Inner Beauty

Susan Boyle rocked the world recently with an incredible performance on Britain's version of American Idol. A great singer is a dime a dozen on these shows, but what made this story electric is that, for lack of a better way to put it, Susan is not what most people would consider beautiful or attractive. Watch this clip and observe the reactions of everyone around her:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

At first they patronize her, and you can literally see the "eckkk" on Simon's face as she comes out. She's ugly. This will just be sad. She's the poster child for anti-beauty, someone no one would typically look at twice.

And then she sings.

Watch the faces of everyone in the audience, the judges, the back stage guys. They are just floored. In a matter of seconds, their perception of beauty is turned on its ear as she fills the room with her amazing voice. She gets a standing ovation, including from one of the judges.

I got chills from this, because this is exactly how God operates through all history. He uses the weak things to shame the strong, the ugly to shame the beautiful. He places a higher worth on inner beauty, talent and giving than all of the surface vanity that we can boast. Everyone in his eyes has tremendous value, even those who are 47 and never been kissed.

This is why we reject the world and embrace Christ. The world says that ugly people can only do ugly things; that the fat, the losers, the geeks, the average are just useless. The world pants after an unrealistic, shallow definition of beauty without ever considering the whole picture. Christ always considers the entire person and loves them completely, fully, wholly. He made Susan, he made me, and he made you, and he gave each of us very beautiful aspects to share with the world.

Thought for the Day

"In truth you cannot read too much in Scriptures;
and what you read you cannot read too carefully,
and what you read carefully you cannot understand too well,
and what you understand well you cannot teach too well,
and what you teach well you cannot live too well."

--Martin Luther

He Is Risen Indeed

Next Sunday I've been asked to do the post-Easter sermon at our church, on the topic of "joy". It is the logical conclusion to the subject of the resurrection of Christ that we celebrate today -- the influx of complete joy that could only be caused by our God forgiving our sins, defeating death, giving us true hope, providing us with a real future, and paving the way for reunification between God and man.

It always boggles my mind to see people who put in their two token visits to church -- Easter and Christmas Eve -- yet are never enticed beyond that. In those two holidays, so much joy bursts out that it really can't be contained, but more often than not the real reason isn't examined. It's attributed to goodwill and the happiness of the holidays, yet Christians know that it goes much further than that. We cannot be the producers of complete joy, just the recipients of it.

I look around and see a world in need of some serious joy these days. The economy, wars, politics, injustices, suicides, abortions, family separations, rebellions, untrust, racism, evening news -- these don't spark the excitement of joy in our hearts, just terror at being trapped in the same world as all of this. It's not a basically good world populated by basically good people; it's a corrupt world given over to the devil populated by fallen, broken souls. It's a world in bad need of joy, so bad in fact that it can hardly recognize that joy when it sees it.

Without the resurrection, there is no joy for us, only hopelessness. Without it, we are indeed lost and quite damned. Without it, we face a future as hollow and meaningless as anything else we might make under our own power. Without it, we live a lie when we trundle off to church on Easter morning singing "Up from the grave he arose!" And yet people spend their whole lives striving to deny the resurrection, fighting it, arguing against it. The image of small children being offered the best candy in the world by parents, only for them to kick and scream and bite their way out of accepting it comes to mind.

But with the resurrection... with it there is joy. Ours is not a God of mere words, who said some common-sense things about human decency and then left us to our own means. He is a God of action, who put his life where his mouth was, who came to earth to live as one of us, who offered a second chance to all around him, and who freely gave his life up as a sacrifice so that the wrath of God may not fall upon those who believe, because our sins are washed clean.

On Easter morning, we are emerging from the tomb with Jesus himself, blinking as we step into the sunlight for the first time, feeling the webs of darkness and despair fall away. We shout "He is risen!" because we are risen too, in him. Our joy is made complete, it overflows, it seeks out the dark pain of our life and overwhelms it. Our joy is not a mere fairy tale, but the simple truth. Our joy cannot be denied, even when people shout in our faces to give it up, to grow up, to be as they are. But, like Jesus, we cannot go back into the tomb -- it holds nothing for us.

He is risen. He is risen indeed.

God is Good, All the Time

One of the most frustrating, universal aspects of ministry is that it's a long-term process in which you rarely, if ever, see the fruits of your labor. Therefore, it's a tremendous blessing when God opens the curtains a little bit to show you how He's been working through you, how His plan has progressed.

Yesterday I received a nice e-mail from a past youth group student who's now married with a kid. Heh. In it he mentioned how he was now going to Liberty University to become a youth pastor -- the first teen I know of from our youth group to go into the ministry. I had been praying for this day for a long time, and it's just so overwhelming to think about it, and to think how way back in 2001, he and I were talking at an amusement park and he mentioned offhand that he might want to be a firefighter or youth pastor. It's amazing how God takes those little seeds and grows something mighty.

Anticipation of Glory

I was doing some thinking today about anticipation -- of upcoming video games I look forward to, of our baby who's less than a month away from being born, of the summer, what have you. People are separate from the rest of the animal kingdom in that we don't just live in the now, we live for the future as well. We look at the horizon and hope.

Paul's statement that "To live is Christ and to die is gain" goes against the grain of secular thought -- why should he look forward to dying? To die means the end, the final act, the forever separation from all that you knew and had and did. And yet, to the Christian, death is but a graduation to a much better life, a severing of the pain of this world and the glory of the next. He looks forward to the future and revels in the hope of what is to come.

One of Christ's greatest gifts to us was to take away the "sting" of death, the worry that it is the end of everything. As the ugliness of the cross was turned into a symbol of victory, so is the fear of death turned into the promise of life for his followers.

There are things I want to accomplish in this world, time that I want to spend with my family, and hope that I might one day rise up to the challenges of the ministry that I've thus far failed to fully reach. Whether or not God gives me the time for this is up to Him, but I can rest assured that His timing of my death will be perfect and serve purpose, and that on that day, I will gain everything and lose nothing.

If I was the one to design the official Christian flag, I think I'd put that verse smack in the middle.

Defining God

I had a professor back in college who once said that we are always struggling to put God into a nice, neat, tidy box. We want him to fit in there, to be able to handle him, understand him -- and limit him. But God's never in the box, no matter how much we try to fool ourselves.

Yesterday at my parents' church, the youth pastor talked about our tendency to attempt to define God according to our own wishes and comfort level. It's kind of a funny reversal on the creation process -- God created us in His own image, and we try to define him according to our own. Yet no matter what we may choose to believe about God, what we accept as comfortable and understandable, God is who God is. We only limit ourselves by trying to confine him to whatever we deem acceptable. You can't pick and choose aspects and qualities of the Almighty and discard the rest because they strike holy fear in you, or challenge your established patterns of sin, or cause you in any way to tremble before his majesty.

It reminds me of that one scene in Talladega Nights, when the characters are having dinner and praying to Jesus, and then talking about which "type" of Jesus they like best. Baby Jesus, party Jesus, what have you. It's funny because that's how many people truly engage in a relationship with God -- by picking just one aspect to fixate upon (such as Jesus being my friend, or Jesus being my protector) and ignoring the rest (Jesus as my King, Jesus as my judge, Jesus as my teacher). God is the whole package when you commit your life to him -- He doesn't limit himself to you, and doesn't allow you to define him in any way that would lessen the perfection and power that he contains.

Walking With Jesus: Prayer Warriors

“Prayer Warriors” is a term that I don’t hear very much these days, at least not around here. That’s a shame – it’s a title that bestows a great compliment on a guy or gal who has a strong, visible, effective prayer life. They are warriors, because they fight evil, sin and Satan in this world with the most devastating weapon at their disposal. They bring everything to God in prayer: their daily life, thanking God for blessings, problems that friends and family have, their country, even strangers around them. One of the reasons that Prayer Warriors get noticed is that their prayers are “powerful and effective” (James 5:16). Their prayers seem to get stuff done – as if they have a special inside to God that the rest of us lack.

C. H. Spurgeon once said, "Prayer pulls the rope down below and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. Some scarcely stir the bell, for they pray so languidly; others give only an occasional jerk at the rope. But he who communicates with heaven is the man who grasps the rope boldly and pulls continuously with all his might."

Jesus was the ultimate Prayer Warrior – in the gospels we see him spending almost as much time praying with God as we see him be with people. Everyone, including his disciples, saw that Jesus’ prayers produced powerful effects. One of his most gut-wrenching prayers was the night before his crucifixion, when he prayed for believers and also for God’s will to be done in that situation. Before he died for you, he prayed for you.

The truth is that Prayer Warriors don’t have any special connection; they just take advantage of what the scriptures tell us so plainly: God acts on prayers. He not only commands us to pray, but He wants us to, is eager to hear from us, and eager to show us what awesome things He can do if we just “pray big”. Realize that prayer isn’t natural for a sinful person – it’s a skill that has to be learned, practiced and honed, just like any other you have in your life. You have to keep doing it often enough to build up “prayer muscles”.

So how can you become a powerful and effective Prayer Warrior? Here are God’s instructions, straight from the Bible and into your life:

• "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of him" (1 John 5:14-15).
• "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:6-7).
• "…The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective" (James 5:16).
• "And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints" (Ephesians 6:18).
• "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express" (Romans 8:26).
• "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).
• "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus" (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).
• "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures" (James 4:3).