I’m a little terrified of my friend Nathan.

He’s not physically scary. I mean he’s kind of a brawny, weight lifting type of guy, much like myself if you’ve seen the video from Cross Point. And he has a breakdancing ministry in inner city Atlanta so clearly it’s not a pop n’ lock issue. It’s just that he tends to ask tough questions. He tends to say things that make me uncomfortable. And that’s exactly what he did at Willy’s a few weeks ago.

We went there for a burrito because unlike Chipotle they don’t charge you for chips. (At this point in the history of burrito consumption, I feel like charging extra money for chips is like a restaurant asking you to pay for the use of a fork. Boggles the mind really.) During lunch I was telling him that I felt like I had hit a spiritual wall. I was stuck. There wasn’t any one thing I could point my finger at, some neon issue I had jumped back into with both feet, but for some reason I just seemed off kilter.

After hearing me ramble for what probably felt like 19 years, Nathan asked me simply,
“Where is all this stuff going? Your quiet time, your study, your reading, your Bible work? Where is the outward expression of your faith? Who are you serving right now?”

Ahh come on. I don’t want tough questions. I want easy friendships where I show up and you show up and we tell each other how awesome we are. “You’re a fantastic Christian!” “No, you’re a fantastic Christian!” I don’t like questions like that.

But as I thought about what he asked, I was confronted with the reality that I really only want to follow the first and greatest commandment. Are you familiar with that one? In Matthew 22:37-38 a guy named Jesus says, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.”

I am down with that verse. When I read it, I think to myself, “Yes, that is what I am talking about! I will focus inward and learn to love the Lord with all my heart and my soul and my mind. This is fantastic. I can twist this into some sort of God-flavored self improvement course. This will be like a Biblically based version of that productivity book I’m reading right now, ‘Getting Things Done.’ I’ll find a quiet spot, cocoon myself in self effort and just go to town growing my faith in a little greenhouse of me.”

That’s what I want to do. But Jesus doesn’t stop thought there. I want him to. I want him to drop a hard period at the end of that sentence and move on to walking on water or multiplying fish with his bare hands. “End scene Jesus, end scene!” I want to shout. But He doesn’t get down that way. He follows verse 38 with this gem about the second commandment:

“And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Nards! Really? There’s a neighbor involved? Can’t I just go on a deep spiritual retreat to a cave in the desert where I grow a beard, and live alone as I work on my faith, perhaps keeping a wolf as my only companion? I’ll name him “Timber” after the one Snake Eyes had in GI Joe. Can’t I turn the Bible into a self help book and God into a self empowerment guru? Can’t this faith thing just be about me?

But it’s not. There’s a second half to that thought. There’s a neighbor and a call to love and an outward expression of faith and Nathan challenged me on it.

The truth is, I sometimes want my faith to be like a bonsai tree, the miniaturized versions of trees made famous in the Karate Kid movie. I want to manicure it and study it and prune it and move piece by piece around with tweezers, never once taking my eyes off the small little tree and refusing to admit there is a forest outside my window. Never once admitting that there are deep woods all around me. Never once realizing that I walk through groves of trees every day that need to be loved and served.

Is there an inward direction to faith? Is there a place for being deliberate about your heart and your mind and your soul? Without a doubt. I don’t think Jesus made a mistake when He called loving the Lord the most important commandment. I think the internal life is a critical part of our faith experience. But Jesus didn’t stop there. He didn’t end the thought with that foundation. He didn’t end the thought with a single tree. He jumped into the forest. He finished by calling us toward our neighbor. He ended by calling us toward outward love.

And whether I’m afraid or lazy or selfish or a million other things, I can’t escape from the fact that He wants me to have more than bonsai faith.

God is refusing to answer my questions right now.

There are a few fairly large challenges on the table at the present moment. I would love to get some resolution on them. I’ve made that clear to God. I’ve presented my case, stated what I would love to happen and yet, nothing.

So I find myself doing what I often do in situations like this, trying to jump start God like a car that stalled out.

Instead of pushing God down a hill to get momentum and then cranking the ignition with the hope that the motor will catch, I’m going through my “Christian to-do list.”

OK God, no answer on that issue huh? How about if I read the Bible a little more? Let’s try that. Nope that didn’t fix the silence. Maybe I need to say better prayers? Or get some wise counsel or read a Christian book or go through old journals and look at other situations in which you have provided? Will that do it, you ready to talk yet? You ready to resolve the things that I think need resolving? No? What’s it going to take to get a clear answer on this issue?

I don’t literally ball my hand into a fist and yell at the storm clouds, but I might as well. God is not removing the confusion around my future and that’s frustrating. “If He really loved me, He would,” I start to think. Maybe there’s some area of my life that I’m messing up in right now and if I can just over turn the right rock and kill the snake under it, then He’ll end His silence and show me what to do. Maybe if I can just figure out where the break in the line of communication is, I can patch it and God will be able to lift me out of the situation I’m in.

Have you ever felt like that? There was an issue or a situation you wanted God to speak to and it just felt like at the time you needed Him most He went into stealth mode? You kept coming back to Him with the same question.

Is this the job I’m supposed to take?

Is this the guy I’m supposed to marry?

Will we ever not be so strapped financially?

You asked and you asked and you asked, and no matter how often you went to Him with that issue, it seemed like He refused to remove it?

I’ve felt that way, in fact that’s how I feel right now, but I’m beginning to think I might be wrong.
What if, it’s not an issue of me not hearing God correctly or me sinning in some way that is disappointing God?

What if it’s not that God is just deciding to leave me vulnerable to a season of confusion?

What if God loves me too much to answer my prayer?

I think that might be the real question I need to wrestle with. I think that’s where I need to start and a friend in high school gave me a hint that pointed me in that direction years ago.

He was a “single topic friend.” Have you ever had one of those? It’s a friend where you only have one point of connection, one thing in common, one topic you can talk about. You know he likes college football so every time you see him, that’s what you talk about. You wish your relationship was bigger. You wish you could talk about your families or your future or a host of other things, but for some reason this relationship is stuck temporarily on one thing.

And if that relationship is important to you, if that girl, who only wants to talk to you about music, is important to you, you’ll continue to be faithful to that topic. If you really love that relationship you’d never say, “I don’t want to talk about college football or music anymore.”

That would close the door. That would end the conversation. That would atrophy the friendship. So instead, while you hope and pray that there will be an opportunity to expand your relationship, you delight in talking about college football with your single topic friend.

Sometimes I think I’m like that with God. I get one thing stuck in my head. I laser focus all my prayers and thoughts and energy on one particular issue. And then I take it to Him. It becomes the biggest part of our conversation, the driving force that I keep coming to Him about and then I act confused at why He won’t fix it already.

Maybe God loves me too much for that. Maybe God’s thinking, “Jon, I want there to be a million doors open between you and me. I want your marriage and your job and your children and your dreams and every inch of your life to be a door you open to me, but right now, in this season of life, the only door you’re opening is the one called ‘the future.’ And you keep asking me to close that door with some answer from above that includes a clear set of steps on what you should do. But why would I magically take that away? That’s the vehicle for 100% of our conversations right now, why would I eliminate that? The result would be less conversation with you and I love conversations with you. I want you near me and fixing that situation the way you want it fixed would actually push you away. You would take the answer and leave.”

I don’t know what you’re praying about right now. I hope that you’re more mature in your faith than I am and have already grown your relationship with God much bigger than a single topic friendship. But if you haven’t, if there’s one heavy thing that’s weighing on you, please know that it might be that God loves you too much to remove it.

I think every Christian has a “Doesn’t Count List” (DCL), a collection of small things we do that might not be completely in God’s will for our life, but they’re so tiny they don’t really matter. If you say you don’t have a DCL, apparently lying is one of the items on yours because that’s just what you did.

Here are some things I recently realized were on my Doesn’t Count List:

Speeding
God is completely cool with this. I know we’re supposed to honor the authority we’re placed under, but God is like the state troopers on this one when it comes to driving faster than the legal limit, “Under 5 you’re fine, Over 5 you’re mine.”

Using the internet at work for personal reasons
Come on, I’m reading www.biblegateway.com and listening to podcasts of sermons. Surely God’s OK with me using time that my company pays me for that? I mean people take smoke breaks all day and I don’t smoke so I’m owed a few minutes of Internet break time here and there. I know that no matter what we do, we’re supposed to do it for the glory of God, which means working hard at work, but let’s be honest, that verse was written before Youtube, and that site has everything.

Doing things you wouldn’t recommend that other Christians do
I caught myself in this one last weekend. A friend sent me a link to a lil’ Wayne remix of Jason Mraz’ song “I’m yours” and it was awesome. I listened to it four or five times to make sure it was clean and then was about to tweet it from my twitter account when I thought, “Is that Christian of me to share that link? I mean it’s lil Wayne. I better not, I don’t want to recommend that other Christians listen to that.” But me? I’m apparently impervious to all sorts of less than holy forms of media. Me? I can handle that. (The second problem in that scenario is that by editing what I tweet but still listening to that song, I create a “twitter Jon” and a “real Jon.” I’m not sure if other Christian bloggers struggle with the temptation to “holy up” how they present themselves online but that is some whackness I need to get under control.)

Hook ups
If you thought I was going to talk about making out, you should be ashamed of yourself. I’m talking about the hook ups friends and family members can get us at stores. For instance, a few weeks ago when I decided to buy a mac laptop, they had a deal where if you were a college kid you could get a free iPod touch with the purchase and a free printer. I seriously considered finding a neighborhood kid to go in with me so that I could get the deal. And although I didn’t take advantage of that discount which honestly did not really apply to me, I’ve done that a number of times in the past.

Those are all pretty silly I guess. You could easily read my Doesn’t Count List and think, “Everybody does that. We can’t be perfect, what’s the big deal?” And you’d be right, we can’t be perfect, but what I’ve found in my own life is that the DCL is never satisfied with staying small and insignificant. It’s a hungry little list. It always wants more of your life. It always wants you to add new things to it. To grow and stretch until it’s a mile long.

When I was in college, I got into an unhealthy dating relationship. We were mutually bad for each other and our combined brokenness only managed to amplify the hurt we were able to cause. When my girlfriend got into techno music, so did I. When my girlfriend started going to raves, so did I. When my girlfriend started doing ecstasy, so did I. How?

I put it on my Doesn’t Count List.

After having years of practice adding “small things” to it and justifying why some things don’t count in God’s eyes, it was surprisingly easy to rationalize ecstasy. As I’ve written about before, in my head I told myself, “Cocaine is a real drug because you have to snort it. Heroin is a real drug because you have to shoot it. Pot is a real drug because you have to smoke it. Ecstasy is just a pill, like aspirin. I’ve swallowed pills before, that’s not a dangerous drug. That’s just a pill.”

As stupid as that sounds, when you’re living in stupid land, stupid decisions and stupid logic make a surprising amount of sense. So I started doing ecstasy. But that wasn’t enough for the DCL. So eventually I smoked some pot. And finally, in one of the scariest nights of my life, I did some acid. I kept adding to my “Doesn’t Count List” until it choked out all the good and made my life not count.

As gross as that all was, the bigger issue might be what keeping a DCL reveals I believe about God. Apparently, in my heart, God is still up in heaven keeping a massive list of things that count and things that don’t count. He’s Santa Claus and I’m a kid trying to hide the pieces of a broken vase under my bed in the hope that they don’t count. Christ’s death must not have been enough, because in my mind, there are still two lists going.

Let’s lose the lists. It all counts. If we could have been saved by a list, God wouldn’t have sent His son, He would have just given us more paper and pens so we could keep better lists. It has to count or Christ’s life doesn’t count. The grace, the mercy, the deep, beating heartbeat of hope from Christ beats loudly because it does count. The gap between me and God was wide and dark. But it was crossed.

Not by me.

Not by my goodness.

Not by lists.

But by Christ.

Because it counts.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. I don’t think I’m the only one holding a list in my hand sometimes. How about you? Have you ever had a Doesn’t Count List? What’s on it?

My wife and I spent Thanksgiving in Pensacola, Florida a few years ago. Since our kids go to bed awesomely early, 6:30 eastern, we were stuck in the hotel by ourselves at 5:30 central time every night. There are few things as depressing as sitting on a bed for five straight hours in a Sleep Inn hotel room. In addition to suck your soul out fluorescent lights, the room had kind of this potpourri of bad smells. It was part smoke, part cat, part old Hardee’s hamburger and a smidge of feet.

It was admittedly a good time to catch up on conversation with my wife, but after a few straight days of staring at each other, we were both a little stir crazy. One night I walked down to the BP gas station that was beside the hotel.

Behind the counter at the gas station was a sad woman in her mid thirties. She looked tired, like maybe life was hard for her a decade too soon. Like maybe she didn’t get to be a kid long enough and all that adulthood was starting to catch up on her.

On the outside of her hand was a small greenish gray tattoo of an X. I was curious about what it meant, so I asked her the significance. Here is her response:

“Oh that? That doesn’t mean anything. My mom gave me that one night when she was drunk.”

That was a kind of weird answer, so I asked her how old she was when it happened. She scrunched up her face for a second in concentration and then said, “I think I was 13.”

When I was 13, I was really concerned about my clothes. I was worried that my mom would buy me a Knights of the Round Table shirt instead of Polo. Or that I would have Reeboks instead of Nikes. These were the kinds of things I focused on, because at that age, kids would tease you for the smallest thing.

But what about showing up to school one Monday with a jagged, bloody green x tattooed on your hand? What was that experience like? How would kids react to that? Didn’t it hurt when her mom gave her that? She was drunk, writing on her daughter with a shaky hand and a hot needle.

I thought about that the rest of the trip and was considering writing about the marks that our parents give us. They’re not all as obvious as that and many are actually positive, but I realized that was a narrow way to look at it, because it’s not just parents that give us marks. It’s coworkers and spouses and friends and strangers. And when we don’t know they’re there, sometimes they actually stick.

Someone once asked me to review a memo at work that included some disparaging remarks about my writing ability. There on page 4 was a giant circle with a big red line through it that said “Fluff” and a sentence that promised a coworker was going to eliminate my fluff writing. The person that handed me the memo didn’t realize it was about me. They wanted me to focus on a completely different section of the document but my eye caught some criticism about the company’s writer, and since I was the only writer there, I couldn’t help but read what was written.

As I walked back to my desk, I was crushed. I felt like my complete lack of value had not only been noticed but captured in a memo. In the quietness of my head though, I felt like God popped in and said, “Hey, that memo doesn’t get to define who you are. I do. And I say you are my son.” I was blown away and instead of spiraling into despair and shame over that memo, I went back to my desk and wrote what was probably the best thing I’ve ever written for that company.

I wish that single event was enough to forever shake off the bad marks I’ve got on me, but it isn’t. I still doubt. I still believe the lies of the marks. I still, like lots of other Christians, forget who I am. I still give other people’s words too much power. I don’t have it all figured out. Instead, more than anything, life feels like it’s been a long series of believing that I am not who other people define me to be, I am a son of God. I am God’s work of art. And the more I have been open to believing that, the more He’s shown me it’s true.

The thing I realized, is that an experience can’t change that. My relation to God is not a mark. It is not a big tattoo or a little sticker, it is who I am. I can not completely cover that up or blot it out with failure. The prodigal son tries, he completely messes up his life. But more importantly, he shows how sometimes, the worst marks are the ones we give ourselves. “I’m a bad husband. I’m a terrible employee. I’m ugly.”

These are the words we sometimes hear from ourselves and they are the kind of words the prodigal son tries to say to his father. (I have written about this story so many times it’s getting a bit ridiculous but I love the lessons it has for us.) When the prodigal son rehearses his homecoming speech, he decides to conclude it with, “make me like one of your hired men.” That was the last thing he was going to say. But when he speaks to his father, that is the one thing he is not allowed to speak. The rest of his speech comes off without a hitch. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

These words are delivered without incident, but he doesn’t ever get to say “make me like one of your hired men.” Why is that?

Why are those eight words left out? You can certainly read that as just accidental, that regardless of the words, the father was going to cut him off before he finished speaking. And maybe that’s right. But when I read that, I read a father stopping a son from saying something the father would never do. The father would never make him like one of his hired men. He would never give the son a new mark of slavery. He would never call him employee, instead of son. So he doesn’t even let those words out. He stops him because no new mark would be given that day. The old truth, the one at the core of the son, still holds true.

Despite the pigpen and the prostitutes, the dirt and the deception, the father doesn’t see a hired man.

He sees a son.

He sees his child.

And that changes everything.

I got fired once, well twice if you count the “carnival incident” but you really shouldn’t count that one.

I was writing for an advertising agency. I didn’t understand what it was they wanted me to do and I had a bad attitude about that. So a few times a week, my bosses would pull me into a break room and explain the job to me. Then I’d go write something that was different than what they asked me to write. Then they’d pull me back into the break room. This cycle of instructions given, instructions poorly followed continued for a few weeks until finally I didn’t get pulled into the break room. I got pulled into a conference room.

There, the president fired me and told me something like, “I don’t think you’re supposed to be a writer. Have you ever thought about being a salesman instead?” And it was the right decision on their part. They had given me a series of tasks, explained them over and over again and I had blown it. I didn’t get what they needed me to do and when I didn’t enough times, they didn’t need me anymore.

Sometimes I worry that God might treat me the same way. Maybe He won’t out and out fire me as a Christian, but I fear that He must be getting tired of explaining the same things over and over to me again.

There are a handful of things that I think God is trying to tell me and I just can’t seem to understand them nearly as quickly as I think I should. Things that if I were a better Christian I would be able to figure out or see clearly.

Have you ever felt that way?

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I met Michael Jordan one summer while he was golfing at a country club in Pinehurst, North Carolina. My uncle and his family lived on the golf course and I was spending a few weeks there before I started the eighth grade.

When word spread that Jordan and a gang of other important people were in the clubhouse that morning we all went down to get a closer look. This was before Jordan became human. Before the gambling and the baseball experiment and the tabloid fodder. Jordan was a god at the time and I had a Nike swoosh mark shaved into the back of my head to prove it. I told everyone in Pinehurst that summer that I had my haircut that way as a tribute to a friend in Boston that had been shot and killed for a pair of Air Jordans.

I’m not sure why I lied like that. None of that was true. Maybe I’m like Samson, razors bring out the worst in me, but Michael Jordan didn’t know any of that. Neither did Dean Smith the legendary coach of UNC or Dr. J, who were both with Jordan that day.

They all signed the back of my shirt with a big marker. Later that afternoon, with the autographed shirt safely tucked in a drawer, I went back down to the clubhouse. It had been 3 or 4 hours and I wanted to see if I could get Jordan’s autograph on a piece of paper I could frame.

The party had already finished golfing and all the fans had gone home. I saw Jordan walking to his car in the parking lot. I ran out after him as fast as my little seventh grade legs would carry me and said, “Excuse me Mr. Jordan, can I please have your autograph?”

He stopped in his tracks and turned, a golf bag resting high on shoulders that towered over me. With a look that froze opponents on basketball courts across the planet he said, “Didn’t I already sign you kid?”

Life is Limited
In the real world, in parking lots in Pinehurst, North Carolina, life is limited. Your hero turns to you and tells you that he’s not going to give you another autograph. Your hero tells you he remembers you and that you’re not getting a second signature, the only thing you want that day. That stupid summer, with a lopsided swoosh mark growing in the back of your head and a mouth full of lies.

Sometimes I think God is like that. Bothered by me, tired of my requests for His time, even if it’s just 3 seconds for Him to sign off on some prayer I’m saying or need I’m sure I can’t live without.

He’s on His way somewhere important after a round of golf with Moses and Elijah or Elisha whichever one plays. I’m chasing Him down in the parking lot. He turns with His big God golf clubs and He looks down at me. And He says in that massive voice of His “Didn’t I already forgive you kid?”

Forgiveness is the thing I ask for the most. In my head maybe I know that God’s forgiveness is eternal and inexhaustible but in my heart I feel like He’s going to run out of it. That He’s got a limited supply. And I’m burning them up, one by one, sin by sin.

The Day After the Party
I’ve read the story about the prodigal son more than anything else in the Bible. If you’ve messed up life like I have it’s a pretty good read. I think when you get arrested they should read that to you right after the Miranda rights. I think that’d be a nice way to take a little sting out of going to jail.

Part of the reason I’ve read that story so many times though is that I think there’s something missing. I feel like there’s some verse or passage that I must have skipped that makes the whole thing make sense. It seems too good to be true. The prodigal son takes his inheritance, blows it on fast living, ends up in a pig pen and then gets a party thrown for him when he returns home. I’ve always wondered what the day after the party was like:

The first rays of sunshine crept across the floor and landed on a pile of party favors being swept up by a servant. A welcome home banner was being taken down and across the house the sounds of morning reverberated.

In his old bedroom, the prodigal son rolls over and opens his eyes. He’d dreamt it so often, dreamt of this place so often, he didn’t believe it was real. Those nights in the dark, curled under a bush or beside the barn when his money was gone and his hope with it, he’d wondered if he’d ever know safety again. He sat up, surprised to find himself there, laughing at the memories of the night before. The feast, the party, the ridiculousness of it all. His family who celebrated his return as if his absence had increased their love for him, amplified it. None of it made any sense. There was a knock on the door. He had a door again, that was something he had missed.

The head of a servant peered in:

“Sir, your father is waiting for you in the kitchen.” This servant didn’t go to seminary either and didn’t seem that concerned that in Biblical times “kitchen” was definitely the wrong word to use in that context.

“Well, you’ve got the rest of your life for it to come back to you.” The father said taking out a pen and writing “family inheritance” at the top of the list.

For most of my life this is how I would have written the second part of that story, the directors cut if you will, an alternative ending that was too harsh for the version they released in the Bible.
The father’s anxious sprint toward the lost son doesn’t make any sense. That’s not how life works. People pay for their mistakes. They don’t get a party for them. When you return home from wasting your inheritance on the world your father says “Didn’t I already bless you kid?” End of story.

Forgiveness
I don’t understand forgiveness and it’s always depressing to me when I read a book that tells me that’s the first step of the Christian walk, believing that God forgives you. If I can’t get past that first step than the rest of it, all the rest of it remains completely closed to me.

It’s not that I think I don’t need forgiveness. I just don’t understand how it’s possible. If I can’t earn it, than it’s out of my control and I’m powerless.

I remember the first time I ever knew how outrageous and insane real forgiveness was. I had gotten myself into some serious trouble at work. The kind of trouble that’s so big and ugly it makes you ashamed that there are people in your life close enough to you to get some of the trouble spilled on them. I wanted to push everyone away, to expel people from the planetary system that was me and just go float somewhere and die.

I called my wife on the phone and told her as much.

“I’m sorry you met me.” I said through angry, frightened tears. I was desperate for her to go, to pull away from me so I could inflict pain on only one person. The person I felt deserved it the most. Me.

“I love you!” She yelled through the phone.

“How can you say that? That doesn’t make any sense.” I responded.

“You don’t get to decide who I love. I love you. That’s my decision. You can’t take that away from me. I love you. I choose to love you.” She repeated words like these over and over again. She attacked me with love that day. And forgiveness I didn’t deserve. Forgiveness I couldn’t earn or make sense of.

I was overwhelmed that day. And I think that was such a thin sliver of what God’s forgiveness is like, how big and nonsensical His love is. I heard a minister once say that His forgiveness, God’s grace, is given wastefully. He pours it out on us in such abundance that it’s almost wasteful.

The Tenth Party
I have to confess that some days I still think there’s a list God will ask me to work through the day after He throws me that welcome home party. I have a hard time understanding how something can be true and illogical at the same time. And so much of God is that way.
But some days, when I least expect it, in ways I can’t control, I believe a different story about God’s forgiveness.

The first rays of sunshine creep across a dusty road and grate against the eyelids of the prodigal son trying to sleep uncomfortably on a bed of gravel. His teeth felt dirty, his mouth and hands stained with the red of cheap wine. A long scratch ran across his cheek, a shoe was angled beneath his head for a pillow. “How many times did this make?” he thought from the part inside him that still remembered returning home. He was doing so well, things were so happy but his never agains always seemed to fail him in the end. How long would he be gone this time?

Miles away, an concerned father stood by the front window of his house as a servant approached with a message.

“Sir, I checked his bedroom and the barn. His things are missing. He’s left again.”

“I know.” The father said with sad eyes.

And then with slow steps he walked to a large closet and motioned to the servant.

“Help me with this Welcome Home banner.” He said pulling one from a pile of a thousand.

“Today could be the day my child returns.”

(This was originally something I wrote for the prodigal Jon site.)

When I’m nervous and meet new people, I tend to read them my resume.

Not literally, I don’t carry it around with me, but I usually find a way to rattle off interesting tidbits about myself.

I did this recently at the Orange Conference. When I went to the blogger lounge I felt kind of insecure and didn’t know what to do. Everyone had their laptop and business cards all over the tables and I had neither. I immediately thought, “Oh yeah, bloggers are supposed to carry laptops not Moleskine notebooks. I’m so dumb.” After a few minutes of standing there like someone that’s eating alone and has forgotten to bring the “don’t feel pity for me I’m reading a book” book, I walked to the Land of a Thousand Hills coffee stand.

I asked if my friend was working at the stand that day and the guys behind the counter said no and then kind of said in a kind way, “And you are?”

I immediately started blabbering about how I had a blog and I once told thousands of people about their coffee and it’s read in all these countries and I’m a special person and look at all my accomplishments, me, me, me, resume, resume, resume. Even as the words were coming out of my mouth I wanted to grab them back, but I couldn’t.

And I find myself doing this more lately as I struggle with the impatience of wanting to be an author and a speaker. The Stuff Christians Like book will come out in March 2010 and I’m speaking at a bunch of conferences this fall so I completely get the foolishness of this thought but it’s still there. It’s a completely dumb thought to have but usually in life it’s not the wise thoughts we have that do the most damage. It’s the dumb ones.

When I pray, when me and God wrestle, there’s a part of me that keeps saying, “How come I only get to spend such a fraction of my day on Stuff Christians Like? How come I feel like I’m bursting with ideas and I’m only getting to write about them an hour a day? How come I’m not a super fantastical mister important Christian writer person right this second God?”

In the midst of those questions, in the midst of being wildly impatient and selfish and arrogant and a million other words that mean “whack,” I feel like God reminded me of a simple question,

“Why do you keep refusing the gift of the desert road?”

That’s kind of a weird question, but it comes out of some verses I’ve written about before. In Exodus 13: 17-18, as the Israelites are leaving Egypt, the Bible says:

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle.

I love the simplicity of that. God knew that if the Israelites took the short way, if they took what probably seemed like the logical route, they’d face a war they weren’t ready for and would probably willingly return to slavery. So out of love, out a deep, big love for His people, he took them on the desert road.

As an Israelite, having spent decades doing hardcore physical labor and leading the kind of manual labor lifestyle that puts the P90X exercise program to shame, you’d have to be thinking, “What? I’m armed for battle! The desert road? Seriously? Look at this sword, I’ve got skillz! Let’s take the short way and give the Philistines two tickets to the gun show. Hey, I just compared my biceps to a weapon that is still centuries away from being invented, that’s odd.”

OK, maybe they wouldn’t have thought that last sentence, but I promise that they probably felt a little confused at why they were on the desert road and maybe at some point in your own life, you’ve felt that way too. Maybe you’ve felt ready for something and for some reason instead found yourself taking the long way around.

I don’t know what your “thing” is.

Maybe you want to fall in love and get married.

Maybe you’re at a job that doesn’t use your God-given talents and you feel desperate to get out.

Maybe you want to start a ministry.

Maybe you don’t know what your thing is, but you know it’s not what you’re doing right now.

Maybe you want to have kids.

Maybe you want to head out to the mission field overseas.

Your thing, your dream or goal or vision could be a million different things, and when it doesn’t happen, when it takes longer than we want, it’s so easy to get frustrated. To get disappointed, to think that the time delay is because maybe you’re not doing something right. Maybe God is mad at you. Maybe if you were a better Christian things would be happening faster and you wouldn’t be on a desert road.

But what if that’s not right?

What if God loves you too much to send you to war? What if He loves you too much to throw you into situations you’re not ready for?

What if that desert road is a gift?

I still struggle with the desert road concept. I’m not “done” with that idea. But my hope for you and my hope for me is that the next time I find myself on one I’ll pause long enough to ask God this simple question:

“I’m on a desert road, what war are you protecting me from right now because you love me so much?”

I went ahead and figured out how powerful God is.

Considering that this is probably a question philosophers and theologians have struggled with for thousands of years, that’s pretty nice of me. Who knew one day a random blogger would figure it out and share it for free. What can I say? I’m a giver.

So here it is:

God is slightly less powerful than Mutton Hollow Chevy.

That’s it. That’s the answer. If you have some other things you need to go do or other blogs you want to read you can probably skip out right now, having been exposed to that little gem of knowledge. But if you’ve never heard of Mutton Hollow Chevy, who is slightly more powerful than God, allow me to explain.

When I started stuffchristianslike.net, I had to go with a .net address because someone already had .com. A small church themed online gift shop had that web address. They sold puzzles of Jesus and what not. I felt like .net was not nearly as cool as .com but oh well, that was what I had available.

Apparently they went out of business or sold their domain to someone else though because now, if you type the .com version of this site, you will be taken to Mutton Hollow Chevy, a small car dealer that specializes in 1955-1957 Chevy parts. I’m not sure why they registered a Stuff Christians Like URL. I guess the hope is that if you searched for wry Christian satire but instead found a Chevy dealer you might stay at their site and buy a 1957 Billet Hood Latch Support Bracket instead. (You know the one I’m talking about, it’s all Billet Hood Latches these days boys.)

I’d like to say that when I found out that, once again, someone from Mutton Hollow had scooped me, my first thought was “aw shucks!” But that would be a lie.

My first thought was more like this:

“I am so dumb! How could I let that happen? I am screwed. If I was smarter and more web savvy that wouldn’t have happened. That kind of nonsense would never happen to a real blogger. When my book comes out, people who don’t know this is a .net are going to accidentally type .com and never find me and I’ll never sell any books and never get a second book deal and will waste this opportunity that God has given me. It’s all over. It is all so freakin’ over.”

I know that probably sounds dumb, but it’s true. I felt sick to my stomach and kind of panicky and really ashamed of myself. And I’ve felt that way before about other things, but do you know what I don’t ever do? I don’t ever take thoughts like that to their natural conclusion. I don’t ever spend time reflecting on what that thought says about me and what it says about God.

This time I did.

And do you know what I found? If that thought is true. If Mutton Hollow Chevy has somehow sunk the Stuff Christians Like ship by reserving the .com version of this web address, if they’ve effectively limited the size of this ministry, if they’ve dashed the opportunity to reach people for the Lord, than Mutton Hollow Chevy is slightly more powerful than God.

Don’t get me wrong, He’s big and mighty and “Almost All Powerful.” He set Stuff Christians Like in motion, but in a late game changing move, Mutton Hollow Chevy showed up and limited even Him. He had plans that were pretty amazing, but unfortunately they involved me getting the .com address and since I don’t have that, God is limited too. The dreams He had just got a pair of Mutton Hollow-sized handcuffs put on them.

That’s ridiculous and I hope right now you are laughing both at the shallowness of my faith and my dedication to repeating the phrase “Mutton Hollow” which is delightful to say I don’t care who you are. But I promise you’ve done the same thing before in your own life.

At some point, you’ve had a fear you thought was more powerful than God.

You lost your job and worried that unemployment was more powerful than God.

You lost a boyfriend and worried that being alone was more powerful than God.

You got in credit debt and worried that Visa was more powerful than God.

Your dream did not turn out the right way and you thought the circumstances were more powerful than God.

It’s so easy to do this, but today, as new worries crop up, I’m trying to do things I little differently. With each new fear, I’m trying to stop long enough and ask myself a simple question:
“Is this more powerful than God?”

Is Mutton Hollow Chevy more powerful than God?

Is a possible layoff at work more powerful than God?

Is __________ more powerful than God?

So far, every answer has come back with a resounding no. I still worry. I’ll still walk through the hollow of the shadow of death from time to time, but with that question and a God that loves to answer it, I think I’m going to be alright.

And Mutton Hollow, please know that when you’re ready to give me that .com I, much like the band Journey, will be waiting right here for you with open arms.

How would you write this question today about your own life?

Finish this sentence:

Is _________ more powerful than God?