For Such a Time as This

With the start of the new year I have made a few resolutions (I hate that word, because you already assume I won't keep them), two of which tie together: Resolution 1: Read through the entire Bible in 2012, using the M'Cheyne Reading Plan and Resolution 2: Blog once a month. Hopefully my life experiences will be informed by the scripture that I am filling my heart with on a daily basis, but I cannot promise that a few jokes of the sarcastic variety and TFM nature won't slip in there from time to time.

With that said, I have been in the word for almost the entire month of January and honestly, not much has clicked with me thus far. Part of my problem is that some of the scripture I am almost too familiar with, to the point where I almost blow it off and fail to stop and really try to soak it in, and the other half of scripture I have been reading in the Old Testament is often times bogged down by ancient civilizations I don't understand and the lineages of king's who don't seem relevant. Nonetheless, over the past few days I have been in the book of Esther and her story has captivated and challenged me.

Esther's story begins when King Ahasuerus, the ruler of Persia becomes drunk at a massive banquet and calls his wife and Queen in to show her off. The Queen does not want to be made a spectacle in front of the King's drunk buddies and refuses to go. Just like that, the Queen is "disposed of." This leaves King Ahasuerus Queen-less. After a lengthy nation wide beauty contest, (think if the President needed a first lady, and held the Ms. America pageant to find his Laura Bush) he finds Esther, a beautiful Jew. After Esther has been established as the queen, the King's Prime Minister, Haman, makes a decree that all Jews will be exterminated. Esther's cousin, Mordecai (who was the one who made Haman irate because he refused to bow down to him) seeks out Esther and convinces her that she needs to talk to the king to save the Jews.

The problem is that Esther can't just drop in on the king while he is in his royal court. If she shows up unannounced, the king could have her killed. Esther knows what must be done, so she enter's the kings court and fortunately for Esther, he extends his royal scepter as a symbol of immunity to Esther. In fact, he is thrilled that she "dropped by the office." Esther arranges a banquet for the King and Haman. At the banquet, the king says to Esther:

“What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to half of the kingdom it shall be done,” Esther’s reply was brilliant: “If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me as my petition, and my people as my request; for we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed and to be annihilated. Now if we had only been sold as slaves, men and women, I would have remained silent, for the trouble would not be commensurate with the annoyance to the king.” The king was shocked. “Who is he, and where is he, who would presume to do thus?” And Esther put the finger on Haman, much to his horror (Esth. 7:1-6).

Needless to say, Haman is then hung from the very gallows that he built to kill Mordecai and the Jews were saved.

My favorite part of this scripture is when Mordecai comes to Esther when he finds out about Hamon's decree and says to her, "...you have been put in your royal position for such a time as this."

It took courage for Esther to step up and to do what she needed to, but she had faith in the Lord and trusted that she really was put in that position for a purpose.

I don't know what the new year has in store for you, what troubles it might bring or happiness it might usher in, but I do know, that "for such a time as this," God has placed people, situations, blessings and sorrows in our lives with purpose. I always get hung up when I say that God has a plan, because the whole free will deal still confuses me, but I do know that God has made us each uniquely and there are people around us that need us to be who God has knit us together to be. As you go forward this semester, looking for internships and jobs, building new friendships, working through classes and interacting with random individuals, as you go about your day, ask yourself, "for such a time as this," what is God calling me to do? Once you feel that tug on your heart/conscience, act on it. Just like God was faithful to see Esther into the king's court, he will do the same for you.

It's Independence Day

On this fourth of July we celebrate the independence of our nation. We celebrate the fight it took to give the first people to call themselves Americans a fresh start in a land where opportunity is everywhere. We celebrate all the good things in life with friends and family and we pause to say thank you to those who have protected our way of life and put their lives on the line and made the ultimate sacrifice for us. On this Independence Day I want to celebrate all of those things, but I also want to take a moment and praise God for the freedom he gave us on the cross.

My time in the Word and prayer life have been pretty erratic over the past semester and I honestly forgot how much I needed it and how much prayer and scripture nourish my soul, so to get back on track, I committed to simply read scripture and prayer journal every night for 21 days. (I'm told that it takes 21 days to form a habit. I made it 20 days on my challenge before missing one...typical right..) Over the past three weeks I have been in conversation with God pretty consistently and I was blown away by what an incredible listener God is and how I often bring a much harder line of judgement on myself than God does. I was working through a few things and talking to different people about their perspectives on the issue I was working through and I didn't like any of their answers. Every night I would journal about my struggles and dialogue with God. I never received a gift wrapped answer. but what I did receive is peace.

I write this message on Independence Day, because God is the ultimate liberator and the ultimate giver of grace and forgiver. For "just at the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly die. But get this! God showed his love for us like this-when were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:6-8.

Do you get it? There wasn't anything we did to earn this, God knew exactly what he was doing when he climbed up on that cross and he hung there not a super hero with his cape fluttering in the wind, but as our best friend laying down his life for us, jumping in front of the bullet that we couldn't stop. Just as we are the recipients of the blessings of our forefathers and their hard work and sacrifice to build this land of opportunity for us, we are also the heirs of Christ and though we did nothing to deserve his grace, he gives independence from sin and addiction to all who come to him. Happy Independence Day ya'll.

Letting Go of Guilt and the Empty Tomb

I'll be honest, I think that the most consistent period in my personal spiritual development might have been in eighth grade. I had a reading plan and worked through the entire Bible in a year. Sometimes I feel guilty because I would rather read a John Grisham book before I go to bed at night than the Bible. Finding consistent spiritual community in college has been a challenge. The potential for incredible community and accountability is all around me. I go to a Baptist university and am an active member in a fraternity filled with some of the wisest and spiritual guys I have ever met. Only recently have I started meeting with a group of guys to help hold me accountable and encourage me in my walk, but even there I sometimes give a half-hearted effort to our conversations, but as the wind blew across my face at the sunrise service this morning, I actually caught a breath of fresh air and began to understand why Easter is a big deal.

If there was a popularity contest between Easter and Christmas, hands down, Christmas would win. Christmas is easier; we have so many festivities and distractions going on, we don't have to confront our own sin and brokenness. Something clicked with me this morning:. the empty tomb means everything and all of my meager efforts at spiritual righteousness aren't the point, because on my own I will never be good enough. I could never earn enough "Bible points" or mentor enough people or go to church enough to earn my keep. Jesus got that.

Jesus was fully human and fully God which means that while he was on earth he felt the pain that we feel and knows what it means to hurt. When he climbed onto the cross on Good Friday he wasn't wearing a cape because he wasn't a super hero. Jesus didn't engage in an epic Satan vs. Jesus HBO special smack down to defeat sin on our behalf, he died on our behalf as a sacrificial lamb because he understood that he could do for us what we could not do for ourselves. On Friday there was mourning and Jesus' disciples and followers thought that everything was over and then...the tomb was empty!

Easter means that there is no way that I deserve to be in a relationship with God and take part in the abundant life that he promises. I could never be good enough, even if I memorized the entire Bible it wouldn't be enough. Easter means that God looks past all of my sins and shortcomings and loves me just as I am, not because of what I have done but because of the empty tomb and what Jesus did. Give all your guilt to God, quit feeling like you're not good enough, none of us are, but on this day Jesus was good enough and he conquered death on our behalf. Embrace grace, embrace Easter.

Stories that the couch can't tell

I'm about to take a plunge, a leap of faith; Over the next eight months, with a team of six guys, I am going to raise 100,000 dollars, build a house and put on a concert like Baylor University has never seen. Am I scared? a little bit; could I fail? yes; will it be a great story regardless? hell yes! Will I have any time to be bored? nope. I'm talking about the 45 year old Kappa Omega Tau tradition of hosting Christmas on Fifth, a campus wide concert event and Christmas celebration.

Today, I met with the head of the Waco area Habitat for Humanity along with Cramer and John, two of the Christmas tree chairs, to discuss what a partnership for this event might look like. I have spent the past week calling band after band, everyone from Pat Green to Josh Abbott to Randy Rogers gathering pricing info, but today, as I sat across from the Waco Habitat for Humanity president, it all became real. I'm about to start writing a story that I have an obligation to finish because if I don't, people will be let down, a Waco family will stay without a home and I will be known as the guy who lead the charge for Christmas on Fifth and failed. Sounds like a pretty good story right? Of course it does, the hard part is, now I have to write it.

It's no secret that Christianity is in decline in America. It's not too hard to figure out why. As Christians we need to tell better stories with our lives. Smiling and being friendly only gets us so far. God created us to play a role in the domain that he has placed us in. He needs each one of us to step up and be who were created to be, to run after him and to tell a good story with our lives.

What makes a good story? Think about all of the movies you love, what do they have in common? Characters you like and a cause worth fighting for. Take "The Hangover" for example, even as crude as this movie is, we all love it because Alan is hilarious and Stew is likable and we all genuinely want this group of friends to find Doug. All good stories involve a character or characters who want something who go through conflict to get what they want.

What kind of story are you living? Is it one worth reading or are you in the same boat as so many of us are where you go to extensive lengths to stay comfortable? Comfortable is boring. As humans, we always seek the way of least resistance, but sometimes as Christians we are called to take the narrow road and I can guarantee you that this road is filled with resistance. Have you ever read a story about someone who sat on the couch all day and watched TV? No, of course you haven't, there's no story there.

This is not a guilt trip trap where you are supposed to feel like you should move to Africa or go live in a box (unless that is really where God is taking you). All I'm saying is that in Matthew 10:39 Jesus says, "Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it." Losing your life for Jesus' sake involves risk. Right before this verse, Jesus talks about how hard it is going to be to forsake everything and follow him. He goes so far as to say that he has not come to bring peace, but a sword. This is not to say that Jesus is not peaceful, but that he did not come to hold our hands and walk us through the daisies of self-help sermons. Jesus is calling us to live better stories and live up to what we have already attained in him. Our faith demands it. What better way to spread the Gospel than to live engaging lives the exude the joy that God has given us? What are you waiting on? Get writing!

For Such A Time As This

It came as an email early on Tuesday morning. What a way to deliver the news. All I could do was lean back in my computer chair and rub my eyes. Wes’s dad had just passed away. I didn’t know what to do. My heart was shatter for the family who lost their son just a few years before. The pain they were dealing with was something that I couldn’t wrap my mind around. The funeral was set for Friday and after talking it over with my mom, I decided that I needed to be there. I lead an accountability group for Wes and his friends in high school and wanted to be able to support them through this tough time.

The funeral brought back hard memories of when another one of the students in Wes’s grade committed suicide; those were dark days, but I did my best to stand by them as they grieved. Death is hard. The service was beautiful. One of my favorite pastor’s talked about Wes’s dad and did a great job of helping those in attendance to remember the incredible man that he was. When the audience dismissed and everyone lined up to console the family, I looked around and began seeing all of the guys that I once met with on a weekly basis. I made the rounds and hugged each one tightly, making small talk about where they were going to school next year. There is never anything great to say at a funeral. The real answers to the standard small talk questions of how are you doing and what have you been up just don’t seem to have very pretty answers.

Driving back to Baylor that afternoon I thought about what a unique opportunity the Lord had given me. Throughout high school I had scattered the seed and been active in the lives of the guys who were at the funeral. Most of the time I spent with them I felt terribly insufficient. The Sunday afternoons when we got together often seemed like a waste of time, because I was only a few years older than them and the things I had to say did not stimulate the most captivating small group discussions.

Ephesians 3: 20 “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to the power of his will to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations for ever and ever! Amen”

In the midst of my feelings of insufficiency and during the small group times that I felt like a failure, God was positioning me to respond to the email I received on Tuesday. He set my relationships up for his glory and he was doing more than I could ask for or imagine.

Don’t give up on the friendships with people who don’t know the Lord. Keep loving your enemies. Don’t get tired of doing what is good. We’re not seeing the whole picture and it will not be revealed to us until we are in heaven. Find peace knowing that we are only seeing a sliver of the picture and God is a much better painted than you or I.

Appreciating Who People Are Becoming

One of the hardest things about coming home for the holidays is that each time I exit the tollway at Lovers Lane and pull onto Purdue, I have grown and experienced things that have shaped my outlook and one way or another, I am not the same person and my friends, they're not the same either. Am I usually drastically different, no, but I've lived stories that my friends in college station and Norman haven't. My community is shaping me and my interactions with my friends and community at Baylor are something that no one can understand except those who are in the middle of it with me. It has taken me heading back to Dallas a couple of times over the past three semesters to begin to learn to appreciate my friends for who they are becoming. This means that I have to change my expectations and learn to listen to their stories and realize that the way that we view things might not be the exact same. My experience in my fraternity at Baylor, KOT, is going to be totally different than my friend Will's experience with Sig Ep in Norman and the things that I love about Baylor probably don't translate directly into Will's experiences at OU.

It is a hard lesson to wrap your head around because growing up with my best friends from HP we all did the same things with each other. All of our stories were woven together and we saw life the same way because for the most part our experiences were paralleled with one another. Learning to appreciate people for who they are becoming is key to maintaining friendships that you have had for years even after spending large spans of time apart.

I have been unbelievably blessed to walk shoulder to shoulder with men of great faith throughout high school and college and this is so important because our common bond is not something that is fleeting. Our stories don't have to sound the same because I know that at the heart of our friendships is Christ and the common love for Christ among a group of friends gives friendship more depth than any common hobbies or stories ever could. I am able to pick back up with the guys I did life with in high school so well because I know that at the end of the day we are brothers in Christ and our love for Him is what we built our friendship on.

I'm not encouraging you to watch your friends make destructive decisions and not get involved in their lives, but what I am encouraging you to do is to realize that no one is perfect and just because your friendship with someone doesn't feel exactly the same as it always has doesn't mean it can't still be something great. If we stop expecting people to complete us and make us totally satisfied and approach each day with more grace than criticism I think that we would be shocked at how much richer all of our relationships would be. For the group of friends you are doing with right now, on the daily, be intentional about building then up as brothers and sisters in Christ so that one day if you aren't roommates and the days of fraternity life seem like a lifetime ago, you will have a bond that is eternal because Jesus is forever.

A Birthday Worth Partying For

I don't know what kind of semester you are coming off of, but if it was anything like mine, there was probably highs and lows and everything in between and over the Christmas break I'm pretty positive that when asked how college is going you will smile and say "great, I really love 'insert your university here'...." Personally, my favorite response is: "college is great, it's the school part that I'm having a hard time with." Guaranteed to get the typical I-used-to-party-dad to say "God, I remember the days" followed by a hearty laugh. For the past two years Christmas break has been a really interesting time for me because I go from being insanely busy to school zone slow and the hardest part is that when I start slowing down I begin to digest what I have been learning and that is often scary. One of the most daunting realizations that I have come to is that time isn't slowing down and I'm growing up.
Pretty obvious observation I know, but I'm in the time of my life that you hear people tell stories about from the time you are a little kid, that your middle school and high school counselors have tried to prepare you for for years and the era when decisions matter. It gets overwhelming sometimes and while people think back on their college years and remember the really good times, they seldom tell you about the really hard growth periods. The tough thing about growth is that it's not painless.

With christmas tomorrow, I've been reflecting on what the birth of Jesus means and trying to not be so numb to everything as I approach my twentieth Christmas. As I was looking through scripture it hit me though. In Matthew 1:23 it says "The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel." Immanuel means "God with us." Do you get what that means? It means that God sent his son into the world as a way of proclaiming as loudly as possible that when the test results get back and they are positive for cancer, God is with us. When you aren't sure if you and your girlfriend are going to make it, God is with us. At your frat party, God is with us. When you come home and things don't feel exactly like they used to, God is with us. When you're studying in the corner of the library, God is with us. When you're procrastinating and sitting around hanging out with your roommates, God is with us. In the midst of trying to figure out what your purpose is and how you are going to charge into the future, God is with us.

Tonight when you hear the Christmas story, try not to tune it out or brush past it because you have heard it so many times, look at it from the fresh perspective of hearing about how God didn't give up on us, how in the midst of all of our shortcomings, he is riding shotgun with us through all of life's ups and downs and that Jesus was born to die a death on a cross that would give everyone the freedom to come into an abundant relationship with the creator of the universe. Merry Christmas.