Hopeless

Exhausted, I finally plopped down in my favorite corner of the couch to write a bit and jam to some I-Tunes stuff. It's been a long week of meetings, a month of mail, and moving Mountain to John Carroll. On top of that, this week has been rough as I experience my first birthday without my dad. If you've ever lost someone close, you may know this pain.

So I'm escaping with some music in my ears, and my shuffle lands on Breaking Benjamin's "Hopeless." Nope sorry, not a Christian band. I love the lyrics though. Here's a band wrestling with real life:

"Silent I go under, I am not afraid
I can see the daylight shine and slowly drift away
Safe to say it's over, sink into the grave
There is nothing left inside but I am wide awake
I can hear the devil call my name

Hopeless, I'm falling down
Filthy, I can't wake up
I cannot hold on. I will not let go
Worthless, it's over now
Guilty there's no way out
I cannot hold on, I will not let go"

Ever felt that hopeless? Ever been that down, like you're falling and you can't hold on? "It's over now." Stats show that about 71% of pastors wrestle with depression. If these people claim a connection with God and they feel like losers, I wonder what that means for everyone else?

Most of us have moments when we are down. These can last days, maybe weeks, months, or even years. You know those moments. Maybe you're there now. Maybe it was the failure where you really blew it with your kids, your friends, your parents, your spouse. Was it the divorce, the death, the disappointment? The insult, the ignorance? Your own inadequacy? Fear? You don't have to work hard to relive that moment. You remember how you felt. If you honestly can't think of any of those moments, you'll probably wasting the rest of your time here.

Now the churchy thing for me to say would be, "You'll be okay, just give it to God." If that works for you, great. For most of us, it isn't that easy.

We're in good company though. We're a week away from Holy Week, a time when many who follow Jesus remember his excruciating journey to the cross. The nails. The beatings. The pain.

One writer's account of Jesus' last words have him saying this: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

This was the first line of a song. Not Breaking Benjamin's "Hopeless," but Psalm 22, a song his hearers would have known well. At first, it sounds pretty hopeless. A lot like:

"Safe to say it's over, sink into the grave
There is nothing left inside"

But, and you know this, looks can be deceiving. If you have a Bible, read Psalm 22 now. If not, check it out here: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2022&version=NIV

What begins as despair ends in triumph. Jesus was battered, but he was not beaten!

In coping with the loss of my father, there have been times when I've felt pretty hopeless. This week has been one of them. This has been a long "moment" for me. I don't know what your "moment" was, but let me say this. It is a moment, it is not eternity. The answer is not avoiding it or giving up. Whatever you are going through, we have got to face it head on.

If that moment happened in the past and you never resolved it, go dig it up now. If it's happening now, face it head on. Call her. Take him to lunch and tell him. Swallow your pride and apologize. Confront whoever brought you down. Breathe deeply and tackle that workload one little chunk at a time. Realize that you are good enough! Don't give up on that person. Work it out.

Jesus' song ends with victory, but what about Breaking Benjamin's? Check out that last line one more time:

"Guilty there's no way out
I cannot hold on, I will not let go"

In a song so hopeless, there is hope. In spite of all the pain, guilt, and filth, these guys aren't letting go. In my moment, I am going to hold on, I'm not letting go! May God give each of us the courage to do the same!

Sex God

Just finished reading Sex God by Rob Bell. Rob kindly reminds us in these 174 pages that yeah, God made sex too. Not too many authors can tick off church people with only their book title, but here's a guy that does it well.

I recommend the book, but if you're looking to round some of life's corners, let me show you a clip off the highlight reel.

We all desire to be in relationships, and not just of the romantic kind. I mean, you've got friends, family, coworkers. There are days you'd want to get rid of them, but most of the time you wouldn't want to do life without them. There's a whole list of stupid things we do with this desire to be in relationships, but we aren't talking about that now. So if you aren't a creative person, you'll have to check out the book.

We desire to be in relationships. You. Me. All of us. We were made to connect with other people. We know the risks. We've been burned 1,000 times by another person. For some, you still cling to a hemorrhaging wound from your parents. For others, it might have been a cut as recent as a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Maybe you've been so sheltered that no one has ever hurt you, but I doubt it.

We hesitate to enter into new relationships. We meet someone new at work, the gym, at school, some other social setting. They're kind of intriguing, and you'd like to get to know them. On the other hand, this person might reject you, lead you on, manipulate you. Who knows? The pain of the past leaves you paralyzed,

Or...

You pursue a relationship anyway. It's terrifying. The first few moments are agonizing, but you make it through. Time will tell where this relationship ends up, but for now, it feels good. Because you were made to connect with other people.

We aren't whole on our own, friends. You know that. We want something more than hermitage. So we pursue a relationship, for now, let's assume it's romantic. If we aren't careful, that serial killer I talked about in my last post rapes our relationship until it's all about our own needs with no regard to what is good for your special someone. We expect her to boost our ego, we expect him to be affectionate. If we aren't careful, we soon bury this other person with our physical, emotional, and spiritual expectations that they have no chance of fulfilling. We can get along for awhile, but in the end, we are dissatisfied and it's time to move on to greener grass. Or so we think.

What if we stopped and realized that the reason we want to connect with others isn't about us at all? You'll have to get over my bias, but no relationship here on earth will ever complete you. Don't worry. Lauren usually rages when I tell her that too. We have to accept that if there's a relational need which no one on this earth can meet, we must need someone beyond this earth. We will only ever experience wholeness when we let God fully be a part of our lives. You don't have to wait until your deathbed like my dad did, you can have that now.

I pray someday you'll get that wholeness you are looking for. I know you crave connection with other people. I hope you realize that that is an okay thing, but this week I want you to do two things:

1) Let's realize that if you're in a relationship for your own satisfaction, you're screwing it royally. Try transforming that relationship into something that's about them, not you.

2) Plug into a church, even if it's just one Sunday. Worst case scenario, you would have wasted that hour anyway. Ask someone about this relationship that you can have with the God who literally came to earth to bleed, die, and raise again all for you.

That's it for now, friends. Check out Sex God, at the very least you'll enjoy the strange looks you get as you carry it proudly!

Why the Title?

A Little about Me

"Today, I want my life to suck!"

Yeah, right. Like you've ever started a day like that. Can we cut the crap here? No one starts a day like that.

Look, I probably don't know you. Are you a career junkie trying to climb your company's ladder? Single mom? Family guy? College kid? A nobody? A somebody? Teenager? Athlete? Genius? Party animal? Lost? Retired? Religious? Atheist? Careless? I don't know who you are, but I do know this: you've never wished for a day that sucked. Please call me out if I'm wrong, but here's the deal. Regardless of who you are, where you are, or how you are feeling, I think we all wake up wanting today to be a little better than yesterday. We're all pursuing a life with a little more going for us.

I was always one of those highly energetic, overly optimistic, increasingly enthusiastic individuals that loved life and always found an opportunity in every problem. Recently, I was handed an amazing residency at an amazing church, and we had more going for us than I had ever dreamed of. I was on a high, and I had this faith in God that was uncrushable.

Then cancer kicked my dad's tail. At Thanksgiving, sudden severe illness. By Christmas, dead. Top that with several shifts in housing, more death, an unseen future, and my wife Lauren getting pregnant, and you have all the ingredients for a dark night of the soul.

And a dark night it was. It's tough watching someone you love die before your eyes. Day 1, Dad gives his life to Jesus. Praise God. Then we watch him fade for the next month. His temperament goes from joy to agitated. His confidence goes from prepared to panicked. Hope? Not anymore. Pain and fear? Definitely. The smell goes from bad to worse to intolerable. 140lbs-110lbs-90lbs. His skin goes from feverish to cold to ice. His heart goes from racing to slowed to stopped.

The best of times, the worst of times. In the midst of confusion, I can tell you with certainty that there was never a day where I woke up saying, "Man, I wish my life could get worse!" I know I'm not the only one seeing the raw side of life. I don't care what faith you have or what god you worship, you can't watch the news for any length of time and think that this is how things were meant to be. In that whole experience, I found myself face to face with the fact that there is something messed up with this world.

So why the title?

If we can see that something is wrong, than my only conclusion is that there's something inside each of us that recalls a time when things were right. Take a moment and process that. You can sense that there is a "right," can't you?

As a Christian, I'd call this an echo of Eden, a memory of life before sin spun the cosmos out of control. If you believe that, that there is a "right," then the question is how do we get back there?

We try to answer that question in a lot of different ways. Some of us are selfish enough to think if we just ignore it, if we just look out for ourselves, the rest of the world will take care of itself. So we drown ourselves in games, books, television, a career. We sell ourselves to sex, parties, drugs, anything that feels like an escape. It's all the same. The world is still wrong when we live for ourselves.

Some think it's bigger than that. If we just vote for the right politician or we just wipe those "terrorists" off the map or if we just recycle or just listen to U2 and Bob Dylan, then all the world's problems will be solved. We've been trying things like that for ages. They don't work either.

The Bible says a few things about rightness. It says God sent this Jesus dude to be murdered on a torture device and that he then resurrected him, all for sacrificial love and a fix to the mess we made. I know it sounds crazy, but yeah, I believe a dead guy rose from the dead. The Bible says God's in the process of fixing it the world. That because of Jesus, things will get back to normal and that someday, we'll see a new heaven and a new earth.

In the mean time, Jesus tells me there's a thief that wants to mug me, slit my throat, and watch my body burn. Sounds hopeful right? The good news comes in the very next sentence. Jesus says, "I've come to bring you the best life you could possibly imagine! An abundant life!"

That's what I want. That's the pursuit I'm on, a pursuit of abundant life. Whether you know it or not, that's the pursuit that you are on too, because you don't wake up everyday wishing your life would suck. We're looking for something better. That's why this blog exists.

I'm not going to beat you up on here every time I write. At times, this will be deeply personal, other times I might post a question, a book you need to check out, or a movie you need to watch. I hope you'll track with me. We've only got one life and I hope you'll share some of yours with me on here. Even if you don't buy into this Jesus guy just yet, I think you and I both agree that we want the best life we can possibly have.

Let's pursue it together.