Nolo Contendere

If you are ever in the mood to feel guilty about your life, you should probably just read the first five books of the Bible.
In those books there some very long lists of sins we didn’t even know existed that we could easily blacken our consciousness' with. Didn’t know you should feel bad about cutting the hair on the side of your head? Well Leviticus 19:27 says you should be, apparently God really digs sideburns. If you read earlier in that chapter in verse 19 you will find that you are also a dirty rotten sinner for wearing clothing woven out of two different kinds of fabrics. Think you are innocent of this one? What about that T shirt you have that says it’s made of 99% cotton? What’s the other one percent? What do you have to say for yourself Mr. half-breed polyester?
Deuteronomy 22:12 tells us to make tassels to wear on the four corners of our cloak. What!? You mean to tell me that you haven’t made your own tassels and fastened them to the corners of all your cloaks? You don’t even wear a cloak? I don’t know how you expect to make it to heaven.
If reading all these laws doesn’t make you feel guilty, you should at least feel guilty about not being able to get through the book of Leviticus.
It is ridiculous to think of anyone looking for things to feel guilty for but I think we do it all the time. We walk around with huge signs on our foreheads advertising all of our failures and mistakes because we think it will explain to the world why were are what we are today. We know we aren’t good enough for God’s grace and for some reason, we keep looking through our past to find more proof that we don’t deserve it.
In Exodus we find a people plagued with guilt. God gave them the opportunity to pay for their crimes by having the priests offer sacrifices on behalf on the people. In order to do so, the priest would have to enter the Holy of Holies, the place where God Himself dwelled. The priest had to walk in with the guilt of his people and know that at any moment God literally could strike him down and that He had every right to do so. Bells were fastened to the edge of his garment and a long rope was tied around his waist just in case, should God’s wrath be so fitting, that the priest fell down dead before the Lord, the people on the other side of the curtain would hear the bells and be able to reel in the body of their priest.
The people recognized their guilt and recognized the holiness of their God and had to walk with the stains of everything they had done wrong trailing behind them into the presence of God.
There was, however, another article of priestly clothing that is generally overlooked and was ordained by God to be worn. On the turban of the priest was to be a sign made of pure gold that read “Holy to the Lord.” Try and imagine this.
The priest would walk in with the guilt of his people behind him and the full awareness that he could die for his crimes but all God would see coming towards him was this sign on his forehead that read “Holy to the Lord.”
He wasn’t looking at all that was behind him, He was looking at the sign that said that this man and the people he represented were holy- set apart and purified, and that they were good enough to walk into His presence.
We as people tend to view our lives from the lens of our past. We take all of our past experiences and put them together as the basis for our identity and expect that God does the same thing. We forget that God is bigger than our understanding of time. He gets to see our lives from the lens of our future. In His perspective, we are already standing beside Him in paradise as completed and perfected souls who’s robes have been washed clean and crowns already rewarded. He sees us how we actually are.
Who are we to see ourselves otherwise?
If you are accused of a crime, you always have one of two options. You could either plead innocent, or you could plead guilty. However, in some cases a third option is given, that is, the right to plead “Nolo Contendere.” Nolo contendere is Latin for “I do not wish to contend.” It basically means that you are accepting the punishment for the charges you are accused of but you don’t have to live the rest of your life with the word “guilty” all over your record.
I think it is time that we as Christians plead Nolo Contendere over our lives. We accept that we deserve the punishment for our crimes and that we don’t deserve the grace of God, but are refusing to walk around with guilt labeled on our foreheads. We will not let guilt be the motive for everything we do.
We will go to church because want to be with God and His people, not because we feel like we owe God.

We will share our faith with the world because we get to, not because we have to to make sure we are good Christians.
We are guilty, but that is not how we are defined.

Get on Your Knees and Fight Like a Man

It’s no secret that I wish I was a teenager in the eighties.
Give me some high-top All Star Chuck Taylors, cassette tapes and face melting guitar solos any day and I will be happy. This is a little weird, I know, because I was born two years after the eighties were over. I think that my odd fascination with the era of Reagan and big hair comes from my early discovery and love for a band called Petra.
If you don’t know Petra, you are missing out on life. They were true pioneers in putting Christian lyrics to electric guitars (and the more than occasional synthesizer and key-tar).
I usually have any one song from their thirty-three year musical career playing in my head at some point in the day but lately I have been hearing one in my head that I hadn’t heard in forever. In 1987, Petra’s This Means War  album came out and on it was the song “Get on Your Knees and Fight Like a Man.”
Now out of context, this is kind of a funny title. Can you picture some big burly men getting into a brawl at a saloon and getting on their knees to proceed with their dual? For some reason the idea of midgets having a slap fight keeps playing in my head whenever I think about this. I don’t know about you, but I think that that is pretty hilarious. In fact, I keep trying to write this post but I am getting distracted by visions of angry midgets beating the mess out of each other.
But that is not what this song is even remotely about.
The verses of this song talk about being at the lowest point circumstantially than we ever could imagine. They talk about having the world fall on top of you and all your resources being exhausted and your options dwindling. Lately, I can relate.
This past week, God has been stressing to me the importance of what I thought an elementary truth, that is prayer. I thought I was good on this one. I mean, even non-Christians know that Christians are supposed to pray, I understand all that God.
I have always understood the importance of prayer but I don’t think I could honestly say that my life or even my schedule reflected that.
I want prayer in my life to be more than an emergency kit that I never use unless I absolutely need it. We seem to have this mentality that after we have done everything we know to do and our circumstances still haven’t changed then “all we can do is pray.”
All we can do? That makes it sound like that is the least promising thing we are capable of doing to get the results we need.
Why don’t we realize that going to the all-powerful, all-knowing, ever present God of the universe first before wasting our time with what we think we can do is the most logical thing we could ever do?
I know we all know this but do we really know  this?
I guess prayer is one of those things that is great in theory but can be boring in practice. When we think about radically following Jesus, we usually think about selling everything we own and moving to Africa or having the faith to tell that guy in a wheelchair that he is healed and should go run around the block. In the back of our mind, prayer just means turning off the T.V and sticking our face in the carpet while we try and think of what to say to God.
When I think about prayer, I am not usually thinking about the spiritual forces of good and evil colliding in epic war for humanity. I am secretly thinking about midgets slapping each other.
It sounds ridiculous and I am exaggerating a little bit but I think that is how we really view the effectiveness of getting on our face before God.
We are so action oriented that the idea of locking ourselves away to pray seems less effective than going out and trying to fix everything on our own.
I tell God all the time that I want to change the world but when was the last time I humbled myself to the point of getting on my face before Him in desperation to see Him move? A lot of times I think that I am O.K. if I just say a couple words of prayer under my breath for somebody. Sometimes I tell God that I am going to pray in my bed as I am falling asleep.
Obviously, there is nothing wrong with praying like that but lately God has been showing me that there really is something to setting a part a certain amount of time and physically getting down on the floor and warring against the forces of evil.
It is really inconvenient, but doesn’t the effort you put into prayer reflect your passion for whatever you are praying for? What would your life look like if you got on your knees and fought like a man for an hour every day? Ooh an hour, that’s a little much. That would be really hard to commit to.
But if you are desperate enough to complain to the world about your problems, an hour can’t be so bad.
One thing I have found is that it is really easy to pray for yourself and your own problems. Sometimes we get discouraged when our prayers aren’t getting answered so we give up. What if, instead of praying for ourselves for an hour, we prayed for somebody else’s problems? I don’t know why but whenever I dedicate that much time to someone else, my prayers get answered and so do theirs.
If I can’t carry my burden, I’ll drop mine and pick up somebody else’s.
What can we change about our lives to reflect that we actually believe prayer is more than a midget slap fight but the opportunity to bring Heaven down into our problems? I want to spend more time praying that God will do something than I do hoping that He will bless me when I do something.

Checkmate

I used to think I was pretty smart, until my five year old little sister beat me in Chess.

I have no idea how it happened because the last game I played with her was Candyland and I wasn’t sure then that she could handle the intensity of the molasses swamp and now I was finding my king pinned between her bishop and her queen with no hope of escape. She got me good and I had nothing to say. I just left the table and buried my head in shame.

When I heard that my brothers had taught her how to play I expected that she vaguely understood the rules but would still fall prey to the number one mistake of every beginning Chess player, that is, to play the game of Chess like a game of Checkers.

You see, in the game of Checkers, the point is to take as many pieces as you can from your opponent while keeping all of yours in play. It is a last man standing kind of thing and new Chess players usually assume that since the boards look the same that the rules must be the same so they use their armies to just knock out their opponent. However, Chess is different. The game is not about how many pieces you collect, but about one specific piece that needs to be taken out. The point of Chess is to go after the king.

I didn’t expect Jamie to understand this principle, but she clearly did. Her eye was not on my knight, bishop, or even queen, but was on my king.

I realized this week that I had been playing life like a game of Checkers instead of a game Chess. I was going after all the extra stuff life has to offer instead of going straight to the King.

I mistook the things God blesses us with for God Himself and that can be dangerous. There are tons of things in this life that are good, noble things that we as people are always going after. A new season in life, new relationships, great experiences- you name and we will go after it instead of going after the One who gives it.

Jesus told us in Luke chapter 12 verse 31 to “seek his kingdom and these things will be added as well.” ₁

So I have to ask myself when I wake up in the morning and the Great To-Do list starts scrolling through my head what pieces of the game I am going after.

Am I really content with putting so much effort into capturing a pawn when the King is waiting for me?

Does my schedule reflect that me getting one more glimpse of who God really is is my very top priority? Why am I so concerned with fixing this, getting that done, or talking to that person when I have the opportunity to leave Earth and the way it thinks by spending time with the King of the Universe?

I want everything God has for me in this life, but I don’t want to want them more than I want to want Him. I want to measure the effectiveness of my day not by how much I accomplished but by how much closer I grew to God in the last 24 hours.

The world can keep it’s pawns and even its’ knights and bishops. I want to want nothing but the King.

_{1-Luke 12:31 (NIV)}

Dear God

Dear God, I can’t sleep.

Truth is, I haven’t slept for awhile.

Life keeps waking me up and I just can’t get my brain to shut up long enough to recognize the inside of my eyelids. I am worn out. I am dry. I am exhausted, in every sense of the word that I could imagine.

It is hard to sleep when it feels like the whole world is crashing down on top of you. God, why does everything happen at once? Why can’t things happen one at a time? Why not when I’m stronger?

I miss You so much even though I know You never went anywhere. You had to have been here the whole time but where then, have I been? I have been pouring and pouring out but am still needing You to refresh me. I don’t find any comfort in writing anymore, at least not tonight. I don’t find satisfaction in doing what You tell me to do. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I found satisfaction in anything.

I just want sleep. I just want rest. I just want everyone to stop expecting me to know what I am doing when I feel like I am falling apart on the inside. I just want to disappear. God, You expect too much.

You taught me not too long ago that the greatest revelations come when I am barely hanging on to the towel I am about to throw in. Well I am still waiting on the revelation. Give me something worth chewing on. Show me some nugget of truth that makes it all better and lets me wake up smiling again, That’s not too much to ask is it?

You always talk about forgiving people for their sins and everything they have ever done wrong and honestly I have never really had a hard time believing You but I never thought about what You asked me the other night.

I was busy doing ministry and trying to serve You when You interrupted my prayer and asked me a ridiculous question. You asked if I had forgiven You.

Had I forgiven You? You are God, You do everything right. You are the definition of perfect, why are You asking for my forgiveness?

Then I realized that you didn’t need my forgiveness. You have never done anything wrong but even if You had, You are big enough to not need my approval.

I need my forgiveness.

Intellectually I completely understand that You work all things for the good of those who love You but I’m not going to lie (anymore), sometimes my heart doesn’t believe taking the life of a twelve year old boy was in my best interest. Sometimes it is hard to convince myself everything my family has gone through and is going through will all eventually work out. God, sometimes I am just clenching my teeth and telling myself that You know what is best for me when really I am just angry that You are God and that I am not and that there is nothing I can do about it. Thank You for being bigger than my doubt.

Thank You for being real. Thank You for doing so much in my past that my future can’t not believe You will come through for my present.

I can’t honestly sat that I have no bitterness left. Frankly, God I don’t like You very much at the moment.

Thank You for being bigger than my moment. Thank You for being real when I can’t feel You. Thank You for planting so deep inside of me the truth that You are everything You said You would be that any thought that creeps its way into my heart that tries to say otherwise dies quickly.

I want to forgive You because I need my own forgiveness. I am not there yet even though I really thought I was. I know who You are, even when I forget.

I know that not only are You all-powerful, all-knowing and ever-present but that You are above all good. Even when I forget.

I know that You not only can heal, but really want to.

I know that You are the same God yesterday, today, and forever despite how I feel about You in the moment with my incredibly narrow human perspective. You are God and I wouldn’t change that if I could. I love You, and not because I have to, but because I want to and I have the right to.

God, I love You enough to not just accept that You know what You are doing, but embrace that You know what You are doing.

I will wake up tomorrow alive.

I will get up and I will bear it. I will walk in the truth that I know but cannot feel. God, I believe everything You have told me and I will keep telling myself that until I can honestly say it is true.

Thank You for a destiny worth suffering for. Thank You for letting me be just like You.

-Sincerely

           An Exhausted,

                   Dried Up,

                           Used Up,

                                   Survivor who still believes that You have it all under control

                                              Kyle

Melting Down My Nose Rings

I have a huge fear of that blinking black line on my computer. You know, that line that starts all text documents and is supposed to precede all the words of wit and wisdom that I expect to write. There is this blinding white blank screen in front of me and at the very top this little blinking line that taunts me all the time. It is like it is yelling at me and saying “I’m waiting! You are supposed to be a writer who always knows exactly what to say and how to say it and you always know how to impress and inspire people with your words. Where is your creativity now? Where is your insight now? You don’t have anything to say do you? You don’t have anything to fill up this blank page with now do you?”

Needless to say, that little black line can be kind of a jerk sometimes.

The bottom line is that I am extremely performance driven. I tend to find my worth in how many people I impress or inspire not in who God says that I am. To be honest, sometimes I write to see how many people will “like” it on Facebook. This is bad.

In the book of Exodus we find a bunch of slaves with nothing to their name. God sets them free from their captors and leads them into the desert. Then God personally shows up on a mountain and talks face to face with a man by the name of Moses and starts giving to them laws and promises for when they would enter into everything God had planned for them. Then the people get restless and start going off the deep end.

In Exodus chapter 32 verse one it says “When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’”

Aaron, for some reason, thinks that this is a good idea and decides to go along with it so he tells everyone to bring all their articles of gold and melt them down and out comes the infamous Golden Calf. But wait? Where did these ex-slaves get enough gold to make a 24 karat heifer?

In fleeing Egypt, Exodus chapter 12 verse 36 tells us that God made the Egyptians “favorably disposed” to the Israelites. They basically were given the right to take anything they wanted from the wealthiest people in the world at the time. So this gold that God had given them was now being melted down and formed into the shape of an idol that everybody was going to dance around and offer sacrifices to.

It is easy for us to look at this story and say that the primary sins were idolatry and sexual immorality or a lack of fear of the Lord and disregard for His authority but I think it is something much more common to us today. The biggest issue in this story is that these people took what God had given them and instead of waiting for instructions on how to use them to their fullest capacity, decided to figure out for themselves what to use these gifts for what they thought could make them happy.

At the very moment that they decided to cast this idol, God was giving instruction to Moses about how to build the Tabernacle while on Mount Sinai. The Tabernacle was the place that God would come down to Earth to meet the Israelites and let them get to know Him better. It was the place that their guilt would be washed clean and they could walk with God. The thing about this Tabernacle is that it would be made almost entirely of, you guessed it, gold.

When God had given them this gold, He had already known how He was going to use it. He already was giving them an opportunity to make what little they were given into something that would last for generations as the place where Heaven met Earth. If they would have waited just a little bit longer they would have known that.

The things I think I am good at are the gold in my life. My gifts and abilities are my Egyptian nose rings. God gave them to me and has things in mind that He wants to use them for but sometimes I get impatient. I think my gifts are about me.

At first it kind of seems like God gives us gifts so that He can take them right back again but think about this. When you fill out a résumé there is always a place to write out your strengths and weaknesses. Your “strengths” are the things you are good at and your “weaknesses” are the things that you aren’t.

There is a song that has been on repeat in my head for months now that sings “my strength/ in life/ is I am Yours.” It doesn’t say that my strength in life is that I can write. It doesn’t say that my strength is the ability to lead people. It says that my strength is that I am God’s. The best thing in my life that I have going for me is simply the fact that I belong to God and that has nothing to do with what I think I can do for Him. Why wouldn’t I want to give everything over to God when my best character trait is simply that I belong to the Creator of the Universe?

What if we actually valued ourselves by the fact that we belong to God and not by what we can or cannot do for Him? Whether you are incredibly “gifted” at a lot of things or less than great at most things the fact that you belong to God trumps it all.

So I have to ask myself, who am I trying to impress? Am I using what God has given me to try and feel valuable when I am already highly valued by the only One who really matters?

It is all a matter of what you are melting your nose rings down into. We are going to use what God has given us regardless but are we using it to feed our own desire or are we willing to wait just a little bit longer to see what God could do with what we have? 

Kansas

Don’t let your envy consume you but recently I got to go to Kansas.


Now I know you might be really jealous of me, being that Kansas is such a magical land of wheat and flatness, but try not to let it bother you too much. Someday you might be able to go to Kansas too.

Actually, I don’t think I would wish that on anybody.

The reality is, and I mean no offense to the people of this state, but Kansas is really boring. I was driving to Wichita and it seemed like time slowed down once we crossed the state line and I was drowning in a never-ending sea of wheat and mind-melting nothingness.

As I was driving out of Kansas, to my great relief, a week later, I realized that my faith lately had been a whole lot like Kansas. I was ready to get out.

Here are some things I have noticed about Kansas faith.

Kansas is incredibly flat. I am pretty sure that if you lived in Kansas and your dog ran away you would have a good three days to find him before he was fully out of sight. There are no ups and there are no downs. Everything is constant. Sometimes I go through seasons where nothing could ever excite me. Everything is going right and just the way I want it to go but I still have trouble looking forward to the next day. I and the world around me are flat. Nothing cranks my tractor like it used to.

When I find myself in a season like this I usually start feeling guilty that I am not being as passionate as I need to be. I start critiquing myself on all the things I should be doing and forcing myself to pretend to be excited about life. I don’t generally fool anybody but myself for a little while until it all boils down to a fit of frustration. After breaking down in an apathetic temper tantrum, God reminds me of who He is and who I am and shifts my perspective to where I truly can be excited about life and all that God is doing. Then He reminds me that those seasons of flatness are OK, as long as they are just seasons and not lifestyles. God never wants us to live our lives with flat Kansas faith but sometimes He does drive us through them for awhile. These times of spiritual flatness only make us appreciate Him more on the other side. They offer a transition between where we were with God and where we are going with God. Until we become unsatisfied with where we are we will never want to go any further into God and what He wants for our lives.

While driving through Kansas I swear we passed the same truck stop five or six times. I checked the GPS to make sure that we weren’t going in circles and it turns out that Kansas just repeats itself over and over. It was almost like every ten miles or so looked exactly like the ten miles we had just driven through and I knew I could relate. Sometimes I feel like life is just a big déjà vu and that I have already gone through everything I am going through now. I feel like I should let God know that I already passed these tests and therefore shouldn’t have to go through them again but He puts them all on repeat and I discover that I still have more to learn. When life repeats itself, God is just reiterating Himself. What did I miss the last time I went through everything I am going through now?

Another thing I noticed about Kansas the second I stepped out of the vehicle was the intense heat. Now, being the native Floridian that I am, heat is something I am generally accustomed to but nothing could prepare me for the dry heat of Kansas. Down south we have this thing called humidity and we have a lot of it but Kansas apparently doesn’t have it at all. I stepped outside and instantly felt life all the fluids in my body were being evaporated through my skin. I imagined that my parents would receive a phone call telling about how their son had been found in raisin form.

The thermometer read 106 degrees and from the outside people could look at my faith and say the same thing. I was doing ministry. I was giving myself as a servant. My faith must have been hot.

There was one problem, though. I was completely dry.

I realized that it is possible to do all the right things and be “on fire” for God but still lack the wetness of His presence. Heat and intensity aren’t enough if we are not saturated with the presence of God in our lives. God never calls us to a dry heat, but and over flowing spring of life that fills the world around us. If we aren’t soaking ourselves in the presence of God than we are sucking life from the people we think we are ministering to.

The best thing about Kansas is that it doesn’t last forever. Toto, I am not in Kansas anymore!

The seasons of dryness that we all go through don’t always happen because we are doing something wrong, but often they happen because we are doing something right. God is calling us deeper into His presence than we ever imagined and there is nothing like a season of Kansas to drive us into that desperation we need to want to pursue God more. Don’t hate on Kansas when your life drive you through it, because the state you are about to go through will be worth it all.

A Man in Red Underwear and an Angry British Woman

           I never once doubted the man who wore his underwear on the outside of his clothes, but he did have me a little nervous.

            I mean who could have seen it coming? We all knew Lex Luther was a criminal mastermind but launching a missile into the San Andreas Fault line to dismantle the continents as we know them and thus create his own super continent was just brilliant. To top it off, Lois Lane just happened to be there when the missile hit, sending her car into the growing ravine and burying her alive. Oh but wait! [Insert heroic music here].

            Lois Lane can’t die, Superman is on his way. No need to worry; everybody knows the hero has to rescue his damsel in distress at the absolute last second- the story is always more exciting that way. Hurry up Superman, the dirt is piling into her car really fast. Lois isn’t going to make it much longer; the dirt is already at her neck. The car is falling further and further into the ravine and Lois is being crushed, Superman why aren’t you here yet? Wait! The car just got completely crushed by the rocks falling everywhere and Lois is still inside! There is no way she could survive that. Superman how could you let her die?

            I never doubted that Superman could save the day, and I knew there was still time left in the movie but at that moment all seemed lost. Even a child of the planet Krypton couldn’t fix this one.

            And this is where my nerd-o-meter goes off the charts and explodes with excitement.

            Why are you going to space Superman? You are flying really fast; is that just because you are really angry at losing your sweetheart? Are you really flying so fast that you are making the Earth spin backwards? Wait are you really going back in time so that you can stop everything before it happens? That’s incredible!

            Never for a moment did I think that there would be a chance of this movie ending with Superman being a failure. I never doubt that good will always triumph over evil when it comes to super hero movies but somehow I have found myself doubting that God works all things for the good of those who love Him.*

            Did I just compare Superman to God?

            No.

            Well maybe a little bit.

            The point is that when we watch movies we always know how it is going to end; we just don’t know how it is going to get there. We know without a shadow of a doubt that the good guy will always get the girl, the bad guy will always pay the penalty for his crimes and Good always wins. I wish we had that kind of faith in the God who actually exists.

            Faith isn’t hard, we show it every day. A lot of people put all their faith in the angry British lady who yells at us from our GPS and tells us where to go. “We have no idea where we are but it’s all OK- we have a Global Positioning System that can guide us anywhere we like. Yeah it is taking me through some dark alleys that I would never go through all by myself but all is well, thanks to the angry British lady.”

            The ironic thing is that most of the people I know who own a GPS have at one time or another gotten lost because of their GPS giving them wrong directions. It never stops us from turning it on and trusting it yet we have a hard time believing that the God who has never failed us and is far more reliable than our TomTom will come through for us in the end. We expect God to give us the whole picture all at once when we only want our GPS to give us one direction at a time. It doesn’t really make sense to me.

            Faith is having a vague idea of where you are going but being really excited to see how God gets you there. Faith is knowing that He will always save the day and that the end credits won’t roll while you still need to be rescued. Faith is knowing that God will handle the in between details, you just have to hold on to the end result.

            I have an idea of the way that I want to end my life, but no idea what God is going to do to get me there. If Superman could blow my mind by flying really fast and going back in time, how much more could God? I am just a spectator anyway; God is the one who does everything worthwhile. I am just really excited to see how it will all play out. The darker the circumstances are, the more exciting the triumph will be.

* Romans 8:28

¿Qué Te Gustaría Compartir Con el Amor?

           Kids say the darndest things, I guess. To be honest, I don’t really know what that means but I do know that kids can say some crazy stuff, even in other countries.

            I was in Colombia recently and had the amazing opportunity to be a part of several different school assemblies where in three day 5,000 kids were reached. I was Jiggles the clown, the tallest most awkward gringo these kids had ever seen complete with curly rainbow ‘fro and face paint. Apparently kids overseas aren’t as terrified of clowns as kids in the States are.

            At one of these assemblies, we had over a hundred elementary school kids staring at us in the main courtyard of the school and our translator lines us up and asks the kids if they have any questions for us Americans. We were expecting them to ask if we knew Hannah Montana, lived in mansions or ate cheeseburgers everyday but one girl with about three teeth in her whole mouth caught us really off guard.

            The first question we got from any of these kids was “¿qué te gustaría compartir con el amor?”

            Our translator asked again, then again, and finally asked a teacher near the girl what she said just to confirm that he heard her right. He turned and looked at us with a confused face and said “she asked what you would like to share with love?”

            What would you like to share with love?

            What an incredible question. We had no idea how to answer that or even what she meant by it but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

            What would I like to share with love?

            That is really the only question I should be asking myself when I wake up in the morning. It’s not about what I have to do or what is expected of me. It is not about making sure I don’t mess up God’s plan for my life or miss any opportunities. It is all about what I would like to share with love.

            I get to decide the difference I make in the world. I get to decide the impact I have on the people around me. This girl just wanted to know if there was any love inside of us worth sharing with her and her friends, and if we wouldn’t mind letting it out. She knew that was more important than anything else we could tell them.

            I have to keep asking myself this question. Everywhere I go there are people who need the love I’ve found but do I want to share it with them? Of course if we were asked if we wanted the whole world to know this love we would say yes but do we do anything about it? Nobody has to force us to do the things we like to do but if I like to share love why don’t I?  Would I like to change the world today?

            I need to want to share love more than I want to have a good day. I want to plan my life around sharing love not doing my own thing.

             I want every decision I make to hinge on how much love I get to share while doing it. I am in a stage of my life where everything is about planning for the future and making the right decisions that will affect the life I end up living. Everybody always talks about a five year plan and career choices. I have absolutely no idea where I will be in five years but I know that wherever it is, I want to be sharing love.

            I talked to a man the other day in Louisville, Kentucky who couldn’t fathom why I would give up even a year to leave everything and follow God around the country with no pay and very little of what the world would call benefits, much less giving my whole life to this cause. He couldn’t grasp that there was the possibility of a life bigger than having a wife and kids and the occasional weekend barbeque with friends. I told him that there was nothing wrong with any of that but that I just wanted more.

            The God who created the Universe is offering to take our dismal existences and let us be a part of something that changes eternity. It isn’t about what job you work or what house you live in but if you are making a difference in the lives of the people you are doing life with. You don’t have to accept this offer, but God wants to know if you would like to. The “call of God” is not some hideous burden of a request that we are forced to follow, but simply an opportunity to be bigger than you ever could be on your own. The truth is, when we share love with the world around us, God shares His love with us.

            It’s not hard. Sharing love just means asking someone how they are doing and caring how they are actually doing. It means scheduling time to be a blessing to someone else. For me it means talking to strangers more, like gas station owners and tired waitresses who just need someone to make them laugh. Awhile ago I asked God what my place in society was. I wanted to know who I was supposed to be when I walked into a room. Was I the life of the party or the one people forgot was there? Was I the one that was the center of attention or the fly on the wall? God just told me that I was supposed to be the one who loves.

            To be honest I still haven’t figured out what that means but I am learning. I want my life to reflect the love that has been given to me. I want the world I keep praying for to see that I love them. I want to embody the love of Christ, not because I have to, but simply because the offer has been presented to me to do so and I would like to. I would like to share something with love.

ITSTHAT SEMPLE Now in Print!!!

       Over the past two years since creating this blog, I have written a good amount of posts. I am doing a second year as well as a summer segment here at Missio Dei School of Missions and Evangelism and am beginning my fundraising campaign. We have found a cheap way to print these blogs for a very high quality hard cover edition and I am excited to announce thaat TWO YEARS WORTH of posts are now available for pre-order in print! 

    I am humbled by the response that I have received from readers and want to give anyone who wants one the chance to own these posts in print. All the proceeds go toward funding my journey across the nation telling people about the love of Christ as well as a portion going to those traveling with me on the journey to help them raise their support. Whether for yourself or a friend, your purchase of Itsthatsemple: The Book of Blogs Vol 1  for only $25 goes toward changing the world for God.

If you are interested, please email me at itsthatsemple@gmail.com and I will give you all the details or if you wish to know more about what I am doing, please visit mymissionsjourney.com-

     Thank you so much for your support!

The Cool of the Day

Something magical happens after midnight, especially at Waffle House.

            During the day it is just a dingy little diner with creepy truck drivers and burnt toast but after midnight it is a whole new experience. I can’t count the amount of good memories I have had late at night at some Waffle House with various groups of people, all laughing and talking about whatever it was that we have just come from and that has kept us out so late. It is not that the food gets any better, the service any nicer, or the bathrooms any cleaner. It is simply the fact that there is something enjoyable about being alive when the world is asleep.

            I’m sure I will grow old one day and appreciate these times less and less but I am 19 now and therefore have a right to enjoy them.

            I have heard people say, though, that nothing good happens after midnight. I don’t completely agree with that but there is definitely some truth to the fact that evenings are usually when we blow it completely.

            Think about it. We can be fine all day until we are tired and come home from a long day and are still asked to do a million things at once. We are exhausted and ticked off at whatever and evening is when it usually boils over to eruption. We just want to get off of our feet and relax and we usually stop at nothing to achieve that goal. Our defenses slacken and suddenly we are watching a movie that we never would have let ourselves watch had it been at any other time of day and we start snapping at people for hardly anything at all. Then the next day we wake up and wonder why it is so hard to have a good quiet time with God.

            Reading through Genesis, something was recently pointed out to me that I had never seen before that has completely changed the way I do my day.

            In the first chapter God has just spoken Light into existence and separated it from Darkness. Then at the end of verse five it says “there was evening, and there was morning- the first day.”

            Did you catch that?

            We usually start our day when our alarm clock buzzes in our ears while the sun begins to peak through our blinds but when God made the first day, He started with the night before. There was evening, and then there was morning. This whole time I have been thinking that evening was my time, since I had given God the rest of my day, and that He wouldn’t mind if I just turned the brain off and relaxed. I used to wonder why I would wake up distracted and my mind going a million places at once thus making it impossible to sit down and talk to God. Now I know it was because I was taking the evenings of my day for myself when that should have been the beginning of my day with God.

            What would our lives look like if instead of coming home from work or school and venting at how terrible our day has been we just sat in the presence of God? What if instead of holding in our frustrations all day until the exploded on our family at home, we gave them all over to God the first chance we got? What if we opened our Bible before going to bed instead plopping down in front of the TV?

            Now it might seem like I am saying we should never take time to rest, but actually I am saying the exact opposite.

            The great Chinese preacher and writer of the early 20^th century Watchmen Nee pointed out in his book, Sit, Walk, Stand, that since God made Adam on the sixth day and rested on the seventh, that Adam’s first day was a day of rest. Adam began his life in rest with God. God worked then rested, Adam rested then worked but their days of rest fell on the same day.

            If God began His days in the evening, and started out humanity with a day of rest, then I think I have been missing out on a lot of what God has been trying to teach me by thinking I could take evenings to do whatever I wanted to do. Evenings are the finish in my mentality and if each day were a race, how many times could I say I finished strong?

            Flip over to chapter three of Genesis and we find that God is walking through the Garden of Eden in the “cool of the day,” looking for His friends. God came to them in the evening wanting to know how their day had been and they hid from Him.

            Taking this literally has transformed my whole outlook on how I plan my day. If I promise God my life than I promise Him my whole day, even when I am exhausted and worn out. I think it’s awesome that the point of my greatest weakness is exactly when God wants to hang out with me.

            Beyond literally, though, God has also been showing me that the way I finish anything directly connects to how much I care about it in the first place. In high school running cross country, I never walked across the finish line because I cared about the race I was running. I wanted to show that this race mattered to me and that the next race will matter too.

            I am coming to an end of my first ten months with Missio Dei and all I want to do is just coast through the end but that isn’t an option. Nothing will have mattered this year if I don’t finish like it mattered. The way I start next year will be affected by how I finish this year.

            Evenings are the transition points. They are the end of one season and the beginning of the next. They are the point when I am exhausted and worn out but need more than ever to push through and seek God. I refuse to limp into the next season of my life. It will be a new day and I am not carrying anything into it that shouldn’t be there even if that means giving it all over to God when I am too tired to care.

            Musician John Reuben said in one of his songs that “good evening is a greeting, goodnight is farewell, ” and that’s the truth. “Good Night” is a closing statement but “Good Evening” recognizes the past but is more excited about the future, which is a place I always want to be.

            So as I close this season of my life I just want to give it all up. God, take all of me. I can give no more and I am exhausted and worn out but that is exactly where You want me. It is here that I realize how powerless I am and how powerful You are. You are the creator of my days and my nights and I know that You will be there tomorrow morning like You are here with me this evening, whatever it looks like. Thank You for a great day, and thank You for the promise of a greater one tomorrow.

            Good Evening.