Special Ingredients (Friday Devotional)

Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.

- Colossians 3:14-16

For most of my adult life, I’ve considered a sandwich from home to be a sort of lunchtime defeat. If I was eating a sandwich for lunch, it meant I didn’t have enough money to eat out, didn’t have any decent leftovers in the fridge, or didn’t have the time or the creativity to make something better. A sandwich at lunch was something I ate with the enthusiasm of a child doing her homework.

So when Lindsey told me we were going to have sandwiches for lunch this past Saturday, my face fell. But I tried to hide my disappointment and sat down at the table to eat. After just one bite, my face broke out in a surprised smile. “This is good,” I said. “What’s in this?” Lindsey thought for a second and started listing off ingredients: turkey, pepperoni, salami, and Swiss cheese, all on sourdough bread. It was then that I realized the disconnect between the sandwiches I had avoided eating for years and the one she’d put in front of me. When I made sandwiches, I bought the cheapest loaf of bread, slapped two pieces of turkey on it, and called it a day. The reason my sandwiches had been so disappointing was because my ingredients were too.

Life can be like lunch in that regard: sometimes we’re dissatisfied with the whole because we’re working with unsatisfactory ingredients. We traffic in gossip and backbiting, then wonder why we’re lonely. We tell white lies and cut corners and then we’re outraged that we’re not respected. We cling to bad habits then despair that our lives seem stuck in neutral.

Scripture reminds us that a life of discipleship is not as simple as flipping a switch; it means repenting of what is sinful and putting on what is Christlike. In Colossians 3, Paul encourages believers to cast aside the sins which drive us and to replace them with God’s Word, with spiritual wisdom, and with worship. It is by making these changes, by replacing the unhealthy with the holy, that we will see our lives line up with God’s will. God wants you to have life, and have it abundantly—what “spiritual ingredients” are you filling your life with?

Starstruck (Friday Devotional)

And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

- 1 John 5:14

I couldn’t believe my luck. There I was, 10 years old, at my first Major League Baseball playoff game, the atmosphere electric. Hope was in the air, excitement radiated throughout the stadium, and it felt like anything was possible. And then came the cherry on top: the friends who had scored our tickets asked if we wanted to meet Tom and Ben Grieve.

My eyes widened. Tom Grieve was Mr. Ranger—a former player and general manager for Texas, and now their color commentator on television broadcasts. And Ben, his son, was the reigning American League Rookie of the Year, a star in the making whose future seemed limitless. Did I want to meet the Grieves? Of course I did!

So my friends escorted us down to where these two baseball kings were sitting and introduced me. And in that moment, face to face with people I’d only ever seen on TV, I completely froze up. I couldn’t think of a word to say—didn’t thank them for taking a moment to meet me, didn’t say I enjoyed watching them on TV, didn’t even say hello. With a deer-in-the-headlights look, I simply thrust my scorecard into their hands with a Sharpie, they smiled and signed it, and we returned to our seats. I’d had the opportunity to get to know two people I considered legends—and instead, I was too starstruck to speak up.

There are days where I come to God to pray, ready to offer thanks and make requests, and the same kind of thing happens as did at that game. I start to think about God’s glory and majesty, I reflect upon all He has done and will do, and suddenly I forget what I came to say. My problems start to feel inconsequential, my thanksgiving starts to feel like a worthless gesture. Things which seemed all-important only a moment before are reduced to insignificance. Before the almighty God, I am too starstruck to speak.

But the amazing thing about God is that He still wants to hear us. Impossible as it may seem, our problems are significant to Him—not because they are too big for Him to handle, but because they are ours. Our thanksgiving and worship are sweet fragrances to Him, not because we have so much to offer, but because we are willing to give it.

The awesome truth is that we can approach God with boldness because He loves us. Even when you worry your anxieties are beneath Him or that your failures render you unclean, God still wants to hear from you. God is worthy of your reverence, to be sure—but you don’t have to be starstruck.

Not Okay (Friday Devotional)

Surely there is no one on earth so righteous as to do good without ever sinning.

- Ecclesiastes 7:20

I’m always amazed by the things my two-year old son teaches me, even when he’s just being silly. The other night at dinner was just such a time. Having refused to nap that afternoon, he was full-scale loopy, talking about whatever popped into his head with even less of a filter than his toddler brain usually has. So it was after a stream-of-consciousness monologue about a mosquito bite on his leg that his face got serious for a second and he announced with the utmost concern, “The people at the church house are not okay!”

A moment later he elaborated, and we realized he was pretending that everyone at church also had mosquito bites, and dinner carried on normally (at least as normal as dinner with a tired toddler ever is.) But his words stuck with me: the people at the church house are not okay.

We try to pretend that’s not the case. Sunday mornings are marked by cheery attitudes, plastered-on smiles, and well-worn phrases about how God is good all the time. When asked if we need prayer, we’re eager to rattle off the ailments of our relatives, coworkers, and friends, but our own issues never come up. When asked to share our testimonies, we intuitively understand the need for our stories to have happy and uncomplicated endings, lest we embarrass both ourselves and our listeners.

When we do these things, when we put on the façade of having it all together, we do so for the sake of appearances. But especially among brothers and sisters in Christ, such a masquerade shouldn’t be necessary, because as the old saying goes, the church is not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners. Being flawed or troubled doesn’t make you an outlier in the church, it makes you just like everybody else!

When you come to know Jesus, you also come to know yourself, to realize that you are a sinner in need of salvation. No one is born righteous, nor does anyone achieve righteousness by their own good deeds. The only perfect person who ever lived was not your Sunday School teacher, your pastor, or any of the other smiling saints in the church house—it was the Lord who is mighty and compassionate enough to save the weak, the tempted, and the broken. People, in other words, like you and me.

My son was right: the people in the church house are not okay. We are all sinners saved by grace, nothing more and nothing less. So perhaps the time has come to set aside your pride in the name of truth and pursue confession instead of applause. We all need grace—may you be willing to accept it and offer it in equal measure.

Finding Fault (Friday Devotional)

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

- Colossians 3:12

I was fuming. Running late for work, I’d been gathering up my things only to realize my wallet was nowhere to be found. When I retraced my steps, I remembered that Lindsey had asked to borrow my credit card to order something online, so I asked her where she’d put the wallet. Her response was the last one you want to hear when your stuff has gone missing: “I put it right back where I found it.”

So there I was, looking under furniture and through drawers, utterly convinced that she’d misplaced my wallet. Silently (or at least under my breath) I was cursing her irresponsibility, her absentmindedness, and her disregard for my things. I was just waiting for my moment of vindication, the moment when the wallet would turn up, only for her to say, “Oooooh yeah, I did put it there!”

Instead, as I rifled through the laundry hamper, the wallet fell out of the pants I’d worn the day before. The words I’d been waiting for her to say became my line instead. It turns out I, not Lindsey, had been the culprit all along.

It’s much easier to shift blame than to accept it. Leo Tolstoy once said, “Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself,” and that is surely as true today as when he said it. When crises come, we are quick to point fingers, but slow to accept our own culpability. Diagnosing other people’s failures comes so easily that sometimes it doesn’t even occur to us that we might share some of the responsibility.

But Scripture reminds us that believers in Jesus Christ are far from infallible, and we must take steps to avoid letting pride stand in the way of love. With the same breath in which Paul calls us “God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved,” he also cautions us to puts on humility and meekness, compassion and kindness. Our task is not to win arguments, but to win people to Christ.

To be blunt, sometimes you’re wrong. There’s no shame in that—the shame comes when you care more about defending your viewpoints than about loving your neighbor. In a prideful world, Christ calls his disciples to the countercultural witness of humility.

Full Power (Friday Devotional)

But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.

- 1 Corinthians 4:19-20

If you’d come to my backyard Monday night, you’d have found both me and my son wielding leaf blowers as we cleaned off the back patio. You’d have heard lots of loud noise, you’d have seen dirt and dead leaves swirling around, and you’d have had no reason to doubt that we were both hard at work.

But upon closer inspection, you’d have noticed something else: while my leaf blower was plugged into a wall outlet, Andrew’s had no cord. What’s more, while both were making a lot of noise, Andrew’s sounded more like the revving of a chain saw than a leaf blower’s jet fan. Most importantly, while my leaf blower was sending dirt flying, Andrew’s wasn’t seeming to impact its surroundings at all. That’s when it would suddenly become obvious: Andrew’s leaf blower, though a convincing imitation, is just a battery-operated toy. For real power, you need the real thing.

In our world, we struggle to distinguish between true power and facsimiles of it. When we want wisdom, we’re quick to settle for what tickles our ears. When we want strength, sometimes bullying seems close enough. When we want to hear words of life, we get impatient and fall for empty blustering.

But Scripture reminds us that the kingdom of God depends not on the appearance of power, but on the real thing. Big talk may sway people in the business world or at the ballot box, but God calls His people to more than words. Following Christ doesn’t mean debating on his behalf or shouting down his opponents, but making his way your way—healing when others hurt, forgiving when others judge, seeking righteousness when others content themselves with self-righteousness.

Looking and sounding like a follower of Christ isn’t that hard—learn the right verses, say the right things, and go to church every once in a while and you’ll fool most people. But looking like a disciple isn’t the same thing as being one, and the kingdom of God needs more than convincing likenesses. May your witness be filled with more than words—may it be filled with power.