I got fired once and they made the right decision.
I was a horrible employee. The work I did was lazy, my attitude was belligerent, and I somehow managed to be cocky at the same time.
So they called me into a room and fired me.
It was a humiliating experience, and you know what the worst part of that failure was?
Next to reading the Bible, what Christians like most is talking about the Bible series on the History Channel. Now that it’s officially over, I think we can safely discuss the 4 biggest problems people had with it.
The other day, Ray Lewis, played his last game in Baltimore’s stadium. After 17 wildly successful years, he’s retiring.
At the end of the game, he took off his jersey to reveal a shirt that said, “Psalms 91.”
I smiled at that. But then deep in my heart, I thought, “Yeah, but that guy was part of a double homicide. Whatever.”
And there it is.
I don’t believe in grace.
Or, I believe in it for me, and people who have sinned like me. But there’s a whole lot of people I don’t think deserve grace.
The problem is that, when we talk about grace, we often don’t use one of the most important words to describe it.
We say, “Grace is powerful and free and beautiful and amazing.” But we leave out one of the key descriptors of grace.
The truth is, grace is offensive.
Grace offends in its’ generosity.
Grace offends in its’ availability.
Grace offends in its’ depth.
Grace offends in its’ unwillingness to be controlled or owned or manipulated.
Grace is offensive, and when I see people who I think don’t deserve it, I am reminded of ultimately how desperately I still need it.
The other day, a friend of mine made a comment about an author. He wrote:
“I’ll say he’s sloppy at best when it comes to sound doctrine and theology.”
I think the first half of that thought is awesome.
I think the author he was describing is sloppy at best.
I think I’m sloppy at best.
I think you’re sloppy at best.
I think there’s not a person on the planet who isn’t sloppy at best.
Turns out that if you chase “enough” outside of God, you never catch it.
Enough followers on Twitter, enough blog readers, enough books sold, enough money made, enough friends…the specifics of the chase don’t really matter.
Enough is elusive. Just when you think you’ve caught it, it moves again.
In this 3-minute video, I talk about how easy it is to wreck your life chasing enough and how that happened to me in the pursuit of fame. (Video was shot at the Catalyst Conference.)
Question:
Have you ever chased some form of “enough?”
Recently a friend of mine started living for the Lord.
After a year of sharing his faith vocally, we had coffee and he told me something he found surprising.
He said that in chess, the pawn pieces are used to advance the more important pieces. They go forward and sacrifice themselves to create opportunities for the Queen, King and Bishop. He thought of himself as a pawn, trying to actively serve the needs of others and serve the kingdom, clear that life isn’t about him.
He said the biggest surprise though was that the more he served and lived a life for Christ, the more he felt attacked. But not by other people, by other Christians. He was confused because he’s never seen a King attack its own pawn in a game of chess. He’d never seen a Bishop take out its own pawn, but the more time he spent in church, the more he got attacked by the people who were supposed to be his fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
I started to think about that because it’s an issue I keep seeing come up.
A pastor once said, “Nobody is as mean as Christians who are being mean for Jesus.”
For the last 7 years, I’ve been unlearning God.
He is not who I thought he was.
He is not who I was told he is.
He is not the greedy miser of joy I suspected all these years. He is not the boring happiness thief I cobbled together all these years. He is something different. Something wild. Something uncontrollable.
And one of the biggest surprises has been discovering how broken my understanding of the word “surrender” is.
I cried in the Chicago Airport.
I have a series of people who hold me accountable on a series of things. (See previous post about how I am “prone to wander.”)
One of them is my friend Brewster.
His first name isn’t punky but it’d be awesome if it was.
Punky Brewster could hold me accountable to wearing brightly colored, mismatched clothes and always going on adventures with a dog and an old man. (If you listen closely, you can hear half of the SCL community googling the reference “Punky Brewster.” I am so old. My bones are brittle.)