Category Archives: personal

That Time When Jesus Wrecked My Ministry (Well, sorta)

Posted on by
English: Wrecking ball in use during demolition of the Rockwell Gardens housing project in Chicago, Illinois, February 2006.

English: Wrecking ball in use during demolition of the Rockwell Gardens housing project in Chicago, Illinois, February 2006.

I’ve written before about where my ministry shoulders are “broad”, meaning the areas that I feel competent and trained and able to execute fairly easily. When I began to teach and preach regularly a few years back, that started developing into an area of confidence and competence as well. I never thought of myself as a preacher, but I knew that words mattered to me, and somehow (for better or for worse) I was able to string together series of them into phrases and thoughts that seemed to matter to people. It seemed like I could do some good; people came up and affirmed me, and told me how much these thoughts and phrases had challenged them, or helped them to see God in a new way, or comforted them.

A part of me loved every minute of it.

My ego soaked it up, and began to believe all of those words that I heard. Each time I walked up onto our little platform, I desired to be poignant and clever; I wanted to shake people up, to invite them to see God and His world in an awe-filled and worshipful way. I continued to do some kind of good, and accepted people’s compliments with the requisite, “aw shucks” attitude that pastors are supposed to have.

But in retrospect I think that I was rotting inside.

When I began my sabbatical back in January, Jesus started dealing with me in some very serious, foundational ways, and one of the truths that I’ve had to deal with is how full of myself I can be.

My pride can be horrific.

For the past 10 months or so, I’ve been journeying inside myself to find all these nooks and crannies where destruction lives, and attempting to bring them out into the light where God can deal with them in a loving but firm way.

As a result, I’ve begun to feel somewhat like a normal human being.

But what’s been interesting—and even a little scary—is how it has impacted my ministry.

Because I have less confidence than ever.

Because I stumble over words more (maybe our congregation doesn’t notice, but believe me, I do.).

Because I feel empty. (Not in the spiritual way; in the “Watch-me-I-can-get-this-done-just-fine” way.)

Because I feel mostly like I don’t have any idea what I’m doing.

All because Jesus showed up. All because he showed up to show me how ill I truly was, how my ego was destroying me, how my inflated and false sense of self was keeping me from knowing healing and some semblance of love.

He showed up—not because he wanted to tear me down as a pastor—but because he wanted to build me up as a human being. He comes to do that, you know: to turn us into full human beings, like we’ve always been intended to be.

He’s still working on me; I’m still speaking and playing music, and I’m growing used to the idea of not being in control of everything.

He’s better at it than I am.

The Time Jesus and Paul Re-Arranged My Office

Posted on by

traditional-executive-office-furniture-936x728So I’d never had an office before.

I entered the ministry full-time when I was 30. Up until that time I’d worked in some combination of libraries, retail, and the requisite cube farm.

But when I went to work (at a little community church in suburban Chicago), I actually got an office (shared with a good friend, but still: IT HAD A DOOR!).

So my first day there, I worked on arranging things in a way that felt right to me: desk facing the door in the back third of the room, my back to the wall opposite the door, etc.

It looked/felt right, and I was happy.

Just as I got it all set, my boss stopped by and asked how I was settling in. I proudly said I was doing great and feeling good.

Then he said this: “You know, actually you’re going to need to move your desk. See, here at the church we make it a policy to never have our desks in the center of the room; arranging an office this way is a statement of power (it makes your visitors feel subordinate), and we’re not supposed to lead from positions of authority or power, but from positions of servanthood.”

WHAT?

I had mixed emotions, but regardless I pushed my desk against the wall (very NOT feng-shui, in case you’re wondering), and rearranged everything to make it work somehow.

And ever since that’s the way I’ve arranged my church offices (if I have one). In my home office my desk sits in the middle of the room, but if I have visitors I don’t sit at it when I have meetings; we have another area that we can sit down in.

I think we should blame Paul and Jesus.

In multiple gospels, Jesus declares that he didn’t come to be served, but to serve, and that is our model of leadership and influence. In the end, Jesus chose to release his authority and allow himself to be beaten and crucified. Paul, for all of the bad rap that he gets as a chauvinist (which I actually think is a result of bad readings of scripture), continues these thoughts when he repeatedly refers to himself as a servant of his communities. Both of them are not afraid to “tell it like it is,” but it seems to me that the “servant language” trumps the “power language” in the New Testament.

All of this servanthood talk makes me examine (and re-examine) the role power and authority takes in my life.

Servanthood seems to work like a really powerful spice, or yeast: it only takes a little to completely change the flavor of your relationships. You can talk “authority” and “power” an awful lot, but when you kneel down to wash someone’s feet, or choose to listen with your mouth shut instead of telling someone what to do, or when you choose to “make room” for another perspective instead of assuming that everyone needs to think like you do…

… when you make sure your office doesn’t tell the story of how important you are…

… all of these things “flavor” our leadership with an attitude of servanthood that carries the aroma of Jesus and Paul and a compassionate God who in the end emptied Himself of his authority in order to serve the whole world by dying.

Over the years, I’ve become convinced that my boss was absolutely right—that office furniture can tell stories of power and authority. In fact, anything in our lives can. We can talk about servanthood and meekness and gentleness, but if the non-verbal things in our lives contradict our words, people will know.

The challenging question is this: does the non-verbal communication of your life match your words? Do you talk about servanthood but then live out power?

It all speaks. We just need to work to make it all line up.

Professional Faith 2: Have a Plan

Posted on by

I thought I might unpack what a “Professional” Faith might look like in everyday terms.

There are so many options out there, but there are some things that I’ve tried and/or heard about, so maybe they’ll help you get started if you want to get serious about doing the work of becoming a “Gospel Artist” (i.e., partnering with God to create a gospel-shaped life).

NOTE: I believe in the power of a positive secret, so I won’t share exactly what my daily practices are, but if you want to know, contact me directly and I’ll walk you through them. Otherwise, I’ll speak in general terms here and give some resources that have worked for me in the past, some of which I still engage with.

 FIRST A WORD ABOUT TIME…

Martin Luther said somewhere that he was so busy he simply HAD to devote 2-3 hours of every day to prayer.

I think it’s pretty obvious that most of us don’t think that way…

It seems to me that we allow busy-ness to take over, to give it the priority.

To put it succinctly, this puts first things second and second things first. A professional knows his priorities. I was looking through a “productivity system” that was designed by a writer, and at the bottom of every day of his calendar was a place where you write your “Life’s Theme”—the spine that your life is wrapped around. It’s so you constantly know what the most important thing in life really is. A professional faith knows owns up to the fact that the most important creative work we have is the one that produces the gospel-shaped life that God is calling us to produce.

For me that doesn’t just take time; it takes the first, significant portion of my best time.

For myself, I’ve found that I need somewhere between 30 and 70 minutes of focused spiritual time in the morning to maintain my sanity for the day.

I honestly don’t know if that sounds like a lot or a little; to me it’s just what is required.

As I got serious about being professional, I realized that I had these daily needs for the things that the spiritual life offers me—I constantly craved more peace, more humility, more sanity, more love—but that I seldom owned up to my part of the equation. I really just expected that God would swoop in like Superman and magically make my heart more peaceful. The time I offered him was in fits and starts: I’d say prayers in crisis, or a hurried line or two as I sat in traffic, or on my lunch break.

That’s like a professional writer expecting to write a brilliant novel by writing for 4 minutes every morning and then in 30 second spurts throughout the day: it may get done in 40 years, but it may have little consistency and excellence. Furthermore, when you consider how quickly the novel could have been written had the writer just sat down and done the work consistently and faithfully, it seems a bit tragic.

Poet Sylvia Plath used to wake up at 4:30 every morning to write because that’s when she could get her work done. Writer Haruki Murakami wakes up at 4am to get in five or six hours’ worth of work. When I was writing for Maida Vale, I’d wake up at 5:30 to do my songwriting exercises before the kids stirred for school.

An artist’s commitment to his or her work drives her time.

We have to really decide how important this God—and this life He offers us—really is, and then adjust our schedules accordingly. You’ll be amazed at the change you can feel when you can stretch out and REST a bit.

NOW A WORD ABOUT TOOLS…

After we manage to get our time sorted out, the bigger question remains: what do we do with it? This, in itself, is daunting because of the sheer number of options available: devotions, prayers, books, music, etc. The Bible itself is 66 books and a thousand pages of stories, prayers, instructions, letters.

Where do you start?

As I said, without necessarily telling you exactly what I do, I’ll just throw out some examples of what I’ve DONE in my journal towards becoming a professional. These are simple tools that the church has historically used. They are the “hammer and nails” of building a spiritual life—they may not be sexy, but they’ve been proven to work over time.

BIBLE

In so many ways, it all starts with scripture. Our spiritual life is one of RESPONDING to God, and in so many ways God’s first word to us comes through scripture. But where and how to begin with such an overwhelming book? In a way, the worst thing we can do is to sit down with this Book (or rather, these books) and simply start reading. There are a few options.

1. A reading plan. If you’ve never read “the whole story”, I’d say start here. Read the whole thing, preferably in chronological order so that you get a sense of storylines and history. I try to do this every 5 years or so, just to remind myself of how grand God’s work is.

2. One book at a time, one question at a time. This was one of the key pieces of advice I heard from a theologian. Anything else can lead to (a) being overwhelmed or (b) getting crazy answers from the text. So consider what questions you have of God and the Bible (“Who was Jesus?” “What does Paul have to say about living in community?” “How did the first followers of Jesus behave?”). Then pick a book and start reading with those questions in mind. Honestly, sometimes you won’t get an answer, but at least the processs is manageable.

3. Lectio Divina. This “Divine Reading” is a method of approaching scripture that the church developed over time. It’s a way of closely listening to the scriptures that can speak to your heart in a highly personal, intimate way. It involves using small chunks of scripture, reading slowly, and imagining yourself in the story. You can find additional resources on lectio here, or contact me for more info.

PRAYER

For me, prayer is the thing. It is the mechanism for communion and fellowship with the Father. There are tons of different ways to pray, but here are just two resources to get you started:

1. Common Prayer. This is the prayer that liturgical churches pray every day. You can find it online here, and there’s also an app. What I love about Common Prayer is that structures your prayer time with scripture and some prayers that have been written and tested, while leaving time for our own prayers and words during intercession. One thing that can be difficult about using this resource is that it’s meant to be done in community; when I use it I just read everything out loud. Many of us are predisposed to think that “reading prayers” is somehow less spiritual, but I actually find it very useful. I just direct my thoughts and words towards God as I read, and this has turned into a strong backbone for my morning time with God for a long time.

2. The Lord’s Prayer. I’ve mentioned this before, but one way to start structuring your prayer life is to use the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray. The trick is to savor the words and to speak them slowly with meaning, occasionally “unpacking” a word or phrase as you pray. In truth this prayer could make up the whole of your prayer time in the morning, but it’s up to you how thoroughly you use it.
The point of all this is to have some kind of plan, to shrink the change that you’re trying to undergo. You don’t have to use these tools exactly, but as we begin to embrace a professional faith the point is to help ourselves with structure and tools.

Next up: Make It Easy.

Coming Down the Mountain

Posted on by

“Mountaintop spiritualilty has perhaps been one of the most destructive things in my spiritual life.”

The words were really out before I had a thought about them. They emerged in a morning devotion with a group of people high up (ironically) in the Guatemalan hills, at a morning devotion time before we went out to build houses.

For me, it was a typically melodramatic overstatement, but in this case it was also pretty true.

Everest North Face toward Base Camp Tibet Luca Galuzzi 2006 (via Creative Commons)

Everest North Face toward Base Camp Tibet Luca Galuzzi 2006 (via Creative Commons)

I am certainly no mountain climber, but I’d spent a season reading and learning a lot about climbing Mount Everest through books like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and a Discover Channel series called, “Beyond the Limit”, about a professional guide at Everest who helped people with their final ascent.

It is an absolutely brutal and a very real you-can-really-die-in-an-instance type of experience. The altitude and brutal conditions take a horrendous toll on your body, making taking even ONE step an excruciating experience. Some people end up being able to put one foot in front of the other about once every thirty minutes. In the last couple of ascents (it takes many days to get from “base camp” at Everest up to the top), the oxygen is so thin that your body is literally incapable of getting enough nourishment, so it begins to essentially “eat itself.” The caloric requirement is so huge, that your body goes into hunger mode, and starts devouring muscle protein in order to survive.

Every move, every stop must be highly scheduled and coordinated or you will literally die on the mountain (many bodies are left frozen on the mountain; you can see them as you climb).

All for thirty minutes.

Due to oxygen requirements (and the schedule that keeps you alive), you can only spend about 30 minutes at the top of Everest.

Now, that thirty minutes may be wonderful; the experience is absolutely magical and unmatched; the time there may even be transformative; but it does not last.

You have to descend.

THAT, essentially, is how I lived my spiritual life for decades: a quest to get from “mountaintop” to “mountaintop”, fixing on spiritual highs like a drug. I would climb the mountain, dwell in the heights for a time, and descend like Moses, full of optimism and reflecting the Glory of God.

But it always faded. It always does.

And so I’d climb again.

And again.

And again.

Is this what Jesus meant by a stream of living water, welling up inside me to eternal life?

This didn’t feel like abundant life to me; it felt like experience addiction.

Lately I have decided to “come down the mountain”, and approach my spiritual life with a different metaphor.

Sinai Desert, via Creative Commons

Sinai Desert, via Creative Commons

The desert is not like the mountain. Where the mountain apexes into a specific peak, the desert drones on and on in a sort of monotony. There is a definite sameness to the landscape (though it’s certainly no less dangerous than climbing; the desert can just as easily kill you with thirst or a rattlesnake).

The desert leaves you alone with yourself. It forces you to face our most difficult challenge: OURSELVES.

On the surface, the desert is the same, day after day, but if you look more closely and have eyes to see and ears to hear, you can encounter amazing life and variety.

But it’s not easy.

You have to be attentive.

You have to watch and listen.

You have to be silent.

For me, this is the way I have to live in order to stay sane in this world. Mountaintop spirituality was simply turning me into a “religion junky”, and the fix NEVER seemed to hang around long enough. The desert, on the other hand, is a consistent, day-to-day walk that continually forces me to find beauty in the apparent normalcy of my life. It makes me work out my salvation in a very consistent, low key manner.

I don’t think it’s any accident that after the “light show” of Mount Sinai took place in the midst of Israel’s long desert experience. It’s as if God wanted to emphasize the fact that the occasional mountain may show up (though you may not even get to ascend; you may just get to watch Moses walk up), MOST—if not ALL—of your life is going to be spent walking through the desert. You have to get the desert right in order to keep the mountain in perspective.

Keep on walking.
+e
Perry and Jane’s gets it… (WARNING: If you know Jane’s Addiction, you know that this video is probably, well, CRAZY, and even a bit NSFW)

With Teeth

Posted on by

I am a musician.

I am a Christian.

(Even a sort-of “evangelical one.”)

I play “contemporary worship” music.

 

…

 

All that said, I will only quote Bono this one time: “Great music is written by people who are either running toward or away from God.”

 

<whew>

This may or may not be widely known, but I’m a Nine Inch Nails fan; I’ve even used them in a sermon.

(If you don’t know who they are, please go read something about them or Trent Reznor before you go mindlessly buy a record; it’s really jarring, even unsettling music.)

Ultimately, I don’t know if Trent Reznor is running to God or running away from Him, or running at all, but here’s what I know…

… Reznor is honest; brutally so.

I suppose the reason I gravitate to Trent Reznor is this honesty. He is simply unafraid to say things that make us cringe and squirm.

In 2005 they released the record With Teeth. Aside from the concert film And All That Could Have Been, this was my first in depth exposure to what they did. I’d read plenty about the infamous Downward Spiral sessions, and had frankly shied away, but something grabbed me about the first single, “The Hand That Feeds.”

The record was recorded just after Reznor decided to get sober, and the record reflects a lot of his experience. Similarly, I listened to this record constantly from 2005-2007, when I was going through some particularly difficult times in my life.

The title track in particular grabbed me. What I hear is a description, not just of heroin, but of anything that can take over your life and go from being an indulgence to a habit to an addiction.

I heard Reznor preaching a stronger word than I’d heard from a preacher about the dangers of addiction—to alcohol, porn, drugs, people. He laid it out square, and the music just brought it home.

Listening to it recently, I was struck again with the power of addiction. I’ve been battling my own demons recently, and now I hear the song from a new place; as I’ve been able to get some perspective on life, I can actually recognize the power of addiction even more clearly in the lyric.

It’s death.

It wants to kill you; if not physically, at least spiritually.

I can’t write like Trent Reznor, but I can just speak plainly for a moment.

If you are struggling with something, and can’t stop, you need to take it seriously. 

Get help.

The entire nature of this thing is that you can’t get on top of it. You need to get help.

And get this as well: it (whatever “it” is for you) wants to destroy you. 

It DOES have teeth, and it wants to gnaw your life down to the bone. 

It wants to burn it all down. 

 

You have to stop.

Ask for help and start the work.

This isn’t nearly as subtle as the studio track, but it gets the point across:

“With Teeth”

She comes along
She gets inside
She makes you better than anything you’ve tried
It’s in her kiss
The blackest sea
And it runs deeper than you
Dare to dream it could be

With teeth …

Wave goodbye
To what you were
The rules have changed
The lines begin to blur
She makes you hard
It comes on strong
You finally found
The place where you belong

With teeth …

I cannot go through this again …

With teeth …

She will not let you go
Keeps holding on
She will not let you go
Keeps holding on
This time, I’m not coming back
She will not let you go
This time, I’m not coming back
She will not let you go

+e
———————————————

Why I am Still a “Seeker”

Posted on by

(I promise the “Jesus” series will start soon!)

My faith became vital and alive to me in the late 1990s. At the time, it was fashionable to label people who were spiritually curious as “seekers”. The church that I was at (and eventually worked at) was actually known nation-wide as a pioneer in the “seeker-movement”, meaning it designed its weekend worship experiences for this particular demographic of people.

Years later, you can still find churches who use these labels to describe themselves:

… “seeker-friendly”

… “seeker-driven”

… “seeker-sensitive”.

Whatever you may think about the “seeker movement”, it was helpful for at least a season.

Lately, however, I’ve begun to think about the term differently. When we first started using the term in the late 90s, the unspoken implication was that eventually you would go from being a “seeker” to being a “finder”. Eventually your search would be over.

You would be “home.”

But I wonder if that’s truly accurate.

To seek something is to be actively pursuing it; to look for it; to crave it. To find something means to cease looking; to rest; to sit.

For better or worse, this has NOT been my story. My story (at least) has been characterized by an active pursuit of not just salvation but LIFE CHANGE (two fancy, spiritual words would be “sanctification” or—my personal preference—”theosis”).

The end of my “seeking” only triggered another phase of seeking.

In the eastern religions (in my primitive understanding of them) the notion of a “seeker” carries with it the idea of being a spiritual master. For many other faiths, “seekers” were those who remained pre-occupied with deeper and deeper levels of spirituality. They were contrasted with people who were merely content to dabble.

When did we turn “seeking” into something that was done before you were certain about your faith?

Why couldn’t our spiritual “arrival” to Christianity trigger an even greater level of seeking?

This is what I am pursuing.

I am not content.

My master (his name is Jesus) is still moving. So I have to keep on moving too. I have to keep seeking and following.

Do you have a seeker service for me?

Under the mercy…

====================================

It Still Hurts (sometimes)…

Posted on by
Chicago, from Jonathan's Boat

Chicago, from Jonathan’s Boat

I know I was supposed to start this series on Jesus today, but I decided to wait another day or two…

So today, I lost my center. I’d been a little a over the place all day, but what sent me (at least briefly) over the edge was a simple text from a good friend in Chicago. He just asked me how I was doing, and caught me up in his life (including this totally unfair shot from his boat on Lake Michigan).

Almost in an instant I was swamped with the practically physical pain of loss from my life in Chicago. It’s a pain I knew really well for about two years, from 2006 to 2008. During that time, I thought of my life in terms of some kind of giant joke that God was playing on me. So much of who I thought I appeared to be taken from me, and very little was given back.

It took years to work through those feelings; to begin to accept my life in Tallahassee for what it was/is, and to begin to see good things grow up around me.

But in that instant, those things were shaken, and I was transported back to that place 4-5 years ago.

It wasn’t pleasant; in fact it was almost strange and surreal to feel the (once normal) feelings of pain, loss, regret and hopelessness.

But some things have changed since then.

After a lengthy battle with those demons, I gradually developed some healthy spiritual practices that remind me of the truth of my life.

(It’s much, much too easy to believe the lies…)

Centering, contemplative prayer (I’m still a novice, believe me), meditation and praying the Daily Office have slowly begun to transform me; it’s easier now to remember that those feelings of homesickness for Chicago may be valid, but are simply not the whole truth of who I am.

There is a deeper truth to my being (and to yours as well). That truth is mostly covered up and obscured by a lifetime of lies and pain and mistakes, but it is still there.

However, most of the time it won’t influence our lives unless we do some kind of work to get out of its way. We layer our own false selves—Brennan Manning’s “Impostor”—on top of that truth and bury its life-giving breath underneath the heavy fabric of pride and arrogance.

We need, as I’ve discovered, practices that silence those unhealthy, false voices and let the voice of God, of Love, of Jesus whisper through.

And over time, day-to-day, minute-to-minute, moment-by-moment, we begin to recover that true self that is centered and rooted in God’s love and power.

At peace.

At rest.

In Tallahassee (or wherever).

========================================

Weapons of Mass Production :: The “135 Principle”

Posted on by

You should see my “To Do” list…

Currently, it runs 11 pages.

This is not a source of pride for me; it’s simply a picture of what my priorities are.

I don’t know how long your list is, but let me as you this…

How many things do you try to accomplish on a given day? 

One of the things I’ve realized lately is that there’s a serious disconnect between what I think I can accomplish on a given day (given an 11 page long “To Do” list) and what I actually can accomplish. I used to wake up and be determined to make some serious dents in that list, but over and over again, I’d end up at the end of the day frustrated and discouraged, because the list just seemed to actually get longer not shorter. It was pretty demotivating.

vsco_0What if the problem is not with my work ethic, but with my expectations? Would it not feel more motivational if I actually was clear (and reasonable) with what I wanted to get done?-

I’ve been trying to re-frame my thinking about my daily productivity, based on something that I’m simply calling the “135 Principle.”

It’s based on the premise that in a given day, you can really only accomplish one really big goal, three medium-sized goals, and five small goals. 

  • The “1” could be that very significant, highly creative project you’re working on that needs the best of you over multiple hours. It’s the centerpiece of your day, the “mission” of that day.
  • The “3” could stand for the thirty-minute standing conversation you need to have with a co-worker regarding an upcoming meeting or event. It could be the set of instructions you need to write up, or the recap conversation or email you need to craft.
  • The “5” could represent phone calls or informational emails; things that are still proactive, but not necessarily time- or resource-intensive.

Sophisticated language, I know, but this was significant because I realized that I’d actually been operating in something like a 5-8-15 paradigm, and there simply is not enough time to do those things. 

And when we “fail”, over and over again, to accomplish things, most of us stop referring to our lists, because we become subtly aware that they don’t mean anything. When you constantly feel like you are unable to accomplish your list, a trigger starts to go off in your brain to avoid it. It’s a drain; it’s a sign of failure.

What something like the “135 Principle” can do is to help you manage your expectations and complete your tasks on a given day, which can give you a minor sense of accomplishment and some motivation to get up and accomplish the next day’s tasks.

 

It’s about momentum.

 

NEXT WEEK: I’m starting a new series on Jesus (surprise!) Stay tuned!

 

========================================

 

 

Words

Posted on by

I’ve been thinking lately about words… We spend an awful lot of time interacting with them: spending them, receiving them, pondering them, etc.

I’m probably over-simplifying this, but I want to suggest that there are three levels of words that we deal with in our lives. Each one of these categories are useful, but can also contain a certain amount of danger in them.

Level 1: “Wal-Mart Words”. I have nothing against Wal-Mart; like most American families, we shop there for certain items. But let’s be honest: there’s not a whole lot that’s special and unique about Wal-Mart, besides the fact that they are relatively easy to come by, and you know what you’re getting when you go there. Wal-Mart words are the words we run across as we go through our days: they can make us laugh, or cringe, but they are typically used to get through our lives, and are soon forgotten about. We need Wal-Mart in our lives (ever run out of toilet paper at 11:45 on Saturday night?), but our lives may not turn on our experience in a Wal-Mart store.

Level 2: “Luggage Words”. How long do you keep a suitcase? I don’t know what the prescribed retention is for luggage, but it seems like most of us keep ours around way past the date that it’s useful. I used to haul luggage out of my closet that was falling apart, had holes in it, and looked like my grandmother’s curtains from 1967. Luggage is something that we keep with us, usually for a while, and certain words are like that. They are the spoken at pivotal times in our lives: in departures, in graduations, at major events in our lives. They are often accompanied by tears and deep expressions of love.

The Apostle Paul speaks and hears words like this when he says goodbye to some friends in Ephesus (modern day turkey). The scene is recorded in the book of Acts. I find it to be one of the most moving scenes in the New Testament:

“‘Remember that for three years I constantly and tearfully warned each of you. I never stopped warning you! Now I entrust you to God and the message of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all whom God has made holy…’ After he said these things, he knelt down with all of them to pray. They cried uncontrollably as everyone embraced and kissed Paul.”

Those are deep words, and deep emotions. I also think of Jesus with his disciples in John’s gospel, when he shares deep “luggage level” words in John 13-17. These are the types of things you don’t forget, and they give you life (hopefully) for a long time. They sustain you…

… But there’s another level still…

There are words that we hear (and ideally share) that are so deep they transcend our “luggage”, and speak to the foundation of our being. 

They are what I simply call “Soul-Level” words. 

These are the words that speak to the deepest level of who we are and who we most want to be. They challenge us to be better human beings, better Christ-followers. They call us to be full of more joy, gratitude, love, and humility.

But you know the most radical thing about these words?

Once we hear them, we must be very careful about sharing them. 

Jesus’ mother, Mary, heard (and experienced) amazing things around his birth and childhood: prophecies, angelic encounters (ahem), babies jumping around in wombs.

In short, there was a lot to tell her that this was no ordinary child.

But a certain phrase in Luke’s gospel always struck me. In summing up Jesus’ childhood, Luke wrote that Jesus “went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. His mother cherished every word in her heart.” Other translations read that Mary “treasured all these things in her heart” (NIV).

Secrets lose their power when they are shared; when they are negative it’s one of the reasons that it’s good to dispel them, for once you shed light on them they tend to lose their effectiveness.

But what happens when the secret has a sort of powerful goodness that accompanies it?

When it’s the story of the Savior of the world who grows up obedient to his parents?

When it’s the story of prophecies fulfilled, prisoners set free, love embracing humanity?

When it’s the words of deepest affirmations that call to the highest parts of our soul?

Don’t we want those secrets to keep their power?

Most of the time, we run to share words that we’ve been given, either through Twitter, or Facebook, or over coffee or beer.

But I want to suggest that there are some words that you need to keep back for yourself. That you need to “cherish” and “treasure.” You need to go back to them, and you need to let them pour over you repeatedly like cool water on a July day.

But don’t give them away cheaply.

I’ve been fortunate to have received some of these words lately. They were so far out of my depth of understanding, it hurt (in a good way) to just read them. They called so much more out of me than I thought capable of giving.

And guess what: you’re not going to read them. 

My prayer is that you get to read or hear those words from someone in your life. They have the power to change you, and to continue to change you.

My prayer is also that you have the chance to give those words to someone as well, knowing that they will reverberate for a long time in someone’s life. And remember: it’s not about eloquence, it’s about generosity of spirit, and of relational commitment.

And lastly, I pray that you lock those words away, and keep them between you, God, and the person you shared them with.

Because their power will go on.

=========================================

Introducing the “Deep Well”

Posted on by

“The Deep Well” is born out of a few threads that emerged during a Sabbatical in 2013.

The first came out of Isaiah 55, where God is reminding his people that they have spent resources—a lot of resources—on “food that is not really food” and “drink that is not really drink.” Folks have wasted their time chasing after things that don’t really satisfy. In contrast, God says, “All of you who are thirsty, come to the water! Whoever has no money, come, but food and eat! Without money, at no cost, buy wine and milk… Listen carefully to me and eat what is good; enjoy the richest of feasts” (vv1, 2a).

The idea that came to me was to just set up some space where God’s people could “feast” on Him. Not really much of an agenda—just provide an arc and a space where people could throw themselves into God and He could satisfy their deep thirsts and hunger.

The second came out of the idea of our “belovedness” in God’s eyes. This theme, echoed in a few writers for me, is necessary (to my mind) because sometimes the very reason we run after so many other things that do not satisfy us is because we are terrified what God may actually think about us—that He actually may not like us.

It occurred to me that reminding folks that they are beloved in God’s eyes would be a good thing to do.

These two ideas—to let people feast on God, and to remind them that they are the beloved—form the backbone of this thing I’m calling “Deep Well”. There are other thoughts and inspiration mixed in as well, but these form the spiritual core of what I’m doing.

It’s pretty simple; I’m thinking that most good ideas are. I’m thinking I’d like to see just how many folks out there are hungry, and thirsty and how many need to be reminded that God’s forgiveness (and love) precedes their repentance. Right where they’re at.

For now, if you want to know about this thing called “Deep Well” you can come here and follow me, or stay posted on Twitter.

The first “Deep Well” event will be happening on June 7 at Element3 Church in Tallahassee. Doors will be at 7:00, and the music will start at 7:30. I’d love for you to come and invite as many friends as you care to.

Let’s see what happens.