Sacrifice?

This Friday Doris and I will celebrate our 33 wedding anniversary. Most of you who knew us at number 25 probably doubted we would make it this far, What am I talking about, most who knew us at number 3 had those same doubts. To all of who doubters I say these spiritual words, “Nananananaaana!”
Well, actually if you knew us then, you know that God is awesome. He has performed a miracle in our lives and the last 8 years have been so different, so full of Him that we rejoice every day over His grace and mercy to us. I love my wife in a way I never imagined because I have finally realized that God loves ME in a way that I never imagined, and out of that….well, this is getting mushy. You get the picture.
So, every year for the last 8 years we have celebrated our anniversary in a big way. We take 4 days and find a new, exciting place. We go to a place we cannot afford and spend money we do not have to remind ourselves what God has done. We have stayed at a bed and breakfast in Pennsylvania, at the old downtown Sheraton in Chattanooga. We’ve gone back to our roots in Ohio and stayed in a beautiful house in Orlando. And we stayed at the Biltmore, a mansion in Asheville, NC for what may have been the best one of all. This year, not so much. This year we are staying home and babysitting our grandson. No trip. No room service. No late night, candlelit dinners. Just toys in the living room, spaghetti-o’s on the couch, and 30 episodes of Thomas the train. AND WE ARE SO EXCITED WE CAN’T WAIT!!!
Somebody might say, “What a sacrifice. That’s too bad what you are giving up.” But we say, “Are you kidding? Where’s the sacrifice? We love him so much that it is a delight. We don’t even consider it giving something up to get to spend a whole weekend with Jon-Mical.” Now in case you think there is no point to my little story, let me make one quick. Your walk with God is not all anniversary cake and strolls on the beach. In fact, the call of God on our lives is to live holy and Godly. To repent. To pick up a cross and follow Him. Brennan Manning says, “The tone of the Christ of God is not always sweet and consoling. The gospel is the Good News of gratuitous salvation, but it does not promise a picnic on a green lawn….It is a summons to personal holiness, on going conversion, and new creation through union with Christ Jesus.” (The Importance of Being Foolish)
We have, most of us, watered the Christian life down to sugary slogans about the love of Jesus and tender, tiny, talks about joy. We sing Kumbayah as our fight song and drop a $20 in the offering plate in response to a challenging message. And any conversation that brings up discipline, piety, and holiness, we dismiss as being legalistic and ignoring grace. And we have missed the point. The point is that our love for Christ, our overwhelming devotion and adoration for Him, based on our recognition of what He has done for us, should compel us to sacrifice and servanthood without so much as a blink of the eye. Paul says, “I consider all these things loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ my Lord. I consider them dung (look it up) that I might gain Christ.” (Phil. 3:8)
Now I’m not being hardnosed or suggesting that everyone should burn their TV’s and where their hair in a bun. We lived through those days and that wasn’t holiness. I have no idea what holy living looks like for you. I’m still trying to figure out what it look like for me. But I think it means that every decision, every desire, every habit, attitude, and pleasure is filtered through my intense love for My Savior who loved me and gave His life for me. And when I do that, there is no sacrifice, there is no giving stuff up. It is all joy because I get to be closer to the one that I love. How good is that? And you know what? Speaking of anniversaries, the longer I live a life fully surrendered to Him and His Kingdom, the better it gets. This “peace that passes all understanding,” and this “joy unspeakable stuff,” it really is there and there is no loss when I gain that.
So don’t feel sorry for Doris and I this weekend. We are spending time with someone who delights us. We are rolling in the floor with the light of our life and the joy of our hearts. Come to think of it, we should be doing that every day with Jesus. If giving stuff up is that easy for us where Jon-Mical is concerned, how much more for the One who makes Jon-Mical and every anniversary possible? And when you run into someone who doesn't understand, say to them with all the love you can muster, “Nananananaaana!”

Codependency

I hurt for you in your private pain
And I often sit and wonder how I could take it away;
Though I do not imagine that you think I do,
And I do not imagine that I can.

You and I are all that’s left.
Your pain is your pain and not mine.
My pain is my pain and not yours.
And the taking of mine or yours by the other is more painful.

My pain is a part of my self;
To allow it to be taken from me is to lose a part of myself.
To take yours without permission
Is the worst kind of invasiveness and a diminishing of you.

We are one in some sense, maybe in our common pain,
But we are not the same.
If I forget that, I tear a piece of you away
And I create more hurt.

Your pain like yourself cannot be taken,
Only given.
So I wait, and pray, and hope to be allowed,
And that is painful.

The Fina Art of Arguing

The Fine Art of Arguing

My sister tells a story (probably not true) about my parents getting into a tiff when we were all much younger. My mother was on the way to church in the middle of their argument and she came to my father, turned her back to him and asked him to zip up her dress. He grabbed the zipper in his ire and yanked it up and down a few times saying snottily, “Zip, Zip, Zip!”
A couple of hours later my mother came home and saw our clunker of a car jacked up in the driveway as usual with a pair of legs sticking out from under it. Remembering her encounter with my father earlier she decided to get even. She reached down and grabbed the zipper on his pants and yanked it up and down, “Zip, Zip, Zip!” Then she stormed into the house where to her chagrin she saw my father sitting on the couch watching TV.
She told her story to my father and they ran out together to see our neighbor who had come over to help my dad work on the car, climbing out from under our vehicle with a huge knot on his forehead and a totally bewildered look on his face.

I really don’t think that happened. But I do know that we used to know how to have arguments and disagreements on a number of different levels that allowed us to express our opinions, vent our emotions, find some kind of clarity and understanding, and come away from the fray better off for having had it. No so today. We have forgotten how to argue. Whether it is in the public political arena or the closed boardroom of the church, civility and conscience has gone out the window and been replaced with name calling, vilifying, and mean-spirited bitterness.
Our politicians run “attack ads,” (we even have a name for them) that cleverly disguise truth, distort facts, and usually make no mention of issues. They also seldom offer solutions. Our religious disagreements resort to caricatures of entire populations, emotional characterizations of the other side, and blatant misrepresentations of position and purpose, often in the name of whatever theology we aspire to.
For the sake of proving our point (though I am usually not sure what the point is) we castrate and crucify people that we do not know, have never tried to understand, and certainly failed to listen too. The result is deeper divides, more intense polarity, and battles being fought over “principles” that are merely excuses for hatred on both sides of the equation.

Here’s an example. I am a Christian. There is a battle raging in my community over a proposed mosque. We have chosen sides, thrown down our gauntlets, and run into the war screaming and cursing our enemies. We have decided on our principles, staked out our moral high ground, and let fly the arrows of our discontent. And friends, we are wrong. I don’t have an answer to the issue of the mosque but I am pretty sure of this, not every Muslim is a radical, suicide bombing, jihadists. Nor is every Christian who has concerns about this project a bigoted, fear mongering, hypocrite. I am embarrassed when I hear some of my friends say horrible things about Islam without knowing or seeking to understand. (The Scripture that I love has some stories that I hope I have the opportunity to explain to non-believers before they call my Holy God a baby killer, and a male chauvinist pig.) And I have been just as mortified when people that I care about have condoned witch-hunts, and intimidation, and even participated themselves in attacks upon Godly leaders and wonderful congregations in our community that are the other side of the debate from them.

One thing I know about arguing, these tactics only separate us further and never lead to resolution and reconciliation. If the downward spiral of our own political system has shown us anything it is that “attack ads” in the media or on our Facebook blogs drive us into paralysis and hate. They do not move us toward understanding or peace.
Perhaps it’s not fair of me to walk a middle road and not take a specific side so, okay, here’s my position. I am not an expert on the Koran but I do not believe that the intention of the Muslim community in Rutherford County is to build a terrorist training camp in middle Tennessee. Listen, we have lived with and worked with and even prayed with some of the very people that now we are accusing of outlandish things. To you guys that I love who stand against the mosque, you are wrong in using the name of Christ to justify unfounded characterizations and accusations. You have every right to be against the mosque. Fight against it vigorously on the grounds that they circumvented our building codes, that they are proposing a facility that is far beyond the reasonable expectation of need in our city, or even that we are a Christian community and we stand against any non-Christian enterprise. Fight them there but listen to their hearts while you do battle.
And to my friends who are just as viciously slandering and maligning your Christian brothers because they disagree with you, you are wrong. Let me be blunt, Allen Jackson is a good man, a gifted leader that loves our community, our country and our God. WOC is a lighthouse on our horizon that gives tirelessly and sacrificially back to our county. And until the conflict started many of you who now attack Pastor Jackson and WOC were supporters and admires of these people. If you are against their position in this matter (or your perception of their position) fight them. Take them to task for their misunderstanding of Scripture. Debate them over the theological nuances of love your enemy and turn the other cheek. But when you post invitations to dig up dirt or take quotes out of context you are certainly no better than the cartoon creatures of stupidity that you have created on the other side of the discussion.

This is a crucial and future-changing argument we are having. It has ramifications that reach far beyond the boundaries of this community or even our generation. As a Christ follower I approach it with both fear over the potential harm a wrong decision might do and with confidence that ultimately the battle is the Lord’s. And I am determined that an argument of such magnitude deserves, really demands, to be handled with civility, rationality, and compassion. It is the only possibility we have of successfully navigating this conflict. In the name of Jesus I implore us all to rethink the way we argue and if not, to Zip, Zip, Zip it up.

Two Races

I finished two races last Saturday. We’ll, I actually finished one and watched the other being finished. My nephew Craig and I ran in the RunChikinRun 10K race in Murfreesboro. For you non-runners, 10K is about 6 and ½ miles. And for you people who think the race is named after my legs, it is sponsored by Chik-fil-let. There, we got that straight.
It was a gorgeous day. About 1000 runners ran across the Greenway and through the Stones River Civil War Battlefield. I finished in the top ten in my age group (out of 12) and all in all we did pretty well, finishing just over 6 miles in about an hour. It was fun to run with Craig and we saw a lot of friends along the way. At the end Chera, my niece, and Josh, Jennifer and Jon-Mical were waiting for us, cheering us on. Really cool.
The other race took a little longer. Vernette Cantrell died on Wednesday and was buried on Saturday. She was nearly 96. She started her race a long time before I ever thought about running. My guess is she passed through a lot of battlefields on her run and saw a lot of friends come and go along the way. She had been married to my father-in-law for 10 years, after both his wife and her husband had already finished their races.
Vernette was an amazing woman. She gave her life to the church and counted doctors, college professors, and pastors in her family. Not to mention the fact that for 10 years she loved my father-in-law and our family and allowed us to love her. She and Pa, Doris’s dad, supported me and accepted me during my most stupid years, and cheered for my recovery over the last 8.
Speaking of cheering, at her funeral on Saturday the church was full of people she had impacted, ministers she had helped, and the two families she had loved. We sang her favorite songs, told stories about her and laughed, wept together over scripture, took her to the cemetery then went into the fellowship hall and ate fried chicken and potato salad in her honor. It was quite a finish to a race well run.
I haven’t finished that one yet but I am running it. And so are you. Someday, when we’ve crossed the last finish line some people will gather around what is left of us on this planet and sing our favorite songs, tell stories about us, weep over scripture, take us to a cemetery and throw dirt in our face. Then they will go back to the church and eat fried chicken and potato salad. And all that will matter at that point is how well we ran the race. Did we love God? Were we good to the people He gave to us? Did we open ourselves up to love and be loved? Were we honest about our faults and realistic about our failures? Most of the stuff we are worrying about today will not even be on the radar screen. As Paul said, “I have fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith. Now there is waiting for me my reward, a crown of righteousness.” On Saturday Vernette crossed the finish line and I am very sure was handed a huge crown of righteousness by our Amazing Savior. Pretty good deal, huh?
Craig and I got a T-shirt. Keep running. Mike

God Loves You for the Email Tell Us So

I wrote an email this morning to a friend. I asked her permission to share it with you. I hope you'll take the time to read it. As usual, the names and details are changed to protect confidentiality but the story is true. God does love you. I write these for the Branches newsletter (www.branchesrecoverycenter.com) but not everyone on the internet gets the newsletter. Go figure...



Dear Friend,

It's 2 o'clock in the morning and both of us should be asleep. I know I'm not and I'm guessing you may not be either. Instead I'm sitting on the couch watching the lightning flash and thinking about how much God loves us. Not us as in "He's got the whole world in His hands" but us as in me and you, specifically, by name, in person you there and me here, He loves us.
I had a typical day today. I saw a woman who is so depressed she can hardly get her head off the pillow. The I saw a young professional man whose sexual sin has become so hideous that he has lost his family and pretty much everything he holds dear. I saw a guy that is wracked with the guilt and shame. Next I saw Doris for lunch. (She's not crazy I just saw her for lunch and it was great). I finished the afternoon by sitting with a couple that is watching their love for each other disintegrate over a struggle to understand intimacy. And then a beautiful, Godly, really neat woman who has spent her whole life trying to perform just right to please a God that she thinks is unpleasable and sees her as a miserable failure.
You know what? I only have one message for each one of them. God loves them. Not as a group, or in a general sense. I mean He knows each one of them by name and He knows their story and He loves them with this incredible, undying, everlasting love. He really loves them. and if somehow I could just help them see that everyone of their situations would be a thousand times better. Oh, they would still have stuff. They might still need medicine, and have more bills than paycheck. They might even still get divorces and struggle with sin. But they would know that God loves them for who they are, that He's crazy about them and He wants more than anything to help them get things on the right track and to find a peace that, well, that is beyond understanding.
If I could only help them see that but heck, half the time I forget it myself. It is such a simple concept. And most of us know it in our heads. A lot of us even believe it in our hearts...for everybody else. But not for ourselves. "For God so loved the world" is really not about the world at all. It's about me. And its about you. Its about a huge, magnificent, incredible God, calling my name and saying, "Hey, you with the too big nose and thinning hair, I am absolutely crazy about you. I think you are the greatest thing since sliced bread. I really do love you."
No wonder Paul said, "I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in God's love, might have the power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is for you. and to know this love that surpasses knowledge." Even Paul knew that you and me would have a hard time really getting it. God loves us.
When I was in my darkest days I had a cd that I used to play a thousand times a day. Actually just one song, over and over and over again. It was my sister singing, "God loves you,and He wants you to know, He is with you. You are not alone. He will see you through. God loves you." I love to hear my sister sing. I still listen to it a couple of times a week. That is the lesson if we all could get, well, we'd be okay. And tonight, at 2 o'clock in the morning it is the lesson just for you. He loves you. Not because He's God and He's supposed to but because you are you and He wants to. Now go to bed and get some sleep. You're hard to love when you're cranky. Mike

Boundaries, Zombies, and Freedom

I had an idea the other day. I was talking to a young friend who is having a difficult time establishing and making boundaries in his life. He gets into trouble because he hasn’t decided where his life begins and other peoples ends. Paul says in Ephesians 4:14 that when we are like that we are like a ship adrift on a sea, “tossed about by every wave of new ideas.” We are easily persuaded to do this thing that we might not otherwise do or go to this place that we might otherwise not go.

So I suggested to my young friend that he write out a short list of a few rules to live by, things that he would operate by when the pressure came from other places to make a bad decision. He jumped all over that. He was so excited. “Dude,” he exclaimed. (I love to be included in the dude crowd.) “Dude, that’s just like the movie Zombieland. This guy had a bunch of rules that helped him to not get eaten by the zombies.” Well, what do you know? I had no idea that I was so artistically in tune with the creator of such a cinematic classic. I am so blessed to know that Mike Courtney, Cecil B. DeMille and the director of Zombieland have similar genius.

Cecil B. DeMille, in case you miss my witty reference directed The Ten Commandments. Remember Charlton Heston and the Red Sea and God writing His rules on a tablet of stone. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so witty after all. But the problem is that many of us think rules, ours or God’s, take away our freedom and make us zombies. We just stumble around with our arms straight out and our eyes have closed doing what we are told to do and not allowed to have any fun or be our own person.

Obviously you’ve missed the finer nuances of that work of art. In Zombieland it was the rules that kept the guy from getting eaten. The people without rules got caught and turned into zombies. In other words boundaries and commandments and living according to God’s plan for us, rather that impeding our freedom actually keeps us free. When I make Jon-Mical, my grandson, hold my hand while we walk across the parking lot, I know that I am keeping him free by not letting him get hurt by a life without rules. Paul again talks about that in Romans 5 and 6 when he says that without the law we wouldn’t know what sin is. And without sin we wouldn’t know what grace is. Dudes, let me put that in words you can understand. If it weren’t for rules you wouldn’t know the zombies from the, well from the dudes and dudettes. And if you didn’t recognize the zombies you wouldn’t know how good it is to not be a zombie. Get it?

Well, let me try one more time. Knowing and living by the boundaries that God has placed in my life does not take my freedom away. In fact, it keeps me from the many pitfalls in life that would destroy both me and my freedom. So the rules in fact keep me free and that is a wonderful gift from God. No wonder the Psalmist says, “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.” Psalm 16:6
On this weekend when we celebrate our freedom and remind ourselves of how great it is to not be a zombie perhaps I should also thank God for the rules that are in place that make my freedom in Him and in life possible. I am so grateful for the boundaries. Now pass me the popcorn, dude, the movies about to start.

Mike

Nothing to Prove and Nothing to Hide

I went to South Carolina this weekend, to a reunion of a youth choir I was a part of 40 years ago. I have never been very good at reunions. There is usually too much trying to impress, trying to look good, trying to put on a show. And that’s all from me. But this was different. It was great to see old friends, some I hadn’t seen for more than 3 decades. Kids I hung out with, leaders I looked up to, and men and women that spoke God into my life in a way that I will never forget.
They asked me to sing a song that I sang way back then. When it was over, TW, one of those great men said, “I remember when you sang that song 40 years ago. It was better then.” He was right but it was really fun anyway. We sang. We laughed. We told old stories. And we remembered.
There is a saying in the 12 Steps meeting that I go to a lot. The way to real peace is to have nothing to prove and nothing to hide. Can I brag for just a minute? I think the reason this visit was so good was that I am finally learning to live that way. And it feels good.
To live life in the moment, not focusing on the past or the future but trusting God for the here and now is joyful and the source of peace. It takes away the insane need to be something I am not for people I don’t even know, or for those I do. Some days I do that well. Other days, not so much. But I keep trying. I think it’s what Paul had in mind when he says, “Forgetting those things which are behind…I press on.”
Now don’t get me wrong. There are deep regrets from my past. When I am with old friends I can’t help but think about those people that I hurt, that I let down in my many failures. But putting my trust in God keeps me from dwelling on those things or taking on the shame of the past. When I know that I am lost in His love and covered by His blood, well, that’s enough in any group.
So I am suggesting for you that you quit worrying so much about what others think and start reminding yourself of how He feels about you. He loves you “with an everlasting love.” “He will never leave you or forsake you.” “He delights in you and rejoices over you with singing.” Keep all of that in mind and go visit some old friends. Be yourself and let them love you.
As for me, I plan to keep on living one day at a time. I’m not going to spend my energy trying to impress other people. Except I need to lose a little weight, maybe get my hair colored just a little, I wonder if I could get a tuck under my chin. Be blessed. Mike