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I used to be quick to jump on Christians who failed morally. How could they claim to be a Christian and do something like that?

A bit of insight came from a Texas storm a few years ago. Strong winds toppled a 50-foot-tall tree in a friend’s backyard. But strong winds are a part of every spring in Texas. Why did this particular storm fell a mature tree? The answer came as my friend cut up the fallen tree. It was completely rotted inside. There was no way to tell when you looked at the tree. The bark covered the decay and the leaves were still green and pretty. But inside the tree was dying. It finally reached a point where there was not enough strength left in its core to withstand another storm.

The example from nature is a metaphor for how we can topple as Christians and completely surprise those around us. We wear masks. We look good. We say the right things. We stay busy doing Christian things. We are more concerned about appearance than honest spiritual health. There is no way to tell by looking that the slow rot of sin is decaying our judgment and relationship with Jesus.

Tree experts will tell you that often a small wound in a tree left unattended will allow fungus to enter and begin the destructive process. If the wound had been treated, the disease could have been halted with little or no damage.

That is again a metaphor for what happens in our souls. Most of us are a little or a lot wounded by life and others. Perhaps pride or fear or simply not knowing what to do causes us to ignore the wound in our souls. And that opening allows the slow decay of unresolved sin that leads to a fall.

The illustration reminded me of the Scripture where Jesus railed against the “self-righteous” religious leaders:

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and self-indulgence! You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too” (Matthew 23, NLT).

When a Christian fails morally they pay a terrible price and so do those they have hurt. I have figured out a couple of things that can help stop the slow rot of sin.

Grace and community.

Grace allows me to quit trying to be righteous and actually begin to be righteous as I focus on the One who gave me the gift of grace. Grace allows me to deal with sin instead of trying to manage and rationalize it. Grace is real and powerful. Grace should never be my cover for sin. Instead grace is my only hope to deal with it. Grace makes me tremble when I think of an almighty and powerful God who loved someone unlovable like me. Why would He give such a gift to an unworthy child? And how could I be comfortable taking advantage of that amazing grace? I cannot and I pray that I will not. Grace is compelling. I want it to be compelling in my life as well. Real grace works.

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Ephesians 2:8

A safe community is powerfully healing and affirming. We need to have people with whom we can drop the pretense. Many of us harbor the secret fear that if our friends found out everything that was true about us they would drop us in horrified indignation and run for the hills. But what if that is one more lie from the Deceiver? What if we could develop relationships of trust and grace where exactly the opposite occurred? What if the revelation of the truth about us caused our friends to love us more? What if we trusted a few with who we really are? God designed this journey of life to be lived in community.

My default mode is to become hidden when I feel shame or guilt over my actions. When I trust His grace and my friends with my struggle I can halt the spiral. I usually need both.

Pray for those who fail and don’t write them off as “less of a Christian”. I would ask you to look in the mirror. If you see what I see you will extend grace to those who fail. What I see in the mirror is a person who was saved only by grace. I see a person who is capable of failing if I do not lean wholly on that grace every day. A person who does not want to hurt the heart or cause of Jesus because I am so grateful for His amazing grace. I like the way The Message translates Paul’s words to the Galatians:

“If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived” (Galatians 6, The Message).

Excerpts from Stay: Lessons My Dogs Taught Me about Life, Loss, and Grace.

Baseball fans countdown the day until pitchers and catchers report like a kid impatiently marking off calendar days til Christmas. The teams arrive in Florida and Arizona as the nation grows weary of gray and gloom. Spring Training is the first hope of Spring.

Today begins the annual six week period of teaching, training, and repetitious fundamental drills. It seems almost silly for uber talented and well paid athletes to be reviewing the same fundamentals they learned in youth baseball.

Yet you watch the very best players focus on repeating proper fundamentals over and over. Superstars hit off a tee. Gold Glove fielders practice footwork repeatedly. Pitchers constantly repeat correct throwing motion. The message is clear. Talent is important but even the best can be derailed by forgotten or sloppy fundamentals.

Perhaps we should co-opt that idea of fundamental training for followers of Jesus. Today I am starting a movement for “Preachers and Christians” to report for Spring Training. For a few weeks we can forego theological nuances to focus on the fundamentals of faith.

We can do drills that reminds us who God says we are in Jesus.

I am a brand new creation.
Forgiven.
Adopted.
Redeemed.
Sealed.
Loved.
A saint.
Righteous.
Accepted.
A child of the living God.

All these gifts of grace are ironclad contractual deals because of Jesus and every single thing on that list happened at the moment we joined His team. Believing who God says He is, understanding that you have been changed because of Christ, and living out of those two fundamentals is a game changer that can weather the toughest season.

Next we could do some gratitude exercises. Gratitude resets the motivation to live for God and trust Him in the darkness. Philip Yancey reminds us why it makes perfect sense in his wonderful book What’s So Amazing about Grace?

“If we comprehend what Christ has done for us, then surely out of gratitude we will strive to live “worthy” of such great love. We will strive for holiness not to make God love us but because he already does.”

Another thing I love about Spring Training is the fresh start. Every team has hope as they enter the new season. What used to be true about the team doesn’t matter. Only what happens from Opening Day to the final pitch matters. Spring training means all things baseball are a new creation.The same is true for followers of Christ. What used to be true of me has changed.

I have had some bad seasons during my career as a follower of Jesus. Some pretty ugly slumps. That doesn’t matter if I focus on Christ in this next season of my life. There can be freshness in the journey and real joy and freedom. I can realize that I am a child of God and be grateful that I can call Him Father. I can believe that hope for the future is real. I can understand that I must (by His grace and the power of the Spirit) be a better teammate. I should not expect my team to be perfect. I am pretty sure they will boot some easy chances and strikeout in some key situations. But I will trust God to help me love them and encourage them because we are on the same team known simply as the Body of Christ. Paul gave us a good reason for hope in his letter to the Roman Church. It also fits into the discipline required to survive the marathon of a baseball season.

And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. (Romans 5, NLT)

The magic of a fresh start happens once a year in baseball. It can happen everyday for a follower of Jesus.

“Preachers and Christians” report! It is time to remember the fundamentals and the hope of what Jesus has done.

Waking Up Slowly is a 21 day journey to connect more completely with God and one another. Click here for more info.

I live in the performance driven world of sports. We too often measure value not by character but by statistics like how many tackles for loss or how many yards gained per carry. Character is a nice bonus but performance is king.

I remembered a comment from Northwestern University football coach Pat Fitzgerald about the impact of negative stats on a football player’s performance. Coaches often talk about the need to reduce “missed” tackles and they keep track of each miscue. Coach Fitzgerald has a different philosophy. His staff does not keep track of missed tackles at all. The staff evaluates each play by their effort even if it does not produce perfect results. His next comment stuck with me. “I don’t like to put negative results in their minds because you become what you think about.”

It immediately hit me how profound that comment is for followers of Jesus. We tend to keep spiritual stats on failure. We beat ourselves up over “missed” opportunities. We fixate on what we have done instead of what Jesus has already done for us. We write our game plan to do better on the board.

Don’t sin.
Do better.
Pray more.
Study more Scripture.
Be more forgiving.
Less angry.
More loving.

And we try really, really hard to do all of those things. But the bad stats overwhelm and discourage us. We do sin. We don’t always forgive. We get angry. We don’t study or pray as much as we think we probably should. The net result is frustration and spiritual fatigue.

I wrestled with idea of how we can deal with sin in my book Stay: Lessons My Dogs Taught Me about Life, Loss, and Grace.

In Hebrews the text tells us to “strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”

Even though it sounds like a daunting and even impossible task, the author of Hebrews sums up how to do that in one powerful sentence: “We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2, NLT).

That is it.

There is no other way to consistently live that life apart from keeping our eyes on Jesus.
The same is true for me. When I keep my eyes on Jesus, I have the strength to be bold and the ability to produce fruit that is pleasing to God. When our rambunctious Labrador Maggie cannot settle down, I tell her to sit so she can focus on calming down and doing the right thing. When she stays and regroups, things go well for her. When my thought life and actions cannot settle down, I need the Holy Spirit to firmly but lovingly tell me to sit . . .stay . . . abide.

Only then do I realize that I have turned my eyes away from Jesus. When I stay, I can focus on His peace, love, forgiveness, and grace, and have the ability to resist sin. If I am anxious, fearful, have doubts, or am sad, I need to sit, stay, and abide, looking at the One who initiates and perfects my faith.

What a difference between that approach and what too many of us experience. We tend to address the sin first. Stop that! Quit! Do better! And by the way, Jesus loves you. Or worse, He will love you when you do better. Paul always took the grace exit instead. Remember who you are! You are saints! Beloved! Adopted! Redeemed! Those same truths are ours to claim as we keep our eyes on Jesus. When we quit fighting to get better and do that one simple thing, something amazing happens. We get better.

We do become what we think about. It is always a pretty good game plan to think about Jesus.

 

Every year they rudely awaken Punxsutawney Phil long enough for the prognosticating rodent to let us know whether six more weeks of winter awaits. Phil always looks about as happy as I do when when I am disturbed in the morning. Twenty-six years ago a funny and underappreciated movie came on the scene. Groundhog Day told the story of a self-absorbed news reporter (redundancy alert?) that finds himself stuck in an endless repeat of the same day. Bill Murray is perfect in the role of reporter Phil Connors. Reporter Phil is less than thrilled that he has been assigned to cover Punxsutawney Phil’s annual peek outside to predict winter’s duration. He feels he is “above” such an inane assignment. Connor’s looks into the camera and cynically reports:

“This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.”

The premise of the movie is that Phil Connors realizes he is doomed to live the same day over and over and over. For Connors, Groundhog Day begins each morning at 6:00 A.M when Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe” blares out from his alarm clock radio. The twist is that his (and only his) memories of the “previous” day remain intact, trapped in a seemingly endless “time loop” to repeat the same day in the same small town.

Connor has this exchange in the film.

Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?
Ralph: That about sums it up for me.

And that brought to mind another famous Bill Murray quote…this time from Stripes.

And then depression set in.

So what is the point of these ramblings? Is it to impress you with my cerebral movie tastes? The point is that too many followers of Jesus are stuck in a Groundhog Day life of their own. They wake up every day and feel trapped in a repeating pattern of frustrating behavior. And then, depression sets in. Why is that? I lived a Groundhog Day kind of faith for years. The Apostle Paul wrote about this very thing (not the giant rodent part…the repeating behavior part) in his letter to the Romans.

I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. (Romans 7, The Message)

Wow…can I relate to that. A bit later Paul writes…I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?

That is the real question. And there is a real answer offered by Paul.

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

So what can you do to get out of this sin spiral?

Nothing.

Wait!  Don’t let depression set in. This is good news! You and I can’t do it. I am incapable in my own efficacy to escape my spiritual Groundhog Day. Only Jesus can enable me to escape this endless loop of frustration. Further advice from Paul follows in Chapter 8 of his amazing letter to the Romans.

But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him.

Allow the truth of that verse to soak in.

Want to get out of your Groundhog Day existence? Most readers of these humble ramblings realize they couldn’t deal with their sin separation from God on their own. We needed Jesus. So why do we think we can deal with our ongoing sin issues on our own? When the Father looks at me on my very worst day this is what He sees.

Jesus.

That is step one. I don’t have to clean up the sin to please God. He loves me already because of Jesus. Step Two. I am learning daily to recognize that the Spirit of God has taken up residence in my life. I am learning that I am the one who limits His power by restricting access and not trusting Him with my thoughts and actions. I am learning that I don’t need to wake up to the frustrating effects of repeated self-effort. I can wake up trusting God, trusting that Jesus has my sin covered and trusting that the Spirit of God will allow me to resolve that sin. Trusting God and what His Word says to be true allows me to escape the Groundhog Day syndrome.

The moral of the movie Groundhog Day was that Phil Connor needed to learn that he was self-absorbed and dependent on his selfish efforts to get ahead. The moral of the spiritual groundhog day is to learn that we cannot depend on our self efforts to live a joyful and free Christian life. I come to Jesus by grace and total dependence. I live for Jesus by grace and total dependence. While the other groundhog is busy predicting weather I would suggest you try this for the next six weeks. When the alarm jars you awake remember this truth. Instead of the Sonny and Cher song you can sing “I Got You Lord”. The two of you can end this “Groundhog Day” of frustration. I can’t help you with the weather.

My latest book, Waking Up Slowly, can be used as a 21 Day Journey to become more connected with God, one another and yourself.

No resolutions…just grace suggestions based on God’s Word. Would you join me on that journey in 2018? Click here to check it out.

I have been on a news fast for a month. I backslid last week and tuned my satellite radio to see what was going in Washington (D)ysfunctional (C)hildren). Within a minute I regretted my decision. Both sides were attacking and demeaning the other’s motives, integrity, and decency. My mood turned sour. Then I flipped to another channel and the first song I heard was a duet from Mandisa and TobyMac.

These lyrics immediately grabbed my heart.

Are you left?
Are you right?
Pointing fingers, taking sides
When are we gonna realize?

We all bleed the same
We’re more beautiful when we come together
We all bleed the same
So tell me why, tell me why
We’re divided.

Why indeed? I am praying for another leader like Martin Luther King Jr who will remind us that hateful rhetoric never, ever, ever changes a heart. Followers of Christ have a message of hope and light that is desperately needed. But we get caught up in the politics of our world and too often snuff out that light. I have been guilty more than I care to think about.

I fear our culture will get darker in the days and months ahead. Followers of Christ have to make a decision. We can decide to complain that Christians are no longer respected and valued in the culture. Or we can decide to show the kind of kindness, forgiveness, grace, and love that early Christians demonstrated to change a hostile culture. Christianity really functions best as the underdog. We can ask God to give us the strength and grace to be a light in the darkness.

What does that mean? I have not had success sharing my faith via a clever T-shirt. And wielding a blinding searchlight seeking sin and sinners has, inexplicably, been ineffective. My moments of pompous moralizing have not brought converts racing to the flock. What message makes a difference?

During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods’ appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death. The debate went on for some time until C. S. Lewis wandered into the room. “What’s the rumpus about?” he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions. Lewis responded, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”

Perhaps the fact that grace and forgiveness are rare commodities in this society is a big reason we see such anger and hopelessness.

Our natural reaction to those who denigrate our faith is to strike back. Jesus knew this would happen and He had some very radical instructions.

“But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. (Luke 6:27-28,  NET)

I wonder what God could do if we followed those words?  And if we remembered that we all created in the image of God but our different experiences and stories divide us. They don’t have to.

If we’re gonna fight
Let’s fight for each other
If we’re gonna shout
Let love be the cry
We all bleed the same
So tell me why, tell me why
We’re divided

When it comes to all those people we may disagree with my prayer is to have the spiritual equivalent of Michelangelo’s artistic vision. The great sculptor proclaimed, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” May God give us the desire and vision to see the beauty of the soul in every person and love them until God sets them free. His grace can release it.

 

No one gets through this journey unscathed. A song I default to when walking through valleys is from singer/composer Rich Mullins. The song “Hold Me Jesus” is from his CD called Songs.

Well, sometimes my life
Just don’t make sense at all
When the mountains look so big
And my faith just seems so small

Right now I am in a pretty good place in my life and journey with Jesus. But then I start thinking about the many friends and loved ones who can relate completely to those lyrics. The words do not exaggerate the agony of going through dark valleys.

And I wake up in the night and feel the dark
It’s so hot inside my soul
I swear there must be blisters on my heart

I remember how I used to respond. I would deduce it must be my fault. God must not be pleased with me. I would decide that I had to do something to bolster my faith. I needed to read more verses or do a study or pray more or believe more. But the answer was far more simple and the chorus by Rich Mullins nails it. All I needed was to rest in the love of God.

So hold me Jesus, ’cause I’m shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won’t You be my Prince of Peace

I needed to quit flailing and trying so darn hard to be righteous. Hold me Jesus. Won’t you be my Prince of Peace? In those moments this prayer is simple and profound.

“God…would you love me today?”

And He does. But I remember how I used to think that I had to “do stuff” for God to earn His favor and receive His love and peace. For those of us “doers” who absolutely must do something here is your assignment.

1. Believe what God says is true about you.

That’s it. Believe you are forgiven. Loved. His child. Adopted. Redeemed. A new creation.

I have made it so stinkin’ complicated and religious for so many years. When I trust what God says about me I am humbled. I worship. Believing how my Father sees me causes me to obey out of gratitude and not teeth gritting compliance.

Why did I fight this amazing grace and His unconditional love? Rich Mullins nails that too.

Surrender don’t come natural to me
I’d rather fight You for something
I don’t really want
Than to take what You give that I need
And I’ve beat my head against so many walls
Now I’m falling down, I’m falling on my knees

That was me. Beating my head against a performance wall instead of surrendering to the extravagant gift of grace and freedom. Next time you are flailing and striving to please God would you try this simple request?

“Jesus…would you love me today?”

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”  (Matthew 11, The Message)

Rest in His love this week and treasure the unforced rhythms of grace. It is a much better place to be.

I am a lifetime, avid Cleveland Browns fan. I know. Thank you for your prayers. I am more optimistic now than I have been in many years. Part of that hope is some great young players. But another factor is the new head coach. Freddie Kitchens is a down to earth and positive influence on the field. He asks each player what plays they like to run and then implements their ideas into the game plan. The players were blown away by that level of personal involvement.

My first reaction was “why is that deemed unusual”? Why wouldn’t a leader want buy-in and ownership of the game plan? Why wouldn’t a leader create a culture of affirmation? As General Dwight Eisenhower wisely observed. “You don’t lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership.” 

A recent book entitled The Carrot Principle by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton concluded that appreciation might well be the missing accelerator for happiness and self-esteem. Based on a ten-year study that interviewed 200,000 people, Gostick and Elton conclude that appreciation tops the list of things employees say they want from their bosses. For those who worked in offices with high morale an amazing 94 percent reported that they were shown appreciation. Not surprisingly, when employees quit nearly 80 percent cited lack of appreciation as the number one reason.

We have a fundamental need to be affirmed. The authors were surprised at how sparingly this blessing is given to others. That is a wonderful way that you can serve others. Simply affirm and bless them in their gifts and skills.

Affirmation is a game changer for all of us. Here is a snippet about affirmation from my book Stay: Lessons My Dogs Taught Me about Life, Loss, and Grace.

We should not be surprised that people respond positively when they are told how much they matter. More important, we matter to God. His Word is full of affirmation for those who choose to trust Him.

To all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.
(John 1:12, NLT)

You are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.
(1 Peter 2:9-10, The Message)

Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.
(Ephesians 1:4, NLT)

We are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Ephesians 2:10, NLT)

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
(John 15:15, ESV)

Jesus calls me His friend. Even when those around you are failing to fill up your affirmation bucket, you can still go to Scripture and find out how God feels about you. Is there a more important affirmation than that? When you believe that your heavenly Father recognizes your worth, it gets easier to find things to affirm in others. How can I suffer from a poor self-image if this is true? Jesus calls me friend, for goodness’ sake!

Affirmation is a powerful tool of God’s redemptive grace. Grace says you can still be loved and accepted even after you make terrible decisions and do bad things. That is exactly what happened when God reached out to love me (and you) after our own terrible decisions and bad actions.

When you see leaders who are loved and admired by everyone I suspect you will find this common trait. They are a full time affirmation bucket filler for everyone around them. Are you willing to swap judgement for affirmation? It will be a game changer for you and those you affirm.

It is especially vital for leaders to practice grace and affirmation. I love this insight from author/pastor Max Lucado. “A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.”

Jesus of Nazareth also had some wisdom for leaders.

But among you it will be different. Those who are the greatest among you should take the lowest rank, and the leader should be like a servant. Luke 22:26 – NLT

Read the first chapter of Stay:Lessons My Dogs Taught Me about Life, Loss, and Grace by clicking this link.