10 Tips for Twitterpating

 Life usually doesn't fit into nice neat little lists, but that doesn't keep me from trying.  Welcome to my Tuesday 10, where I try to fit the messiness of life into a list of ten.

In eight years of campus ministry far and away the thing I've counseled people about the most are their romantic relational issues. Love is easily one of, if not the most, talked about issue on the planet.  These are ten fairly blunt things I shared with a group of college students Sunday night.  This list comes from, not only years of discussing these issues with people, but from my own mistakes and experiences as well

1. It's okay to be single. Society treats single-hood as though it is something to be shunned, feared, or mocked; but that is wrong.  Being single is a lot better than committing relational suicide, sexual sin, or emotional masturbation.
   
2.  The "you complete me" line from Jerry Maguire is a giant smelly fairytale lie.  Putting two messed up people together doesn't make one whole person, it makes one messed up couple--and if you're not already solid in God, it becomes a lot harder for you to be obedient to the changes He tries to make in you if you are distracted by romance.  When Jesus said a man and would unite as one flesh He didn't mean actual human being.  He meant one unified representation of the goodness, likeness, and image of God.
   
3. Know who you are.  If you have identity issues a relationship will only complicate them.  The healthy way to find your identity is by searching for where your heart and God's heart are joined.
   
4. Early affection is a warning sign.  Someone eager for early physical contact is dangerous to your sexual, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
   
5. You probably don't know what you want.  Guys are selfish.  Girls want to be wanted.  Sometimes those roles are reversed.  Both are horny.  Neither know what they want at 20ish years old.  Know what you want in a future Mr. or Mrs. you.  Make a list.  Check it more than twice.  Then check it again.  Then let people in spiritual authority over you check it.  Guys, if your list reads like a help wanted ad for a modeling agency, you don't know what you want.  Girls, if your list sounds like a trailer for anything resembling a Disney, Nicholas Sparks, or Ryan Reynolds movie, you don't know what you want.  Cultivate an expectation for a Christian union based around the the principles found in a Christian person.
   
6. Relationships don't change people.  A frog doesn't turn into a prince just because you kiss him.  Just because she kissed you doesn't mean you're Prince Charming.  Relationships don't change people; they magnify all the weird little parts of who they really are.
   
7. You are no one's puppet.  If every moment with someone is overshadowed by an expectancy to behave, act, or perform in a certain way you are in a poisonous relationship.  Leave now and never look back.
   
8. Emotion is a slippery slope.  If it was a ski slope it wouldn't even be a double black diamond.  It would be an uncharted run that required a helicopter dispatch and constantly ran the risk of avalanche.  If all that connects you is emotion--your relationship is destined to fail.  True love is so much bigger than emotion.
   
9. Wait for sex.  Wait for sex.  Wait for sex.  If you're not married, don't do anything that can lead to orgasm, or anything that makes you want to do things that lead to orgasm.  The enemy will do everything he can to get you to have sex before you're married, and everything he can to keep you from having sex after you're married.
   
10. True love is unconditional.  "Happily Ever After," would make a better episode of Dirty Jobs than Mythbusters.  Can you picture yourself changing their diaper for twenty years?  What about pushing them in a wheelchair or carrying them to bed?  What about listening to them snore or putting up with a really annoying relative?

Stuff I've Learned 1

I have an incredibly interesting job.  I once heard a dear friend, and long-time campus missionary, describe it by saying, “I’m not really sure what I do, but I sure do a lot of it.”  He was joking of course, and referring to the constantly evolving nature of campus missions. 

Even in the dynamic state of “everflux,” as I like to call it, there are constants.  I will always be tasked with reaching people with the good news of the Gospel and there will always be hurting people who look to me for counsel.

I don’t have any Bible verses or great words of deep theological insight for you in this little blurb; but that doesn’t mean you won’t find Biblical precedence for these things. What I have instead is a little bit of helpful, practical, stuff I’ve learned along this interesting eight-year journey in campus missions.

1)     Speak truth in love.  If people are asking your advice you owe it to both of you to lay the truth out there in the most direct, and loving way possible.  Don’t pull your punches and confuse the issue, but don’t be mean about it either.

2)     Be comfortable in your own skin.  It’s incredibly helpful when communicating with people to have a healthy opinion of yourself.  That means honest self-evaluation that reveals the good and the bad.  Whether you’re up in front of a crowd or just talking to a friend; it’s a lot easier to talk about deep issues, and not so deep, if you don’t take yourself too seriously all the time.

I’ll have a few more over the next few days.

T is for Turn

Being reconciled to God along His plan of salvation means that at some point one must make a change.  In other words, you must eventually turn away from the habitual failures of the past to embrace a forgiving future life endowed by the Father.  Unless this turning to God takes place, there is no salvation.  A commonly used word for this act of turning to God is “repent”.

I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish – Luke 13:3

To turn to God is to embrace the realization that you need His forgiveness, you recognize it is available; you know it is impossible apart from Him, and you are desiring a new life.  I find it incredibly humbling that something with such far reaching affects can be accomplished with such ease.  One need only do as described in Romans 10:9 to find salvation.

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. – Romans 10:9

Turning means to walk away from sin, and selfishness, to embrace Christ alone.

I is for Impossible

Sin separates man from God.  You need only to go back and read the third chapter of Genesis for the sad account of Adam and Eve and their failures in the Garden.  As a result of their actions God forever removes them from his presence.  A condition we all face prior to salvation is our eternal separation from God.

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one” – Romans 3:10

It is impossible for God to allow sin into heaven.  God is loving and just, his judgment is against sin, and we are all sinners.  How then can a sinful person enter heaven, when God allows no sin?

Mercy triumphs over judgment. – James 2:13

Just as we are inclined to communicate the necessity of forgiveness and it’s availability; it is also of upmost importance that we realize access to God is impossible apart from God’s own means.

A is for Available

Just as the first talking point in the “plan of salvation” is forgiveness, or helping someone to realize their need for it, the second is the availability of forgiveness to any who come to God seeking it.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16

Most of us are incredibly familiar with this oft-quoted passage, but a key component of salvation that often goes overlooked is that it does require something on our part.

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. – Matthew 7:21

Forgiveness is available for all, but it is not automatic.  It requires acknowledging our need for God, accepting the forgiveness that is available, and submitting to God’s will for our lives.

Brotherly Love

The most obvious face of love in our day and age is brotherly love, which I would define as the affectionate concern for the well-being of others.  Simply put, caring about other people is a vital characteristic for anyone who wishes to follow the heart of God.  Don’t just take my word for it.  There are several passages in scripture that lay it out there, plain and simple.

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality. – Romans 12:9-13

Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. – 1 John 2:9,10

We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him. – 1 John 3:14,15

Does your life exhibit brotherly love?  It’s not always the easy thing to do, especially in a society that conditions us towards selfishness.

Stuff Love (Empty Love)

One of the most immediately recognizable things about our society is our love for stuff.  We have stores where you can buy stuff; TV shows for selling, making, and reviewing stuff; an entire transportation industry revolving around moving stuff.  We build houses with attics, basements, and massive garages and fill them with stuff, so we have to rent storage space for even more stuff.  We depend on the assistance of regularly scheduled crews of men to remove our wasted stuff and have yard/garage sales to profit from our unwanted stuff.  We love our stuff.

Stuff is most easily identifiable as acquired physical possessions; but really it goes beyond even that.  Stuff is generally what we are interacting with to fill our schedules.  It could be physical possessions like a nice house, sweet vehicle, or highly valued thingamajig; but it may very well be something not quite so tangible like a relational attachment, job, or hobby.

Is all stuff bad?  No.  Is all stuff good?  No.  How do I know the difference?  It all boils down to priorities.

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. – 1 John 2:15-17

If you are too busy salivating over your new shiny toy, making sure your kitchen counter tops glow from Pinesol overload, or lost in the thralls of sports-delirium to recognize, and engage, in the meaningful things of life … then you have a stuff problem.

Love is a _____.

Love, such a short little word—but let’s face it, we have such a tremendously difficult time understanding it.  Doing some studying recently I went to the dictionary, as I am often prone to do, and discovered that my dictionary of choice had twenty-eight different definitions for love.  I found all of them to be sorely inadequate.  I want to spend the next few days looking at this wonderful little word.

Rather than just diving straight off into the grandiose theological implications inferred by the word love, let’s just think about a few examples of what our society considers love.  We have holidays based on loving things, relationships, family members, and hobbies.  There are huge corporations designed around the promise of connecting people to love.  In America we tailor our lifestyle, including routines, possessions, wardrobe, religion, and friends to the thing(s) we love.

Waylon Jennings summed it up pretty good, “I’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places.”

In the Beginning

I’m going to spend the next couple of days looking at thevery first verse in the Old Testament.

In the beginning Godcreated the heavens and the earth. - Genesis 1:1

The first four words speak volumes. God was there at that point our feeble finiteminds would call “the beginning”. However, God is beginning-less.

Have you ever tried to wrap your mind around eternity? C.S. Lewis described it in Mere Christianity using a brilliantanalogy dealing with ink on paper. Mortal life is the ink; time is the paper; and God is the one holdingthe pen and paper. Eternity is a weightythought that when contemplated heavily can actually lead to doubt in somemeasure because we really cannot fully grasp it. It is so beyond our capacity to understand.

I once asked a room full of people to define eternity for m eand started getting words like; forever, never ending, and endless, but eternity is more than time, and God is eternal.

That all sounds great in my head or as I read and reread it back to myself, but what kind of implication does it have for me today? If God must come before the “beginning”, He will most certainly endure beyond the “end”. I find great comfort in the notion that in spite of all my failed attempts to comprehend—He still is.

In essence, we can’t really grasp Him with our minds, luckily we can seek Him with our hearts. Knowing that God was before beginning gives me a steadfast faith in His unyielding sovereignty and that can only be a good thing.

If I were to write my own story, it wouldn’t start with “in the beginning Nathan,” that would be preposterously presumptuous; but God did because He was, is, and will be. “In the beginning God” might be some of the most comforting words we could ever hear.

Too Much To Lose

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of attending a lecture on Christian leadership given by one of my heroes. The schedule had intentionally called for a long session to allow for question and answer feedback and I was attentively listening, absorbing, and writing throughout.  Then somewhere near the end something happened.

Someone in the crowd asked something akin to, “How do you handle a situation that might place you alone with a woman who is not your wife?”  I was pretty certain how the speaker would respond.  It is common practice among ministers not to be alone with another woman, but then the lecturer elaborated on a personal story.

One cold day he was driving in the rain and came across a woman walking in the downpour without an umbrella.  Immediately his heart was provoked into offering this sodden pedestrian a place in his warm, dry vehicle; but he did not.  The reasoning he gave I still remember word for word, “I could not afford to put myself in that situation.”  While I am an avid practitioner of not allowing myself to be compromised through unnecessary situations, this was something altogether different. 

What I see in this scenario is a conflict of differing natures: not the rain versus the driver or the woman.  I’m talking about the desire of the driver to assist the pedestrian as prompted by God versus his hesitance as a result of what someone might think about him by having a strange woman in his car.

It boils down to this.  He would not pick her up because he had too much to lose.  Job, reputation, whatever you want to call it… the potential opinions of men trumped his willingness to do the right thing.

James wrote that when we know the right thing to do and we don’t do it we have sinned.  (James 4:17) Protecting the opinions of men will never be the right thing to do when compared to showing the love of God.

Even when doing the right thing means that you must lose everything you have, be it relationships, reputation, or riches, it is what we are called to do.  We won’t always succeed, but we must always try.

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. Matthew 16:25

Neighbor =/ Me

"Love your neighbor as yourself."  Mark 12:31 is not a suggestion.  It is a command straight from the King of Kings.  In fact this premise is so important when asked what the greatest commandment is; Jesus replied with the previously discussed command and added this one as the second.

We live in a society of self-worship.  A huge portion of what we do in our day-to-day lives revolves around being, making, looking, feeling, or knowing better.  There’s not really anything wrong with those things when kept in check, but many make an idol of themselves by taking one or more too far.

What if we who proclaim to carry the name Christian upon our lives were to actually love people as we love ourselves?  Jesus spoke numerous tidbits along these lines, but it all boils down to the practice of placing others first.  Let’s be honest, living selflessly is not at the top of anyone’s to-do list these days.  Shouldn’t it be?

Strength

The final piece of the greatest commandment as passed down from Christ to His listeners in Mark 12:30 was to love God “with all your strength.”

In this era strength is a word full of vibrate meaning and weighty connotations.  Chiefly when we think of strength we more often than not begin to think of a type of physical prowess or the ability to perform some feat of significance.  This is not an incorrect idea of strength, although I do believe it to be an incomplete one.

Loving God with all of your strength means to sacrifice your every effort to Him.  It means to perform to the best of your ability in all areas, not because your relationship with Him hinders on your performance; but rather, because your love for Him compels you to honor Him throughout your every waking moment.

The measure of our strength in light of His is pitifully meager and almost unworthy of even mentioning and yet still the God of all creation yearns for it.  Not because He in any way or capacity needs our meager offering to fulfill His sovereign purposes.  He sees the effort we spend as a collective act of willful adoration.

God wants the sum total of our parts to align in a fervent love for Him alone; heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Mind

Loving God “with all your mind,” is not nearly as hard a concept to grasp as the previous two sections from Mark 12:30 I have discussed.  Of course, as is so often the case in life, it is perhaps easier said than done.  It is my belief that this kind of mental devotion to God can be boiled down to three basic areas; thought-life, attitude, and intellect.

As fallen beings our thoughts often betray us.  Paul wrote that he had to consciously make his every thought captive to Christ.  He also wrote that he had to renew his mind daily.  In this sense loving God with your entire mind would mean that you seek purity in your thoughts.  With obedience we can control the things we allow our minds to dwell on, however it takes a measure of steadfastness, devotion, and discipline.

Our attitudes are another area where we all-too-often fail to love God with our whole mind.  This point was made so very real to me during my trip to Ecuador this past summer.  In a part of the country that was extremely poor and by all our culture’s indicators should have been depressing and destitute, I met some of the most jovial and upbeat personalities I’ve ever crossed paths with.  Why?  Because their attitudes are rooted in a righteous perspective of who God is, what He has done for them, and a healthy faith in His power and willingness to be sovereign in their day-to-day lives.  In stark contrast I’ve known many people within our borders who would claim Christian status and yet do not at all display the upbeat contentment that I found among my Ecuadorian brethren.

Intellect is the last part of our mind that I believe we should turn over fully to the King.  To be blunt, many Christians are dumb.  There are probably numerous reasons for this but the most glaring reasons I have encountered for this are laziness and apathy.  Many believers today have an extremely poor knowledge of the basic principles of their faith and many more are just too apathetic to think that they should honor God by furthering their intellect.

In loving God with our entire mind I believe that we will develop a better sense of how to serve Him through a healthy thought-life, a contagious attitude, and a robust intellect.  This is perhaps one of the most neglected aspects of the Christian faith.

Soul

“With all your soul,” could probably be one of the most confusing phrases ever spoken and if not for the great wealth of insight Scripture gives us concerning the personhood of Christ it would be hard to grasp the nature of what He meant.

We can look to John 4:24 for further illumination on this phrase as during his discourse with the woman at the well Jesus uses another phrase, “worship in spirit and in truth.”  You’ll need to (and should) visit that passage for the full context of what is being discussed there.  Essentially Jesus is speaking to the theological principal that your inner self is the true self.  If you could peal back the physiological composition that contrives your physical essence and see the soul inside, you would be able to look on the real you.

Loving God “with all your soul” means that you love Him with a deep authenticity that is rooted in the very nature of who/what you are as His created being.  Authentic-soul-level-love surpasses the wishy-washy nature of a cultural religious phenomenon or ritual and surpasses even a lifestyle to alter the fabric of one’s very identity itself.

Heart

“With all your heart,” those words carry a great depth of meaning, but as concerns the passage from Mark 12:30 it is easy enough to grasp the nature of what Jesus was speaking of—even if the actual living it out part is not so easy.  It is my belief that when Jesus told his listeners to love God with all their heart he was essentially speaking of their desires, desires for God and Godliness.

He was instructing them that to truly love God with every aspect of their heart it must come from a place of willingness.  And from the willingness and desire for God they would see a resulting change in character and compassion, passions and discipline.

I heard it said once that salvation was the process of changing our “want to”.  It seems to me that loving God with all your heart has to come from that place inside us all.  It is neither something that will happen by accident, nor can it be forced upon us.  Rather it is the willing act of changing our desires.

Basically Jesus was saying, “want God.”

Most Important

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” - Mark 12:28-31

This is an awesome excerpt from the Gospel of Mark.  After all the intellectual and theological poking and prodding from the religious leaders of his day Jesus set the record straight (true to character) with such a profoundly poignant answer that they are basically left speechless.  Tune in over the next few days as I discuss this great portion of scripture in a little more detail.