Just Another Blog Post About Fight Club

Posted by shelby on Feb 2nd, 2012 at about 11:36 am

If you ask any college dude about his favorite Brad Pitt movie, chances are he will probably answer Fight Club (a movie based on the 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk). Seriously. Walk into any male-occupied residence on or near a college campus and I promise you will find at least one copy of Fight Club in their DVD library. It’s an amazing flick.

So amazing, in fact, that in the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith (also starring Brad Pitt), the “young dude” character played by Adam Brody is wearing a Fight Club t-shirt while being interrogated by Mr. Smith himself, Brad Pitt (Tyler Durden in Fight Club). It’s a little “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” from Hollywood to you. Bottom line: Fight Club is cool . . . and interesting too.

It has to be one of the most quotable movies of all time, what with little wisdom nuggets like, “Martha Stewart is polishing the silver on the Titanic,” and “The things you own end up owning you.” However, there is a memorable scene in the middle of the movie - when Edward Norton’s character is having a conversation with his alter ego, Tyler - which gives insight into what some of this generation believes about God. Here’s how it goes:

Tyler: “Our fathers are our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?”

Norton’s Character: “I don’t know!”

Tyler: “Listen to me. You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, He hates you…it’s not the worst thing that could happen.”

Norton’s Character: “It isn’t?”

Tyler: “We don’t need him. [Forget] salvation! [Forget] redemption! We are God’s unwanted children? So be it!”

(Note: I did a little editing in there to make the dialogue somewhat less R-Rated.)

The sad thing to me is that there truly are people who believe this about the God who loves them and created them to be in a relationship with Him. Imperfect earthly fathers often become the image of who God is. So when someone says to them, “Your heavenly Father loves you,” they roll their eyes and say, “I don’t need or want a heavenly father. The one I have here on earth is bad enough.”

A friend of mine named Calvin has had just such an experience with his father. Calvin’s parents divorced when he was three and his mother got custody of both him and his sister. Summer visitation rights colored his childhood and, at the age of 10, through a graphic series of events, Calvin realized (almost all at once) that his father was a compulsive liar, an alcoholic, and heavy drug user. Time proved his childhood realizations to be all too true and his relationship with his father is now horrible.

It’s always been hard for Calvin to really trust people…especially older men who act as father figures in his life. That lack of trust has inevitably bled over into his perception of God. Calvin views his own life through the lens of his tainted opinion of what God thinks of him.

A.W Tozer once said, “What I believe about God is the most important thing about me.” The different experiences people have gone through in their lives have shaped their beliefs about who God is. If those beliefs happen to be distorted, what can we do to help people discover the true and loving Heavenly Father?

Ministry is meant to be an overflow of the heart: like a person who has enjoyed a great meal needs, in some way, to share it or say, “Mmmm!” When we are experiencing God’s love and grace, it reflects in us…and when others see that, they desire it. We need to reflect grace as we talk to (and listen to) people who might have an inaccurate picture of the God who created them.

The Amazing Really Goods

Posted by shelby on Jan 7th, 2012 at about 11:44 pm

Even though I’m only 5’6” tall and weigh a buck forty soaking wet, I’m a surprisingly good athlete out on the flag football field. Really, I am; don’t snicker.

A few years ago, I was part of a flag football team known simply as “The Amazing Really Goods”. That’s such a great team name, isn’t it? Our desire was to have a title that would send a message to all those opponents we would face out there…and that message was: we’re amazing and we’re really good.

One year, our season of hard work landed us smack dab in the middle of the championship for the coveted title of “Division 2 Intramural Flag Football Champions of the South East Region”. This was a title that we did not take lightly.

For our final game, we were playing a team called “Ricky Williams’ Secret Stash,” which gave me a pretty good understanding of what these dudes did on a typical Saturday night. Rumor had it that they were pretty tough out on the football field, so I remember being very nervous during pre-game warm-ups. Looking around at my teammates as we stretched, I could see that all of them were feeling exactly the same thing that I was feeling…all of them except for Matt.

Let me tell you a little bit about Matt. See, he was a senior in the Army ROTC program at school and he had just returned home from a 12-month stint in Iraq, literally fighting for our country.

While overseas, Matt carried a weapon and sometimes he even had to use it. He saw explosions, screaming women and children in pain, tanks, humvees, blood and sand. Good friends of his got shot and he was even shot at himself on occasion. In everyone’s eyes, Matt was a hero who had just come back from war. No one debated that.

And now we stood together on a silly intramural flag football field; me feeling nervous and scared while Matt looked as serene as if he were on vacation in the Caribbean.

The game started. We played hard and the outcome was close, but sadly, we ended up losing to the pot-smokers in the end. I remember how frazzled we all were when we were defeated. Some guys left the field without speaking a word and others held their heads low…but again, not Matt.

Matt was lighthearted afterward. He skipped across the field and picked up his bag while throwing an arm around a friend and playfully punching him. I was puzzled at the time and I asked myself, “How can he be so cavalier about the fact that we just lost the biggest game of the season?” I didn’t get it.

Well, it only took me a few days to figure out what was going on in Matt’s mind the night we lost. The answer was simple: to him, it truly was only a game. The Intramural Flag Football Championship was so small in comparison to the things he experienced in the thick of battle only a few months previous. Matt had gone through war, so why get so upset about something that was supposed to be fun competition?

You know, I think a lot about Matt and his experiences when I think about evangelism. In many ways, when we are out there on the front lines of battle for God’s Kingdom sharing our faith, the other annoying little details of life begin to slip into their rightful place behind what’s really important.

When I’m active in reaching out to others with the gospel, suddenly (for example) traffic doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. The small things in life truly become smaller in light of the fact that people die every day without knowing Jesus.

I now understand why Matt was the way he was at the game that night. I only wish that I could continue to have that kind of proper perspective on life when it comes to majoring in the majors and letting the minors be the minors during my years on this planet. Our time here is short and God calls us to live in light of eternity.

Someone very wise once told me that all of life is about perspective. And when I’m sharing my faith on a regular basis, my perspective is vividly accurate because I’m focused on the things that are most important in light of all eternity. I don’t sweat the details and I don’t lose my cool over stuff that, in the grand scheme of things, just doesn’t matter as much. Matt was a great guy that had great perspective that I can continue to learn from.

Now if I could only go back and change the outcome of that flag football game…kidding.

Gimme, gimme, gimme!

Posted by shelby on Dec 22nd, 2011 at about 2:49 pm

On occasion back when I was in college, my friends and I would go to this home-style restaurant called The Home Place.

The Home Place is the kind of restaurant you think about when one combines the word Amish with the word delectable…unless you have some kind of a bizarre imagination that takes you in a totally different mental direction, and if that’s the case, call your psychiatric health physician immediately.

Anyway, back to the food. Juicy fried chicken, tender roast beef, smoked turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, corn on the cob, gravy, biscuits, gravy, cornbread, and iced tea…and gravy. All of this and all you can eat. A dream come true for any college dude looking to work on his freshman fifteen.

The restaurant was a good thirty-minute drive from campus, so more often than not, we’d get up late and go on a weekend for lunchtime. If we knew we were going the next day, sometimes we wouldn’t eat dinner that night just so we could justify the gluttony when we got there; that’s how good this place was.

The establishment was a converted old farmhouse and the atmosphere inside really added to the home-style country appeal that they were going for. My friends and I all agreed that it was more delicious and more authentic than any of the 6 billion Cracker Barrel restaurants sprinkled throughout the nation. And the size of the line out front of the Home Place always proved us right.

The standard wait time was consistently 30-45 minutes, regardless of when you showed up, and the waiting area was always crowded. It was also torture. When we would put our name in for a table, we would be forced to sit or stand in this little room that I could only assume used to be a small den or mud room back when the place used to be a lived-in house. It was connected to a long hallway that opened up to the main dining area, giving everyone waiting for lunch the perfect view of what it was like to be fed and content with the world.

For what would seem like hours, we would loiter in the den with grumbling stomachs and smell all the delicious items as they were piled onto platters and taken to insatiable customers, sitting at crowded tables while demanding from their waitresses, “More chicken! More potatoes! More iced tea! More gravy!” I’m not going to lie: I hated every one of them.

Now, there were basically two types of customers in the Home Place at any given time that one would show up there—the stuffed and the starving. The stuffed were the ones at the tables that continually bellowed for more as they gorged themselves on wonderful home-style cooking. The starving were the poor saps that had to dwell in the waiting room and stare at other people as they ate.

Recently, I heard a talk from someone at a conference that made me come to a shocking realization: the same two types of people exist all over America today—the stuffed and the starving. No, I’m not making a literal commentary on why we should be feeding the poor (which is no doubt very important), but I am talking about the contrast of people in their differing spiritual conditions.

Christians often sit at the table of God and receive His grace, wanting for nothing but more. “It’s all about me. How can my church pour into me? What kind of group can I be involved in with believers that will spiritually benefit me? Who will disciple me? What kind of worship music best caters to my taste? Where can I serve most comfortably but get the most reward? Me, me, me…it’s all about me.” They are stuffed with the good gifts of God, yet they hold their plates up to His face and continually shout, “More blessing please!”

The majority of the population, however, is spiritually starving. They have no idea what it truly means to have a personal relationship with God. Whether they realize it or not, they are hungry for the kind of love and blessing that can only come from Jesus Christ, and it’s time to pass the plate. If we don’t get up from the table and recognize that it isn’t always about what spiritually benefits me the most, the spiritually starving will continue to grow anemic while we sit and ask for more from God.

As American Christians, we’ve been given the kind of blessings that are only dreamt about in other parts of the world. There are literally thousands of books that you could go online and buy right this second to help with any type of spiritual issue you might be going through. You can go to any bible-believing church and get plugged in to an environment that feeds and nurtures you in the Lord. There are college and high school ministries all over the nation that pour into Christian students and spur on growth, depth and development as a passionate follower of Jesus. We are spoiled, my friends, and it is time to pass the plate.

If we refuse and stay seated at the table, we are like the obese people at the end of Wall*E that obsess about themselves and continue to feed because it’s comfortable. In the movie, they eventually opened their eyes to see the truth, however, and it’s high time we did too. It’s time to pass the plate.

It's All About You?

Posted by shelby on Nov 29th, 2011 at about 5:12 pm

I really like thinking about how great of a guy I am. I know that sounds bad, but regrettably, it’s true.

I’m a genius when it comes to knowledge on the subject of me. I’m literally obsessed with myself. Not a day goes by when I don’t think, “What could make me happier right now?” or “what do I want to do?” And if you were honest, you’d probably say the same thing about yourself. Am I right?

Self-obsession has always been a human problem, but recently I think we’ve taken it to new levels by championing it to the highest levels within our very existence. Ask any kid what they want to be when they grow up and this is what they’ll most likely tell you: a rock star, an actor, a fashion designer, or a superstar athlete. Ask the same question to a kid 20 years ago, and you’d get a very different answer with a very different mindset: a fireman, a mom, a police officer, or an army soldier. Yesteryear used to be about giving of yourself to better society around you. Now it’s about how to achieve the most success and get the most money to live in a big house with fancy cars and cool clothes. I know I’m probably sounding a bit like a crotchety old man here, complaining about the present and longing for the past, but more and more I’m seeing what a “me-centered” society is doing to our thought process and belief system.

Of course culture is going to continue to get worse. This doesn’t shock me at all. What does bother me, however, is when we allow the tainted teaching of the culture around us to shape our views of the church, the body of believers within it, and God Himself.

Let me let you in on a not-so-big secret from the bible: it’s not about you—it’s about Jesus Christ!

People like Dr. Phil, the women on The View, Tony Robbins and Joel Osteen want you to believe that if you work hard enough to become a better you and believe that the capability is inside of you to achieve the greatness that you deserve, you will aspire to great things. The only small, little, tiny problem is this: you’re simply not capable of being better in your own power. Whoops...kind of changes everything, doesn’t it?

No matter how hard I try, I have never ever been able to make my sinful nature improve by trying harder to become a better me. Every seven-step program that I have implemented into my daily routine has failed miserably. All the sincere promises I have made to myself and to God to try harder and do better the next time have come up wanting in the end. In my own power, I am a loser ten times out of ten. Why? Because I can’t do it on my own! I need Jesus!

And so do you.

It’s a warm and fuzzy feeling when someone tells you that you are capable of achieving prominence. But to what end does that desire for prominence produce? Most often, the motivator to improve ourselves is solely for the glory of us. See, when you peel back the warm and fuzzy layers of self-esteem, there is a dark and disgusting idol that rests in the center of the shiny exterior—pride.

Nobody today likes to admit that they need help. We all fantasize about sitting in the chair opposite of Oprah Winfrey while being applauded by the studio audience for pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and making it on our own (well, at least I fantasize about that).

“Nobody helped me on my way to the top.”
“I did it all by myself.”
“I worked hard and I achieved my goals.”
“I believed in my heart that I could do it and I did.”

These are the kind of statements the culture admires and praises as something worth taking note of remembering. These are the phrases that make people tear up and silently proclaim, “good for them”. And unfortunately, this is the prevailing mentality that has oozed its way into the church, bringing with it the destructive arrogance that has been the downfall of humanity time and time again. In Genesis 11, all the people at the Tower of Babel thought very highly of themselves and consequently, the Lord intervened to help them understand where their rightful place was in terms of importance.

Understand what I’m saying here and what I’m not. I’m not saying that you are worthless garbage. I’m not saying that you aren’t valuable and special either. You are very important to God…if you weren’t, do you think He would have sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to die for you? You have incredible worth because of what God has done for you through Jesus Christ.

The problem begins to take shape, however, when we get cocky and think that all of life is about us and what we can do to make a name for ourselves. God is very clear about the fact that He will not share His glory. He is jealous for it and when we try to steal His glory for ourselves, it is sin…even if masked by the perpetual back-patting happiness of self-esteem motivators.

All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." (I Peter 5:5)

A good definition of humility is “knowing your place”. God is God and we are not. The quicker we realize this, the better off we will be, I promise.

Success in life doesn’t come by believing in the capability we have to be better people, it comes by knowing our place and believing that God is the ultimate good power and loving authority over all things…including your life.

5 Reasons God Values of Humor

Posted by shelby on Nov 17th, 2011 at about 5:46 pm

I've been thinking a lot lately about the value that humor has and how it can be wielded in the appropriate ways. I know I have failed multiple times when it comes to the "appropriate" part, but I'm always in process. Humor can be a good and godly thing even though some of us might not think that to be true.

I think God actually does value humor in a way that we might not expect Him to value it. Why do I presume this to be true? Well personally, I don’t need much more proof than the fact that farting is a part of a person’s daily routine, but you might need something a little more concrete than I do. Let me give you a few reasons why I believe God appreciates humor.

1. Humor produces laughter, and laughing makes the soul strong. I heard Mark Driscoll use that phrase before in a sermon he once gave: “Laughter makes my soul strong”, and I couldn’t agree more. When I think something is funny enough to produce deep belly laughter followed by tears that I wipe from my eyes, I always feel like I’m experiencing life at a deeper level in that moment. The occurrence is rich and almost adventurous. So much so, that I long to duplicate it over and over again just to absorb the kind of life it gives to me. I literally love to laugh, and I’d be willing to bet that you do too. And since laughter is such a large part of strengthening the soul, it is an obvious indicator that the Creator constructed it as a valuable part of life.

2. Humor can be easily found in the bible. There are tons of examples in scripture that I find funny, but let me highlight four of them for you.
a. I Kings 18:27 – This is the quasi-famous Old Testament example when Elijah is mocking the prophets of Baal as they try to get their god to respond by lighting a fire. Elijah basically says, “Maybe he can’t hear you right now because he’s busy taking a #2…yell louder!” Hilarious, simply hilarious. Elijah may have been the very first stand-up comedian.
b. Job 38:21 – Good old-fashioned sarcasm from the mouth of God Himself. God is responding here after Job has questioned where God was in all of his suffering. To paraphrase, the Lord says, “Oh, you know all about everything because you were around when the earth was created...right? Oh wait, you weren’t!” A verbal backhand to the face of Job probably wasn’t pleasant for him, but it sure is funny to the reader.
c. 2 Kings 21:23-25 – These verses are so weird that they are funny. Elisha is walking along, minding his own business when some small boys make fun of the fact that he’s bald. Elisha then curses these guys and two she-bears come out of the woods and tear up forty-two of them. The first time I read this, I was like, “What? She-bears?” This story may be bizarre, but you’ve got to admit that it’s funny. Only after I read it again did I commit to never mock a godly bald man with a temper.
d. Matthew 7:3-5 – Jesus intentionally uses hyperbole here that undoubtedly produced a snicker or two from the people within an earshot. A log cannot fit into a person’s eye and the visual that I get of a huge chunk of wood coming out of someone’s face makes me giggle.

3. As I mentioned before, humor is the language that people speak. It is the means by which so many people choose to communicate with one another. If two people are very good friends, they often joke with each other pretty frequently. I know that I do with all of my closest friends. Comedy creates a connection between people and bonds them in a way that nothing else can. God obviously values communication (see the bible…all of it) and I think it would be hard for me to believe that God doesn’t really have anything to do with that kind of joyful connection just because it isn’t “serious”.

4. Humor can break down barriers. Many people know that comedy can be used as a weapon for the wrong purposes, but if it is wielded with godly motivations, it can be a very powerful tool to destroy the walls built up by anger, prejudice, sorrow and hatred. I often employ the strength that humor has in order to share the gospel with people that have preconceived ideas about what a “religious person” is really like. If someone finds something funny, they will routinely find the willingness to accept whatever message happens to travel on the heels of that humor. It’s an unwritten law of human kind that if you’re smart enough to make someone laugh, you’re smart enough to have people listen to you. God is very much aware of this fact and I have to believe that He wants us to use humor with discretion in order to benefit the advancement of His Kingdom whenever possible.

5. Humor has the ability to disarm sin. Much like its capability to break down walls built by sin, humor can disarm sin in a way that powerfully works to the advantage of its user. When something or someone is laughed at, it is partially robbed of its influence. Think about the school bully getting his pants pulled down in front of everyone in the cafeteria—all of a sudden, he’s not so scary anymore, is he? See what I mean? Racism can be stripped of its dominance, idols can be ejected from their thrones, and religion’s leverage to sway people toward activity for salvation can be destroyed…all by humor’s potential. God values disarming the power of sin and if humor can be used to make that happen, employing it properly is a great thing.

A friend of mine once said, “Humor has the quality of bringing down walls and defenses so that truth can be clearly communicated.” Nailed it.

Death of a Prairie Dog

Posted by shelby on Nov 10th, 2011 at about 3:08 pm

 

Everything that I’m about to tell you is absolutely true and the details have not been exaggerated or skewed to fabricate something more than what actually happened that day. 

When I was about 15 years old, I went on a camping trip with my sister, my ex-Step Mom, and her current boyfriend that later became her husband. (This is a story in and of itself, but I’m not going to go there right now.) It was approaching the end of a summertime trip of seeing most of my extended family in California and I decided to take this camping trip with the aforementioned group of people to a lake area someplace in the state of Oregon before the vacation was over.

Now, once we got there, we weren’t really going to rough it in tents or anything like that, because we had a huge pop-up fifth wheel camper in tow, complete with kitchen, shower, and one of those toilets you have to hook up to a giant hose to empty when you exit the campsite (think cousin Eddie from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation). Not exactly real camping mind you, but I have no regrets about sleeping on a bed away from blood-sucking insects when I get the chance.

When we completed the drive up north and pulled into the campground where we would be staying, my breath caught in my chest at the site of this absolutely beautiful area. There were cedar trees that seemed taller than skyscrapers. There was a lake with clearer water than I had ever seen in my life. There were miniature fields of clover and wildflowers, populated by deer and birds that literally came up to humans and ate tiny scraps of bread from the hands of children. And the coolest thing of all to me were the hundreds of prairie dogs that skittered through the patches of flowers and clover, dodging tree roots and diving into little holes they had burrowed in to call their homes.

Before I go on, let me tell you a little something about 15 year-old boys: they’re idiots. Truly, they are. When we stopped the truck and hopped out to take in the view of the land, the first thing that went through my 15 year-old mind was not, “Wow, this place is gorgeous!” Rather, this is the initial thought that came to my brain: “Hmm, I wonder how many times I could throw a rock at a prairie dog before I could hit it?”

I’ll say it again—15 year-old boys are idiots.

We quickly settled in to our campsite and got situated enough to feel like home for a few days before each of us decided to go exploring on our own for a few minutes. I took this time to immediately make a B-line for the nearest patch of clover, in hot pursuit of my prairie dog prey.

On my way, I bent down and randomly picked up 4 or 5 medium sized rocks that I thought were just the right shape and weight to hurl at a speeding animal the size of a large rat. When I got to the first mini-field of clover and flowers, I widened my stance a bit and stood silently like a sumo wrestler on the edge of a ring, ready to pounce as soon as the situation called for it. Only a couple of minutes went by before I saw a prairie dog pop up out of a hole in the ground and start darting across the field, away from where I was standing.

A starting gun went off in my mind and I sprang forward toward the little thing with the speed of an average teenage girl chasing down Robert Pattinson in a parking lot. When the prairie dog spotted me running after it, he kicked it into high gear and darted away from me with the kind of haste that can only be described as “awe-inspiring”.  It was now or never for me, so as I was in mid-stride, I plucked a single rock from the cluster of them in my left hand, cocked back my entire right arm, and chucked the stone toward the prairie dog like a Major League Baseball pitcher.

What happened next appeared to me in what seemed like slow motion. The rock flew through the air, top over bottom toward the little guy on a frozen rope of complete accuracy. Inch by inch, it sailed toward him, finally making stunningly perfect contact at the back of his head, then ricocheting off at a 90 degree angle toward the woods. I think I heard a small “thump” sound in that moment followed by a tiny little, “nooooo!,” but it’s possible that I had just imagined that part.

The prairie dog instantly flipped over onto his back, put both of his front paws together, and made like he was digging a hole in the air for a few seconds. Then he stopped sharply, froze his paws in mid-air and collapsed onto his left side. When I processed the fact that I had hit the prairie dog on my first throw, I stopped running, dropped the remaining rocks in my hand, lifted both of my fists to the sky and shouted, “I hit him on the first try! All of you woodland creatures bow before me, for I am your KING!”

A couple of mental high-fives and booty shakes later, I walked over to the little guy to gently nudge him from his stunned state, in hopes that he would just shake it off and run back into the closest hole. But what I discovered next would quickly change my prideful attitude and burn this whole experience into my mind for the rest of my life.

Gently tapping him with my shoe didn’t wake him. Clapping my hands loudly next to his head didn’t make him move. And poking him tenderly with a nearby stick didn’t make him hop to his feet and scurry away. In that moment, I came to the realization that I had, in fact, killed that precious little prairie dog with a crude rock that I found on nature’s floor.

A wave of remorse promptly swept over me. All of the pride and jubilation I felt from my rock-throwing accuracy drained from my body, leaving nothing but guilt and sadness. I couldn’t believe that I had actually killed that cute tiny creature because of an idiotic desire to turn rock throwing into a game. What had I done?...what had I done?

After about 10 minutes of self-condemnation, I came up with a plan to make things right. I took the stick I had been holding and dug a hole in the ground, roughly the size of a shoebox. I then stepped over in front of the dead prairie dog and picked him up with my bare hands (I do not recommend this, by the way) and gently laid him inside his final resting place. After covering him with the loose soil I had dug up, I walked over to the nearest patch of wildflowers, picked 4 or 5 (ironically the same number of rocks I had initially picked up), and placed them on top of the grave. I then performed a small funeral service that included 2 full minutes of silence and a genuine heartfelt prayer that went something like this:  

Lord, I’m so sorry for murdering one of the creatures you created. Please forgive me. I pray that you would accept this prairie dog into your presence and may he always run freely in the clover fields of glory. Amen.

 After the service was over, I felt so much better about myself for handling my mistake in a way that was honorable and good. I was able to enjoy the rest of the camping trip we had in the beautiful state of Oregon, and I vowed never again to throw rocks of any kind at any of God’s creatures.

I know this may sound funny to you after a story like this, but we as human beings do this kind of stuff all the time with God. No, I don’t mean the whole funeral for a prairie dog thing…I’m talking about the heart attitude of checks and balances. Whenever we foul up and make a mistake that overwhelms us with guilt, we think that our bad thing can be covered up in God’s eyes if we do something good. Now, I quite literally thought that I could cover up my misdeed with a good act of an appropriate burial service, but I’m also extremely guilty of the “good stuff cancels out bad stuff” belief system in my everyday life too. I always think, “If I just feel guilty long enough” or “If I’m nicer to more people today than yesterday” or “If I give more than I gave last time” or “If I read my bible for a longer time today,” etc. It may sound ridiculous, but my heart really thinks that these kinds of actions and attitudes can save me from condemnation. How incredibly foolish!

I have yet to find the verse or verses in the bible that say something to the effect of, “Doing one good thing cancels out doing one bad thing, so make sure that you do more good things than bad things or God isn’t going to love you and He’ll probably send you to hell.” Why do we diminish the grace of God to checks and balances? Why do we believe that we can save ourselves from condemnation with a good thought or a good action? Being in the good graces of God has nothing to do with our actions and everything to do with the love of God through His Son, Jesus Christ.

If you believe that it’s about Jesus and His love, you will live that way, and if you live that way, your life will shine in stark contrast to the kind of life that is enslaved to performance. Connection with God is about grace through faith, not good action to appease wrath and guilt. Stop performing prairie dog funeral services to make yourself feel better and start living in the truth that a relationship with God cannot be bought with good works.

Digitally Jacked: Rules Shm-ules

Posted by shelby on Oct 30th, 2011 at about 8:27 pm

If I’m in the right mood, I can be easily convinced to join a group of people and play a game. My in-laws are really big game people, and that always makes for a lot of laughs at family gatherings. Most of the time, the humor comes from someone making a Freudian slip and saying something completely inappropriate, causing the entire room to erupt in deep belly laughter.

This past Christmas, my wife and I gave my brother-in-law a new board game. It was a game that none of us had ever played before, so the routine course of action took place before we all gathered around to play: we read the rules.

To be honest, I absolutely can’t stand reading the rules before playing a game. I just want to get to it! There is fun to be had and pausing to make sure I engage in the fun correctly kind of saps away some of the excitement. The truth is, though, that if someone didn’t read the rules first, we would end up playing the game wrong, the scoring wouldn’t make sense, and the actual fun would get derailed by arguments, frustration and someone inadvertently kicking the chair where grandma sits. Bad things would happen, man. Bad things.

For many areas of life (not just playing board games) the key to fruitfulness is appropriate preparation. And evangelism is no exception. Yes, it is important to practice and be prepared to answer specific questions that might come up, but the preparation I’m talking about here has to do with prayer.

If you closely examine the ministry of Jesus, you will easily discover that He was a man who took prayer very seriously. The bible says that Jesus often withdrew to lonely places to pray (Luke 5:16), even in the midst of a lot of work that needed to be done. A kind of running motto should pretty much always be on the mind and heart of every Christian, and it goes like this: “If it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me” (although this doesn’t fit on a bracelet quite as well as “WWJD.”) Jesus’ life didn’t lack prayer and neither should ours.

Frankly, if we’re not praying throughout the entire process of communicating our faith, we’re trying to accomplish the work of God through our own efforts.

Prayer is where our strength comes from, it’s where our hearts become aligned with God’s, it’s where our motivations are focused on the appropriate things and it’s where we recognize who is really behind all of this anyway. We need to ask God to open people’s hearts to the gospel before we open our mouths. We must be talking to Him about our fears and apprehension in a way that honestly recognizes that He must work in order for people’s lives to genuinely change. It may sound cheesy but it’s the some of the best evangelism advice I’ve ever heard: before you talk to people about God, talk to God about people. It really is the best way to prepare in order to see good things happen.

Read John 17

1. What does this passage reveal about the prayer life of Jesus?
2. If prayer truly is the way to properly align your heart for effective evangelism, what might be pushing you to “skip it and move on to the action”?
3. How has Jesus’ model of prayer inspired you when it comes to evangelism?

Digitally Jacked: Threads of Hope

Posted by shelby on Oct 17th, 2011 at about 10:23 am

Not too long ago, I was invited to speak at the University of Alabama - Birmingham (UAB) for their weekly Cru large group meeting. To use the word “speak” is a bit misleading, however, because about half of my time up front utilizes stand up comedy in order to leverage my motivational agenda of plugging lifestyle evangelism to the Christian students in attendance.

The gathering drew roughly 100 college students, most of whom were ethnic minorities. I didn’t find out that UAB was such an ethnically diverse campus until I arrived there the day before I spoke. But, sure enough, the small subsection of that school represented in the room proved the diversity to be true.

Before I got up front to speak that night, a short five-minute video was played, advertising a ministry called Threads of Hope. This ministry is based out of Puerto Galera on the island of Mindoro in the Philippines and its primary purpose is to assist the economically oppressed by giving them steady jobs making colorful bracelets. The reason why this is such a big deal is because many families in Puerto Galera are so poor that they are forced to resort to prostitution in order to feed their families. Some people even sell their young daughters into the sex slave trade in order to receive income.

Threads of Hope gives them a safe and healthy alternative at earning income as the bracelets (which cost about four cents to make) are sold for a dollar or two here in the States. It’s an extremely moving ministry that’s taking place in the Philippines and the promotional video that was played that night powerfully conveyed their vision.

After the video concluded, some announcements were made, I was introduced, and then I spoke about the value of communicating the gospel to our friends who don’t yet know Jesus…with a humorous twist, of course.

Little did I know that there were roughly seven people there for the first time who showed up to the meeting because they had heard that a comedian would be performing that night as a special alternative to the normal speaker.

When the meeting ended, I mingled with the students and staff that lingered for a while, made a phone call to my bride back home and packed up my things to go back to where I would be housed for the night.

My ride home was the local Cru director Drake, and I soon found him in the hallway outside the meeting room, talking to three students in a manner that seemed intentional, sincere and joyful all at the same time.

About 45 more minutes passed before Drake’s conversation with those students came to a close, at which time he walked up to me and apologized for it taking so long. I shook off that apology and immediately asked how the conversation went.

“Great,” he said. “They all accepted Christ tonight.”

“What?!” I nearly shouted in response to the news. “Tell me what happened!”

Drake went on to tell me that, although those three students had only attended the meeting to hear a comedian, they were greatly impacted by the Threads of Hope video because they were all Filipino students. When I had spoken about the gospel from up front, this only continued to prime the pump of their spiritual hearts and all three were very ready to hear in more detail about how they could be in a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Drake stepped up to the plate, so to speak, and led all three to the Lord.

My heart swelled with excitement as Drake smiled and nodded. God used a promotional video about a ministry that keeps women off the streets in the Philippines to lead three Filipino students in Birmingham, Alabama into a relationship with Him. Who in the world would have thought up that particular scenario?

After all this occurred, I went over to the Threads of Hope table in that same hallway and bought a bracelet for $1 to remind myself of the night’s events. (If you’d like to learn more about the Threads of Hope ministry, go to www.threadsofhope.com.ph)

Read Habakkuk 1:5

1. Make a list of times when God has worked in a way you didn’t expect Him to. (Note: this doesn’t have to be specifically in the area of evangelism.)
2. As you think about the current state of that list, what are some things that you can do now in order to create an environment for God to work?

Taking the Initiative

Posted by shelby on Oct 11th, 2011 at about 2:47 pm

Initiative evangelism (in Cru, we label it as “ministry mode” evangelism, but for the purposes of vast understanding, we’ll call it “initiative”) is an activity that truly draws a line in the sand and, by its very nature, asks you to pick a side and stand on it. Many Christians disagree with approaching strangers intending to share the gospel. And those Christians have developed a number of reasons why a faithful follower of Jesus shouldn’t do it.

Recently, a college student sincerely asked me why we share our faith that way. In a nutshell, this is pretty much how I responded…

First of all, I believe that it’s important that we walk by faith and make ourselves uncomfortable for the sake of Christ. Initiative evangelism is a great way to make that happen.

Secondly, I have seen a number of people place their trust in Christ through this method, and it’s a beautiful thing to watch someone pass from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. There’s nothing like it.

Yes, there is a vast difference between the number of people we share with and the number of people who actually place their faith in Jesus, but doesn’t that tell you something in and of itself? Baseball is a game of failure. However, if you’ve got a .300 batting average, you are a really good player . . . and that means you only hit the ball three times for every ten times you’re at the plate. You “fail” 70% of the time but you learn every time you’re up there, and that makes you a better player —a valuable asset to the team.

Similarly (and thirdly), maybe it’s not always about the people we’re sharing with when we decide to participate in initiative evangelism. Maybe it’s more about what God wants to do in our lives when we step out in faith and talk to others about Him. When we die to ourselves and sacrifice our own comfort, reputation and pride, God is able to work in us and mold us into the kind of followers He wants us to be: faithful ones.

I do believe that people come to Christ this way and therefore, their lives are changed by this specific activity. But I also believe that God works powerfully in the hearts of His children when we share our faith this way and therefore, our lives are changed by this specific activity. How can any of that be a bad thing?

Read Isaiah 64:8

1. In this passage, we are referred to as “the clay” and God is referred to as “the potter”. How does that relate to the subject of initiative evangelism?
2. In what ways does God want to mold you when you share your faith?
3. How can you be more proactive about allowing God the Potter shape you as His child?

Digitally Jacked: Power Surge

Posted by shelby on Aug 19th, 2011 at about 10:46 am

“I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ was no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world, there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I have all founded our empires…but upon what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love, and at this moment, millions of men would die for him.” - Napoleon Bonaparte

Jesus Christ and the message He proclaims is a message of love. That message is inherently powerful to the degree that, in fact, millions of people have been changed because of it.

As the worship song says, “I know You gave the world Your only Son for us to know Your name and live within the Savior’s love. And He took my place, knowing He’d be crucified…and You loved a people undeserving”. This is a very real and unparalleled fact that slices right to the heart of what is so beautiful and so mysterious about the gospel.

How could a perfect, unblemished, holy God love someone so undeserving as me? Why would God be compelled to give up His Son just to save someone who really wouldn’t appreciate it as much as he should? Why does He love me so much?

In short, my answer is, “I just don’t know.” That, however, doesn’t change the fact that the message is true and because I have accepted it, it has changed me forever. There is power in the gospel that makes a person fall to their knees in appreciation while simultaneously scratching their head in confusion.

I, for one, don’t think that I will ever understand what makes a bratwurst so delicious but that will never stop me from slathering it up with yellow mustard and joyously consuming it when given the chance. Similarly (well, kind of), I doubt that I will ever truly understand why God has chosen to love me the way He does but that won’t ever prevent me from reveling in it.

The good news of God’s love through Jesus Christ is permanent and powerful…and that good news changes lives. Love is stronger than force, making the message of the gospel –which stands in sharp contrast to all other religions - sparkle with an attraction that is hard-wired into the DNA of every soul. We, as human beings that long to be loved, are instinctively drawn to that deep-rooted power communicated in the pages of Scripture. He loves us so much that He took our place, stepping in front of the nails that should have been driven into our hands and feet the moment we turned our back on God.

Often referred to as “the great exchange”, 2 Corinthians 5:21 says this: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

God took all of our sin and placed it on Jesus, and took all of Jesus’ perfection and placed it on us. Nothing is more powerful than that, and nothing is more worthy of our lives.

Re-read 2 Corinthians 5:21.

1. Take a moment to marvel at the fact that God took all of your sin and placed it on His Son, and He took all of Jesus’ righteous perfection and placed it on you.
2. How does that make you want to respond?
3. How will living and breathing this truth change the way you share the gospel?