How God saves Muslims… and everyone else

Social media can often be a trainwreck. This has been well documented over a long period of time. But occasionally something amazing happens and you’re forced to remember that when God said that he can take things that human beings do or create with evil intent, and use them to accomplish his purposes (Genesis 50), and when he said that he was “sending forth the word from my mouth, and that it would not return void but will accomplish its purposes” (Isaiah 55) he wasn’t blowing smoke.

As I was poking around on Reddit today I came across a post in a sub I hang out in where the original poster had questions and was seeking help with respect to converting to Christianity. As much as I would love to link the sub reddit so you can see the post I’m not going to because this is the internet. And people are nosy. And the man who wrote this post lives in a country and social context that is much different than mine, and if you’re reading this, more than likely yours as well. In my country I am free to gather in a pretty big building on Sundays. That building is filled with so many other Christians that we need to have the service twice. Nobody is ashamed or afraid to be there. We can sing loudly while a 5 piece band plays songs about Jesus through amplification. And there is an actual police officer who volunteers his time to stay in the lobby, armed and ready to protect us from any threat that might come through the doors with intent to do us harm. In Elijah’s country, the few Christians there are meet in small rooms, in secrecy, fear, anxiety and usually under the cover of darkness… because for them being a Christian may very well mean that a uniformed official from their government may kick the door in and arrest them, prosecute them, and maybe even execute them for no reason other than they have followed Jesus Christ in faith, and are not ashamed of the Gospel. They will have no legal recourse, no rights, and at the absolute best they will be shunned by their families, and excommunicated from their societies.

Rather than leave this poor soul to the comments section I sent him a DM and asked, “has anyone helped you yet?”.

“No”, He replied.

He asked if we could talk via facetime because English was smoother for him being spoken rather than written. So I downloaded WhatsApp since I don’t have any other social media by which we could communicate from 7,600 miles apart. And after a bit of me struggling to get to grips with the app (I am officially getting old at 35, hooray!) We were speaking to one another… we spoke for four of the most thrilling hours of my life.

We got to know each other fast and discovered we had a ton of common interests. He told me about his love for cricket and all things United Kingdom. I told him about my deep affection for golf and all about my family. He told me about his background and what he has been wrestling with. We discussed and educated one another on some of the differences between the faith tradition that he was raised in and the one I was raised in. He was brutally honest with me and clearly desperate to know more about Jesus. To be honest I really don’t know that I had ever heard more thoughtful questions from someone his age. He was obviously in the fight of his life over guilt that he could not place and was failing more and more to understand. He knew the doctrines of Islam well and had found them to be unhelpful, unsatisfying, and restrictive. And he was so tired of being where he was spiritually and emotionally that he had formulated, and prepared for a plan to take his own life. Completely dead… Just like I once was… in his trespasses and sins.

I answered question after question to the best of my ability. Respectfully addressing and correcting what he believed about Jesus that was false, and even helping him to develop a sort of framework for how to understand what the Bible actually is and how we arrived at the canon of scripture. And then the conversation took on a much more personal tone. I shared MY story with Elijah, and as I began to tell him the details of how I came to my saving faith… the picture began to take shape. He began to express to me the deep and very real fear that was attached to this proposition for him. I could tell… ‘the Holy Spirit is after this mans heart, he knows it, and he’s scared’.

“If I become a Christian, I cannot tell my family, I cannot tell my friends, I don’t know where I will go to Church to learn about Jesus”

“Elijah, Jesus said that the only people who were worthy to follow him were those who would hate their mothers, their fathers, and even their own life. The cost of following Jesus for you will almost certainly be very very high. But the promise of the Gospel is that if we lay down our life we get his. And his is eternal and better than anything this world has to offer. The deal is that we give up our life, and we get Jesus, and Jesus will be enough come what may.”

After a pause he asked, “will you teach me how to pray?”

“Of course man.”

I explained to him the basics. You don’t have to be somewhere special to pray. God can hear you wherever you are no matter what, and there are no magic words, and so on. I did show him the Lord’s prayer because that’s just a good one to know. And I told him that when you pray you just talk to God honestly with whatever you have because he already knows everything that’s in you anyways. And then… we prayed.

I’m not going to try and transcribe the prayer but essentially, Elijah and I went into the throne room of the Most High and I asked Jesus to save him…

Jesus already had. Because after I said “Amen”…

“How do I convert?”

“Buddy you’re already converted! If you’re asking me that question and you’re telling me you want to be a Christian then that literally means that you are one! You have a whole new destiny, a whole new identity, and God has opened your eyes to believe. Welcome to the kingdom of light!”

“SERIOUSLY? THAT’S AWEOSME! Can I have a new name?”

“Well The Bible tells us that when God redeems us he gives a new name that only he knows, and you don’t get to know it until you meet him and he calls you by that name for the first time. But there isn’t anything unbiblical about changing your earthly name. Do you want a new name?”

“I’ve always been obsessed by the name Elijah. Can I be Elijah?”

“Sure bud! Do you want me to call you that?”

“I wouldn’t mind it”

When I saw a Reddit post that came from a Muslim asking questions about my faith, the idea of engaging did not feel safe or unscary. Some of the thoughts I had before I pressed send on that message were: “But what if this is a scammer who just wants my phone number so he can rip me off” – “What if he judges me? What if he hears the Gospel and it offends him so terribly that it turns him off to Jesus rather than drives him towards Jesus?” – “What if he asks me something that I just don’t have an answer for?”: It would have been a lot easier to just scroll on. I would’ve kept my plans for that Saturday afternoon and not given up most of a beautiful day to be on the phone. But because I didn’t, because I said yes to Jesus again, I have a brand new friend and co-heir with Christ. His name is Elijah and God saved him using Reddit and Whats App and just a little bit of my obedience and he started ALL OF IT…. by dropping a little vibration in my spirit that said ‘hey, I’m up to something incredible over here… you wanna come play?’

Our faith has not moved forward through the generations by our wealth, our intelligence, our stature in society, or any other thing we try to claim as our own or take credit for. No… OUR faith, once for all delivered to the Saints, has moved from Judea and Galilee to the ends of the earth on the blood of martyrs, and by the day to day little acts of obedience of God’s people who loved him more than they loved their own comfort and safety. Today God saved a Muslim who had never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ and who did not own a Bible. That’s something worth remembering the next time you receive an invitation from the King of Glory to be a part of his unstoppable plan to seek and save the lost. Jesus didn’t die for those who might believe. He died for those who WILL believe.

You ARE being discipled

What does it mean to be a disciple? It really depends on who you ask. So for the sake of a common reference point, let’s ask Merriam Webster for their take on the definition.

 Disciple : one who accepts and assists in spreading the doctrines of another. . . On this occasion I would say they have it spot on. Here’s why…

Discipleship isn’t a reality exclusive to Christians. The world is teaching, shaping, whispering, wooing, influencing… all the time. Everything you watch on Netflix or read on Reddit or Twitter has some kind of message or narrative that it promulgates, supports, or defends. And even if you’re not aware of it, you are constantly being discipled. Don’t miss that, ok? We’re talking about something that is by definition an external reality. This happens to us, no matter what we think or do.

What we do get to choose is who and what we allow to disciple us. We make decisions every day about what we read, what we watch, who’s podcast we listen to…etc. And to some degree or another regardless of our level of awareness, all that we take in bears it’s own specific effect on us. It all teaches. It all shapes. It all adds to or removes something of how we see and understand both ourselves and the world around us.

We should view our relationships with people through the same lens. It seems like the generally held belief is; ‘people only influence me to the extent that I allow’. This may be a common assumption but it’s a wildly arrogant one. We are nothing like as good as we think we are at throttling back the input from the people we surround ourselves with. In his 2005 book “12 Pillars”, entrepreneur and motivational speaker Jim Ronh famously wrote that “we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with“. While I tend to think he’s overstating the point just a little, let’s consider these passages together:

Corinthians 15:33 Do not be deceived: Bad company ruins good morals.

Colossians 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

Proverbs 4:14 Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of the evil.

This is a warning from scripture to be careful who has a voice in your life. And you will not always nail that. Somewhere along the line you will have a well intentioned fool try to lovingly speak into your life only to lead you astray. I have been both he who was led by fools, and the fool leading someone.

Once you have considered the realities surrounding discipleship, and once you begin to get your head around what’s really at stake… the lines become very stark. The world is not only trying to disciple you but they are doing so in direct opposition to the creator, God, with the end game being your ultimate destruction. The messaging isn’t even subtle anymore, it wasn’t all that subtle 100 years ago! In the poem Invictus, William Ernest Henley sums up quite nicely the overall message of our post enlightenment society.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.

How’s THAT for a Twitter bio? This touches right on the message of our day… You are all you need. Happiness is found in the best version of yourself NO MATTER WHAT that looks like. You have the right to determine what’s right for you and nobody else. There is no authority higher than your deepest desires, and therefore you must satisfy those desires…. It all sounds good, it all sounds like it makes sense, and every word of it down to the punctuation is a soul damning lie.

Having people in your life who have your permission to say hard things to you, confront your idols and call them out for what they are, and enter into uncomfortable spaces with boldness and loving kindness is a powerful defense against the lies of our enemy. Satan desires many things for you but he wants nothing for you like he wants you spiritually isolated. Having a robust relationship with another believer is how you say “no” to that and reject it not just in word, but in practice. It’s THE best way to develop your spiritual muscles and reflexes. Like a sparring partner in an MMA gym, it trains you to make violence against your flesh while also training you to feed your own soul with the word. Things like confession and repentance become less abstract and ideological and more on the ground and practical. And in time you get to see real victory over once dominating sins. All while enjoying the companionship of another Christian who can celebrate your wins, console and encourage you in your losses, and experience the wondrous joy of growth in Christ.

We have to be serious about this. We have to be deliberate about it. Because no matter what we tell ourselves; the shaping of our hearts and minds is a constant and primarily external thing. And if it’s going to happen to us one way or the other, it falls to us to chose the direction in which we will be moved. The ways in which we will be discipled… Like it or not, the default posture of your heart will drag you towards the lie, towards isolation. The truth is in the other direction. The one that doesn’t look as appealing. The one that will cost. Friends, hear me… Whatever it costs you… it will be worth the cost.

On Mentors: Introduction

The temptation to isolate is often powerful. Even the most extroverted of us have the tendency to dive inward and put the walls up around certain parts of ourselves. Regardless of who you are or what stirs up in you the impulse to hide, one thing remains true across the spectrum of personalities… we are not designed for isolation.

God created us to be social beings. In the beginning, God makes Adam in his image, and in this moment the brokenness of sin is only a future reality. All is right and good with creation and yet…

“the LORD God said, “It is NOT good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for[fn] him.” (Gen. 2:18 emphasis added) And so God gives him Eve. Thus begins the first human relationship. The cherry resting neatly atop the sundae that is God’s then flawless and unbroken creation. Even before sin came into the picture and shattered the shalom of the universe… we needed each other to do life the way God designed it to be done. Community wasn’t a fix for something, it was the plan all along!

Obviously, not every relationship is designed to be as intimate or carry as much weight as that of a husband and wife. However, there is at least one relationship that should come pretty close if you want it to achieve the purpose for which God designed it. I am of course speaking of spiritual mentors.

This is the first in what will be a series of essays meant to encourage you to press hard into the kinds of relationships that go deeper than mutual hobbies or small talk. I was moved to write this by my dear friend, Brad Clay, who requested that I write on the mentor relationships I’ve had and how they shape me. Because my main goal in everything I write is to be helpful and to connect deeply with those of you who read this, I will be approaching this a little more broadly than to simply write on me and my own journey. Hence… a series of blogs/essays on the topic of mentoring and being mentored. I hope that you’ll read all of them. But more than that, I hope they are received not as a holier-than-thou lecture, but as an invitation into a life free from the bondage of isolation and pretense. You were designed by God to have deep, honest, loving relationships built around growing in intimacy and holiness. The relentless refrain of the New Testament is “one another”.

In later blogs I will cover my own mentors in detail. But my first mentor after I became a Christian was a guy named Drew Hildenbrand (you’ll hear much more about him later). The way I see it Drew taught me 5 or 6 things that added up to a paradigm shift for me. One thing he told me as he tried to impress upon me the weight of what he intended for our time together the very first time we sat down together in June of 2010 was; “to be 99% known is to be unknown”. My intent is to make that statement the heart-cry of this series of essays. Something deep inside of you knows that you were made for real relationship, and I want to be honest with you… these are hard relationships at times. It is not easy to let someone in and lift the vail on the darkness in you that you think is so dark it means God can’t love you or use you. It’s not easy to be honest about your doubts. It’s not easy to be honest about your pain. It’s not easy to be honest about your sin, but it is ALWAYS worth it.

We place different labels on these relationships. Mentor-mentee, accountability partner, “life coach” (yuck), teacher-student, pastor, counselor, elder… people we go to when we need advice or counsel. Other humans we feel we can trust and confide in. But how many of us actually have that on a regular basis? There is a lot of objective evidence to suggest we are losing our skillset for developing this level of intimacy in our lives with anyone at all (particularly since social media and then well… COVID became a thing). This is not just a “church thing”. Our whole culture is all in on “you do you”… even when it means you doing you… alone. The Church writ large has not come away from this shift unscathed.

More than ever we are socially awkward and spiritually frustrated. More than ever our churches are filled with Christians who are getting absolutely worked in their war against their flesh. Living a cheap imitation of the life of adventure they’ve been made for. Sitting on the sidelines suffering in silence and utterly bored by their faith. I am just as guilty. I can recall occasions when I led worship in church on a Sunday morning while languishing in a kind of voluntary loneliness. We all know how to put on the mask and roll into church like we woke up floating, glowing in the effervescent hue of the Holy Spirit… meanwhile, our house is burning to the ground behind us. Maybe some of us don’t even think about developing the kind of bond with someone that would allow us to tap them on the shoulder and say ‘I’m not ok…my house is on fire’. For many of us the deepest relationship we have is surface at best. We are treading water and tired and can’t articulate how desperate we are for something more meaningful, something that might stand a chance at actually producing some growth in us that spills out onto the lives of those around us.

Of course… these conversations and relationships happen all the time. Do you know a mature believer? Someone whose life just looks the way you desperately want your life to look? I can promise you that if you ask them about the role the kinds of relationships I’m describing have played in their growth they will ALL tell you they were of utmost significance. Every Christian in history can point to someone who mentored them. No Christian in history has seen God’s ultimate purpose and good design become a reality in their life without them.

What’s the answer? How do we even begin to address this? The answer isn’t simple or short. And that’s a tough thing for us these days. As our attention spans have collectively shrank, it will require more of us if we want to see real growth in this area of life. But my sincere hope is that what you read in these blogs will inspire you to seek out men/women who will walk alongside you and speak into your life. Jesus purchased you with his life so that you could have the fullness of life. But that fullness lies on the other end of a long and vulnerable road. It is my honest prayer that you will decide to walk it with me. Let’s go!

Genesis: Drew Hildenbrand

I remember the day I met Drew Hildenbrand like it was yesterday. I had been saved a few days before (June of 2010). Jeremy and I (one of my oldest friends and the person most instrumental in my conversion) were walking through Brownsburg talking about Jesus with anyone who would listen. Then out of this little alley comes a minivan, seated in the drivers seat was Drew, 31 years old and just the most “youth pastor” looking dude I’d ever seen… given that Jeremy was carrying an 8 foot cross on his back… Drew had questions. We talked for about 10 or 15 minutes and he heard my story and Jeremy’s. He invited us to come to Church @ Main the following Sunday morning and speak to the high school kids he pastored (WILD move in retrospect considering he barely knew us. I mean we could’ve said literally anything in there). We accepted the invite. And thus began 2 years of some very intense discipleship. This is how I met my first real mentor.

The very first time Drew and I sat down in his office I knew there was going to be something different about this. His tone was serious. He never broke eye contact. He sat behind an open Bible (the very Bible he would later pass on to me that I still use to this day) and told me… “Shane, we have an opportunity to do something real here. And I’m in if you’re in, but I need to know that you’re really truly in“. I wasn’t sure that I knew what he meant and I told him so. So he explained… “The only way to get to Godliness is through all your junk. Which means if you’re going to sit in this room with me every week and ask me to counsel and teach you, you’re not going to be permitted to hold anything back from me”… Nobody in church had ever been so direct with me so immediately. The idea that I wouldn’t even have the option to be guarded was terrifying to me. At that moment I realized my entire 21 years had been lived never really being completely honest with anybody. Everyone I knew only knew the version of me I wanted them to see. And Drew wasn’t about to tolerate any of that nonsense.

I actually had to go outside and smoke a cigarette (a habit I would kick 11 years later), I needed to really think about whether I wanted to do this or not. I could tell there was something different about Drew and what he intended for our time together, the road ahead looked scary. But I was SO compelled by and drawn to him. There was something of him that I wanted to rub off on me. And for the first time I got my head around the idea that maybe, JUST maybe, there was something to be gained from being truly known.

So… I went back into his office… Sat back down…. Looked him in his face and said…. “Drew, I’m in”.

For two incredible years I sat with Drew almost every week and let him speak into my life. I let him tell me what to do, what to read, I got permission from him before I started dating again, we sat together in church, we ate meals together…He counselled me through reconciling with my Dad, He never once stopped trying with me. I was not then (and probably am not now) a particularly easy person to mentor. Even less easy to love. But what Drew saw when he looked at me was not a ‘project’ or a job. He saw me as a hurting and very messy brother in Christ. He saw an opportunity to step into a difficult space and love me like Jesus loves him… unconditionally.

This is a photo of the page in my Bible that separates the new and old testaments. A decade ago I wrote the 5 most important things I learned from Drew on the page. I refer back to it often.

Near the end of 2012 I began a relationship with a girl that Drew warned me strongly against. I didn’t take his advice and the relationship he and I had changed. For a while he just kind of kept me at arms length. The air between us was thick and full of tension. I had convinced myself that what I was getting into was permissible (not ‘right’, a very important distinction) and when I had made it clear that I intended to pursue this relationship even to the point of living in sin… Drew did something that, in hindsight… must’ve felt absolutely impossible and heart wrenching at the time, but was 100% right. He called me one last time to plead with me to do the right thing, and then he said “Shane, if you’re going to do this than I’m going to have to ask you not to call yourself a Christian”. It felt like someone had punched me in my soul. And after that Drew just let me go. He let me chase what I wanted more than I wanted God. 4 years later it all came crashing down and I still remember thinking…”I should’ve listened to him, WHY didn’t I listen to him?”.

I can say pretty definitively that I would not be who I am today if it hadn’t been for the years i got to spend with Drew. His unrelenting faithfulness in the face of my inexhaustible foolishness must have been so wearisome for him at times. To watch me trail off onto the heavily trodden path of pride and self-indulgence again and again and again. To put his arm around me and invite me to sit with him when I showed up for Church one Sunday still a little drunk from the night before could NOT have been comfortable. He must’ve been SO tempted to frustration and discouragement when I would take 2 steps forward and 7 steps back… But as long as I was striving for faithfulness, he absolutely refused to leave me and watch me die. I cannot help but wonder what it’s like for him to watch my life now? Now that we’re both far on the other side of our time in the fray together. I pray that he sees the juice as being well worth the squeeze.

Drew is a constant presence in my mind. Rarely does a day go by when I don’t hear him in my inner dialogue reminding me to be careful what I’m looking for, and that I will always have much more to be humble about than I do to be proud of. And largely because of the impact he had on my life… one thing I am always looking for are young men who are like I was at that stage in my life. Foolish, arrogant, ferocious, but starving for more of Jesus. So that I can sit across from them, look them in the face, and tell them … “The only way to get to Godliness is through all your junk. Which means if you’re going to sit in this room with me every week and ask me to counsel and teach you, you’re not going to be permitted to hold anything back from me”…

One last note on Drew… He’s still doing the same thing today. Young men like Matt Mugumya who is now a pastor himself (and who KNOWS how many countless others over the years)Luke, and Rashad are over there at Church @ Main sitting humbly at his feet and learning how to be disciple makers. So you see how this works? Because 12 years ago, a ~relatively new to ministry~ youth pastor obeyed the promptings of the spirit and struck up a conversation with a lunatic with a cross on his back (I cringe HARD at that now)… I (a humble ape) am writing to you as well as mentoring other believers on the topic of Christian discipleship. Isn’t that bananas??? This is the fruitful harvest available to you if you are willing to take the risk that Drew and I took and commit to being known deeply. Oh and BTW… This past Sunday (9/19/22) my oldest son Roman made a profession of faith and took communion with me for the first time…. in the sanctuary of Drew’s church. How amazing is that? What an extraordinary gift. I have so much to thank Drew Hildenbrand for I could fill pages. But I’m most thankful for his ferocious commitment to care for me on God’s terms and not on his own. And as I have struggled to be known more and more in my walk with Jesus, I count it one of the great honors of my life to have been so well loved… despite being so well known… by someone like Drew Hildenbrand.

A tiny blog about tiny prayers

I write you from a very frustrated place tonight. A place only spoken of in hushed whispers and frightened tones. A place that has claimed the sanity of many and driven legions of otherwise stable adults into fits of simultaneous tears and laughter. The place from which I write?….. The terrible twos. I have to confess that I am on about 3 hours sleep thanks to a random and unexplained bout of insomnia last night coupled with a toddler who decided that 3 am is definitely the time to wake up and ask us how we’re doing (It’s 3 am I must be lonely… sorry, had to). It’s been a tough week and I haven’t been feeling myself. Mainly, I’ve been really angry.

I’m angry because my week isn’t going exactly the way I want it. I’m angry because Owen is getting to a stage where he tests me on EVERYTHING. I’m angry because I’m worn out. Like all of us, he’s a sinner. The bent towards rebellion is just deep in him and I am weary of the work of training that out of him as best I can. It has made my interactions with my son much more tense and a lot less fun. More and more I find myself having to breathe deep (more often than not I get a loving reminder from Megan to do so) and calm myself down deliberately so I don’t say or do something I’ll need to repent of and seek forgiveness for later. I am now somewhere near the limits of what I feel like my psyche can take from this kid. Every door in my home has crayon on it. There are 14 different varieties of snack smashed into the carpet. And I’m pretty sure he moves my stuff around just to mess with me. The fact is… I have a 2 year old in a 4 year old’s body. And mathematically that makes him twice as exhausting to try and contain.

So… just minutes ago I was putting him to bed. No big deal, right?

FALSE!!! (In my very best Dwight Schrute).

The calm, orderly, dignified process that was bedtime for the first 28 months of his life has been replaced by a cacophony of chaos and wrestling and shouting and crying. Have you ever tried to put training underwear on a 40 lb. 2 year old (not even exaggerating a little… this kid weighs 40 lbs) who, by the way… does NOT want to wear them? If you haven’t been blessed with that experience, just imagine trying to defuse a bomb while it’s detonating. The list of things I would rather do includes things like falling down stairs whilst wearing leg braces, being on fire… stuff like that. Getting him down nowadays is a full fledged war complete with strategy, tactics, alliances, weapons… it gets real. Rarely am I not bitten or choked at least once during this nightly ordeal and while bedtime was once a highlight of my day… I now get literal anxiety over it.

IN THE FACE

However… Every single night…

When I put Owen to bed…

I pray over him…. and the prayer basically never changes. It goes something like this. “Lord, thank you so much for Owen. Thank you for giving ME the privilege of being his Dad. Help me be the kind of Dad that never stops pointing him to you and trying to convince him that you’re the most beautiful thing in the universe. Help me to always see him how you see him. Help me to remember that he’s not really mine, he’s yours. Please protect him from my sin. God… please save my son at a young age. Please let there never be a day in his memory that he didn’t know, love, and follow hard after you. Help him to sleep well and have dreams about what you’re like… amen”…

Something like that.

Because we pray as a family over meals and together at bedtime, Owen has caught on to the routine. He folds his little hands, bows his little head, and starts speaking to the God he cannot yet comprehend in toddler gibberish that only he and God understand. He always mentions food in his prayers (because… he’s just a big fan), and he almost always remembers to mention his mommy. I have not yet earned a spot on his prayer list. Now, when we sit down for dinner Owen makes it a point that HE gets to say a prayer. That’s always what it is. Just a tiny little prayer… that ends in the cutest “amen” you ever heard in your life. I try my very best to cherish every single one of those prayers. And I am pleading with the Lord that one day he’ll breathe life into them.

Tonight as I dragged my way halfheartedly through our bedtime routine, utterly exhausted from the day and the sleepless night before it, I felt more than anything like I was failing. I was failing to maintain a good attitude in my frustration, I was failing to have a stronger will than his. I was honestly pretty done with him and I couldn’t wait to get out of his room and into my chair for the evening. As I forced out a yawny “goodnight buddy, I love you” and turned to walk out. He cried out “WAIT… pray?”, I had totally forgotten. He had not. Then he folded his hands and scootched over so I could kneel down and pray with him before he went to sleep. As always… he went first. He mentioned mommy, then some gibberish followed by a distinct ‘food’… then some more gibberish followed by “aaaand Daddy, amen”. I left my sons room with tears of extraordinary gratitude welling in my eyes, and a much lighter heart.

Every once in a while, your kids will do something to remind you that maybe… just maybe, you’re not doing half as bad at this parenting stuff as you think you are. And without even knowing it he reminded me that I can fight with him, discipline him, train him up, teach him, all the things that we do as parents to compel them into Jesus. But only HE can save my boy. Only HE can do the work in his heart that he did in mine that June day 12 years ago. So when I get those little glimpses… those tiny little windows into what God may be up to in there… boy does that go a long long way to keep me in the fight.

Hang in there Moms and Dads. You’re not defeated. You’re not alone. He’s with you in the mess.

Guns, Grief, and Growth.

In the screenshot above you can see 2 things clearly. The first clear thing is that gun violence and shootings are not a new problem. The second clear thing is that 8 years ago… I was an idiot. Because 8 years ago I actually thought it was appropriate and fitting to blow right past the correct response to death and violence and go straight for the political jugular. This was less than 24 hours removed from two human beings (Police officers none the less) having had their lives taken away from them and their families, and I thought the most helpful thing I could do was add political commentary to the situation despite being asked to speak on the matter by exactly nobody.

This has now become a sort of cultural reflex. The pattern looks something like this… A mass shooting occurs, we blow straight past grieving, and we jump right into trading blows and bickering about policy. Striking while the iron is hot and the pain and anger are still fresh. Creating a cauldron of bitter fights and division over how we would solve this problem. This goes on for a week until the next grand display of evil happens and we all go “SEE? WE NEED TO ARM THE TEACHERS”… or “YOU’RE A MORON!!! WE NEED TO MAKE GUNS ILLEGAL”. Rinse… Repeat.

One after another the incidents of mass death keep happening and with each new headline, with each new body count… the continual failure to grieve the dead compiles on itself leaving us a mountain of unprocessed emotion and frustration. We are a nation of numb, we have forgotten that the correct and immediate response in the face of all this brokenness is not rage or rhetoric… it’s grief. Outrage is proving to be an awful substitute.

It really isn’t that hard to understand how we got here. It’s perfectly consistent with how we experience and respond to everything. If something happens often enough we just become numb and cold to it. I am speaking both from the observational and experiential, it’s not like I’m not one of you. Two days ago 7 people were murdered during a parade in Chicago and dozens more injured. I didn’t feel a thing until it came out that 2 of the dead were a married couple and their 2 year old son had been made an orphan instantaneously, THAT broke me a little. My heart recoiled from the thought of it being Owen (my two year old) because along with the grief comes an acknowledgment of reality, the reality is this could happen to us like it happened to them.

I write this as an encouragement to all of you to join me in the deliberate act of grief. And in seasons like this when the repeated loss of life has just become some twisted combination of exhausting and mundane we’ll have plenty of opportunities to practice. Grief terminated upon itself isn’t particularly useful. But when directed towards the one who can actually DO something about all this evil it becomes more than just an outcry or a lament. It is pregnant with the potential for an honest conversation with God. And we absolutely should be talking with him about this.

The prophet Habakkuk was witness to both the rise and fall of his nation during what many historians agree is one of the only real ‘golden ages’ Israel ever knew. He watched helpless as a wicked king led the people of God back into rebellion and idolatry. Facebook wouldn’t be invented for another 2500 years give or take so he only had one place to go with his complaint… The Lord. Read this, but REALLY read it.

Habakkuk 1:1-4 …

1 The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw. 2 O Yahweh, how long shall I cry for help and you will not listen? How long will I cry out to you, “Violence!” and you will not save? 3 Why do you cause me to see evil while you look at trouble? Destruction and violence happen before me; contention and strife arise. 4 Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice does not go forth perpetually. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice goes forth perverted.

That just about sums it up… doesn’t it? Does that resonate with anyone else right now? Anyone else turning on the news or opening up social media and feeling their heart cry “God, when are you going to DO something about this? When will you step into the chaos and say ‘enough'”. We’re allowed to do that. We’re encouraged to do that. We believe that the prayers of the people of God move the heart of God. OH that we might become a nation of people who turn our faces to God in our grief, rather than turning our voices to the comments section with our outrage and blame.

I have learned with age that nobody is looking to me for answers about gun laws. Nobody cares what I think about the 2nd amendment or bump stocks or what I have to say about extended magazines. But everywhere you look you’ll encounter people who are DESPERATE for someone to tell them there’s hope. I’m pleading with all of you, when you open twitter and find out about the next mass shooting… grieve. Learn the names of the victims and pray for their families. Be the last one to rush in screaming about answers and accountability and be the first one to rush in with grace and the love of Jesus. If we’ve learned anything at this point, we know that this can simply happen to any of us. And that’s what makes our immediate response to the devastation so important. Because one day… it might be our turn. And I’m sorry, but I just have to believe that if it’s your kid that doesn’t come home from school or becomes an orphan in the blink of an eye… “arm the teachers” probably doesn’t feel particularly helpful. What will be helpful in the face of unimaginable grief? unimaginable hope. Everywhere we go Christians carry both an explanation for the violence and the promise of seeing it fully and forever brought to an end. Let us step in with that instead.

Don’t begrudge the wilderness:

The Bible and our lives have a lot in common. There are familiar themes, experiences and ideas in the word of God that feel inherently right and good. It’s easy to celebrate and relate to them. For example, everyone can relate to the impulse to rejoice. So when we encounter rejoicing in scripture by example, or by instruction… we can feel that. We can almost see ourselves joining in with the wedding guests in awe and amazement at the realization that Jesus had turned the water into wine and that the soiree could continue after all. We can picture the joy and celebration that must’ve broken out in the crowds around Jesus after healings and miracles. We see the value in it. We understand it in the context of our own lives. We (generally) get it.

There are also recurring themes in the Bible that don’t seem to resonate so naturally. They don’t fit into our worldview very well. We just have no category for them at all. And so they are more or less lost on us. One such theme… is the wilderness.

The word wilderness appears 280 times in our Bibles. It shows up again and again. From Abraham to Moses. The prophets and Jesus himself. There is a clear emphasis God places on the wilderness and what he accomplishes there. All of these and countless others had their time in the wilderness. And with the exception of Jesus, all of them had questions. All of them wondered ‘why me’? ‘Why this place’? God isn’t going to call many of us to forty years in the desert, but all you need to do is live long enough and you will find yourself in the wilderness. Alone, terrified, angry, destitute in spirit… unsure if you will escape with your life.

Generally when you or I think of the word “wilderness”, our mind rushes to images of desolate or wild places. Miles from civilization. But in the abstract, we should understand the concept of the wilderness in our culture a little bit differently I think. Because for us, the wilderness is usually a place we go to fulfill our hobbies. But in ancient Israel? In Samaria in the first century? The wilderness meant something different entirely. It was the place you found yourself cut off from any familiar thing whatsoever. You would’ve been completely without hope, alone, terrified, angry, destitute in spirit, unsure of whether you would make it out alive.

My son Owen was born in September of 2019. Not long after, my wife started getting beat up pretty badly in her fight against anxiety and depression. A fight she very nearly lost on the night of June 29th 2021. And when she finally came to me and said “I need help” I knew I was absolutely powerless to help her in the way she needed. And through a series of events that could have only been ordained by God I found myself driving to Lafayette IN the morning of July 1st to leave my wife in the hands of strangers who I hoped would be able to help her in ways I could not. After a very short ‘see you later’ I kissed my sweet wife goodbye in the conference room at VOH and got back into the car to head back to Brownsburg. Back to a home without my bride. I was driving into the wilderness. And I knew it. What followed was an absolutely spectacular implosion… a long train of failures on my behalf to walk through it all faithfully.

I ran to projects. I ran to my work. I ran to drugs (like… real ones), I ran to alcohol, I ran to everything I thought God had saved me out of. Surely I knew better than this. Before I knew it I was in a place I thought I would never be again, addicted and hiding it from everyone who loved me. Terrified to deal with it because I was more afraid of people than I am of God. More afraid of “I thought he was a Christian”…. “This guy serves in his church?”… “What a hypocrite”.

Thank God for the conviction of the Holy Spirit that stopped letting me sleep until I would confess. Thank God for the brothers who came alongside and helped me drag it into the light and kill it. Thank God for my wife who never made me feel anything but loved and forgiven as she nursed me back to health when I lost 20 lbs. in 48 hours. Thank God for the love that he lavished upon me that I should be called his son. Thank God that he didn’t let me stay there.

I had taken an opportunity to make much of Jesus in my pain and suffering, and instead made much of my pain and suffering. Rather than walking in the identity that had been purchased for me and in the power of the Holy Spirit that indwells me… I walked headfirst into a trap. I believed the same old lie. I leaned into lesser gods that had no power to accomplish in me that which I had asked of them. The idols of my heart will never be able to sustain the weight of my lament any more than they can sustain the weight of my worship. Both were designed for God and God alone.

I had once again wrestled with the Lord as he tried to lovingly cut out of me that which robs him of glory and me of joy. He had brought me into the wilderness to love me faithfully… and I wasted it. I cannot believe I wasted it.

Despite our tendency to convince ourselves otherwise, God never takes his children into the wilderness to punish them. I don’t know that there is a clearer or better picture of God’s actual intent for the wilderness than what we find written in Hosea 2:14-16

“Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards
and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. And in that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.”

God tells his beloved bride (that’s us, Christians) that he will bring her to the wilderness, and there we will stop calling him master and start calling him husband. The wilderness becomes a vineyard. This is where we are made into who he has already declared us to be!

My wife is home now and our family feels whole again. I keep catching myself staring at her because I just can’t believe the worst is really over! I can’t believe everything God accomplished in her over the last year. I can’t believe she’s mine. Owen is potty trained. Work is going awesome and I have the first job I’ve loved in a long long time. Life is looking up! The wilderness seems to be in my rear view mirror.

Friends… Don’t waste your wilderness. Learn the language of lament and speak it in honesty to Jesus because he knows how scary it is to be us. And when you find yourself in the desert, don’t cave to the temptation for self pity or to numb the pain. The goodness of God will be enough to sustain you as it was for me. Gather around you brothers and sisters who will wet the floor with their tears and weep with you, pray with you, plead with God for you, hold you to obedience and faithfulness…. and then enter the fray. Your time there will be arduous and painful. Saturated with lament and praise. But know that on the other side of all that travail and upheaval is a harvest of holiness and a heart more prepared to be gospel light in a world that desperately needs it. God does some of his very best work … in the wilderness

Masquerade: my season of depression.

Over the course of the last year I have seen some significant changes occur in my life. My wife and I bought our first home, we welcomed our son Owen into the world, I graduated from my apprenticeship after four long years of work and schooling. I have much to be grateful for! And yet… I find myself in a prolonged season of depression.

It’s actually kind of hard to account for. You would think that with all of the progress I’ve made and the joyous addition of our youngest son that I would be on cloud nine. You might look at my circumstances and decide that I should be all smiles all the time. Sadly that just isn’t how it’s played out for me. There are other things going on that cast a dark weighty shadow over my soul. Things that make it hard to get out of bed in the morning. Things that make small things feel like huge things. Things that give the enemy all the ammunition he needs to accuse, to ridicule, to enslave me.

I know how it feels to be depressed. I know how it feels to carry the weight of guilt and shame because I can’t bare the thought of playing with my kids or go grocery shopping or open the mail. I know how it feels to be tempted to turn on the car and close the garage door because my goodness, that life insurance money might make all the difference for my family. I can barely make ends meet, and part of the problem is that I spend money I don’t have on a decade long addiction to nicotine. As a man who was taught that men provide and hold their own I always wanted to give my wife the gift of stay at home motherhood. It’s what she wanted and it’s certainly what I wanted for her. So, when we found out Owen was coming we made the decision that she wouldn’t work anymore after he arrived. The adjustment has been difficult for us. We are a single income family trying to learn how to get by in a two income world. All of this was made more difficult by our expenses increasing at the same time our income decreased. Math is math, it is unforgiving and it doesn’t care about your problems.

As I have struggled to cope with the pressures of being a father, husband, and a provider I have realized something important. Life is not fair or easy, and the Bible never promises that it will be. Scripture is jam filled with suffering and loss and trial and difficulty. Men like David who God called ‘a man after my own heart’ are constantly revealed to be cowardly disobedient fools. David knew and loved God’s law and failed repeatedly to obey it. He had his friend murdered shortly after having an affair with the man’s wife. Jesus told Peter that he was ‘the rock on which he would build his church’ just months before he denied Christ three times. In both of these cases, we see men of God who had been given identities they did not earn and would often fail to live up to. Men who were given a name that didn’t reflect the content of their character. My last name is Hampton, and when I look at the other Hampton men I feel more than anything like I don’t measure up.

But… I have been ministered to in deep and profound ways by the Holy Spirit in the midst of this season on life. I have often been pointed back to the truths of God’s word which admonish me to not give myself over to fear and anxiety. I have been reminded that even the lillies are clothed in splendor and that Solomon had nothing on them. I have had my attention drawn to the birds of the air which eat by God’s soverign provision. I have been reminded that Jesus taught Paul how to live in plenty, and he taught him to live in want. And in true David/Peter fashion I have learned slowly and with great pain that my identity is never in how I’ve failed, but rather it is set firmly in how Christ has succeeded!

I often fall hard into the trap of comparing myself to other men around me. Based on what I see it doesn’t seem like any of the other Christian men I know struggle with feeling like they’re being crushed under the weight of their various responsibilities and obligations. To my eye they all handle it swimmingly! They pay the bills, they parent their kids, they love and lead their wives well, they serve in the church with zeal and consistency. Oh, how the enemy uses their seemingly natural abilities and strength make a mockery of my smallness and woeful insufficiency.

But I wonder; how much relief and rest I might find in knowing that I’m not alone? What if some of the men around me who I see as such unshakable rocks were to approach me having shed their facade and their stoic guard only to reveal that they are sometimes just as depressed and afraid and weak as I am right now? What if the fifty somethings told the twenty and thirty somethings their story of how hard learned faithfulness produced hearty, long lasting fruit, and that it had been well worth the struggle? Then wrapped them in a hug and let them cry a bit without an iota of judgement. What might that do for the men like me who are still learning how to talk to themselves more than they listen to themselves?

I wrote this blog (my first in two years) because I am weary. Not simply with my circumstances, but with hiding them as if they are going to get better on their own. I am weary of my fellow men constantly acting more put together than they actually are. I’m weary of not being serious about someone discipling me because I’m too afraid to admit where I’m weak, and ask for much needed help. So… consider this an invitation to the party, whatever the opposite of a masquerade is. It needs to be that kind of party. Because the masquerade is killing us. I’m taking off my mask and letting those closest to me see the battle worn lines of a tired face. I am waiting patiently to look into the unmasked eyes of another.

Shane.

Building On The Rock

 

A.W. Tozer once said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us”. I tend to agree with him. The question is what shapes our thoughts about God? The trouble is, churches all over the world have people in them who aren’t being taught biblical orthodoxy. And it would seem to me (for the most part) the Church has failed to seek it out on their own.

The truth is, there are two things that are designed BY God to shape our view OF God. Two primary ways which God has chosen to reveal himself. And those are the only two things from which we should derive our thinking. Romans 1:19-20 makes is clear that God has revealed his nature and divine characteristics in creation itself. Now, if you are a believer, you have no issues looking past what some might consider a paradox. The NON-believer might look at that statement in scripture and take issue with one source of knowledge of God claiming reference to and proving another.

In other words, if God has not written his presence and power into the faces of mountains and into the shapes of clouds using written language, then the only reason someone might have to believe that nature reveals it’s creator is that the Bible says so. This argument falls apart however, when you introduce an interesting question. If God’s nature and existence is NOT revealed in nature, then how does one explain the fact that nearly every culture from every historically recorded time period including the ones that predate the Bible and ALL OTHER scripture from every religion have a clear and undeniable awareness of deity and divinity? Even going so far as to ascribe worship and sacrifice to objects and idols these cultures had made out to be God. It would seem obvious to me from this alone that all of human kind possesses an intrinsic pull toward the divine. In short, The Bible is not the only reason to believe that God has revealed himself to us in creation. Because since the beginning of time, people of all cultures have turned their eyes skyward at night to gaze upon the cosmos and been filled with a deep awareness of the creator behind this creation.

The much more detailed revalation given by God is his word. It describes his character, his attributes, his power and might.  To the Christian. This is the very word of God. The primary way which God has chosen to reveal himself to man kind. The Bible you own, whether it sits in the back seat of your car, on your nightstand, your bookshelf, or in your hand at this moment… was written by 40 authors across 1500 years. Each one of them under the divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit It agrees with itself completely. Imagine that for a moment. A book written by 40 different authors, many of whom were writing in completely different centuries, living in an entirely different cultural contexts wrote our scriptures before telephones, the internet, or even an established postal service. And yet, what they wrote bares no contradictions. No mixed signals about the God who inspired it. This is what scholars are referring to when making the statement that The Bible proves itself.

What an incredible gift our scriptures are! We have a clear picture of everything God wanted us to know about himself available to us. And make no mistake, there is nothing else at our disposal which can teach us about who our God is with such authority. Nothing even comes close. This is why it is so important to know what it has to say. Because the Bible itself makes it clear that there is nothing else meant by God to shape our view of him. There is nothing else sufficient to inform our thoughts of the sovereign king of glory. It absolutely has to be the lenses through which we view our lives, as well as the eternal.

I am often bothered by how frequently I find myself having a theological discussion with someone and will hear them say the words “I think”. Because at times whatever follows that statement is informed by little else than a gut feeling or something they once heard someone else say. Another commonality is “I know in my heart”. It’s not a new problem among Christians. Every generation of the church has taken firm stances based on something (and in some cases everything) other than scripture. This… is a tragedy. We realize that the gospel message is confrontational, and rather than wrestle with it’s deep reality and impact on our lives, we shy away. We turn tail and run to something that seems safer, more palatable, more marketable, easier to “sell” or “swallow”.

I have never met the man or woman who has allowed their views of God to be informed by something other than the Bible and then landed on solid ground with regard to how they think of him. Our sinful bent always yields the same result. And the pull of our hearts is to design for ourselves a God who looks an awful lot like us. He’s never angry about sin. He has no wrath toward the wicked rebellion of humanity. He can be manipulated, bought off, bargained with, and controlled. In other words, the uniformed believer will always end up worshiping a god who simply does not exist, and who looks completely different from the God I read about in the Bible.

There are no new heresies or blasphemies under the sun. Man is not that creative. Only the same old tired philosophically fragile concepts that get recycled a few generations apart, but never last because they aren’t built on anything real. This is the vicious cycle in which we all live. It is the air we all breathe. And the ONLY solution to the problem is becoming rooted in Biblical, historical, orthodox Christianity as we see it revealed in God’s word.

It is the longing of my very soul to see a revival in biblical doctrine and a theology built on the Bible. Because, folks… this matters. Our approach cannot be nonchalant. This is not a thing about which we can afford to be trite. There is far too much at stake. We must remember that the Bible does not NEED us to protect it, it is the other way around. It isn’t a book about US. It is a book about God. It’s not the road map for life. It’s the road map to life. We must treat it with the reverence and attention it deserves. We cannot afford to forget the importance of it’s role in our lives. It is imperative that we allow it to accomplish in us the thing for which it has been sent. To mold us. To change us. To READ us. And of utmost importance, it needs to be where we go to know Jesus. It has the power to peer deep into our hearts and do surgery where we will let it. It can expose and push back against our darkness.

My sincere hope is that you will learn what I have learned. That Holy scripture carries within it’s pages the intent to TEACH you about God. And as Tozer already so beautifully pointed out… there is simply no more important subject upon which we can fix our affections.

 

Shane

 

Obedience and Motives

 

Have you ever asked yourself this question… Why does God want us to obey him?

I certainly have. I have asked it in the confines of my mind. I have posed it to others verbally. And most often I have questioned it in action simply by refusing to obey him at all. Both in the context of being unsaved and in glad rebellion, and in the context of being a Christian who simply still struggles with old sins. But regardless of how you ask the question, it requires an answer. Let’s dig in to that.

Let’s get one thing straight right away. There is NO shortage of bad teaching on this topic. One cursory search of YouTube and you can be bombarded with lies about how if you obey the commands of God you will never get sick and your bank account will be filled by tomorrow. You can find endless hours of falsehood that will fill your head with untrue ideas about how obedience will earn you a better standing with God, God’s favor and his blessing. The list goes on. You may even be a member of a church where these ideas are taught in one way or another every Sunday morning. So for the sake of this being manageable in size, let’s just address the two most common misconceptions about obedience, shall we?

If you obey. God will make you rich and healthy and all your dreams will come true

This is most commonly referred to as “the prosperity gospel”. It shows up in all sorts of places and venues. And it is disillusioning and damning. And I believe saying that is right and biblical because of what I read in the book of Jude. The big problem with this belief is that it represents an attempt to put God in your debt. The prosperity gospel says “I was GOOD, GOD!!! YOU OWE ME!!!” The truth is… he owes you nothing. And if you’re reading the Bible honestly you will not be able to escape the truth that you absolutely do not want what you deserve from God. He owes you nothing. And that makes his unbelievably gracious giving to us SO amazing.

Nowhere in scripture will you find anything (when read honestly and objectively) that would lead you to believe in this “version” of the gospel. And to believe in it is to deny scripture itself and centuries of Church history. Take for instance the twelve apostles. Every single one of them can be safely considered radically obedient. And every single one of them… dies bad. They’re beheaded, crucified upside down, boiled alive in oil and marooned on a small island. Not one of them ends up a physically well off millionaire. See the example of the reformers. Men and women who were burned alive at the stake contending for the truth.Each one of them obedient unto death (usually violent and brutal). And yet, every Sunday morning churches all over our cities and towns fill with people who have believed this damning lie. And what most often happens as a result? The money and health either dry up or never show up to begin with. They become convinced in the futility of their minds that God has failed them. So… angry, disappointed, and disillusioned people run from and accuse God. Because their ideas about God’s goodness toward them have been wrapped up in the temporal and fallible rather than in the truth of scripture. This lie is so popular because of the condition of our hearts. It’s simply what we all desire to hear. From the instant we enter the world, we don’t want God. We want his stuff. We choose to worship creation rather than the creator. And if we’re honest… it’s why without a right view of God, we are left wanting and empty. Unfilfilled shells who have convinced ourselves that God is not good, God is not for us… God did NOT show up when we needed him.

Would it not be safe to say that the lie of the prosperity gospel flies in the face of your own personal experience as well? Are you wealthy in the kind of way that can ONLY be a gift from God? Are you NEVER sick or depressed? I would be willing to wager that the answer to both of those questions is a fairly unequivocal “no”. So when you have eliminated the possibility that it is true, you are left only with the reality that it is a falsehood. And the Bible is chocked full of evidence to defeat it. Therefore, if your motivations for obeying God’s commands for us are centered around yourself (as in what it buys you) than you have completely missed the point. And In a few more paragraphs we WILL address the point. But first… Lets look at the other common lie that people believe.

If I DON’T obey, then God will punish me.

Let me get one thing out of the way here… there is SOME truth in this. What I mean is simply that if you are NOT in Christ, redeemed and justified by his atoning sacrifice on the cross… then yes, you are living under the weight of his judgment and have a very real punishment written into your eternal destiny. And even if you ARE in Christ, God often allows us to experience the consequences of our sin (Hebrews 12:7-11). But THAT IS NOT THE SAME as punishment. God’s wrath exists to satisfy his justice and righteousness in the face of our constant state of unrepentant and glad rebellion against him. Discipline is designed differently. It’s purpose is to lovingly shape us and mold us into the image of Christ (Philippians 1:6), it is all about HIS glory and OUR good. That’s not to say that discipline isn’t often painful and difficult. Because it certainly can be. Let us never allow the pain of God’s loving discipline to create bitterness towards him.

Where the idea that a lack of obedience resulting in God’s punishment goes awry is when that fear becomes the root of our motivations to obey. God is not some cosmic kill joy waiting to light you up because you’re having a good time and enjoying yourself. He doesn’t stand on the edge of heaven with his arms folded in disapproval because you smiled or laughed. He created enjoyment. He is the author of all of the good and right things that we participate in as we live out our day to day (James 1:17). And by believing anything else you are belittling the cross of Christ and robbing yourself of the fullness of joy that he designed you for. God’s love for his children is absolutely NEVER punitive. He is not interested in making you feel bad about yourself in order to make HIM feel better about himself. His love is far greater and deeper than that. And when you believe the lie that you are somehow capable of influencing how he feels about you… you are essentially trying to earn favor with him. Let me spare you the effort and exhaustion that comes with this absolutely futile pursuit. YOU CAN’T!!! YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!!! YOU ARE NOT THE INEXHAUSTIBLE WELL OF ENERGY AND RIGHTEOUSNESS YOU WOULD NEED TO BE IN ORDER TO SUCCEED AT EARNING HIS LOVE!!! YOU HAVE BEEN OUTED BY THE CROSS AND REGARDLESS OF ALL THE GOOD THINGS YOU DO; YOU ARE IN DESPERATE NEED OF A SAVIOR BECAUSE YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS IS FILTHY RAGS BEFORE A HOLY GOD!!!……     Now…. Take a deep breath.  And that, my friends is wonderful news. Because God didn’t bet it all on you. He bet it all on Christ. Grace has paid the bill. So when something goes horribly wrong in your life, it is CRUCIAL to have a biblical world view and know how to discern where it’s coming from. In short… yes. One day God is going to punish sin for all eternity. But if you are a Christian, you are not subject to his wrath any longer. And he will not punish you for screwing up. There is NO condemnation for those who are in Christ (Read Romans 8:1-4. Read it slowly, pay special attention to verse 3)

Ok so…. Why obey?

God absolutely places boundaries and expectations on the life of his children, And they exist for two purposes. HIS glory (primary) and OUR joy (secondary). Our obedience has to be rooted in faith. It must be motivated by our trust in Him, our belief that he is not in the business of keeping good things from us. He designed us to BE a certain way. Our sin is simply our failure to acknowledge him and choose our way over his. It is us placing ourselves in his rightful place on the throne. Our desire cannot be for more money, or better horizontal relationships, more stuff, more power, higher position and influence. These things all crumble underneath the weight of our worship because they were not designed to handle it’s weight. Our enjoyment of life needs to roll past life itself and onto the creator. It cannot terminate on things and people and experiences.

The greatest motivation to obey can be found in one undeniable reality that shows up again and again in scripture. God is FOR us… not against us. His call on our lives to obey is meant to lead us into something better than the temporary. Something that is so wonderful and incomprehensible and vast that our minds can never develop to the point of being able to fully grasp it. He has a very real plan to grow us and bring us into greater fellowship with him. And he has a powerful desire to reveal himself to us. That might seem difficult to believe. Maybe you’re reading this and you’re a little skeptical about all this. I would simply point you to the Cross. Why? because there is absolutely no greater objective evidence of God’s unconditional love for you.

Obedience rooted in faith does not say “if I obey God, then he will love me”. It simply cries out from deep inside of us “YOU LOVE ME! I WILL OBEY!” It recognizes God’s goodness to us in spite of our sin. His faithfulness to us in spite of our idolatry. It sees beyond circumstances and emotions and roots itself deeply into the heart of the believer who has been radically transformed by the gospel. It is not something that can be mastered in the course of a week, or month, or year. Obedience is developed slowly and painfully over a lifetime of lessons learned by mistakes. It stumbles ever forward through our inconsistent and imperfect attempts to get it right. But it grows most powerfully when we allow our eyes, our hearts, and our minds to be completely transfixed upon the object of our salvation. As we gaze in awe at the cross of Christ where all of God’s holy wrath was poured onto the spotless lamb of creation. Our obedience to God can be cultivated by filling our lives with things that stir our affections for Jesus… The author and perfecter of our faith.

Why obey? Because we were designed to live fully, richly, and in fellowship with our creator. And despite our sin, God sent his son and put himself in our rightful place so that we would be able to re-enter the space we are designed to occupy. And I can frankly think of no greater motivation than that.