Pray, Sing, Confess

"Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. [...] Therefore confess your sins to each other so that you may be healed."
James 5:13,16

There are three cornerstones of a strong Christian faith and all of them have to do with community. Community with God and community with our brothers and sisters in Christ. James tells us of two things that will help us overcome anything and one base act "so that [we] may be healed," (verse 16). 

Praying. What exactly is praying? A lot people see it a lot of different ways. A plea, request, reminder, list, conversation. I don't see it like anything 100%, but I do gravitate towards one way that I learned while reading through Acts. In chapter 28 of Acts, verse 8, we're told that Paul went into a room to see a man who was sick. It says, "Paul went in to see him and, after prayer, placed his hands on him and healed him." Paul prayed before he did anything. I see prayer as a preemptive strike against Satan. If our prayer lives are strong, then we're in constant communication with God. We're able to recognize Him in a much easier way than if we spend time away from Him. Imagine your best friend's voice. Is their any doubt in your mind over what it sounds like? I'd imagine not because you talk to them so much that their voice is unmistakable. That's what we're doing with prayer. We're becoming familiar with God so that when Satan comes to tell us a lie (or as I learned from The Screwtape Letters, to withhold the truth from us) we are able to easily pick out God's voice. We're able to stop hearing lies and start hearing only God's truth. All that from a strong prayer life.

When my mom was our youth leader, she had us play a game where we broke up into partners. One partner was blindfolded. That partner had to navigate through an obstacle course listening only to the voice of their partner telling them where to turn and walk and step over and whatever else. The trick is that the rest of the youth group was also shouting, so you had to focus on your own partner's voice. While it was fun, it came with a message. The rest of the world is going to be shouting at us. They want us to buy into the philosophy of aborting our children and saving the trees (N.B. I don't think saving the trees is a horrible idea. I do think it's horrible that people are focused on the lives of trees and not babies). The more we talk to God, the easier it will be to hear the Voice of Truth over the chorus of lies. Praying puts us in an intimate relationship with God.

Sing. This is one is easier for me. Let me start by saying I am not a good singer. But thankfully for me, we're instructed to "Make a joyful noise to the Lord," (Psalm 108:4). While I might harm the ears of those who have the misfortune of standing near me during worship, I do not struggle to raise a joyful noise! I'm able to lose myself in music unlike anything else. I was talking to a woman on Carson Newman's campus (Jennifer Catlett) and she told me a fact I did not know about music. I told her that music really helps me relax and breathe when everything seems so constricting. She told me that our brain stores 80% of a song unconsciously. That's why it's so easy for us to remember songs; our brain works extra hard to retain them! I consider worship a lyrical prayer. And one of my favorite things about worship is that it can be done alone and it can be done with many thousands of people (I've done both). When we feed our spirits with singing, they tend to grow. I hope that's not a shocking fact. When we feed something, it grows. Not only do our spirits grow, but when we worship and sing with other people they see a very intimate part of us. We open ourselves in a very unique way when we sing to our God. Worshiping puts us in an intimate relationship with God as well as our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Confession. This is a very uncomfortable aspect of Christian faith. I don't think I've ever met anyone who likes to talk about what they do wrong. There is one person I know who isn't scared to tell people what he does wrong but he certainly isn't comfortable doing it. He does it in order to help others. But what does the Bible have to say about confession? "What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs," (Luke 12:3). What we try our hardest to keep private will be known to all one day. 

This week I went for a run on something ROTC has coined the "Cow Route". The route is just over 3 miles long. I love it. It's got some beautiful fields along it, some massive hills, and it's simple. While I was running, I had music going (as I always do). This particular run, Rooftops by Jesus Culture came on. This is a song I've heard easily hundreds of times. It's pretty much a staple at any modern worship night, and for good reasons. The first hundreds of times I heard this song, I thought it was about proclaiming our love for Christ for all to hear, and that is definitely a large part of the song. It says, "So I shout out Your Name, from the rooftops I proclaim that I am Yours." No matter which way you slice that, it's powerful. But I always missed the next line and the next line hit me like a Mack truck on that run. "All that I am, I place into Your loving hands." Simple and at first glance for me pretty basic. But how wrong I was. "All that I am, I place into Your loving hands." What does that mean? That means our strengths and our weaknesses we hand over to God for Him to use as He pleases. All that I am. I realized for the first time in my Christian walk that I need to give God everything! And shout from the rooftops that I've done it! This message will reach God and it will reach everyone else. "Jesus! I am Yours! All of me! My lying, gossiping, jealous, mean, sarcastic, joyful, (hopefully) funny, people-loving self is all Yours!" What will it be like when we finally give God everything instead of just our great things? And perhaps the best part of it is that we're putting them into loving hands. We give God our worst and He absolutely loves and adores it. Yeah, God can use a good speaker to affect someone's life. But God can also use a drug addict to do the same. Give him everything! Confess what we've done wrong and let God use that. Once we confess, we can be healed. Confession to God and to others puts us in an intimate relationship with God and our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Pray, sing, confess. I'm here to argue that there is not a better way to become so close with God and our fellow Christians. Complete honesty and genuineness in these three acts will take us to new heights in our walk with Christ. 

John, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ

"James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,"
James 1:1

A lot of people get a title. Alexander the Great, Louis XIV the Sun King, Philip the Fair. Generally, this title is given by people who have experienced their lives, sometimes scholars, and deem it an appropriate title for them to have. While I would love to go down in history as John the Great, that's not the ultimate title. The ultimate titles are ones like Peter, Paul, Timothy, and James got; titles that indicate a strict devotion to their ministry for Christ. So the question is: have I lived a life worthy of being noted as being a servant of God and Jesus Christ?

2 Peter 2:16 tells us to "live as God's slaves." It's a topic that I thought was very interesting when I first read it in 2 Peter. In fact, I liked it so much that I talked about it during one of our Bible studies on campus. If we're instructed to live as God's slaves, what does that mean? Peter gives us a few examples in his first book but there are examples throughout the Bible. Peter tells us to "Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits," (verse 12). He says, "Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor," (verse 17). That seems so simple! If it's not, we'll break it down further. Here's my advice: "Be nice to everyone, love and support other Christians, be aware of God's power, respect the authority structures."

I had a conversation with someone just yesterday who told me that they are not a Christian because of the horrible way that the church treats people. And I had to tell them that, for the most part, I couldn't disagree. Isn't that sad?! I am a Christian who believes in the loving message that Jesus came to the earth to teach and I have to agree with someone when they say for the most part, Christians treat others poorly. To earn our title, we have to start here. 

I have seen first-hand the judgmental nature of the church. I understand the pain it can bring into someone's life. Jesus said that he did not come for the healthy, but for the sick. Our job as Christians is to reach out for the hurt ones and to help them. That doesn't mean to point out what's wrong with them and how to fix it. That means loving them. The sentence stops there! That's what living as God's slaves looks like and that's the first step to earning our title. 

Slavery to God is a complete surrender. It means we're going to let Him completely rule over our lives in every way. Every decision that we make needs to be weighed on God's scale. Quite literally, we need to ask ourselves: "What would Jesus do?" Most of you who know me know that I hate corny Christian sayings. "Jesus is the reason for the season," "While He was on the cross, you were on His mind," and the works. I'm not denying their validity, I'm just not a large fan of corny. However, this is a genuine question that we should ask ourselves. When you see that homeless man, what would Jesus do? When someone is sitting alone at lunch, what would Jesus do? When someone spits in your face, what would Jesus do? It's no longer a corny saying for me but a lifestyle. When every decision we make boils down to whether or not we're living our lives as Christ would have us do, then we're living as God's slaves.

Paul puts his slavery as this: "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified," (1 Corinthians 1:29). Oswald Chambers says, "You are to have no end, no aim, and no purpose but [Jesus's]." Paul devoted all of his energy to focusing solely on Christ and His sacrifice. But what neither Paul nor Chambers ignored was how this slavery to God is not an impersonal relationship. It's the exact opposite. It's a gentle, genuine, loving, honest, and intimate relationship with the one who loves us more than anyone else could ever even hope to. And while we are deeply in love with Him (and He with us), that love leads to reverent obedience. It's exactly like our parents, not to beat the analogy to death. We love our parents and they love us. And out of our love for them, we obey them and trust them. That is where God wants us (N.B. I am not comparing childhood to slavery).

Our slavery to God is not a bad thing though the world will tell us so. It's not a dictatorship and we're not robots. It's a love story. Our slavery to God is a love story. When we fully devote ourselves to being a slave before God, then we earn our title.

John, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

To the Heights and Depths of our Soul: Forgiven!

"For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy."
Hebrews 10:14

Last night, I listened to a man talk about God's forgiveness and what that really means. He quoted this verse and many others, all referencing to the fact that when God forgives, He genuinely forgets. He shared a personal anecdote about the church he grew up in and how the members would always get on him for being mischievous and telling him that God would "get him back for that". He went on to say that they would always tell him to keep a "short list" of wrongdoings for God and to continually apologize for that. He said something that hit me: "What about no list?" Well, what about it? Because according to Scripture God doesn't keep a list. He throws our sins as far as the "east is from the west" (Psalm 103:12).

On January 9th, I was struggling. As usual, the devil knew where to jab just so it hurt enough to cripple me. That's self doubt. I, like many other Christians, have a hard time accepting the fact that all the wrong I've done in the past is truly and genuinely forgotten; that is doesn't mean anything to God. The reason I remember that it was January 9th is because that day's My Utmost for His Highest just so happened to be written directly at me for that reason. Chambers wrote: "Cleansing from sin is to the very heights and depths of our spirit [...] soul and body are preserved in unspotted integrity, undeserving of censure in God's sight, until Jesus comes." 

This is a lesson I've heard my whole life. When we're forgiven by God it's a whole forgiveness that wipes us clean. But there's one adjustment I want to make to that lesson: It doesn't present tense wipe us clean. It past tense wiped us clean. When did Christ die on the cross? Nearly two thousand years ago. When were our sins atoned for? Nearly two thousand years ago. That means the sin you committed yesterday, the one you may have just done, and the one you'll do in ten minutes were all already forgiven. God's forgiveness is already given. Once we understand that, we can more fully understand what Chambers said.

"Cleansing [...] is to the very heights and depths of our souls." What is at the heights of our souls? I think it's when we're most excited for Jesus. For me, that's in the middle of a worship song. Music takes me over and I feel the Spirit strongest in that moment. A friend of mine here at college says it's at night when he's just about to fall asleep. At that moment, we were cleansed. What's at the depths? This is an easier question to answer. It's our regrets. It's that mistake that we can't forget for some reason; I have about a hundred of them. And guess what: cleansed. We are "preserved in unspotted integrity."

In October of 2014, I was having an argument with a friend about the meaning of one part of the Bible. It's not an issue that has to do with salvation. By that I mean you could be on either side (or neither) and still be secure in your salvation, I believe. But it is something that both of us thought we were right about and had Biblical backing to prove our points (though one of us had more, *cough* me). I texted my dad about the issue, who by the way disagrees with me. I told him how angry I was and how it actually started to come between my dear friend and I. I got this text back: "Don't die on hills that are small enough to step over." I learned quickly after moving out of the house that my dad is killer at giving the perfect advice. It's never confusing and always 100% accurate. This particular bit of advice has carried over into almost every aspect of my life. Whenever I'm arguing, the thought always pops in my head, "Can I step over this?"

Our mistakes can be stepped over. Past, present, future. All of our mistakes can be stepped over because Jesus Christ bled on a sinner's cross. In that moment, he made every sin for the rest of time until he returns small enough to step over.

It's easy to dwell on our mistakes, our flaws, our inadequacies. In fact, the world would have us do it. Even more than the world, the enemy would have us do it. The Screwtape Letters written by C.S. Lewis is a satirical piece about Christianity written in the style of one senior demon, Screwtape, writing to a novice demon, Wormwood, giving him advice on how to tempt a human to stay away from the truth. It was given to me by my girlfriend's dad and I couldn't be more thankful. In the third letter, Screwtape writes to Wormwood, "It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out." Don't let the demons keep the truth out of our minds!

The truth is that all of our sins (yes, the ones you haven't committed yet) are forgotten! God doesn't dwell on them, why should we? Dwelling on our mistakes makes life void of joy. That's not the life God wants us to live and please take it from me, it's not the life you want to live. If we spend our time dwelling on how unworthy we are of God, we'll miss the fact that God doesn't care. We certainly aren't worthy and God absolutely does. not. care.

I'll leave on advice from my mom. My mom was the one who bought My Utmost for His Highest for me. She got it for me to use in college because she was very aware that I was not too excited about coming to college. She wrote a very touching note in the front of the book that I rediscovered today. The last advice she wrote in her letter before signing off was this: "Stay." That was it. Two paragraphs of sweet mother-to-son letter, and she leaves on, "Stay." At the time, I didn't get it. I do now.

Stay! Stay in Christ, stay yourself, stay confident, stay brave, stay forgiven.

Shipwrecked Faith

"...He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and get to land. The rest were to get there on planks or on other pieces of the ship. In this way everyone reached land safely."
Acts 27:43-44

A complicated part of Christian theology is what many literary theorists have coined the "Doctrine of Contraries". The Doctrine of Contraries states that humans learn more from hardships than through easy times. If you need Biblical examples, read the stories of Job, Jonah, Hosea, David, Solomon, Daniel, John the Baptist, Paul, Timothy, and yes even Jesus Christ. If your walk is easy, I'd challenge you to go further. Dig a little deeper and go deep enough to where your feet can't touch the ground. NEEDTOBREATHE has a beautiful line in one of their songs that says, "There's only one way to figure out if You'll let me drown." And isn't that true? We can't know for sure that God will save us from drowning if we're standing on the beach.

Previously in the passage quoted above, God promised to Paul that no one that was on board with him would die. "But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost," (Acts 27:22). Of course Paul, in all of his finite human knowledge, did not know how this promise of God would come true. I think if I were Paul, I would see it happening in a much more common way: the ship lands and everyone gets off unharmed. But not so surprisingly, God used an unconventional way of following through with His promise. The ship completely wrecked. Paul and the men aboard saw an unrecognizable land and decided to aim for it to go aground if possible. On the way though they hit a sandbar. While stuck on the sandbar, the waves beat the stern until it shattered completely. The centurion on board this ship ordered everyone who could swim to jump ship and swim to shore and the rest to jump ship and grab onto debris...from their own ship...and paddle to shore. And as it says, "In this way everyone reached land safely," (Acts 27:44).

Thanksgiving 2014 will be an unforgettable one. Sarah and I decided that I should go up to New York to join her and her family for Thanksgiving (Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday). So, I and my van (kindly named the Swagger Wagon, often "The Wagon" for short) set out for our trek. I left my house in Virginia at around 5 in the morning so I could get to her house at around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. About 6 or 7 hours into my trip, in the thick of a nasty Nor'easter heading through, I hit a patch of ice or snow on the road going around a turn; I hit the mile marker 146.6. Turns out, I was just outside of a wonderful little town named Tamaqua in Pennsylvania. Tamaqua now has a large spot in my heart and forever will. As I began to learn more about what this wreck meant, I realized a few things. They told me they would most likely total the van because it would cost more to repair it given its age; I couldn't get a rental car because I'm not old enough (stupid rule, by the way); and there's no way I was going to see Sarah in a timely manner. So I'm in contact with my dad, the insurance company, and the Mattinglys (Sarah's family). The decision we finally land on is that the Mattinglys would drive from New York to come pick me up in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania (if you ever want to know about Christ's selfless spirit, spend 20 minutes with the Mattinglys). The trip from their home to me is about four and a half hours away. Well about an hour away from me, the Mattinglys (who included Mr. Mattingly, Sarah, and Justin) got clipped in the back by an 18-wheeler; another wreck. To paraphrase the rest of this story, they were able to eventually get a rental car, come pick me up in Tamaqua, and we stopped for the "night" in Justin's dorm room at Syracuse University (I say that in quotes because we got there around 2:30 in the morning and were back on the road at 6, so it was more like a rejuvenating nap). 

About ten minutes before my wreck, I said a silent prayer to God in my van. "God, I pray this trip is completely for Your glory and not for the enjoyment of Sarah and I." God has a funny way of taking control in situations. I don't want to fill this with my weekend with Sarah so I'll sum up how the weekend went: perfectly.

Sometimes God uses a shipwreck to save us. That's such a weird concept. God can destroy everything in your life in order to make things perfect. This isn't a mean or spiteful act, but one of love. God made it so that the men on Paul's ship literally used the broken pieces of their ship to swim to shore; and not a single life was lost!! So the question is: Will we let God wreck our ships? Are we in a spot in our faith where we're okay with God breaking the safety of our ship and saying, "Okay, child. Grab on to the pieces of what you once thought was your stability. I can take what is broken and make it save you,"? That's a scary question to answer. Can anyone ever really be okay with God destroying our "safety"? Yes, I think we can. But it takes a large amount of discipline. And an even larger amount of love.

How can we know that God won't let us drown? Easy. Put ourselves in a situation where without Him, we would drown. Let God's shipwreck save your life.

God's Holy Silence

"Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
    whose hearts are set on pilgrimage."

Psalm 84:5

It's a phrase said often and understood little: "My strength is in the Lord." It can come in a lot of different forms, and it does. You'll find its variants in songs, sermons, devotionals, and passing conversations of two struggling Christians. "Yeah, but you know, my strength is from God; couldn't do this alone." But I think it's one of many phrases in the Christian religion that has been said so much that it has lost its meaning.

My best friend in the world sent that verse to me randomly on January 2nd of the new year. He and his family, which includes my girlfriend, Sarah, had left our house that day after spending New Year's Day in Virginia with my family. I could get into how amazing that was, but I think it's self explanatory. He sent me this verse, I believe, because God knew I needed it. It was a rough day for me. I always hate saying goodbye to Sarah and the realization that I was going back into "real life" (viz. college) had hit. But it went deeper than just reminding me that whatever actually does come my way is a speed bump on God's highway. It changed how I look at almost everything I do now.

On January 19th of the new year, I sat down to do my daily devotional, which right now consists of reading through the book of Acts and doing Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest. MUfHH (I love short-hand) hit me as hard as Psalm 84:5 hit me. It started out with a gentle command for Christians: "...be still and listen." And that is so hard.

I love listening to myself talk. I like to think that I'm pretty eloquent with the spoken word and as an English major, I genuinely enjoy using words and deeply enjoy using them to elicit some kind of emotional response from people. A lot of times, this can be good. It's helped me build some very solid relationships the many times I've moved states/schools. At the same time, I often find my foot in my mouth and that's not limited to my interactions with other people; it's happened with God. Every once in a while it's smart to shut up. Shut up and listen to what God is saying. I could have stopped reading that day's devotional there and gotten plenty spiritual food for the day. I'm so glad I didn't.

There are two more sentences in that day's devotion that got me good. They are: "[Listen] to good advice when it is dark instead of waiting for God to send the light. [...] Those years of silence were a time of discipline, not displeasure." Oh man. This is encouraging, I think, to everyone venturing out on the Christian walk. Which brings me to part two of Psalm 84:5. "...whose hearts are set on the pilgrimage." There's one common theme across literature (and I include the Bible in literature) when talking about pilgrimages or journeys: hardships. Some succeed, some fail, some are irrelevant, some we're still learning from today, but all were hard. I've found myself in a time of my faith that God is remaining mostly silent. For a long time I saw that as pretty discouraging. Most things I heard growing up in church was that a good Christian can hear God's voice. Well I can't right now. So does that mean I've let my faith fall and now I'm failing as a Christian? No. No, it absolutely does not. Because if we remember, our strength is from God, whether He's outright saying it to you or not.

When I was in first grade, I forged my dad's signature on homework because I forgot to ask for it the previous night. Of course at that age, I thought it looked legit and I totally stuck to my lie. Clearly, my teacher (Mr. Scott, whom I'll never forget) knew it was a lie. He gave me an opportunity to correct myself and come clean. But I stuck to it! I was almost offended that he didn't believe my lie! Sadly, this is a trait that still plagues me, but maybe we'll tackle that later. Anyways, since I didn't come clean, he called my parents in. Oh. Well that turns the heat up a little bit. So my dad came into school and it took me all of two seconds to break down crying. I apologized to Mr. Scott, he forgave me, and I left with my dad. On the ride home in his Ford lime green pick-up truck, not a word was said. He just drove. A five minute drive felt like a trip to California. When we got home, he just got out and walked inside. The rest of the day, he never said another word about it. The day went on as normal and for the first time in my memory, I was wishing for a punishment. Had I done something so wrong that my dad wouldn't even dignify my wrongdoing with a response? I haven't lied to a teacher about a homework assignment since and I never will. That time of silence, while it certainly did not feel pleasing, was not of displeasure but of discipline. To this day, he and I haven't talked about it, and I'll never forget it. It's been brought up by my mom in a joking manner, but my dad remains silent on the issue.

What happens when we let God's silence shape us silently?

The devotional ends on an encouraging note. "Nothing that other saints do or say can ever perturb the one who is built on God." The reason this quote stood out to me is because Chambers specifically pointed out saints as people who may try to perturb me (or us, whichever). Don't ever let anyone tell you that you need to fix your spiritual life because you can't hear God. Instead, be silent. Listen. Allow God to use His perfect silence to shape you until one day you will hear again His beautiful and still voice. And what a welcome return it will be. If you allow your strength to be in God and you take the pilgrimage He has set forth for you, no one, not even someone as profound as Reverend Billy Graham, stands a chance of knocking you off course.