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.