Month: January 2023

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It’s Right There, Hiding in Plain Sight

When I was a young teenager, members of our youth group took a two-hour trip to go visit a family of friends that had moved away from our church.

We did lots of stuff while reconnecting. We hung out at their house, we went to a local mall, and we ran all over the church grounds playing different games. As energetic young teenagers, we needed an outlet for some of our energy.

It must have been a cold-weather trip, because the sun went down pretty early. One of the games we played was a round of capture the flag. We could go anywhere on the church grounds, as long as it wasn’t inside a building. The playing area included a paved parking lot, the main church building, and a couple of out buildings on the property, along with all the green space in between. We set up the boundaries and used two plain white knee-length socks as flags.

Normally the way these games work is that the playing field is divided into two zones, one for each team. Each team hides the flag somewhere in their zone, and you have to venture into the opposing team’s zone to search for the flag. If an opponent tags you while you’re in their zone, you go to jail in a small section within their zone. You can be set free if someone else from your team makes it to the jail to tags you. You win the game if you find the opposing team’s flag and carry it back to your zone without being tagged. Both teams are playing offense and defense at the same time.

On that particular evening visibility was bad. Since it was dark, starting to get foggy, and there was lousy weather moving in, we split into two easily discernible teams: boys vs. girls. I don’t remember numbers, but there were a lot more girls than there were boys. Between an odd layout of the church grounds and not having enough guys on our team to simultaneously do a good job defending and go looking for the opposing team’s flag, we decided that in order to have any chance of winning, we’d have to come up with an amazing spot to hide our flag so we didn’t have to dedicate anybody to protecting it. As it turns out, we came up with what I believe to be a pretty risky and bold idea for a bunch of middle-schoolers.

When both teams were ready, we started the game. It moved slowly for a long time. Even if our team tagged opponents and brought them to our jail, we didn’t have enough guys to really protect the jail and still play in other areas, so it wasn’t too hard for the other team to set their jailed teammates free.

I remember our team’s strategy was so incoherent and we were spread so thin that at one point in the game I was running from one part of our zone to another and I stumbled across a member of the other team that nobody even realized had made it into our zone. She was picking through the bushes, looking for our flag. They had figured out that if they were patient enough, they could wander in and out of our zone and all they had to do was move quietly and we probably wouldn’t even know they were there.

This went on for probably 45 minutes. I don’t think any of our guys were able to find their flag, and the other team was getting frustrated because they felt they had searched everywhere in our zone and still couldn’t find our flag. All of us were cold and wet, and our team was about to get accused of cheating, so we collectively decided to call it a draw.

Understandably, the other team wanted to see with their own eyes where our flag had been hidden. We brought them over to the area, and some from the opposing team were shocked to learn they had run past it multiple times during the game and hadn’t even considered that it could be so near. We had placed our flag, an ordinary white sock, lying in plain sight on one of the white lines outlining parking spaces in the church’s parking lot.

Humans are born with the idea that there’s something beyond this life…that there’s more to this existence than what we can see. God’s the one that put that feeling there…He built it into us. People can’t look up at the stars or at the intricacy of the human body and not start asking big questions.

The devil, knowing he cannot stop this instinctive wondering, has concocted and fostered numerous counterfeit religious ideas and worldviews with which to distract humanity. The objective truth seeker has many options aside from Christianity they must examine, and the enemy’s hope is that the seeker will tire of the search and declare something besides the following of Christ as “close enough,” that the seeker will conclude that each worldview is as meaningless as every other one, or get them established and entrenched in an inaccurate worldview like works-based salvation. Yet all that time, the answer is not hiding. It’s sitting right there in plain sight, waiting for the seeker to look closer at it.

If you’re seeking truth, take a look at Jesus Christ and what the Bible (only the Old and New Testaments…no “mandatory” additional books) has to say about Him. Humanity was initially created perfect and had fellowship with God, but then made mistakes and became imperfect, thereby falling out of that fellowship. Jesus Christ, God incarnate, lived a perfect (sinless) life, and extends to us the offer of the only bridge back to that sweet fellowship with the Lord.

It’s that simple. You don’t have to perform rituals. You don’t have to give a certain amount of money to the church or perform a certain number of hours of community service. All you have to do is embrace Jesus Christ as your Savior, acknowledging Him as your only means of escaping the judgment of your imperfections. As you walk that new path, you’ll desire to change your character to become more like His, and as a result of that, you’ll want to perform good works.

It’s right there, hiding in plain sight. I implore you, take a closer look. You might just find the thing that you’ve been looking for all along: the answer to your deep restlessness.

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It’s A Thick Blackness You Can Feel

November in northern Virginia can be a little unpredictable. Some days it’s very cold, other days it’s very mild. The 10-day forecast can vary quite a bit, so it’s a good idea to check in on it frequently.

One morning the temperature got pretty warm and a heavy fog settled over the area. When I say ‘heavy fog,” it’s hard to oversell how thick it was. On this particular morning, I headed into work well before dawn. Between the darkness and the fog, it was a unique experience. I don’t ever recall having been inside a black fog prior to that. It was a little freaky, to be honest with you. The darkness felt oppressive, and almost tangible. I imagine it’s kind of what it felt like during the plague of darkness the Egyptians encountered in Exodus chapter 10.

Well anyway, the usual commute moved a little slower than normal, and it was odd to see tail lights so close, yet still fading into the inky blackness. The route I took that morning involved a descent down a long hill, toward a traffic light at the bottom. I’d done this trip numerous times in the past, and always wanted to be at a certain point down the hill by the time the light turned yellow. That way I knew I had enough time for the next group of cars to get a green light and get through the intersection and still get there in time to take advantage of the left-hand turn arrow that came after that.

It was a strange and unsettling thing to be driving at normal speed, see numerous tail lights in front of me, many (dimmer) headlights in my mirrors, but not be able to see the faithful traffic light at the bottom of the hill.

Here we were, racing headlong into oblivion, and we couldn’t see far enough in front of us to stop if we came upon an unexpected hazard. We all gained a false sense of security in seeing others around us moving at the same speed, doing the same thing we were doing, and we all just kind of figured that since other people were doing it, it’s probably okay.

Well, thankfully I didn’t encounter any sort of hazard that morning, but if a deer had decided to venture across the road at an unfortunate time, I wouldn’t have had the time or space to do much about it.

This is where most non-believers find themselves today. They’re rushing headlong into oblivion, thinking that everything’s going to be okay because they’re in the same boat as a lot of other people. Things worked out fine for me that day, but others aren’t going to fare nearly as well for these people when they stand before the Almighty.

It’s our job to sound the alarm for them. We (Christ followers) formerly stood where they stood, and have escaped the fate they’re still rushing so quickly into: an eternity separated from fellowship with God.

People fill their time with busyness, equating being busy with doing meaningful things, thinking they’ve got plenty of time to think about the more spiritual side of things later, but in reality having no idea how much time they’ve got left to consider such things. The unimportant things of life distract from the central issue of humanity’s existence.

Christians are called to spread the reality of the situation. It’s our job to help wake them up. For their sake, I implore you to use the spiritual gifts you’ve been entrusted with. I’ve heard it said that the Creator of the universe preferred to die than to live without you. The reality is that the same holds true for all the other people out there, too. It’s up to us to let them know, so they can make their own decision.

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When the Routine is a Painful One

Back in college there were a few of us among our larger group of friends that would hit the weight room on a regular basis. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around 6:30 pm, Tyrone, Gabe, and I would meet up and head over to the gym.

It was a good routine for us; most of the time all three of us kept the appointment, but of course there would be times when one of us had to catch up on school work, make up some time on a project, or pull some extra hours at work, so the trio would be down a man. That’s when having a group of three paid off, there would still be two guys that could meet up and get a workout done.

Consistency was the key to results. Getting into a routine was important, and after a few weeks of regular workouts, the body came to embrace the physical stress. It was also a good mental discipline for all of us. There were definitely times when I didn’t feel like going, but knowing there were two other guys that were going to come looking for me to go with them helped get me ready to head out the door.

Now, missing a workout every now and then wasn’t a big deal. You can skip a workout and still jump back in without much of an issue. Christmas break, on the other hand, was something you had to figure out how to deal with. Bench press and bicep curls were some of the mainstay exercises we did in the gym, but neither of those exercises were something you really performed naturally in normal life. If you had a couple of weeks off from school (and the weight room), you probably missed a bunch of workouts unless you did something really creative to stay in shape, and those muscles didn’t take long to begin to atrophy.

Every January when we arrived back on campus, we kind of dreaded the first time we got back into the weight room. We still had muscle mass, certainly, but it had noticeably lost some of its density and tightness. We wanted to get back into our routine, but we were also a bit reluctant to get started up again because after you go for a few weeks without doing unnatural movements like bench press, and then you start doing it again, it becomes very painful.

What we came to realize was that it wasn’t the first workout back that we needed to fear, it was the second.

On the first workout back, we’d try to hype each other up a little bit, probably spout off something about working out harder in the new year, and grit our teeth as we pushed through. Sure, we took a couple of steps backward for that first workout, but the goal was to just get through it.

On the second workout back, we wouldn’t be gritting our teeth, we’d be wincing in pain. The acute stabbing pain in our pectoral muscles was terrible as we asked our bodies to work through the soreness that came from our first workout back. The only way to get to the other side of the pain and back into the reality of exercising without that kind of hurt was to just keep going. “If you can make it through the second workout, you’re home free,” we used to say.

As Christians, we’re entrusted with spiritual gifts. If Christ is your savior, you’re equipped with what you need to perform the work God’s asking you to do. We go through different phases and chapters in our lives and we’re capable of giving more effort in some phases than in others, but at some point during our lives God calls us to do something on behalf of His kingdom.

Perhaps it’s been a few chapters since you were willing to step outside your comfort zone to follow God’s will for your life, and you’ve been trying to get back to fulfilling your calling. Things tend to align against you and work to dissuade you from getting back into that sort of routine.

I can’t sit here and honestly tell you that you only have to get through two sessions of whatever it is that God’s called you to do before it gets less painful, but I would encourage you not to give up, and urge you to stick with it. To His followers, Jesus promised persecution, difficulties, and generally some hard times. He said that we’d need to have perseverance and grit to stick it out. I may not know you personally, but I can tell you that you’ll have challenges in this new year. Stick it out. Hang in there.

I’ll leave you with two Bible verses on perseverance. One is addressed to you as an individual who needs encouragement to follow Christ, while the other is addressed to you as an individual who’s exhorted to fulfill your calling. In both cases, note the need for persistence and perseverance.

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. –James 1:12

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. –Galatians 6:9

May 2023 be a year of persistence and growth for you, and I wish you the best in getting past your discomfort and into the routine God wants you to pursue.

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Why Do We Even Bother Going to Church?

What’s the point of church? Like, why do we have church?

Many people think it’s a place to bring non-believing friends, family members, or acquaintances so they can hear about God. It’s great if you can bring unchurched people to hear about God, but that’s not the main purpose for church services. When you get right down to it, church exists for believers to gather in corporate worship, be bolstered in their faith, grow in their knowledge of the Bible and the Lord, and then scatter for the purpose of executing different types of ministry on behalf of Jesus Christ.

If Christianity is a seven-day per week commitment, church is a pep talk. Church is where you go to hear one of God’s representatives proclaim the truth. It’s where you call sin “sin.” You’re supposed to walk away from church feeling uplifted and hopeful, but also a little convicted and a little uncomfortable. If you’ve got a pretty good handle on living the right kind of life for God, you should walk away from church with an increased sense of urgency for all the people that still need to hear about Christ.

There’s a problem that’s been happening with churches for a couple of thousand years now, though. There are too many churches that don’t want to be the bad guy by calling something “sin.” Some churches don’t want to touch controversial topics. Some don’t want to offend anybody. Others just want to do “feel good” messages.

A couple of seasons back I bought a new garden hose. The ones I had been using kept breaking near the connection where you screw the hose onto the spigot, so I bought one that had a more robust connection. It was great, I’ve still got it, and it’s still very sturdy. The problem is that I left it attached to the spigot too long, and now it won’t unscrew from the spigot.

I don’t know if it’s because minerals in the water precipitated out and solidified on the connection, or if the two different metals somehow corroded together, but the end result is the same: the two different items that were very distinct before have now become, for all intents and purposes, a single entity that’s now a liability. I shut off the water to the spigot, but can’t fully drain the hose for the winter. Assuming it doesn’t sustain any permanent damage through the winter it should still be able to function when things warm back up, but the hose has lost some of its value (I can’t for example, unscrew it and attach it to my house’s other spigot).

The reason the church exists is to act as the “salt and light” for the world. That is, it’s the means by which the earth’s decay will be slowed. The church exists to provide moral clarity for the world and to point the world to Christ. I will fully acknowledge that a greater percentage of people will ignore or choose to turn their backs on Christ than will follow Him, but that should not influence the Church’s purpose. To be effective at preserving the world, the Church must stand in stark contrast to it. Have no doubt about this: one day God will look at the state of the world and how badly its morality has decayed, He’ll look at the Church and how watered down some teachings have become, and He’ll say “that’s enough. I’m pulling all my children out of there.”

At that point, the earth will have no true church left; it will have to start over again with zero believers. There will be plenty of people that have attended church for years but have not actually embraced Christ as Savior. The earth will still have church members who are more concerned with social events and community garage sales than they are with evangelism, and those people will be confused about why so many parishioners are gone while they’ve been left behind.

Since the “salt and light,” or “preservative” has been removed from the situation, it’s at this point that there’s no longer anything holding back the acceleration of society’s moral decay. To everyone that’s left, God will say “you know what? I gave you plenty of chances. Have it your way, do whatever you want, but I’ve pulled all my people out.”

A note of encouragement to those of you that are pastors/priests/teachers. Those that have a leadership or teaching role when it comes to God’s word are going to be held to a higher standard when they stand before the Almighty, so now’s not the time to compromise for the sake of appeasing earthly voices. We’re counting on you to say it like God wants you to say it. Don’t water things down. Don’t talk yourself into thinking that the Bible means something other than what you know it’s saying. If you make a leap like that, you’re going to have to answer for it someday.

I could apply brute force to that hose to try to get it off, but by doing that I’ll run the risk of twisting and breaking the pipe it’s connected to. I can apply heat to try to cause differential swelling to break the hold, but that risks damage to the hose itself. I can try applying lubricants and penetrants, but odds are that I’m going to need to combine that method with another. In any case, there’s going to be some pain and discomfort associated with breaking that “merged” entity back into two different ones. It would’ve been much better if I’d simply removed the hose from time to time to ensure it wasn’t bonding too closely with the spigot. Let’s take the lesson here and make sure the Church’s teachings are distinct from the audience we’re trying to reach and aren’t getting too bonded to them. It will be a lot more painful to break them apart than it will be to just ensure they stay separate.