Why Start A Church? Reason #4: Your Second Story Can Be Your Best Story

As Job’s story comes to a close, after losing everything and going through a personal version of Hell, the dust finally settles down and we find him having renewed his faith, found his footing with God, re-grounded in truth, and healed from everything that hurt him. The Bible never tells us how long that process took or what he had to do to get there. But life seems to have evened out for Job. And then this is how Job’s story ends:

Job 42: 12-13: 12: So the Lord blessed Job in the second half (which half?) of his life even more than in the beginning. For now he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 teams of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. He also gave Job seven more sons and three more daughters. He named his first daughter Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. In all the land no women were as lovely as the daughters of Job. And their father put them into his will along with their brothers. Job lived 140 years after that, living to see four generations of his children and grandchildren. Then he died, an old man who had lived a long, full life.

Here's the lesson I learned in my life, and it was the one that put me over the edge on deciding to start a new church: Reason #4: Your SECOND STORY can be your best story. 

Do I wish none of what I’ve described from my story would have happened to me? Of course! …But it did. And I’m not naieve about the reality that it happened to you, too. I have no doubt that if we sat down together across a table, you could tell me of all the ways you’ve experienced many of the same things I have. You’ve wondered if your story was over. You’ve wondered if God was against you, if He even cares, or if He even exists. You’ve wondered if it’s even possible that the future could be as good as the past when it looks so different than you thought the future would. You’ve had people leave you, too. You’ve had friends that you’ve lost as well. I get it. We all have.

I love that the Bible points out that the second half of Job’s life was even better than the first – that’s when the country song got played backwards and he got the house back, the truck back, the kids back, the farm back, and the dog back. I take a lot of hope from how Job’s story ended. I want that on my gravestone: “Here Lies Seth…he died, an old man who had lived a long, full life.” But do you know what one of my favorite parts about this ending is?

It’s when it says that Job wrote his daughters into his will. In Job’s day, that wasn’t a thing. Women weren’t written into the will. The legacy of the father was passed to the sons. But in the second half of his life – in his second story – Job recognized something really important: That the most important thing he could pass on from this life wasn’t his farm, or the livestock, or the money, or anything else that he possessed. The most important part of Job’s legacy wouldn’t be any of the stuff that came to him by faith – it would be the people he built with his faith. Even the one’s who by law should have been left out.

When I was at my lowest and most depressed and most anxious, the one thing that got me through it was the thought that I need to get better not for me… but I need to get better for my kids.

They need their dad healthy. They need me whole – physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And the best gift I can give my kids, my greatest legacy, is that I live out my second story in a way that when they encounter hard things in their life, they know they can get through it because their dad did. Their grandpa did. Their uncle did. Their son did. Their friend did. I’ve come to the conclusion that the greatest thing that I’ll leave on this earth isn’t how much faith I have and what I survived. It won’t be how much I accumulate or how much the world sees that “Seth bounced back.” The greatest thing I’ll leave on earth will be who – not what – WHO – I built with my faith.

 That’s why at Second Story, we talk about the people and issues that too often go unseen in the church. We’re talk about what God has to say to people going through church hurt, people who are single, people who are living out their walk with God in isolation, people who feel judged by Christians, people who have identity issues, people who are wondering if they have a place in God’s Kingdom. We talk about what God would have to say to people who feel like life has left them out, and about the fact that God has written them into the will. The people nobody thought God would – including me. Including you. We’re included and we have a story to tell.

Most scholars think that in terms of authorship, Job is actually the oldest book in the Bible. You know what that means?

It means that everything that happened to Job, and everything that happened to me – where someone started off life thinking everything was going to go great, and then something happened – a trauma, a hurt, an event – and it sent them down a path where they lost themselves so deeply that God had to meet them and restore them and redeem them – everything about THIS story? It’s the oldest story in the world. God has been in the Second Story business from the beginning.

The day of my anxiety attack on the side of the dirt road was a full decade ago now, and though I never did move to California, life today looks vastly different than it did 10-years-ago. 

Thanks to a family who loves me, friends who believe in me, countless hours with a highly skilled counselor, and a God who pursued me relentlessly, I am more me today than I have been in years – maybe ever. Being a dad to my kids is my favorite thing in the world and brings me incredible joy. My relationships with my family and friends are a foundational bedrock for me. I am physically stronger and healthier than I have been in my entire adult life, and my faith is stronger, more vibrant, and more real to me today than it’s ever been.

While I still teach middle-school to pay the bills, I have returned to ministry. My first story didn’t end the way I thought it would. But if God can help me turn the page and write another story – a second story – He can do it for anybody. 

 That’s why I started Second Story Church. Because everyone needs a second story. And a third! And a fourth! And a fifth! That’s the driving force behind everything we’re about. 

I didn’t come back to ministry to play church. I came back because that’s the mission – we’re trying to start a movement of people who understand that God gave Job and so many others in the Bible a second story, and they built up other people with their faith who had a second story, and the process kept repeating itself over, and over, and over, and over all the way to my life. He did it for me. And I promise you, if he did it for me, He’ll do it for you, too.

There are a lot of reasons to start a new church. These four are mine: Nobody is above the attack. Everybody’s first story comes to an end. You can get through it, but not alone. And your second story can be your best story. There are so many reasons to quit on life. Quit on faith. Quit on church, and people, and God, and trying again. If you really want to find a reason to quit, life will hand you a new one every day.

But Psalm 150:6 says, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord…” That means that if you’re still breathing, then God is still writing your story. Be very careful about judging your story when you’re in the middle of it. God does his best work in the second story.

Why Start A Church? Reason #3: You Can Get Through It... But Not Alone

As job experienced the losses he did in his life, one of the hardest parts was that the relationships closest to him were the least helpful in dealing with his situation. Job had a group of friends, and he had a wife – but most of them were absolutely no help when life was at its worst. In fact, when everything had completley fallen apart, Job’s wife told him at one point, “Why don’t you just curse God and die?” (Job 2:9). Thanks, honey. I’ll just be over here… dying. Job had some real winners in his circle.

Not all of Job’s friends were bad, though. In fact, one of them named Elihu tried to help Job see God in the middle of his struggle. Elihu said this to Job in Job 36: 2-5: “Let me go on, and I will show you the truth. For I have not finished defending God! I will present profound arguments for the righteousness of my Creator. 4 I am telling you nothing but the truth, for I am a man of great knowledge. “God is mighty, but he does not despise anyone!”

Here’s the lesson, and it’s one of the reasons I started a new church: Reason #3: You CAN GET THROUGH IT… But not alone.

Job didn’t need a lot of people to help him. But he did need a few who were willing to challenge his thinking and refused to let go of him.

After losing what I did in my life – my house, my career, my church, my social network and friends, and my marriage, I had a couple of moments when I very nearly gave up on pretty much everything.

I remember one night sitting in my car, it was late at night in the middle of winter and bitterly cold out. I stared out the windshield and actually thought to myself, “I’ve got some family in California – I should just move out there. There is nobody in my life, including my kids, who wouldn’t be better off without me. Maybe it’s time for me to just quit everything and go find a quiet corner of San Francisco and just… quit, because there is nobody who really wants to be with me, given the choice, anyway…” It was broken thinking coming from hurting and broken places inside me that needed correction and healing.

And here’s where we run into the problem with the idea that, “…your truth is your truth.” It’s that when your thinking is jacked up, if your truth is your truth, then you’re utterly on your own with that reality. All of us need someone grounded in truth to sometimes be able to help us see what’s true and what isn’t.

I was very blessed in that I had 3 people in my life who challenged my broken thinking – I had my parents, who were unbelievable with me when I was going through the worst of it, I had a really skilled therapist who loves Jesus and spoke truth into the most broken parts of my thinking that were contributing to what I was feeling, and I had one friend left from ministry. I used to know everyone in ministry – now I knew one person – he’s a pastor and a friend of mine who refused to give up on me. 

In fact, as I healed up from all this stuff and I was making progress, he and I were having breakfast one day, and he said to me, “I want you to come with me to St. Paul and help me start a new campus of my church.” I told him I can’t do that. He said, “Why not?”

I said, “Because I’m divorced. I’m disqualified, man… I’ve been DQ’d. Nobody will want some single, middle aged, divorced pastor helping lead their church…” I’m never going to forget this – my friend sat across the breakfast table from me and big tears began to fill his eyes.

“Who told you that?” he asked.

I said, “It’s just the truth – my story disqualifies me from my calling.”

He said, “I need you to listen to me… and you need to listen good… You’re one of the most talented, skilled, and called pastors I’ve ever met. What you’ve been through doesn’t change any of that. The devil cannot take away your calling – all He can do is convince you not to go through with it. Your story isn’t over. Your ministry isn’t over. God is still God. You are still not. Your calling is still your calling, and you’re still who He says you are. It’s time for you to stop letting broken things that have happened to you make decisions for you about what you’re going to do with the rest of your freaking life.”

He absolutely wrecked me. In challenging my thinking about God, calling, identity, all of it – my friend started me on a journey back to remembering who I really am and what I’m really called to. I’ve come a long way from that day of sitting in my car wondering if I should move to California to this one, but I’m going to tell you right now: I haven’t done it alone. I still can’t. Nobody can!

When it all went south, Job needed a friend who would speak truth to Him about who HE IS and who GOD IS. He didn’t need the girlfriend or the dude who took him out for drinks at the bar and would agree with all the stupid things Job already thinks about his situation. He didn’t need someone saying, “Oh, that’s what she said? Bro, I would leave that so fast…” Or, “You know, Job, California actually sounds kinds of nice – my gosh, the people in your life don’t deserve or appreciate you anyway!" Most of us would rather have our thinking affirmed than challenged – even when what we’re thinking is wrong. But you need a few people in your life who are going to shut that mess up! I needed 2-3 people to point me to Jesus, and I needed God to remind me of who He is.

So…What if we started a church where we did that for people?

What if Second Story could be a community that understands that the Bible isn’t kidding when it says it isn’t good for man to be alone, and that when you’re most hurting and you feel most alone, you need people to speak truth over the lies you’ve believed?

What if we could start a church where people actually believed that what’s ahead of them is greater than what’s behind them – and not in a cliché kind of way, either. Like this isn’t pie in the sky Hallelujah when I die. I’m saying, what if we could help people see as they heal that nobody is ever too far gone! Nobody is out of reach! There’s nobody God can’t redeem! If the entire human race didn’t need a second story and a do-over, then there’s no point in God sending Jesus in the first place!

So why is it so easy to fall into the idea that everybody but you can experience that with God? Why is it so easy to think that God’s grace is sufficient for everybody BUT you? Why do you think the Bible calls Jesus the SECOND Adam, and we’re awaiting the SECOND coming, and we live inside the new and SECOND covenant? It’s because when you learn what it means to pick up your cross and follow Jesus, you understand that your first story might be over, but your SECOND story is just beginning!

So! What if we did church like we believe that? That everyone, no matter what they’ve done, where they’ve been, what they’ve been through – no matter who left you, no matter what your history is – everyone, everyone, everyone – has a place that, with a lot of grace and love, stands on truth asks the lies we’ve believed: “Who told you that?”

Everyone needs a community in their lives where God can remind them that grace powerful, that beauty can really come from ashes, that dry bones really do live again, and your story isn’t over. Maybe you’re more spiritual than I am, but I just don’t think these are conclusions people just naturally come to on their own. I know I didn’t.

In the Garden of Eden, God’s story was the first, FIRST story to come to an end – that’s WHY JESUS WAS SENT IN THE FIRST PLACE!

So if God can live in the Second Story… What if we did church like we believed that He really wants us living that second story out with Him? Wouldn’t that be good news… for everybody?

Why Start A Church? Reason #2: Everybody's First Story Comes To An End

Job 3:23-26 finds Job complaining to God about what’s happening in his life. He’s started to feel the attack that has come against him and he’s experiencing all the effects of it – the loss of his health, his wealth, his farm, and the support of others in his life. Job cries out to God in this passage saying, “Why is life given to those with no future, those God has surrounded with difficulties? I cannot eat for sighing; my groans pour out like water. What I always feared has happened to me. What I dreaded has come true. I have no peace, no quietness. I have no rest; only trouble comes.”

As the attack comes to Job, and Job starts comparing himself to other people – and by the way, comparison will never make you feel better about your situation. That’s why Instagram can be such an awful companion. It’s fun to stay in touch and keep up, but it’s an absolute tyrant as a measuring stick in your life.

Job is saying that the things he feared most in life – all of them have now happened to him. All of them. What I dreaded has come true… Job is hitting rock bottom, and here’s the painful life-lesson he’s learning, as well as part of the reason I started a new church: Reason #2: Everybody’s FIRST STORY comes to an end. Everybody’s.

I know exactly where I was and what I was doing when my first story came to an end.

I was out for a jog on a spring day in 2013. I was listening to my usual assortment of 80’s hair-bands at full volume because I can’t run unless I feel like the devil is chasing me, and the lake we lived near was coming into view over a rise in the dirt road we lived on – I was feeling as good as my 40-year old self could feel… and then it hit.

As I approached the lake, I noticed that my body began to feel uneasy and unsure of itself. My legs went wobbly and weak. My throat began to tighten up. I pulled the headphones out of my ears mid-guitar solo and slowed myself to a walk. My eyes slowly swelled and flooded with tears, and out of nowhere, and I mean NO-WHERE, I began to cry. 

And listen – when I tell you I began to cry – It wasn’t a polite, sniffly, boo-hoo kind of cry. It was an ugly, sobbing kind of cry. It was a deep weeping. I dropped to my knees with the lake in front of me, feeling like the wind had been stolen from my lungs. For a solid 15-minutes I heaved, I wailed, and I tried to catch my breath. I had no idea what was happening to me. I slapped the ground repeatedly like a wrestler taps out of a wrestling match. I had no idea where it came from, and I had no idea how to make it stop.

Like a lot of people, especially pastors, I had tied my worth and identity to my work. In my case, that meant my church. And when the church crashed… I crashed. I had a full on anxiety attack on the side of the road – a total and complete breakdown.

I walked back to my house slowly, and shaken. I sat down on the steps of the front porch and I called my dad. I told him, “I don’t know what’s happening to me – but I don’t think I’m ok.” And I wasn’t.

In the coming months, I would see the closing of my church, the short sale of my house, a major career transition from ministry into teaching (which meant an even deeper identity crisis), the loss of virtually my entire friend/social network, and eventually, the end of my 22-year marriage.

That day on the side of the dirt road was the end of my first story. And it sucked.

But in the days between that one and this one, I’ve learned that I’m not the only one who’s experienced the end of my first story. Almost everyone does. Maybe not in quite as dramatic a fashion. But almost everyone experiences it in some way, shape, or form.

If you live long enough, at some point you’re going to come up against questions, problems, or situations that you never saw coming. Something is going to throw you. Something is going to buck you. Something is gonna get you into that Job frame of mind where everything I’ve ever feared is all coming true. This stuff happens to everybody. It might not be your fault. It might not have been something you wanted or caused – or maybe you did. Either way, you can’t stop it from hitting you. And when it does, you have some big decisions to make about the kind of life you’re going to live and the kind of person you’re going to be.

For a lot of people, life stops right here. This is where we quit. We opt out. This is the part of the story where a lot of people harden up and give up on faith, give up on relationships, give in to temptations, seek unhealthy means of escape, and develop addictions. They resign themselves to what life has become and just say, “This is as far as I’m going to go in my life. I tried…” When my first story came to an end, it took me a minute, but eventually (with help!), I realized I have some big decisions to make.

This is part of the reason I started Second Story. At the churches I went to as I was rebuilding my life, the message was consistently one of two things: It was either: 1. “Yes, God loves you… But you’re really stupid and your problems are all your fault…” OR, it was 2. “Let’s dwell on our wounds and our problems, glorify them, worship our feelings, and tell each other how we’re fine just as we are – nothing needs to change, and no one needs to heal or get better.”

I had been a pastor for over 20-years, and I had begun to notice that when people struggle in the church, we tend to either club people over the head with a theology book, or we get stuck and convince ourselves that what we’re going through is a good/normal thing. My experience, and Job’s experience, was that neither one of these approaches are helpful.

So, what if we started a church where we understood that when first stories end, there’s a Second Story waiting to be lived out, and that shaming and blaming people who already feel terrible about themselves never does anybody any good? Instead of normalizing our wounds, hurts, habits, and broken feelings, what if we could learn to surrender to Jesus, heal, and forgive? What if we could learn what Paul meant when he said that Christians should not be people who grieve as those who have no hope? We can grieve. And we can have hope.

When your first story comes to an end, somebody has to stand in the gap between your head and your heart to try and hold these two things together. Your head and your heart are not enemies. But when your first story ends, man alive, it can feel like they are. What if we could work them into each other so that big, foundational spiritual truth was expressed with emotional and relational intelligence? My experience in my journey to healing had been that the more I understood God’s love, the more deeply I felt it. And the more deeply I felt it, the more I understood it. So what if we didn’t have to choose between feeling it and understanding it in the church?

What if we could start a church that addresses deep longing, grief, hopelessness, lack of purpose, isolation, and REAL PROBLEMS with tenderness, compassion, and love? It might be messy. The black and white “truth people” might be frustrated by the gray that creates. And those more committed to what they want to feel will not always enjoy having their version of “truth” challenged. But what if we could live in the tension and find a different approach to church that would help us change what people believe is possible? Would that change anything for someone who, like me, found the end of themselves on the side of the road?

If we could start a church like that, it might help some people understand that the death of your first story isn’t the death of YOU. The future in front of you might not be the future you had always imagined you’d have, but it’s still a future held in God’s hand. You can’t control the ending of your first story. It comes for everybody. But you can control where the story goes from here. A church that believes that and lives it out in practice… that might be a place filled with an awful lot of hope.

Why Start A Church? Reason #1: Nobody Is Above The Attack

In the next number of posts, I’m going to share my personal testimony by using the book of Job as a kind of framework for some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way, and a vehicle for sharing some of the thoughts and ideas that pushed me to start a new church in St. Paul called Second Story Church. Please understand – I’m not equating myself WITH Job. I’ve just found that Job’s story in the Bible is a great framework for helping us understand what second stories are all about.

Job: 1: 9-11 says this: Satan replied to the Lord, “Yes, but Job has good reason to fear God. You have always put a wall of protection around him and his home and his property. You have made him prosper in everything he does. Look how rich he is! But reach out and take away everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face!”

So, why atart a church? Reason #1: NOBODY IS ABOVE THE ATTACK.

I pastor a church called Second Story Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. But Second Story… is not the first church I’ve planted.

I’ve actually planted or helped to start 3-churches at this point in my life. The first one was in a small town in Minnesota and it went really, really well, right up until it didn’t. I was there for 8-years, and in the almost decade of my life that I was lucky enough to lead that church, what we saw and experienced was downright miraculous. At our height, we had over 10% of our town coming to the church. We were doing things in rural ministry that weren’t really being done elsewhere in our state.

At that time, I was getting groups of pastors both around the state and around the country who were Skyping me into meetings and conferences – REMEMBER SKYPE?? – asking me how we were doing it and encouraging other pastors with it – we had plans to launch more campuses and more locations. On a personal level, life was great. I was raising 3-amazing kids. I was married. My wife had a great job. We had a great house in a beautiful area in Minnesota – I’m not gonna lie – it was a “season” (I hate that word) of life that was a lot of fun.

But 8-years into it, we hit some pretty serious problems at the church. I’m not going to go into the specifics of what went wrong, but when problems in the church hit, they hit hard and fast. It was as if the whole locomotive we’d built suddenly ground to a stop and started going the wrong way. We lost 73% of our congregation inside of 18-months. There is no church on earth that can take that kind of hit and survive. The issues I was up against at the church bled into my home life and created all kinds of stress there.

All the friends who were skyping me into meetings before? Almost all of them were gone or wouldn’t return my calls. And when they did get back to me, all they had was all kinds of cliche, trite, unhelpful advice – “Don’t quit before the breakthrough,” “Fake it till you make it!” (Because faking it until you make it is what Jesus would do?). I was left in a place of asking: “How did this happen – not just to the church… but to me? I thought I was doing things right! I thought I was doing all the things you’re supposed to do in life as a pastor, a dad, a husband – how am I experiencing these kinds of problems?” It was incredibly displacing for me.

Here’s what Job’s story teaches us – that the brokenness of the world is not a respecter of the people in it.

Brokenness doesn’t care what you’ve accomplished. It doesn’t care what you’ve done. It doesn’t care how devout you are or how well you’ve lived, or how much money you have, or what success you’ve known – brokenness touches everybody. The attack comes for everybody. It’s just a part of the way the world works.

I wish I could tell you that if you follow Jesus and really live out your story with Him that you’re going to be protected from hard things. The reality is that’s just not how the world works. In fact, I’ve learned that for every slice of Heaven somebody’s standing on in their life, they’ve probably had to fight like hell to get to it, and they have to maintain their defense of it every single day, because nobody’s above the attack. In fact, the better your intentions, the more I can promise you the attack is coming, because the size of your attack is relative to the size of your calling.

I started Second Story church, in part, because when the attack hit me, I couldn’t find many churches, or pastors, that would help me deal with that reality head on. What most churches want to talk about is the other side of the attack. We want to talk about 3-steps to parenting successfully, 4-steps to financial success, and 3-ways your marriage can be amazing. We like to keep it snappy, clappy, and happy. That’s what sells. And that’s all great… But none of it helps me in the middle of the attack.

I need to know how to know that I’m still valuable when I feel like I’m not and when others are proving my point by walking away. I need to know what to do with the complexity of real life problems. I need to know what to do with shame, and inadequacy, and lack, and how God sees me when all I see is attack, after attack, after attack. I don’t need someone to paint me a rosy picture of life after the storm – because if somebody doesn’t give me a life-jacket IN the storm, I’m going to drown!

I started Second Story because I wanted to start a church where people can survive their storms. That means we’re a church that’s real about spiritual formation and discipleship and learning to actually apply our real faith to our real life. It means we talk about the hard stuff people face and are going through by name, and we do it with an eye toward the fact that we have decisions to make in the here and now that are going to affect us in the there and then. Faith in Jesus should be something that’s helpful IN an attack – not a source of pressure and stress and “…you’re not good enough…” IN IT.

Job knew that and found out on a deeply personal level that the attack comes for everybody. If you’re going to be serious about following Jesus, you’re going to have a target on your back, and we need churches that are serious about helping people deal with that reality. I’ve experienced it as well. Church should be a place where we not only name the attacks that come, but we are able to deal with them by understanding that the attack someone else is under might be something we experience down the road and need to help them find grace in the middle of.

Nobody’s above it. But you can get through it. Stay tuned this week and we’ll talk about how that’s possible.

Who Benefits When I Shut Up?

This past weekend at Second Story Church, we read a story about the prophet Elijah from 1Kings 19 where Elijah… let’s just say he was a little burnt out. God’s answer for Elijah’s burnout wasn’t found in anything spectacular. It was found in what the Bible calls a “thin whisper” in Elijah’s silence before Him.

And that got me thinking: How do we be silent in God’s presence in a world that’s addicted to noise? Who benefits from silence? Let me give you just one person who benefit when you and I dare to do what our world encourages us not to – and that’s actually be quiet, still, and silent.

Stillness and silence helps us be present with OURSELVES.

One of the first people to benefit when we learn to be still and silent is US! When you break your routine of noise and the addiction most of us have to constant distraction, you actually have a chance to listen to what’s going on inside of you.

The NBA playoffs started this weekend, and I have high hopes for my Boston Celtics this year. But I discovered a new trick this season for watching Celtics games without getting nervous for them while they’re playing. When things aren’t going well and the Celtics are playing on the road in a hostile arena, and the momentum is against them and they can’t buy a bucket – you know what I do? It’s kind of ridiculous, but I promise you it works: I watch the game on mute. I watch it in silence. Why?!

I don’t need to listen to an opposing crowd cheering for everything I don’t want to happen! I don’t need to listen to their stupid celebration when things are going wrong! I don’t need announcers nitpicking everything the Celtics are doing and pointing out everything they’re screwing up! I’ve got eyes! I can see that for myself! So Doris Burke, Stan VanGundy, and anyone else who’s commentating on the game, in the name of Jesus, if you can’t tell me something about how we’re going to dig ourselves out of this hole we’re in, I don’t want to hear it! It’s making me nervous! It’s making me anxious! I don’t need that mess in my ears right now! I just mute the TV and it’s incredible how much anxiety goes away! I can watch even the hard things and see them for what they are and evaluate them without all the noise of a crowd that’s cheering against me and announcers who have nothing good to say. I might even play some spa music underneath the action just to keep myself calm while I watch.

 You want the truth? Some of us, that’s all we’ve got on our anxiety and insecurity right now – crowds cheering for all the wrong stuff and announcers who are nitpicking everything apart all the time. This is why athletes delete social media when the playoffs start – I don’t need all that negativity and pressure on top of the pressure I’m already under and the anxiety I feel – I need my coach, I need my teammates, and I need my family, and that’s it!

 Silence and stillness help me to mute what swirls around in my heart and mind so I can see things more clearly and realize what’s happening inside me. In Psalm 131:1-2, David wrote: Lord, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. 2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

 David is saying that calming and quieting yourself is what mature people do so they can be in tune with themselves through silence and stillness – getting to know what’s really going on with them without the added momentum of anxiety that all the noise brings. It’s a mark of maturity to press mute. Noise and distraction are a mark of immaturity. See – that’s the thing – when I say that silence and stillness are ways to be present with yourself so you can be alert to what’s in you – I’m assuming you actually want to know. A lot of us would rather not know. We’re pretty scared of what bubbles up in us when we get still and quiet. That’s when the insecurity comes up that we hide underneath our workaholism and our workout plan. That’s when the insecurity and loneliness comes up that we hide under a social calendar that we’d fill every evening if we could.

You can’t fight the clutter of noise within you by creating more noise around you. Fighting noise that way is a never-ending battle in which eventually you won’t be able to hear, discern, or recognize anything – it’s all just going to be noise – and it’s going to get louder and louder and louder. So you’re actually way better off learning to sit in stillness and silence so you can deal with the noise WITHIN you, partner with God on weeding through that – what’s healthy? What isn’t? – so you can deal with the noise AROUND YOU in a non-anxious way. Stillness and silence helps you better know you.

Proverbs 10:19 says, “Too much talk leads to sin. Be sensible and keep your mouth shut.” This is the Bible literally telling some of us that the reason we’re sinning, the reason we’re missing the mark, the reason we’re experiencing pain, the reason we’re repeating the pattern, the reason we can’t unlock the next level is because we will not shut up long enough to listen to Him. If you want a better relationship with yourself, others, or with God – you need to learn to be still and silent so you can listen in a non-anxious way and carry His peace to the world around you.

Why I Need A Rest... And You Do, Too

I have a confession.

As a “Type A,” check-list oriented, achievement-driven, goal-striving, self-motivated guy… I struggle to regularly practice the sabbath in my week.

I’m getting better at it. But the thing about the sabbath is that if you don’t observe it, this is one of the 10-commandments that will actually catch up with you – it will force you to observe it – it’s just called a different name when that happens: Burnout. I’ve met the sabbath in burnout before, and frankly, I’d rather not meet it there again. So, these days I’m trying hard to be better about something that should be so simple – finding regular rest in the schedule of my week.

Sabbath comes from the Hebrew word, “Shabbot,” which means TO STOP. In ancient, Jewish practice, people got very legalistic about the practice of the Sabbath. They actually invented 39 categories of stuff you couldn’t do, your family couldn’t do, your kids couldn’t do, and even your livestock couldn’t do when Sabbath rolled around every week. The idea went from: “Let’s spend a day a week resting and reflecting on God together in our relationships!” to, “Let’s play a giant game of spiritual “Gotcha!” The ritual and routine became legalistic in the extreme.

The problem is that the Sabbath was never meant to be legalistic. Just like everything else in the Bible – it’s relational. God didn’t take a break on the 7th day because He was tired. He took a break because He made human beings and he wanted to spend time with them. That’s why keeping the Sabbath is #4 on the list of the 10 Commandments – as Israel was coming out of 400 years of slavery in Egypt, God sent Moses up to the top of a mountain and gave him the 10 laws – and really what these were meant to be were instructions on how to now live as free people. It had been a while since they had lived that way, so God gave them the 10 Commandments as instructions about how to live AND STAY free.

This is why when Jesus comes along He told people in Mark 2:27: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” What Jesus is saying is that the Sabbath was always meant to be a gift for you, not a burden on you. Without it, you’ll end up living in slavery instead of freedom. And by the way, you don’t need to live in Egypt to be a slave. You can be a slave to expectations. A slave to anxiety. A slave to insecurity. A slave to misunderstanding. Sabbath is a way for free people to stay living like they’re free.

And yes – that freedom comes with limits. The Sabbath is a limit. But it’s a limit that produces life. It’s kind of a funny thing – in the creation story in Genesis, God blesses animals, and he blesses people, and He blessed the 7th day of rest. That’s kind of a weird combination, right? But what scholars point out is that God blesses the things that are capable of producing more life. Rest produces more life.

So how do you practice sabbath in your week? Let me give you 4 ingredients that have helped me in my own practice. Maybe they’ll help you, too.

1.     Pause

Remember – what does the word “Shabbot” mean? Sabbath means to stop. We tend to live as though everything is an emergency, even when it really isn’t. So practicing the sabbath is really a way of resisting the tyranny of the urgent by pushing pause on our urgency. And when you push pause on your urgency, you’re telling whatever insecurity, whatever anxiety, and whatever thing inside you is driving it: You aren’t God. You’re incapable of bringing me more life, or bringing life-producing blessing into my life – only God can do that.

So, your sabbath day SHOULD look different than the rest of your week. Here’s a good test for you – if someone were to watch your Sabbath day on mute, would they be able to tell that day is any different from the rest of your life? It’s ok to work on your car on your sabbath. It’s ok to fix something around your house. It’s ok to clean your bathroom. Sometimes a clean house leads to a rested spirit – it does for me, anyway. The challenge is to make sure that the activity isn’t wound based, and it’s actually based in you enjoying it.

 2.     Play

Make a big breakfast. Watch sports. Dial up a great movie on your favorite streaming service. Indulge in some good food. Do a long workout at an enjoyable pace. Spend time with the people closest to you – this is about bucket filling stuff that you do in relationship with the people closest to you.

In my house when my kids were young, every Sunday night we did something called popcorn, shake, and a movie night – we’d just watch movies together and eat a bunch of unhealthy food. For you, it might be fishing. It might be building something. Go to a game – whatever – the point is that sabbath needs to have an element of play – something in it that’s a bucket filling activity. And it’s not self-indulgent. It SHOULD involve the relationships closest to us.

 3.     Praise

Eugene Peterson, one of my favorite pastors and people, said that the sabbath needs to have some kind of marking on it, some kind of practice, where we intentionally thank the giver for the gifts we experience. Many of us will take a day off. But not all of us will mark the day by making it holy in any way, shape, or form – it’s all pause and play with no praise.

For many of us, Sunday is a natural day to make our sabbath because we go to church as a part of it and naturally have a moment of praise when we are there. Whatever day you pick, you need to figure out what this could look like in your life. Your Sabbath has got to have a pocket of praise.

It could be waking up, making some good coffee, and making a list of things you’re grateful for today. It could be listening to some worship music. It could be starting the day with prayer and journaling. As Christians, we don’t believe that we move toward the thriving side of the mental health spectrum by just resting our bodies and “unplugging” – we believe that part of our well-being is actually a spiritual thing – that truly healthy people acknowledge that there is a God, and we are not Him. One writer I admire a lot says, “Sabbath is a form of resistance against the pull of living a Godless life.”

 In other religions, God is bound to geography. In Islam, God is in Mecca. In Buddhism, God is in the out of body metaphysical space. In Christianity, God is with you. He is Immanuel. God is not off in the distance, He is near. His Spirit is within you. He’s waiting for you in this day of rest, calling to you: “Let’s go make this day holy together!” It’s got to have praise.

4.     Prep

If you’re going to practice the sabbath, I’ll be honest with you – there are things I’ll actually work harder at during the week to make sure I don’t have to do them on Saturday, which is usually when I try to practice sabbath. Emphasis on USUALLY and TRY. I’ll work harder to get things done during the week so I can actually unplug on Saturday a little bit more.

 And this is what I’ve found as I’ve experimented with this in my own life – in the flow of the week, I will actually do more and be more productive in my week IF I take Saturdays to rest. There’s a reason I write my messages at 4am on Sundays. I’ll do the outline of them during the week, but then I write them out on Sundays – and the reason is that I’m sharper, clearer, faster, more focused, more present and more productive if I’m rested.

That doesn’t mean I get this perfect all the time. That’s ok! Sabbath, just like the rest of life, is often way messier than we’d like. Hebrews 4: 9-11 says: So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall.

 The goal isn’t supposed to be how do you get sabbath perfect – don’t make this a legalistic thing. It’s about doing your best. If we’re going to be a non-anxious presence in the world, we need to ask: How do I take a step? It’s about progress, not perfection. We’re so addicted to speed. For many of us practicing the sabbath is going to be a big adjustment. This is going to mess with your life.

And you want to know the truth? That’s the point – the point is that it’s supposed to mess with your life. It’s supposed to be different so we can live out our freedom, not our slavery, and be a non-anxious, life-giving presence to the people around us and the situations we find ourselves in every week.

The Danger Is Hoping For Less

We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. - Luke 24:21

 Then Jesus said to them, “You foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures.  - Luke 24:25

 You know what that phrase, “We HAD HOPED…” PAST TENSE means? It means, “We used to have hope, but we do not have hope anymore.” What have you hoped for in your life at this point? In your marriage? In your career? In your physical health? In your finances? In your relationships with your kids – where did you USED TO have hope… that you don’t anymore?

The disciples traveling the road to Emmaus with Jesus after his resurrection told him, “We had hoped… That knowing Jesus would actually mean something different. But here we are – just a couple of dudes, walking the road back to Emmaus.” By the way, you know why they’re walking to Emmaus from Jerusalem? Because they’ve given up and they’re going home. The women had told them – HEY!! JESUS IS ALIVE! THE PACKAGE HAS BEEN DELIVERED! And they didn’t believe it. We thought He was different. We had hoped that He was the messiah, and that the idea of a Messiah meant something different. We had hoped…

 So these former disciples are headed home and have no idea that the delivery they were waiting for is now walking on the road with them and is in the process of explaining everything that had to happen for Him to be right there in front of them – and they don’t even recognize it. Their miracle is in the process of unfolding. But they can’t see it. They haven’t tracked it. They expected it to get here sooner in a package that looked different. But now the package is walking along side them and they haven’t even realized it yet. As soon as they do, it’s going to change everything about their lives. The reality of this delivery goes so much farther than they think. But right now, they’re stuck in their expectations of what they’d hoped for – to the point that even Jesus says, “You find it so hard to believe… what God has done and is doing in your life. So hard to believe… How far He’d go to deliver all of Heaven right to your door. You don’t even see it unfolding even now.”

I’ve been a pastor for a long time at this point, and I honestly think there are a couple of reasons that people don’t experience as much resurrection in their lives as they were hoping for and so they give up… One is they just don’t believe the miracle could go that far, and another is that believing it could is too disruptive to their lives. So we become people who had hoped. And giving up on hope can look a lot of different ways – most of the time it doesn’t look like what we think it does. Giving up on your faith for the things YOU HAD HOPED FOR doesn’t always look like sulking, pouting, shrugging your shoulders and kicking a can around the block, muttering to yourself about what God hasn’t done for you.

 Most of the time, giving up looks like apathy – it’s just adjusting your expectations and practices to your experience of reality rather than what you used to hope for in faith. So – giving up doesn’t look like telling people you’re not a Christian anymore. But it can look like not going to church because you’ve given up on the idea that church is worth going to. It doesn’t always look like divorcing the person you’re married to, but it can look like living inside of a very hard relationship and accepting the misery and pain it comes with as normal. Giving up can look like giving up on eating right and exercising because you think that how you feel is just how adults are supposed to feel. It can look like going through the motions in your career even though you don’t really have a sense of purpose in it because you don’t think God has called you to anything else. It can look like never getting time with your teenage kids – because everyone else lets youth activities and sports and social media get to their kids before they do – so you give up on hoping you can develop a deeper relationship with them as they grow and you just kind of accept life with your kids as it’s handed to you…

 Giving up can look like maybe not living in full-blown addiction to something, but dabbling in just enough of it that it you’re using it as an escape. It can look like settling in your dating life for the next available instead of holding out for someone you connect with, who shares your values and your faith – it’s easier to adjust my values and faith than it is to find a miracle in a haystack, isn’t it? It can look like burying your trauma, ignoring your grief, not paying attention to and stuffing your feelings of hurt from things you’ve been through – because you think that the most healing you’re gonna get out of God is enough to be functional in a world that’s just gonna do it to you again, so the best thing you can get from God is a faith for things to be different someday when you die – but until then, we let those hopes go – it’s what we USED TO hope for… we had hoped. Now, we just hope to get by and get through.

 Here's what the road to Emmaus speaks over us on Easter morning – that the real danger about miracles isn’t that God doesn’t still do them. He does. And it isn’t that He won’t deliver on them. He will. The danger isn’t that you’ll hope for too much and then be let down and then quit. THE REAL DANGER WITH THE MIRACLE GOD WANTS TO DO IN YOUR LIFE is that it’s going to take longer to show up than you thought, and it’s going to look different than you thought it would when it gets here, so you can tell the story of what you hoped for, but you won’t recognize it as it’s unfolding in your life.

 The danger of Easter isn’t hoping for too much and being disappointed in your faith. The real danger is hoping for too little, and not understanding that God doesn’t DO little, so you don’t see it as it’s arriving, and you miss the full impact of the delivery because the miracle didn’t fit inside the box you thought it would arrive in. The disciples were hoping for an earthly Kingdom, Jesus said, “I’ve been telling my people since the beginning of time – I came to deliver you eternity.” They were hoping to defeat the Romans. Jesus said, “I defeated DEATH – it’s a much bigger problem, and I’ve taken care of it.”

 The danger of Easter is that your expectations are too little, of a God that’s too small, for a life that fits into the parameters of what you can conceive of and think of – When God says that what I’m trying to do in your life is more than you’d ever know to ask. It’s more than you’d ever dream to imagine – you don’t even know what you don’t know about how far this miracle goes. You don’t know how long I’ve been trying to deliver this to you. I’ve been doing this since the beginning of time – you think I’m gonna fumble the package on the doorstep of your house?

 Your miracle might require your participation. You might have to do the counseling and the therapy. You might have to get the treatment. You might have to work through the problem in the relationship. You might have to pay off the debt. But I’m walking on the road with you! I’m right beside you! I’ve been providing for you the entire time and the whole way – I’m not going to fumble the package now! I’m closer than you think! I’ll explain to you what you don’t know! Your problem isn’t that you used to hope for something that you didn’t get! Your problem is that what I want to give you is so big, and it’s so whole, and it’s so holy, and it’s so healing, and it’s so overwhelmingly beautiful that you don’t even know what it looks like when I’m in the process of walking it out with you!

 The danger of Easter isn’t that the FedEx truck from Heaven can’t find your house. The danger is that you’ll give up and not be there when He arrives!. The miracle of Easter, the resurrection God wants to do in your life – I know it’s taking longer than you’d like. I get it that this isn’t what you through it would look like – I’ve been there in my own life! But once you start seeing what He’s doing as He’s walking… You can’t unsee it. It’s so much bigger, it’s so much more, it goes so much farther than you think.

God's Word Brings Clarity To What's On The Menu

During that time the devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.” But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” – Matthew 4: 3-4 NLT

 Have you ever gone grocery shopping when you were hungry? Have you ever noticed that your grocery bill goes up by about 40% when that happens? Why is that? It happens because when you’re hungry, everything looks good, doesn’t it?

 Even food you don’t like get’s thrown into your card when you’re hungry. I don’t like tomatoes – but if I’m shopping when I’m hungry, I’ll throw some in the cart, because you never know. Maybe I’ll put them on an omelette… maybe… Then I take that food home and it goes bad before I even eat it and I’ll ask myself, “Why did I even buy these tomatoes? I don’t even like tomatoes!” I was hungry. That’s the reason. And when you’re hungry – everything looks good. Even stuff that isn’t food looks like food when you’re hungry enough.

 Jesus hadn’t eaten anything for 40 days – He had been fasting. And the devil told Jesus, “Turn these stones into bread!” This isn’t a test of Jesus’ hunger. It’s a test of his VISION.

 Jesus said, “First of all, I can see with my own eyes that these are rocks, they’re not food. In order for me to make them into food, I’m going to have to supernaturally turn them into something they’re not so I can fill a temporary desire with a temporary pleasure. But God’s Word says that man does not live by bread alone – meaning that even if they WERE food, which they’re not, that bread is only going to fill me up temporarily – but the Word of God is going to fill me up spiritually – and nourish me eternally. God’s Word is going to satisfy me at a much deeper level. So forgive me, Satan, for passing on turning these rocks into breadsticks – rocks aren’t food! That’s why God didn’t put them on the menu!” Isn’t this what the devil does in your life, too? Make rocks look like they’re the featured item on the menu?

 The first time I ever had to take my dog, Rosie, to the vet, she had eaten a flower that can be poisonous to dogs and she got really lethargic and sick after she ate it. So we took her into the vet. I don’t know why dogs, Beagles in particular, think everything is food, but they do. Rosie was in the back while the Vet was examining her, and a man came into the writing room with his big, beautiful Golden Retriever. I pet the dog for just a second, and I asked the owner, “What was this good boy in here for?”

 The man said, “Well, I was grilling steaks on the patio at my house, and the patio has an area where I keep the grill that’s got some stone and gravel around it. And as I was putting the steaks on the plate for dinner, I knocked the grill by accident and the tray under the grill that catches all the juices from the meat – it spilled onto the rocks. So while my family and I were eating dinner, this guy smelled what had been spilled onto the rocks and ate the rocks… She ate ALL OF THE ROCKS. So I just had to spend $3,500 to have rocks removed from his stomach because he doesn’t know the difference between a real steak and a rock that smells like a steak!”

 Do you know the difference? Jesus does! Jesus said, “That’s not a steak. That’s a rock. I don’t care how much the devil tries to make it look like a steak and smell like a steak – that’s a rock. And eating rocks will kill me.” Jesus knows the difference because God’s word gives Him clarity about what’s on the menu.

So when you’re straining, and you’re wanting, and you’re lacking, and you can’t see real clearly, God’s word can tell you – “HEY! This is food, this isn’t. This is what God is serving, and this is what will kill you.” Jesus said, “Don’t get me wrong – this is a temptation. It’s TEMPTING! But when I put on the corrective lenses of God’s word, I have clarity about what’s on the menu so I know what to order and what to eat. Without it, I’m going to ingest a bunch of things that are just going to land me in an emotional emergency room because the devil poured steak sauce on it, but it’s just a rock – and God didn’t put rocks on the menu for me!”

That man you thought you could fix if you got into a relationship with him? He’s not on the menu – he’s a plate full of rocks. That website you visited for some temporary snack food last night? That’s not a snack. It’s a pile of rocks. That glass in front of you when you’re tempted to say, “I can handle one more?” That’s a glass full of rocks. We keep thinking that rocks look like food.

One of the reasons it’s so important to read your Bible and know God’s Word is that God’s Word brings so much clarity to the food that He serves to meet the desires He gave you. If you’re not clear about what’s on the menu, then we tend to be people who will order anything… eating piles and piles of rocks, hoping and praying that maybe this time, they’ll turn into bread.

Grace Is Your New Uniform

And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.” - Galatians 3:27

You thought it was funny when I talked about Trekkies wearing uniforms in my last post? Let’s talk about the clothes God wants YOU to wear for just a minute…

It’s a uniform called grace…And grace is about one of the most misunderstood and misapplied uniforms anybody ever tried to put on.

Most people think their grace uniform is made out of endless amounts of elastic. There’s a real trend today for clothes that used to be stiff and ridged are now being made out of things that have more elasticity to them. Jeans used to be this really ridged, denim material where you’d put them through the wash and then put them on afterward and they would be so stiff that you could barely sit down without them restricting you in some really uncomfortable ways – anybody remember jeans like that?

 These days, the most expensive jeans – the most expensive dress shirts, the most expensive pants – all of them are made out of material that stretches and wicks your sweat away from your body. It moves with you, and curves with you, and glides with you, and it covers all of the things you want covered. Personally, I’m a big fan of stretchy clothes. I put them on and I’m comfortable just as I am – I can move how I want and it moves with me. I can wear it anywhere and be comfortable and look good doing it. I will gladly wear that kind of uniform.

 Most people think this is how grace is. They think that grace is something that meets me where I am and it bends around me. So when I am applying God’s grace to my brokenness, I think that the fact that God’s grace is sufficient for me means that that it covers all of me and it moves with me, however I am, wherever I want it to go, whatever I’m doing – I can do whatever I want when I’m in the uniform of grace because it’s primary purpose… is my comfort. That’s how most people think of grace, the new clothes Paul is talking about here. It stretches over whatever I want so I can be comfortable just as I am.

 I have other clothes in my closet other than stretchy clothes. I have a few shirts that were tailor made for my body – and I bought them a number of years ago. It’s the coolest thing – you use an app on your phone. It takes pictures of your body, and then through the magic of A.I., it actually designs shirts and pants to fit you. It’s the most incredible thing. I used to put on these shirts, and I’d actually make an audible noise like, “Oooo… that’s how a shirt is supposed to fit.”

These shirts still bend with me. They still curve with me. But the do it in all the right ways and all the right places because they’re form-fit, you know what I’m sayin? They just feel good to wear. Everytime I’ve worn those shirts – to work, church, school – every time – I get complements about them. “Hey, man, that’s a nice shirt. You’re looking good today! Where can I get a shirt like that??” I had a 7th grader notice what I was wearing the other day. He told me – “Mr. Hinrichs… the FIT is DRIPPIN’!” I said, “The what is whatting?” He said, “…the outFIT is DRIPPIN’!” He was telling me I was looking good! I said, “Yeah it is! I drip a LOT! All I DO is drip!” It feels good to wear clothes that fit right!

 And my best clothes? They fit because they’re tailor made – they fit me right, you know? Or… they did until I gained 60 pounds. Because then, I’d go to put on the shirts that were tailor made for me, and suddenly the material that used to cover all of me wasn’t covering all of me anymore. I was stretching the shirts out in ways they weren’t meant to be stretched. I was pulling on them to make them comfortable, but no matter what I did, the shirts just didn’t want to go where I wanted them to go – they wouldn’t comfortably cover what I wanted them to cover.

In that scenario, what changed? Me, or the shirt? It’s me, right? The shirt hasn’t changed. The problem is that the shirt was made in the image of a healthier me that I used to conform to. When I got unhealthy, it’s almost like there was too much of me… and not enough… of the shirt. So in order to fit it – I had a choice – I could do one of two things: I could get healthier and better fit into the image the shirt was made in. Or… I could wear a bigger hoodie.

 When it comes to wearing the uniform of grace, Paul put the choice this way elsewhere in the Bible – He said, “Shall we sin, that grace may abound?” Should we buy stretchier clothes to accommodate our unhealth? Or should we work a little more to conform to the image tailor made for us of what we look like at our best?

 Because that’s who Jesus is – He is the image of God you were created in. And in His love, God said, “All people are my people! There is no distinction between who’s in the club or who’s out of the club! But that doesn’t mean that my clothes are one-size fits all! It means that I will cover you in grace while you work out your salvation. I will cover you with inclusion and acceptance and love in the community of the church while we work together on becoming the healthiest version of yourself. It means that I will walk with you, and teach you, and bless you, and provide for you, and cover you, while we work together on conforming your life to the image of my son that was tailor made for you –

The fact that I love my people doesn’t mean they have a license to do whatever they want! It means they have the right to step into a relationship with me – to step into their identity as sons and daughters. It means they have the power to fight the darkness inside them. It means they have the means to get from where they are to where they need to be – because in this club, my grace meets everyone where they are, but it’s not going to leave them where they are. I love you too much to tell you you’re fine when you’re not. I love you too much to tell you you’re healthy when you’re not. I love you too much to tell you that how you are doesn’t matter when it does.

Jesus said, “I didn’t come to abolish the law, I came to fulfill it.” I came to show you what the form is and what the image looks like. So, in grace and in love, and with a lot of patience with each other, we’re gonna put some movement on this thing. If I didn’t love them, I wouldn’t have made the shirt in the image they need to conform to in the first place. Why bother showing them the image if the form doesn’t matter?!

 That means two things – first, nobody has the right to judge anyone, and the church needs to get off it’s high horse and quit judging, condemning, and excluding everyone when it’s own grace-uniform is bulging at the seams! And second, it means you need to quit judging, condemning, and excluding yourself because you think the uniform of grace isn’t going to fit you!

 If I see enough people acting like a bunch of judgmental, exclusionary snobs while wearing a Star Trek uniform, guess what I’m going to assume about Trekkies? They’re judgmental, exclusionary snobs! It’s no different in church! If the people in the church judge, condemn, and exclude me, I’m going to assume that the uniform of grace was never meant for me in the first place – because I’ll never fit into that. I’ll never be healthy enough to wear the grace uniform. I’ll never be good enough. What I did was too much. Where I’ve been is too far gone. I can’t fit into it. And based on what I’ve seen from the church, I don’t really wanna try!

 Paul says: ANYBODY can wear the uniform of grace… God made one for everybody… That’s the beauty of the church. That’s the beauty of God loving His people!

But here’s the other part of it – you have to give up the right to not just judging other people – you have to give up the right to judging YOURSELF! You no longer have the right to say I don’t belong – when Jesus said you do. You no longer have the right to say I’m not good enough, when Jesus died for you. To Him, you were worth that sacrifice.

Paul says, here’s how grace uniforms work: You have to want to wear it. You have to want to get well. You have to want to get healthy. You have to admit that the way you think about yourself is jacked up. You have to acknowledge that the way you’re living isn’t working. You have to notice that the way you’re doing relationships isn’t healthy. You have to want to conform to the image of His Son and not try and make His Son conform to the image of your unhealth.

 So God says, “HEY CHURCH!” You don’t get the right to say who the uniform is for and who it isn’t. I’ve got grace for EVERYBODY! And PEOPLE! INDIVIDUALS! You don’t get the right to tell me what it should look like as it pertains to you when I’m the one who designed it – I’m the captain of this starship! I’m the leader of this club – and because of that – I not only get to say who’s in and who’s out – I get to show you a form and an image of what you could look like at your healthiest, and I want you to fit into that uniform a little more each day.

So the question isn’t will you join the club or not, Leutenant Commander. It’s not does God love you and are you one of His people? You are! The question is: Will you allow yourself to be loved… and will you lean into the grace, and the healing, and the wholeness, and the identity that comes with? Will you put on the grace uniform that an heir of Abraham ought to wear? What would that look like on you as you love people? As you invite them to church? As you relate to people that are hard to relate to? AND… what would it look like in your own thinking about yourself?

Where is the uniform stretching and pulling on you? Where is it a little tight? What needs to get healthier? What is God speaking to you about that?

God loves His people. It’s not about who’s in and who’s out of the club – this is about how you’re going to live long and prosper.

Exclusion Is An Old Hurt

23 Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until the way of faith was revealed. 24 Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith.  - Galatians 3: 23-24

 A friend of mine once gave me a documentary to watch about fans of the TV show, Star Trek. It was called Trekkies. The last 10 minutes of the film is filled with people talking all about how Star Trek has been the one place in their lives that they have felt included, accepted, embraced, and even loved for who they were. To a person, they talk about how as goofy as they can be, or as rejected by their family, or for all of their quirks and faults or mistakes, they have always found acceptance and inclusion as a Trekkie. That’s why they do what they do and why they are as fanatical as they are. It’s why they dress in full uniform and try to live by the ideals of Star Fleet. It’s why they go to conventions. It’s why they call each other by rank at their club meetings as they’re making their fan-films. One cast member of Star Trek: The Next Generation actually said in the documentary, “The reality is that Star Trek fans devote more energy and finance and loyalty to the object of their affection than just about any other group of people I’ve ever seen.” If you’re in the church, or you’re a Christian… I mean… does that sound a little bit familiar? Why is that?

 Maybe it’s because it reminds us how how far we’ve gone for the same things. How far would you go to be included in community with other people at a deep level and find a sense of friendship and purpose just as you are? How far have you gone?

 It’s been my experience that’s something people will go to extremes for.

People will stay in bad relationships for that. They will continue unhealthy habits and behave in ways that might seem strange to have that experience. They will engage in activities that are inappropriate or ill-advised – even unhealthy. They will even dress up in uniform and go to conventions. They will have surgeries to alter themselves, make lifestyle decisions they know are unhealthy and unbalanced; all for the sake of finding someone, somewhere that will accept them and include them in community just as they are.

 In the early church, this was a point of huge debate from the very beginning – who’s in the club, and who’s out of it? Who are God’s people, and who aren’t? How do we know? Is THE CHURCH a Jewish-only club? Is it open to Gentiles – people not of Jewish decent? Can women be in the club? Can slaves be in the club? How far does this Jesus group really go? What’s the uniform we should be wearing? How should people be dressing? If you dress like THIS or THAT are you in or out? This is one of the very first controversies in the early church –

 And then along comes Paul in the book of Galatians, and he says – IN CHRIST there is neither Jew, nor Gentile, slave nor free, male or female. Jesus said, “For God SO LOVED THE WORLD that He gave His only son…” In other words, we’re talking today about the fact that God loves His people, and yet one of the first questions Christians tend to get hung up on is: WHO ARE GOD’S PEOPLE? To which Jesus and Paul both say, “There are no people who are not God’s people. Everybody is God’s people…” And that’s something a lot of people have a really hard time with.

Can I tell you a secret you might not know about yourself if you’re a Christian?

 You can laugh all you want about Star Trek fans, a.k.a. “Trekkies,” calling themselves by their rank as they go to a convention or attend a club meeting that’s based on made up space-stories, but here’s the hard truth: The world doesn’t look at the church any different than you look at Trekkies.

“Oh you’re ‘deacon’ on the ‘board of stewards’ at your church?? Ok…”

“…Oh, you’re a part of the ‘tech team’ or the ‘connections team’ at your ‘somebody rose from the dead club’? Rock on, brother…”

“You put art on the walls of your house based on this? You decorate with this stuff? You give it your time, affection, and your money? You go to conventions… Oh, I’m sorry – I mean Christian conferences?”

The world does not see a real distinction between us and Trekkies. They think the story of Jesus is just as silly, just as made up, and just as insane.

And part of the reason they don’t see the difference is that the church hasn’t always done the greatest job of helping them to see the difference. Because they come to church and they feel just as excluded, just as alienated, just as picked on, just as rejected in the church… as they do in the world.

 In Galatians, Paul says, for a long time, we lived under the law – and that’s what the law did. It placed access to God under guard. It put God’s people into a kind of protective custody – the law said, “These ones are my people, and these ones are not…” And Paul says that we needed that until the way of faith came – until Jesus. It was important that we have that until Jesus came – and when Jesus comes on the scene, He makes a new way for us to have a relationship with God, which is through faith in Him, not the law – not the stuff that was rule-based. Inclusion now isn’t based on rules, looks, cosmetics, or even the law – it’s based on a relationship with Jesus, who fulfilled the law when we couldn’t. So, Paul says that the fact that you’re still trying to define who’s in the club and who isn’t is really kind of a YOU problem. You think we’re still under law and not under grace, and as a result, you’re excluding people, you’re overlooking people, you’re dismissing people you shouldn’t.

 Now… I don’t know if you’re feeling it while you’re reading this… But even in using the words inclusion and exclusion – I know some of us might be getting a little tightly wound right now. The reason is that these are trigger-words in the culture we live in right now. When I’m not at church on Sundays, I teach in the public school system where the idea of inclusion, tolerance, celebration of differences – these are real buzz words that can have very strange applications. What you’re feeling is the is the tension we live in – Who is the gospel for? Who is Jesus for? Who’s allowed to be one of God’s people that John says He loved so much that He gave His only son for? We live in a day and a time when people are D E S P E R A T E to belong to something. Desperate to feel included. Desperate to feel seen. Some people make up clubs based on space stories. Other people make up clubs about people who think they’re cats. Other people think they follow someone who rose from the dead 2,000 years ago – what’s the difference. …I need to belong somewhere… to something… to somebody… I need community – I need connection…

 The number one most common question I get about my church from people, often times before they will even attend a service at our church, is some version of, “Will your church accept someone like ME?” And then they’ll go on to describe the circumstance that’s left them feeling excluded from the church. It could be something they’ve done, a preference, a belief, could be something else entirely.

 But what Paul reminds us of in this passage is that this whole idea of feeling excluded, on the outside, feeling out of the club – this is a very old hurt. It’s a very old feeling that a lot of people have. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that’s the number one question people want to know: “Your church – is that a place I will feel loved? Will I feel accepted? Will I be embraced for who I am just as I am? Is this going to be a community that I can find relationships in? And be loved in?” This isn’t new to 2024 America – we didn’t invent exclusion. People have felt this for a long time. And it’s why they love things like Star Trek. Because feeling excluded is a real old hurt for people. Even the Bible says, “It is not good for man to be alone…” Everybody needs a place to connect, and most of the time we have a really hard time finding it.

 So Paul reminds the church that yeah – there was a time when we defined ourselves by who was in and who was out, and we had a way of doing that called the law. As a church, as a people, as a club, as a group, we’ve had some pretty severe ways of reminding each other of that through the centuries. But now we have something better. We have grace. We have the way of faith through Jesus. And because of that, we know that all people are God’s people – and THEY ARE!!! BUT – before everyone starts jumping up and down saying, “THAT’S AWESOME! The church is all about grace! I can be a part of the church and do whatever I want!” We need to understand a few things about grace. More on that in my next post…