Sweet Sorrow: Finding Hope in the Face of Death

Today a friend of mine breathed her last breath and went to be with Jesus. I’m writing this through tears, but not for the reasons you might think. Please allow me a few minutes to explain; I promise it will be worth your time.

I haven’t known Julie long. Five weeks ago, a friend of mine from church called me and asked me to come speak with Julie. She explained that Julie had been battling liver and kidney disease for years and that the doctors had only given her a matter of weeks to live.

When I first saw Julie, she looked like she already had one foot in the grave. Her body was frail, her shoulders were bowed under the weight of her prognosis, and her eyes were haunted with a mixture of sadness and resignation.

Without thinking, I blurted the first greeting that came to mind: “Hi, I’m Eric. How’re you doing?”

She just looked at me with a look that said, “Really, that’s the best you’ve got?” and then she said matter-of-factly, “I’m dying.”

I may have held my smile, but inside I was thinking, “Mayday, Mayday!”

Over the next hour, Julie and I talked about the diagnosis, the overwhelming sadness, the fear she had as she faced her own mortality. She spoke of her concern for her husband, who had already lost both his parents and was in denial about her impending death. And as I listened, I heard Julie’s hopelessness. She was barreling at full speed towards a cliff in a car without a steering wheel and she was powerless to stop it, powerless to avoid the crash.

What do you say to someone who has no hope?
What words can you say that won’t come off sounding trite and dismissive?

I could only think of one thing to tell her, one thing that has given me hope in the midst of my own sorrow: words that comforted me as I held my wife’s hand through not one but two miscarriages. Words that I held onto like a drowning man as I watched my second-born son (born 11 weeks prematurely) laying in an incubator struggling to breathe through lungs that were not yet fully formed. I shared the words that gave me hope in the midst of my darkest valleys, when the shadow of death blotted out the sun and cast everything in somber shades of gray.

They are words that Jesus spoke to his disciples as he was sharing his last meal with them, as he was facing his own impending death. He looked at his closest friends and warned them, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart for I have overcome the world.”

There’s no way his disciples could have understood what he meant at that time; they were still thinking he was going to be a conquering king, not a suffering servant who would die to give us life. But Jesus’ words came to have deep meaning to them after that first Easter, when they saw the empty tomb and saw their risen Lord. His words gave them hope in the face of the trials and persecution they faced, and they continue to give hope to Christ-followers today as we live our lives in this sin-scarred world.

In this world we will experience pain, we will be persecuted for our faith, relationships will suffer, our bodies will break down, and we will taste death. BUT we can take heart in the fact that because of what Jesus did on the cross 2000 years ago and because of the fact that he rose from the dead, he has overcome the world. This is the hope that we have in Jesus, that the brokenness of this world doesn’t get the last word: that broken relationships don’t get the last word, that broken bodies don’t get the last word, that kidney and liver failure don’t get the last word and that even the grave doesn’t get the last word.

God does.

I shared this with Julie as she sat staring at her hands, lost in her thoughts. And I told her that I couldn’t even begin to imagine what she was going through, but that Jesus could. He’d faced his own mortality, embraced it willingly, because he loved us more than he feared the suffering he was about to endure. But he also rose from the grave, conquering death and declaring once and for all that sin and brokenness and death don’t get the last word. I told Julie that because Jesus is alive, she didn’t need to face what was coming alone. She could invite him to walk with her through this, as her comforter and guide.

Julie chose to embrace Jesus as her savior and her lord that day. She accepted the gift of grace that he’d bled out on a cross to purchase for her. And I left her with a hug and a promise to follow up with her in a few days.

Later that week, I went to visit Julie and her husband Dan at their home. When I saw her, I once again said the first thing that sprang to mind, “How’re you doing?” (I’m a slow learner). Now, keep in mind, she was still dying, her body was still emaciated and frail, but she looked at me with eyes that were full of hope and she said, “I’m tired, but I feel at peace in the midst of this.” She had a totally different countenance, because she knew that because of her faith, her disease won’t get the last word.

That day, she requested two things of me: First, she asked me to baptize her as a public declaration of her decision to follow Jesus for the rest of her brief life and beyond. And then she asked me to officiate her funeral. Talk about conflicting emotions. Of course I said yes, though like her husband I wanted to focus on the former, not the latter.

So three weeks ago, I gathered with Julie, her husband and 20 of her closest friends on Balboa Island to celebrate her commitment to following Jesus. And you know what? Far from being a depressing memorial service for a dying woman, it was a celebration of a living hope in her living Savior and Lord.

                         

This morning, Julie’s body gave up the fight. She spent her final hours laying in a hospital bed, with her husband Dan laying next to her, holding her frail body as a morphine drip took the edge off her pain. And then, at 5:30 this morning, Julie passed from her husband’s arms into Jesus’ arms. She is out of pain, free from the brokenness of this sin-scarred world.

Goodbye, Julie. Thank you for all you’ve taught me in the short time I’ve known you. I will miss talking with you, miss getting encouraging voice mails telling me you’re praying for me, miss getting to pray with you. But I take solace in the knowledge that I will see you again – that your death doesn’t get the last word.

God does!

Marriage: Contract or Covenant?

God designed marriage as a covenantal relationship between two imperfect people and Himself. He is the third strand that strengthens it and protects a relationship from being easily broken. But we live in a contract-based society.

Take our cell-phones for instance. I go into the store and pick out a phone. If I were to simply buy the phone it would cost me $700, but if I sign a 2-year contract that says I’ll buy my cell service from them every month, they will give me the phone for $100. They scratch my back so that I’ll scratch theirs. But what if I find a better plan a few months later? No problem, I can just pay a sum of money and break the contract. The tacit agreement between the consumer and the producer is this: So long as the producer supplies me with something that meets my expectations at a price that I’m willing to pay, they will get my business. However, as soon as they are no longer meeting my expectations or the cost exceeds my perceived value or there is someone offering a better product at a smaller cost, then I’m out. 

Now, this works well in a consumer-based society; in fact, that’s what drives our economy. But it becomes a dangerous mindset to bring into a marriage, because marriages are not intended to be contracts, but rather covenants. What’s the difference? Well, it all comes down to our focus. A contract is me-focused (I enter into it to meet my needs.) A covenant is we-focused (we enter into it to mutually meet one another’s needs).

Contract                          vs.                        Covenant
What will it take?	Whatever it takes!
I’ll meet your needs IF you meet mine.	I’ll strive to meet your needs, regardless.
I’ll meet you half way.	I’ll give 100%.
What do I get?  (self-focused)	What can I give? (Other-focused)
For as long as we both shall love.	For as long as we both shall live.
Conditional and impermanent.	Unconditional and permanent.

Our society treats marriage as a legal contract that can easily be dissolved or broken for any number of reasons: “We fell out of love.” “He just wasn’t meeting my needs” (in other words, he wasn’t living up to my expectations). “We have irreconcilable differences.” This, by the way, is the number one reason people give for divorcing. And it’s undoubtedly true, because every couple has irreconcilable differences. Every couple is made up of two people who have different perspectives and different desires, and no matter how similar they are they will always have differences. The question is what do we do when we come face to face with them?

If you view your marriage as a contract, then as soon as you run face-first into one of your differences, you will naturally begin to look for an out. You will begin to compare your marriage to your perception of others’ marriages, or you will begin to resent your spouse for failing to live up to their end of the agreement. Suddenly, you find yourself flirting with the idea that this isn’t your fault, you just married the wrong person. And once you begin to embrace that idea, you’ve unwittingly unlocked the back door to your marriage.

But if you view your marriage as a covenant rather than a contract, then you will recognize that there simply is no backdoor to marriage. Despite what our society or our legal system say, the marriage bond is permanent, not because we are perfect people who perfectly keep our vows, but rather because it was God who unites us as husband and wife. Jesus himself said that “what God has joined together, no man has the authority to separate” (Matthew 19:6). In other words, the covenant between a husband, wife and their God is unconditional and permanent.

This alters the way we approach our differences, doesn’t it? When there is no back door to marriage, this means that we are in it for the long haul, despite our differences and disappointments. Since there’s no backing out, when we encounter conflict as we inevitably will, it does us no good to grow resentful and detached. Instead of pulling away, the covenant reminds us to lean in and fight for our marriage – this includes working through the disagreements, seeking to understand one another’s perspective, and striving to articulate our perspective in a tone and manner that won’t put our spouse on the defensive. The covenantal perspective of marriage reminds us that we are one flesh, partners unified in our commitment to God and one another, not for a season or until we’ve lost that loving feeling, but for the rest of our lives.

This may sound like a heavy burden - a life sentence even - but it is really a blessing. Since there’s no backdoor to marriage, it forces us to work through the hard stuff and face our differences head on. And as the saying goes, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. I can say from experience that my marriage has not only survived but thrived because my wife and I couldn’t run away from our conflict. Sure we fight and we get emotionally overwhelmed at times, but at the end of the day we both know that God can help us navigate around any obstacle we face, even if we don’t see a way through. And so, after a brief cooling off period, we turn our hearts back towards our spouse and, with God’s help, we get back to work, because we know that we’re not in it alone. God is with us, and if He’s with us, even our irreconcilable differences don’t stand a chance.    

A Biblical Perspective on the Upcoming Election

A few weeks ago, I went to the optometrist to get my eyes checked (Ah, the joys of aging). She had me sit down in a seat and stare through a big set of goggles at a picture on the far wall. Admittedly, the picture looked pretty fuzzy all that way across the room. Then, she started flipping lenses in front of my eyes. Some of these lenses further obscured the picture, but a few of them really helped bring it into focus. I left her office with a prescription for reading glasses, which she said are optional at this time but will probably be necessary before too long. And while I may not be quite ready to take that leap and pick out frames, I did leave with a newfound appreciation for the difference the right lenses can have on the way we view the world.

If there was ever a time we could use a new perspective, it’s right now as we prepare for the upcoming presidential election. I cannot recall an election that has been more polarizing and emotionally charged. We are used to seeing candidates slug it out, though this round seems far more ugly and personal than normal, but what I’m not used to is the way it’s caused so much division and anger between friends and neighbors. I’ve seen friends belittle one another on social media for hinting that they’d vote for one candidate over another. I’ve watched a protest in my own community that, like so many others, turned ugly and ended in physical violence and property destruction. I’ve even had a few people leave my church because someone in the congregation made a comment or forwarded them an email that supported one candidate over the other. As a pastor, this election has made my heart heavy.

Now, typically we only look at an election through the lenses of political pundits and social media, but I've found that these sources only stir up more fear and agitation. What we truly need is a new perspective on this election, one that is based on something more solid than the shifting sands of public opinion and partisan politics. My hope is that, in the following paragraphs, I can do for this election what my optometrist did for the picture on the wall - bring it into perspective through the use of some different lenses.

As a Christ-follower, I can think of no better framework to look at this election through than the Bible. It is the living, active and inspired word of God and it has outlasted nations and political movements. So the lenses I will use are biblical perspectives that can help us bring this election into focus.


Lens 1: As Christ-Followers, we are all foreigners.

A lot has been said this election about foreigners entering our country and living here. Ironically, if we call Jesus our Lord and Savior, then we ourselves are foreigners living in a land this not truly our home.

In the opening verse of 1 Peter, Peter addresses his letter to “God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.” You might think that Peter is writing to Jews who have been driven from the Promised Land due to persecution. But in fact, he is writing this letter primarily to Gentile Christians who are currently living in the same towns and provinces where they were born. So what makes them exiles? The fact that through their faith in Jesus Christ, their citizenship has shifted. They are no longer identified by the kingdom into which they were born; they are now identified as members of the Kingdom of God.

This same recognition led the Apostle Paul to write “our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20).

Why does this matter? Because sometimes we get so focused on this world and the things in it that we forget that this isn’t our final destination. We may be American citizens, but being an American is a temporary condition. America is not our primary residence. If you have accepted Jesus’ invitation to follow him, you are not an American Christian, you are a Christian who happens to live in America. Our identity is fundamentally changed.

And yet, sometimes it feels as if our patriotism to this country overshadows our devotion to our God. Many of us spend more time worrying about the politics of this world than we do the values of the Kingdom of God. Here are a couple questions to consider:

• Do you look to a candidate or a political party as the solution to the issues we face?
• Do you spend more time reading articles, watching the news and browsing your social media feed than you do spending time with God and meditating on his word?
  
• Do you pay taxes, but resist giving a tithe?
  
• Are you more outspoken about your political perspective than you are your faith?
  
• Are you more concerned with the shifting morality of our nation than you are looking into your own heart and recognizing the ways you have resisted submitting to God?
  
• Are you more patriotic for America than you are for Jesus? 

The first thing we need to remember as we approach this election is that our primary allegiance is not to a presidential candidate or a political party, it’s to the Creator and Sustainer of the world, the one who rescued us out of darkness and gave Himself for us so that we can be called sons and daughters of God.

If we forget that, if we take our eyes off of God and look to a political party or a politician to fix the brokenness around us, not only will we be sorely disappointed, but we stumble into the same trap that the religious leaders of Jesus’ day fell into. They longed to see God’s Kingdom come and His will be done on earth, but their idea of how God would accomplish this was different from how God actually planned to accomplish it. They were awaiting the Messiah, God’s anointed redeemer, but their expectations of what this Messiah should look like had been irrevocably influenced by the power structures of the world around them, indelibly marked by a culture that said things like “might makes right,” “we advance by crushing our enemies” and “compromise is acceptable so long as the ends justify the means.“

Because of this, when their Messiah actually did show up, they couldn’t recognize him. Despite the fact that Jesus was doing what God said he would do - driving out demons, healing the sick, binding up the broken and breaking down strongholds - they viewed him as a pretender to the throne. What’s more, they viewed him as a danger to the status quo, because if Rome viewed him as a rebel, it could actually cost them their comfortable positions within the political environment of the day. So what did they do? They sought to shut him up and, when that didn’t work, they clamored for his death. They compromised in order to retain what little control they had by declaring their allegiance to Rome (the political power broker of their day) rather than embracing their King.

May we not forget that we are temporary residents in this world, citizens of the Kingdom of God, living in a world that does not share our values. May we never put our faith in a politician or a political party, because at the end of the day they are not our savior – last time I checked, Jesus was. Similarly, America is not the hope of the world - Jesus is.

This brings us to our second perspective shift –


Lens 2: Though only temporary residents, we still have a responsibility to be God’s representatives.

Despite the fact that we are citizens of another Kingdom (the Kingdom of God) and living here as foreigners, that doesn’t mean we have no responsibility for the place in which we live. We were designed by God to be His representatives and called to be ambassadors of hope to a hurting world (2 Corinthians 5:17-20). This leads the Apostle Peter to write:

“Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 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 us. ” (1 Peter 2:11-12)

How we live our lives matter, because we are God’s representatives. We reflect (albeit imperfectly) the heart of our King to the world around us. And our actions speak far more loudly than our words.

We are surrounded by people who live and think differently than us: the unmarried couple living together next door or the kid who is covered in tattoos and has his stereo turned up so high it makes your windows rattle. How we treat people like them declares to the world the sort of God that we serve, for better or worse. When someone accuses us of being bigoted or racist or sexist or closed-minded just because we call ourselves a Christ follower, how we respond shows them the sort of God we serve. Do we respond with love? Or do we return tit for tat, meet anger with anger, hatred with hatred? We can claim that God is love all day long, but how we respond to people that disagree with our political perspective says more to the world than our words. 

Furthermore, we are called to reflect the values of the Kingdom of God, despite how contrary they are to the values of the world in which we reside. While the world says to destroy your enemies, either with words or weapons, Jesus told us to love our enemies and to pray for them. In a world that honors the strong and celebrates the victors who climb to the top over the broken backs of their competition, Jesus said that the greatest in the Kingdom of God will be a servant and put others well-being above their own.

So, as aliens and strangers here, citizens of a foreign country living in a broken, sin scarred world, we are called to embrace and exhibit the values of the kingdom of God, called to be representatives of our true King. Of course this doesn’t give us permission to simply disregard the laws and leadership of the land in which we reside. Peter continues:

“Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor” (1 Peter 2:13-17).

Notice that we submit ourselves to the leadership of this land “for the Lord’s sake.” We are his representatives, his ambassadors, and as such we don’t flaunt our freedoms, but we do live as representatives of the Kingdom of God.

Now, I want to be very clear about something. Just because we’re citizens of another Kingdom living in exile doesn’t mean that we disregard the upcoming election or refuse to do our civic duty of voting. After all, as Christ followers we are called to be stewards of what God has entrusted to our care, and our vote is one of those things. On November 8, we have an opportunity to give voice to our values through voting (not just for the top of the ticket, which is where we’ve spent the vast majority of our time focusing, but all the way down the ballot on issues that will impact our community as well as our country). To refuse to vote is about as effective as burying the talent our master has entrusted to us in the ground (Matthew 25:14-30).

However, I want us to remember that our vote is not the only tool we have for shaping and influencing our community. We may only go to the polls once a year, but we vote every single day for the kind of community we want to live in by the choices we make. We vote for the kind of community we want to live in by how we treat our neighbors, by the ways we spend our money, by the values that direct our actions and by the places where we volunteer.

I love the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, written to the Israelites as they found themselves living in exile, in a land that was not their true home. He said, “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jeremiah 29:7).

This may not be our permanent home, but as ambassadors of our King, we have a responsibility to care for the community in which we reside, and to pray for it. This includes praying for our leaders - even the ones we didn’t vote for - because they have been entrusted with the weight of leadership, and our God can and does use even bad leaders to bring about His good and perfect will.

This brings us to our third lens:

Lens 3: Regardless of who wins the election November 8, God is in control.
“Make your motions and cast your vote, but God has the final say” (Proverbs 16:33, MSG).

The message of scripture is that, while man has free will and we make choices that affect our reality (such as electing who will govern our country), God still works behind the scenes to bring about his perfect will. Now, at times it might seem like God has lost control and the inmates are running the asylum, but scripture is full of reminders that we might plot our course, but the Lord ultimately directs our steps (Proverbs 16:9).

We may be wringing our hands about what might happen on November 8, but the outcome is no surprise to our God. He already knows what will happen. He already sees how our choices will affect our temporary home, how it will shape our society. What’s more, He can and will use the outcome of the election to bring about His purpose and plans, even if what He wants isn’t exactly what we would have expected or asked for.

Let me give you an example. Consider the Israelites living as slaves in Egypt during the time of Moses. They would sit around the fire, recounting the story of their ancestor Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, then falsely accused of sexual harassment by a spiteful woman and ultimately thrown into jail. Yet, God used these circumstances to place Joseph into the right place at the right time so that he could rise to power and save the Israelites from the coming famine. They would remember Joseph’s words to his brothers – “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20). God used his brother’s jealousy, their decision to sell their brother into slavery, even a false accusation to place Joseph right where He wanted him.

And then, as these Israelites sat around the fire, with weary muscles and calloused hands from a lifetime of slave labor, they’d consider their current leader - Pharaoh. He was so different from the Egyptian ruler that had entrusted Joseph with power. This Pharaoh didn’t treat them as honored guests – he’d enslaved them. I would imagine that the Israelites of Moses’ day probably didn’t think that God had any control over their circumstances, probably felt that the Pharaoh in power was the wrong candidate. If they had been given a vote, they almost certainly wouldn’t have voted for him – maybe they’d have looked to Moses as their candidate for change.

Yet, God allowed Pharaoh to sit on the throne of the most powerful nation in the world, not because he was a Godly leader, but because our Creator was going to use Him to bring about His purpose and plan. Listen to what God told Pharaoh: “By now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth” (Exodus 9:15-16).

Don't think that someone is in power because our God has no control - they are in power because our God has allowed it and He plans to use them to advance His purpose and plans. Nations rise and fall, presidents come and go, but our God never changes - He never fails.

That’s not to say that we won’t suffer or endure persecution. In fact, if we take Jesus at his word, we are guaranteed to be persecuted for our faith (John 15:18-21). After all, we are foreigners living in a land that is at odds with our Lord and King. And just as they sought to silence Jesus, they will seek to silence us. However, just because we suffer persecution doesn’t mean God has lost and the brokenness of this world has won.

As I look around, I recognize the ways that God uses even persecution to advance His purposes and plans. It was persecution that prompted Rome to crucify Jesus. It was persecution that motivated the spread of the Gospel (Acts 8:1-4). And as I look around right now, the gospel is making the greatest impact in those areas of our world where Christ-followers are experiencing the greatest levels of persecution, places like China and the Middle East.

No one likes to be persecuted, but it seems that persecution actually promotes spiritual growth, so perhaps the greatest good that can come from this election is that the American people select politicians and policies that will further the persecution of the church. I’m not saying that’s the way I’m voting. I’m just saying that God’s ways are not always our ways and what we see as a setback might actually be a huge step forward. Regardless of the outcome of this election, we can have confidence that our God is on the throne, not only of our hearts, but of all of creation. Furthermore, although we don’t know what the path ahead looks like, we can rest assured that our Father in Heaven does and that His Kingdom will come and His will will be done.

So on Tuesday, November 8, go to a polling station and vote. Elect a temporary leader for our temporary home. But don’t forget that we are foreigners living in this land, and God is our true King. While we reside here we are called to be His ambassadors, reflecting His loving heart to our hurting world in both word and deed. Just remember, despite the outcome of this or any election, our God is in control and He will bring about His purpose and plans in this world and the one to come.

Majoring on the Minors

“When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s hard to remember

 that your primary objective was to drain the swamp” (anonymous).

I’m a pastor of a small community church, which means that I am regularly involved in the messiness of people’s lives. At any point of the week, I might need to be a marriage counselor, career coach, AA sponsor, handyman, volunteer coordinator, financial planner, crisis counselor, or prayer intercessor. And Sunday still comes the same time every week. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I love what I do. I love walking with a couple as they prepare for a lifetime of marriage. I love coming alongside a family who is reeling from the death of a loved one in order to comfort and help them through the grieving process. But those are secondary responsibilities inherent in the pastor’s role; they are not the main focus.

You see, try as I might, I will never be someone’s savior. I will never be able to truly heal, fix or free anyone from addiction, depression, or spiritual apathy. Sure, I try. I come alongside them and lovingly support them in any way that I can, but at the end of the day I can’t save anyone – I can’t make them grow or change them in any way. Only God can.

Sometimes I forget that I’m not called to be people’s savior; 

I’m called to point them to the savior. 

The Apostle Paul understood this fact. In his first letter to the Corinthian church, he exclaimed, “when I came to you, I didn’t not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Cor. 2:1-5).  If my efforts throughout the week or on Sundays don’t connect people to Jesus Christ, then I’m nothing more than an entertainer, or, worse yet, a guide who is leading people along the wrong path.

Now, if I really believe that my ultimate purpose is to nurture their spiritual intimacy with Jesus, then EVERYTHING I do needs to be filtered through that: my teaching, my approach to weddings, funerals and counseling, the programs we implement and promote at the church – everything! And I need to constantly be asking myself, “Does this help connect people with Christ? Does this help me fulfill the Great Commission of making disciples (followers) of Jesus, baptizing them in His name and teaching them to obey all his teachings?” Because if it doesn’t, then it’s probably not worth the effort.

But as I assess how I’m actually pastoring right now, I recognize a major issue – I don’t control God. I can’t invoke His presence any more than I can force His hand to my bidding. He’s God; I’m not. So the fruitfulness of my efforts is dependent upon God. And my ministry has to be steeped in prayerful intimacy with God. After all, I’m a disciple before I’m ever a discipler; I’m a part of Christ’s flock before I’m ever a shepherd of His church. I can’t lead where He hasn't taken me; I can’t impart what He hasn't already given me. 

As both a pastor and a follower of Jesus Christ, I have to make prayer my steering wheel, not my spare tire. Otherwise, I might succeed in the external, but fail in the eternal. I might build a huge church, make a name for myself as an eloquent, insightful teacher, bind the wounds of hurting people and send them back out to the front lines, but in the end the fruits of my efforts won’t last, because they will be the crumbling fruit of human effort. 

I don’t want to indoctrinate people into a philosophical worldview; I want to introduce them to their creator and sustainer. I don’t want to comfort them as they drown in sin; I want to impel them to the savior of their souls. What’s more, I don’t want to get so focused on “doing” the ministry through my own strength that I forget to nourish and invest in my own relationship with God. Like Paul, I need to discipline my flesh into submission to Christ, “so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize” (1 Cor. 9:27).

So I guess these are my marching orders: Pursue Christ in everything that I do, and point those whom God has entrusted to my care towards the true shepherd of their souls.
Bring on the New Year!

Life by Committee

You’ve heard the saying, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Well, to be frank, I don’t get into the woods nearly enough to care about the warning cries of lonely trees, but here’s a question that made me stop and think this morning: “If something happens in my life and I don’t post it to social media, does it still matter?”

Laugh all you want, but to me this is a real conundrum! I mean, here I am playing with my kids; one of them does something hilarious and I don’t think, “They are so cute. I’m so grateful to be their daddy.” No, the first thought that flies through my overly publicized mind is, “Oh, I wish I had taken a picture of that, so that everyone would know what cute, brilliant kids I have.”(They are, in fact, both cute and brilliant, but that’s beside the point.)

Or I go body surfing in the stillness of the morning, sharing the waves with only the pelicans and a pod of dolphin. When a couple of the dolphin steal the wave I was about to ride, my first thought isn’t, “How amazing is this! I wonder if I could ride one” (though the thought did cross my mind). No, I think, “man, I need to get a Go-Pro with a waterproof housing so I can record this!”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love social media and the way it allows me to eavesdrop on my friends’ lives (or at least the sanitized, glamorized parts of their lives that they choose to broadcast). And I love the way that I can share moments from my life with my extended circles of family and friends (especially the ones that make me look adventurous, romantic, insightful and awesome). The point of this rant isn’t to critique the shallowness of social media relationships, though that is an issue in our already narcissistic, self-promoting culture. Rather, the point of this is to confess that my desire to construct an epic social-media presence actually hinders me from being present, truly present, with the flesh-and-blood people right in front of me (primarily my wife and kids).

Most family holidays are consumed not by having deep, meaningful conversations with my extended family. Rather, they are consumed by getting that one shot of my boys and all their cousins looking into the camera at the same time (we’ve long since given up trying to get them all to smile at the same time. Heck, I can’t even get my two boys to do that, let alone a hoard of two to five-year-olds). By the end of each family gathering, my wife and I are left exhausted and frustrated, with the sneaking suspicion that we have once again missed out on truly connecting with our extended family. But we do have a bunch of pictures to show what a great time we had!

Methinks that my social-media life is getting in the way of my real life. I have begun to exchange reality, with all its wonderfully mundane moments, for some glamorized online facsimile. Because, let’s be honest, in this day and age, it doesn’t really matter how much fun you had, or how beautiful the sunset you shared with your spouse was, or how awesome your children really are, unless you have at least 25 people who agree with you through their “likes” and their comments. The more online feedback you get, the better it must have been! Oh, the wonders of living life by committee.

Hit “like” or comment below if you agree (only then will I know that my private musings matter). J

Occupation vs. Vocation

 “Our occupation is how we make a living… Our vocation, on the other hand, is what we’re inherently wired for. It’s less likely to consist of a set of tasks and more likely to consist of a set of themes.”  – The Accidental Creative p. 210

“An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence”  - Honore’ de Balzac

The English language is full of words that, while seemingly synonymous, actually communicate radically different things. For instance, take “politician” and “public servant.” While both could be used interchangeably, the latter is, by definition, focused on others, while it seems that the former is often focused on his or herself. Another set of false synonyms is “occupation” and “vocation.” While both words refer to something that we do, a job or profession, the similarities stop there. 

An occupation, from the Latin occupatio, means "to occupy or fill a position." Doesn’t sound all that glamorous, does it? It’s just a big word for “taking up space.”  And that’s just what most occupations do—they take up your time and energy in exchange for a paycheck. Occupations are those things that we do to pay the bills; those things we have to do, but which we dream of retiring from.  In contrast, a vocation is something that we do for the joy of it, whether we’re paid for it or not. It’s an activity that we happily invest our life into and never think about retiring from.

While an occupation is a job, a vocation is a calling. In fact, the word “vocation,” from the Latin vocare, means “calling.” When we take our God-given skills, abilities and values into consideration, a vocation is that thing we find ourselves naturally drawn towards, that thing that we do because we love it, because it matters deeply to us, and that that we would do if money weren’t an issue.

Though our vocation may be tied to a job or career choice, it’s not necessarily the same thing. Consider the Apostle Paul. Paul’s occupation was tent-making; His vocation was living as an ambassador of Jesus Christ. His occupation allowed him to make money to support his vocation. I suspect that he never questioned whether his tent-making made him happy. I’m sure he was a great tent maker, but that’s not what defined him, that’s not what got him out of bed in the morning. His vocation defined and motivated him. He was a minister of the Gospel, and that’s what kept him going even when he encountered opposition, even when he faced persecution and imprisonment.

I remember the first time that I considered the difference between an occupation and a vocation. I was just out of college and working at an agency doing public relations for the surfing industry. In other words, I got paid to go to surf contests and then write about them. Sounds like every kid’s dream job, right? And for a little while it was. But before too long, I began to get bored. I guess I just didn’t care all that much about who won or lost, and I began to lose my motivation. During one contest, I thought about the surfers I was writing about; whether they won or lost, they were doing what they loved. They would go out and surf even if no one was there watching, even if they never got paid a cent for it. In that moment, I decided that’s what I wanted to do: not surfing, I wanted to find what I loved to do and focus on doing that for the rest of my life. 

I began to consider what I liked to do when I didn’t have something to do; I paid attention to the ways I spent my free time. And before too long I noticed a pattern. I was spending a large part of my free time sitting down with other guys, either being mentored by them or investing into them. Multiple times a week, I would get together with someone to discuss life, where they were going, what they were striving to accomplish and why. I loved it; it never felt like work. Just the opposite – I actually got energized from these conversations.

Around this time, I discovered a little book by Laurie Beth Jones called The Path, which guided me through the process of writing a personal mission statement for my life. Here’s what I came up with:

“I want to invest my life inspiring, encouraging and equipping those who are truly hungry for maturity to pursue a more intimate, transformative relationship with Christ and to live lives that are marked by intentionality and fruitfulness.”

To boil it down into a word, I felt called to “disciple.”Armed with this new lens, I began to examine the myriad options before me. I considered getting a teaching credential, since I figured teaching was one profession that would allow me to talk with impressionable students all day long. But then I realized that if I were going to walk with other people as they wrestled with what they believed, I should probably figure out what I believed so that I wasn’t just taking my parents’ and pastor’s  word for it. So I wound up going to grad school to get a masters degree in Theology.

Fast-forward about a decade. I found myself working as a pastor and teaching some classes at the local Christian college down the street. I had arrived, right? I was finally fulfilling my vocational calling, right? Possibly, but then why was I feeling the same sort of boredom and lack of motivation that I’d felt in my previous “secular” jobs?  While my jobs (pastoring and teaching) were certainly more aligned with my vocation than they had been when I was doing PR for the surfing industry, they still weren’t my vocation. They were my occupation; they paid the bills. Discipleship was my vocation. And yet, I found myself pouring all of my time and energy into my classes, into my sermons, into the myriad responsibilities I had, and my passion to disciple got lost in the shuffle. As I revisited my vocational mission statement, I realized that I’d been focusing on the occupational responsibilities and forgetting to be intentional about my vocational calling to disciple.

As I began to realign my focus, I began to make time to disciple. My church and my classrooms became my fishing ponds where I went looking for new disciples who were hungry to grow in their maturity. In hindsight, I realize that I could have been just as intentional (and possibly just as fruitful) in my previous “secular” occupations, but this was simply part of my development process.

The point is, don’t waste your life filling a space; don’t trade the precious days, months and years God entrusts you with for nothing but a simple paycheck. Don’t spend another day looking for your purpose and fulfillment in an occupation; Ask God to help you discover your vocational calling and invest your life into that, even if you never collect a single paycheck for it.  

Grayson’s Homecoming

On Saturday at 2pm, Cathy and I walked out of Kaiser Anaheim as we had done almost every day for the last 2 and a half months. The only difference was that, this time, our newborn son Grayson was with us. After 56 days in the NICU (68 days if you count the two weeks of hospital bed-rest that Cathy had to undergo prior to Gray’s birth) Grayson was finally coming home.

It’s funny the little things you think about when you’re bringing your infant child home: “This is the first time he’s feeling sunlight.”  “I wish I’d washed the car. This is a momentous occasion and it really deserves a clean vehicle.”  “Dang, Cathy looks hot!”

We loaded our precious cargo into the backseat and Cathy climbed in beside him, while I got behind the wheel. As I pulled onto the 91 freeway and began the 20 mile drive home that has become so familiar, I was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion and my eyes began to overflow with tears. I cried for a lot of reasons:

Exhaustion: Words can’t properly express how grueling the last three months have been. There was a constant stream of demands that needed to happen since the day Cathy went into the hospital – there was the daily care of Ethan that needed to be arranged, work responsibilities, figuring out insurance issues and the little task of finding and moving into a new home that didn’t have mold in it. Then there was the emotional weight that was far heavier than any of the physical demands.

Relief: The last three months were a harrowing trip through the valley of the shadow of death. But as terrifying as each step has been, it could have been so much harder and so much worse. As we sat in the NICU on Friday getting the last minute training we needed to bring a preemie home, I overheard the doctor talking with the father of another child, a little girl named Sabrina. He was explaining that she had lost a little weight and dipped back under 3 lbs. Now, having been in that same position with Grayson some 8 weeks before, I suspected that she was just a newborn, but when I looked at her chart on the wall, I was shocked to see that she was actually older than Grayson by a week. She had been in the NICU 5 days longer than my son but was only just getting to where he had started out. In that moment, I realized just how monumental Grayson’s early release from the hospital was. After all he’d been through, the infections, the pneumonia, the collapsed lungs, and the myriad other challenges he faced, the fact that he was in the back of our car headed home to meet his big brother for the first time some three weeks before he was even supposed to be born was a miracle! Many of my tears were tears of relief that this part of our journey had finally come to a close.

Joy and Gratitude: The rest of my tears were those of a father who was excited to finally be bringing his family together, to finally be able to hold his son whenever he wanted, to be able to carry him in his arms without the intrusion of electronic tethers and squawking monitors.  Finally, after two months of holding my breath and praying for God’s protection, I got to feel the joy of a father with a healthy newborn. And as I drove home, observing the speed limit for the first time, I silently thanked God for this gift of Grayson in the backseat.

As I write this, my boy is sleeping on the couch next to me, swaddled in a warm blanket and apparently dreaming of something judging from his soft grunts and squeals. Every once in a while, he smiles and I feel a serenity that I haven’t felt in months. Peace has come to the Wayman household and I intend to rest in it for a while.

Thank you, God, for the gift of my son. May I never take his life or any of the other gifts you have showered on us for granted. And may you watch over Sabrina and all the other children still in the NICU, using that time not only to prepare them for the rest of their lives, but also to draw their parents into a more intimate dependency on you.