Post 13: And there stood before me a great wall... made of cantaloupes.

Many people have this misconception that prophets make big sweeping “prophecies” that are supposed to predict the future and that these prophets are supposed to be right every time or shut their trap forever if they make a mistake. Most people who call themselves “prophets,” or who at least claim to be “operating in the prophetic gift,” won’t usually try and tell you the capitol f Future, or even necessarily try to tell you you’re future. Most legitimate “prophets” I have heard of would probably just say that they know how to listen to God.

Now, we have a God who loves us so when he speaks he will not uncommonly whisper things very pertinent and real to the people who are listening. Or he may speak things to someone with open ears that are meant for someone who refuses to listen. This is where prophets come in and this is where it gets personal, powerful, and real. This is also where Herb Marks and I come into the story.

Herb Marks is a local “prophet” with a significant reputation. He served on staff at New Life Center, a huge Foursquare church in Everett, Washington, and while he was there, there was joking amongst some people that if you had any bad habits you shouldn’t go when Herb was speaking because he would “read your mail.” Herb is so gifted that he was hired by one church to do nothing but pray for people. Two or three years ago I saw Herb at Hope Foursquare in Snohomish, Washington, but I wasn’t there for his service. I was there for band practice and he was stealing our time because his service was taking too long. I was waiting in the back for him to finish up and head out when he caught my eye and, despite the fact that there was a large line of people waiting to talk him, he motioned for me to come up and talk to him.

At that point in my life I was skeptical, both of this guy and of the idea that God would speak through someone I had never met to say something useful to me. However, I went up and Herb walked me through a series of questions culminating in him asking me what the single biggest thing standing between God and I was, to which I responded… cantaloupes. I say that because the answer to that question was fairly personal and cantaloupes seem like a good substitute.

Two weeks ago I went and saw Herb a second time, this time with a very different mindset. Having now witnessed some very real prophecies and other incredible acts of God, I was more prepared to believe what Herb had to say. I was also strongly reminded of the fact that the cantaloupes him and I had discussed were still very present in my life. After Herb spoke he began to ask for people to stand if they felt a breeze against their legs. I thought I had felt the breeze but wasn’t really sure so I didn’t stand. He then said that there was one person who wasn’t standing because they weren’t sure if they had felt the breeze or not. I promptly stood up. When I rose Herb didn’t recognize me but began to tell me some pretty remarkable things. He made a point of saying that I needed to become a man of integrity, he also emphasized that he was NOT calling out sin in my life. This is rather important because some prophets can see the sin in people’s lives and will call it out in front of people, but that is quite destructive and is not the way that prophets are meant to handle that kind of information.

After speaking directly to me for a while Herb asked everyone that was standing to go and be prayed for by one of the people on the prayer team. God pointed out someone specific for me to pray with named George. Before I even approached him he came to me and asked if I wanted him to pray for me, I of course obliged. He prayed for me generally first and told me some things about myself that I may share another time, but not now. He then asked what specifically I wanted prayer for and I of course told him it was the cantaloupes. As he began to pray, God gave me an image of a small pink planet. I was standing on the planet and next to me was a large brick wall a few feet taller than I was. On the other side of the wall was the sun. The sun’s rays were shining over the top of the wall and my planet was entirely lit up despite the fact that the wall stood between the sun and me and I couldn’t see the sun itself. As George continued to pray the wall suddenly came down and became nothing more than a pile of bricks at my feet. I could now see the sun directly and step over the wall and it would not hinder me in the least, as long as I didn’t rebuild the wall myself.

Now, two weeks later, the wall is still down. Don’t get me wrong, the temptation has returned. I, however, have a new attitude about it. Now when the rotten cantaloupes show up, my attitude is one that says, “No, that’s a terrible idea! That is only going to be hindering to me and I should NOT do it.” As opposed to one that said, “Oh, I shouldn’t do it, but…” Two things that are helping me in this fight are the example set by the life of Jesus and the book of James. When Jesus was tempted he didn’t pussyfoot around and think about it, he immediately quoted scripture and walked away. The scripture I usually think of is in Phillipians (I think) when Paul calls people out for making their stomach their God, and for me, that’s a real quick shutdown. What James says in chapter 1 verse 15 is, “when desire has conceived it gives birth to sin.” So a natural extension of thought from that verse is to ask what it is I desire that I am trying to satisfy with a big orange fruit. So I’m asking God; what is it?

Rob Bell, in his book Sex God, talks about our desires. He says that our desires, in and of themselves, are not the problem. God gave us, and gives us, our desires. Problems arise when our desires are misdirected. Desires require an immense amount of energy and those desires, along with the energy that drives them, need to be directed towards positive things. In the book of Ephesians, Paul says that thieves first, need to stop stealing, but then they need to begin to work with their hands (the thing they once used to steal), and begin to work towards something good. He says this because, in essence, it’s impossible to focus on not doing something, so we need a positive to dwell on if we are to be rid of the negative influences.

The cantaloupes of my life used to make up a great brick wall that stood between God and I, but that wall has fallen. I still have those desires. Those bricks are still there. Now it is time to use the bricks to build a bridge to bring me closer to the sun. Or a bridge that will take me to another planet where I can help someone else tear down his or her wall. Or use those bricks to build a monument to God. Or crush the cantaloupes into some cantaloupe juice and bring the good out of them and share it with others. Or… well you get the idea.

Post 10: This Mountainous Life

Life is like a climbing a mountain, you get sweaty, tired and sore but it’s all worth it for the companionship and the view…

A few weeks back I went on a hike to Mt. Si, which is near North Bend, WA. Leading the charge was the good doctor Luke Reinsma and following him were myself and a few other students and alums from SPU. After about an hour into the hike the group became fairly split up, my good buddy Andrew and I leading the way by about five minutes and the rest of our motley crew following at various intervals. As we carried on with our hike I couldn’t help but feel like God was saying pay attention… pay attention.

Initially the hike was a jovial one, everyone was fresh and ready from a good breakfast, we were bundled up and warm, there was lots of good conversation, and everyone was having a genuinely good time. As the hike progressed and we began to split however, the conversations died down and were mostly replaced by heavy breathing and the occasional grunt or groan, though Andrew and I did manage to continue discussing theological questions despite this.

Shortly after the group split I began seeing clearings in the trees through which I could see the view; this was a wonderful motivator. As we continued up the path the view kept getting better and better and the trail started becoming more and more lit and the excitement of knowing the summit was nearby was tremendous. Finally, we reached the peak and what a view it made the toil all worthwhile. There were many mountains and valleys all around us, and a beautiful blue sky with some thick, white, cotton-candy clouds interspersed through out it. There was a huge rainbow too, starting on top of a cloud and ending somewhere very far away (you can barely see it in the picture). Off to the right, behind the rainbow, we could see the very top of one Seattle building, probably the Columbia Tower, just barely peaking up through the clouds, which were covering all the other skyscrapers. Seattle feels huge when your downtown, but from atop that mountain it was very clear how very small man’s accomplishments are when compared to the beauty of creation. It made the whole venture more than worthwhile. As we sat on top of the mountain feeding the Canadian Jays (who will sit on your hand for awhile if you have food to offer) I began thinking about our journeys of faith and the trail up the mountain.

When we first meet God all is well. We feel warm and fuzzy inside, were full on our first meal of the body and the blood, and we have our fellow travelers all around us. As we begin the real ascent however, the journey quickly becomes challenging. The people we set out with at the base we begin to lose touch with as they go on ahead or fall behind on the trail. The pain and soreness that are bodies undergo begin to make the journey feel very unappealing. When all we can see around us are those same repetitious trees we begin to wonder if we’re really progressing at all. But when we begin to see the sun shining through the clearings we have our first glimpse of hope. And when we have a companion with us we have the encouragement to stay strong. Finally, when we hit the zenith it becomes very apparent that the whole journey was worth it for the beauty and the glory displayed before our eyes. And as we stand on top of the mountain and see the rainbow in the distance, we are reminded of the promise that God made; you will find rest and you wont have to climb that mountain ever again.

Fall quarter I was talking with my friend Daniel and he told me that he wasn’t really sure about what he thought of God in a lot of ways, but he also said that, “You can’t go to the mountains or go to the ocean and not know there is something bigger out there.” Daniel wrote a song called, “This Vast Expanse” which is essentially all about looking for God in the mountains and the oceans. The song is a beautiful ten-minute epic and it truly is a masterpiece. He performed it at the SPU talent show with a twelve-man band featuring a piano, two vocalists, a guitar, a bass, drum set, trombone, trumpet, cello, and several violins. That night as Daniel and the band hit the climax of the song with every member playing at full intensity, he not so much sang as shouted into the microphone, “Is this my God, this vast expanse?” I nearly cried as I thought to myself, yes, it is.

This is the view from the top of the Mountain

Post 8: Sick Doctors and Sleeping People

There is no such thing as a perfectly healthy doctor. Yes, even the masters of medicine have their diseases and broken bones, just like us.

I saw a movie recently called Awakenings featuring Robin Williams as Dr. Sayer, a doctor newly hired by a psychiatric hospital in the Bronx. Dr. Sayer has been hired to care for some particularly hopeless patients despite the fact that he is not at all a “people person” and desires minimal human contact. The patients he is assigned are essentially catatonic; they are in a state only slightly better than a coma. They shut their eyes to go to sleep and open them when they are awake, but other than that it seems they have no actual brain activity. They don’t walk, talk, eat or anything until Dr. Sayer begins performing some tests to see if these patients have active brains. He begins by throwing balls at them and seeing if they will catch them, and they do! He then begins various other tests in order to see what other stimuli his patients might respond to and finds a number of other things that will stimulate his patients’ minds, like playing Jimi Hendrix music to see if they will dance. After awhile, he begins to hope that his patients aren’t simply brain dead and that they due in fact have active brains that simply need something new, an awakening so to speak.

Prior to Dr. Sayer’s arrival the other doctors had given up all hope for these patients and had basically decided that these patients would be doomed to float around the hospital until they died. As Dr. Sayer became more and more involved with his patients he finally was able to find a medicine, which he believed would “bring them back” from their perpetual coma, or whatever it was they were in. The first subject he tried the medicine on was a character named Leonard Lowe, played by Robert De Niro. Initially there was no response to the medicine from Leonard, but one night Sayer decided to give him a little extra medicine and that night he “woke up” as it were and began talking and drawing and all the other things he had been doing at nine years old, prior to entering his catatonic state.

After “awakening” all of his patients, Dr. Sayer takes them dancing and out and about to do things and tries to help them have lives all over again, unfortunately it is not long before (spoiler alert) Leonard and the others begin to regress and lose their minds all over again. At one point as Leonard is fading back into a catatonic state he begins to twitch, talk funny and have a number of other issues and in a private conversation with Dr. Sayer he says, “Look at me! I’m grotesque!”

We are all patients and we should all be doctors as well. Just like Leonard, most Christians “wake up” to find that they were missing a lot in their lives. I don’t mean this in the sense that, they needed something that wasn’t there before, I mean this in the sense that they realize that a spectacular thing called life with God was waiting right in front of them. They just couldn’t reach it because too many people gave up on them and wouldn’t give them what they needed. For most people, this is just a matter of a little more love, a little more patience, a little more understanding than what the average person will give them. In my own life a significant part of what brought me back to God was a few good people showing me love when most people like them had only judged me. I see people like me all the time that simply need a little more love and when we “the church” don’t provide it (though we’re commanded to) they seek it everywhere else. All it takes is one person, like Dr. Sayer, to give them that little extra medicine even though it costs a little more and is a little less convenient. And when that little extra is given, people can start to see what Jesus was to the world and what we are asked to be.

Unfortunately, even when we give that extra medicine people will still regress. My six-year addiction didn’t die when I “found God” and when we “wake up” we sometimes feel grotesque because we know there is something better but we feel that we just can’t hold on to it because our old lives don’t just disappear when we find something better. This is when we must recall that Jesus didn’t come to heal the healthy because the sick need a doctor. This statement is I feel is two fold because I feel he not only meant that he came for those who didn’t know him but also that he came to help us with our problems not to make us perfect.

Life with God is always right in front of us but I, like most people, know how easy it is to allow ourselves to fall asleep rather than to wake up and embrace the truth. I have had people confess their sins to me and often with that confession comes the declaration that they feel they will never be good enough for God. They say “Look at me I am a terrible person, liar, slut, etc! I am not good enough for God!” Congratulations, none of us are, nor will we ever be. The beauty of salvation is that there is no such thing as good enough; there is simply the decision, followed by the awakening. Regress is inevitable, but God will always be right there in front of you. Our imperfection will always be there, but God doesn’t care about that.

I know it’s sad
That the gift we have
We keep it for ourselves
Most of the time
The world is looking
For a love that’s locked up
Inside these four walls
Break the door down and shine

We need to wake up, wake up
Live like God
Pour out love

-Leeland "Wake Up"

Post 7: Rocks that God "cant" lift

Can God make a rock so big even he can’t lift it? Or as Wayne’s World put it, “Can God microwave a burrito so hot that even he can’t eat it?” Many people have found this to be the single defining question that ruins any possibility of God existing. Some will tell you that if, in fact, God can make a rock he can’t lift, then he would've created something he can’t do and is therefore not all-powerful and not real. If you say he can’t make a rock so big even he can’t lift it they will give you the same answer saying that if he can’t make a rock so big he can’t lift, then there is something he can’t do and is thus not all-powerful and not real. I would say that these people have missed one thing in this argument, that is can’t vs. won’t. Unfortunately, I must now go a very long way around to explain why the short answer to this question is yes.

As a young man in the midst of some very intense moments of worship I have found myself saying over and over again, “Jesus I love you. Jesus I love you!” The need to repeat this over and over again is born out of the feeling that once is not enough and despite the fact that I know he heard me the first time, God is often so overwhelming that I feel those words can’t be said enough, that’s when we start to speak the language of emotion.

This idea of emotional communication is not entirely original, it is partially stolen from C.S. Lewis, however I hope my explanation is a little clearer and my expansion on this idea still somewhat original.

When you think about your friends and family, or anyone else you encounter in your life, what is the first thing about them that you think of? When I ask someone, “Hey do you know so-and-so?” how do they respond? Usually it’s with, “Oh I love so-and-so!” or, “I don’t like that kid.” This is because the first thing that comes to mind when we think about people is how they make us feel. When I think about my friends, the first thing that comes to mind is not, oh yeah they have blue eyes, or brown hair, it’s how they make me feel.

One could even say that how someone makes you feel is even more relevant to who they are than any other aspect about them. I, like everyone, occasionally find people attractive upon meeting them, however, if I begin to feel that this person looks down on others, doesn’t love their family, or doesn’t care about anyone I can never feel attracted to that person again. They don’t make me feel love and as such I can’t feel attracted to them. Most people don’t pick their friends because they are, “tall, dark and handsome” they pick them because they enjoy spending time with them because of how they make them feel. Thus, we choose our companions based not upon sight or sound but upon… feelings. This is why I choose God.

It’s true you’ve caught me. I’ve never seen God, heard God’s audible voice, smelled him touched him, or tasted him, though I would count the works of his hands as being awful close to it. No, my five senses are not convinced he is real. However, I have emotionally touched him and heard from him and spoken to him. These things, as I have just shown, are far more important to our experience of who people are than any or all of the senses combined. Emotion is the sense that most of us, whether we like it or not, find to be the most real and the most important, because it is, to us, the most real sense we have, even if no one else can experience it.

God doesn’t bother with being physically tangible because we can experience him on a higher level than sight or sound. I only wish that the feelings that I emotionally/spiritually communicate to God could be expressed to other human beings, but they can’t. When we try and verbally explain our feelings, we have to reduce them too far for them to be experienced as they were originally intended and as such people will never know how God really makes us feel. Instead, when I want to use my mouth to communicate God’s love to others I have to reduce him, which is getting closer to the point about God’s burritos.

As I may or may not have said before, God is bigger than human comprehension; this is beautiful to some, beyond frustrating to others, and wholly unacceptable to others still. Thus, God reduces himself so that we can experience him without our heads exploding. Some people would ask, “Why would God bother to walk through my trials with me when he already knows how they will turn out?” The answer? Because he loves you. When my drum teachers showed me how to play they reduced themselves to a fraction of what they were capable of in order to teach me and show me how it is done. Did this diminish their capacity? Not at all, it simply made a big idea manageable for a young student. God does the same for us; he shows us a fraction of the bigger picture so that we can take in who he is. He reduces himself because that’s the only way we’ll ever begin to understand him. God could look into our futures, know where his angels will step in and out, let it happen, think no more of it and give us a pat on the back as we walk through the pearly gates, this is the what those practicing deism believe. Instead, he wants to come down to our level to show us how to keep a beat, hold a stick, and play a perfect rhythm, and as we learn he wants to share in the joy with us and even though he knows we’ll get it eventually, he’ll ignore that so he can experience the best moments, and the worst ones, with us. William Young gives a wonderful depiction of this in his The Shack.

In The Shack the main character, Mack, is sitting down having a conversation with God incarnate. God the father is a large black woman, God the son is a Jewish carpenter, and God the Holy Spirit is a translucent Asian woman. They sit down for dinner one night and as they are all eating together they ask Mack how is children are doing. As Mack responds he quickly realizes that they must already know how his children are and that they don’t even need to ask him. He also at this point realizes they don’t need to be eating with him either. Mack then asks God (all three of him) why he (they) asked about his children and why they are eating. God the father responds explaining that while he doesn’t have to eat he does enjoy eating with Mack and would rather reduce himself to having hunger for the sake of eating with him. He also tells Mack that while he could know exactly know Mack’s children were at that moment he would rather hear it from Mack and hear about what Mack is experiencing. Now back to God’s burritos.

Can God create a task so great even he can’t perform it? This is the question, enter rock lifting or burrito eating or whatever as the said task but this is the core of it. The answer to this question is a simple yes. Why? Because God can and will place limits on himself for our sake. He will make himself incapable of completing the task and will not ever reverse that inability because he is a just God who will not go back on his word. Yet, God could have at one time done said task, but as I already explained, self-enforced limitations do not affect one’s capability of doing. God would have the strength and everything needed to complete the task but would be entirely incapable of completing it because he made a law for himself saying he wouldn’t. This doesn’t make him any less capable, only unwilling and because he is just (a rule he made for himself) he could never make himself capable of doing the task.

Post 6:Is happiness hidden in turkeys?

What can Emile Hirsch and a discounted mocha teach us about happiness? Well, my experience this weekend has been that they can teach us an awful lot about happiness.

My sister Tara came to pick me up from SPU on Wednesday and before we set out towards my parents place I decided to get a mocha for the road. I had about two dollars left on my SPU card and it was going to cost me an extra two dollars to pay for the drink. The barista quite kindly said not to worry about it and to have a happy thanksgiving, so I walked out of the SUB with two-dollar venti mocha. Tara commented on this saying that she loves the holidays because everyone is so nice to others from Thanksgiving to right around New Year’s Eve. This comment quickly turned to discussion about this question; why cant we be this nice to people all year round? My solution is this; people are generally happier at the holidays.

Thanksgiving is sort of like the “kick-off” event that signals the commencement of the holiday season and during the holidays most everyone is happier than the rest of the year. Almost everyone has days off, great food, presents, and time with family to look forward to. Thus, “…since I am happy, everyone else should be happy too” so people try and be nice to everyone because “everyone deserves to be happy at the holidays.” This sentiment was confirmed for me on Thanksgiving.

My clan decided to take most of our leftover food (about twenty-five plates worth) and give it to the homeless in Seattle. While this may sound crass, it was like Halloween on the streets of Seattle that night. Our idea was apparently highly un-original as almost everyone we came across already had a plate loaded with food just like the ones we were handing out, which had been given to them by some other family with leftover food. Like I said, we get into this mind set that “everyone should be happy at the holidays, just like me” when the rest of the year almost of all of us can be accused of ignoring the people who are in need.

Thus I have to come to this unfortunate and highly pessimistic conclusion that I really hate, and it is this; at the holidays we are nice to people because we are happy and we feel others deserve the same. Yet for those who choose to follow God we are called to love people always not just when we are happy and it’s convenient. Now I want to get into what it means to be happy.

In the film “Into the Wild” Chris McCandless, the main character, is a bright young man who has been accepted into Harvard Law School and is well on his way to becoming a “successful” man. However, his family life has been nothing short of awful due his parents putting their business before their children, their endless arguing, and finally Chris’ discovery that his parents had lied to him his whole life and that he was actually a bastard child. And so, tired of his parents and of their forcing him to pursue success, he gives almost all of his college money ($24,500 dollars) to charity and sets out on the road hitching around the country. His goal is to simply be alone, free of any social obligations, live off the land and discover who he truly is with his final destination being the Alaskan Wilderness.

The whole time he is gone he doesn’t bother to tell his parents where he is and he hopes they don’t find out because he never wants to see them again. However, on his final stop before reaching Alaska he meets an old Catholic man named Ron who lives by himself because he has no family. As Chris gets to know Ron better he begins to challenge him and shows Ron that he has no life beyond the comfort of his own home. Shortly after pointing this out, Chris challenges Ron to climb a big hill with him, which he had refused to do earlier in the movie. Ron climbs and reaches the top of the hill, much to the joy of both of them. As Chris and Ron sit on the hill together Chris explains to Ron that he feels the principle joy of life isn’t found in human relationships but in the world all around us, to which Ron responds, “…there is some kind of bigger thing we can all appreciate, and it sounds like you don’t mind calling it God, but when you forgive [for example his parents] you love, and when you love God’s light shines on you.” Right after this the sun peaks out from the clouds and Chris exclaims “Holy S**t!”

Towards the end of the film as Chris is alone, highly emaciated and dying in the Alaskan Wilderness, he realizes that the only thing that can save him is medicine, in other words the society that he tried so hard to be rid of. Just before lying down on his deathbed, he reads in a book (I think one by Tolstoy) that a man could want little more in life than music, books, a quiet country life and a family to share it with. After reading this he writes his last words, “Happiness only real when shared.” This demonstrates his final epiphany that happiness does not lie in society at all (which he knew all along) nor does it lie solely in relationships or solely in nature, instead happiness lies in experiencing the joys of this world with the ones we love.

The bigger picture that I am trying to get at with all of this is that we can be happy and show love (be nice) always. We are a people called to show the world we love them because God loves us and we know the power of love (just like the Huey Lewis song). As were trucking through the mountains and especially the valleys of this life, God asks that we shine his light and his love even when we are covered in mud and we don’t know how. We can be happy people in the midst of tragedy when we embrace that there is good in everything not just in presents and turkey. We can show love even when we don’t feel like it, because we know that we have perfect love on our side. Finally, when we live in happiness and love, we live the life God intended for us. When we do this we can be living proof that God is good and that the only reason people don’t like him is that we have misrepresented him.

Post 5: Let's get intimate...

Ewwww gross! Intimacy! You can’t say that in church! How nasty! I hope that wasn’t your reaction to my title, but it may have been, and I won’t lie; I do make these titles to get your attention.

Whenever I say intimate people usually think sex, being married, and maybe chick flicks, specifically The Notebook comes to mind. This is really too bad because none of those things are the intimacy I care to talk about. I am not married nor do I presently have a girlfriend (so yes ladies I am available… just kidding) and as such I don’t have a physically intimate relationship, nor do I plan to until I am married. I don’t want this to be a blog about sex or adultery or lust because those topics have long since gotten old to most people so Ill stop here and say that this is about intimacy between friends. As a side note I’ll just say that physical intimacy is (obviously) intimate but in my minimal (and entirely regretted) experience it was even more performance based than real life and as such is untruthful and irrelevant to this.

Finally getting to the point intimacy is fantastic! I have a dear friend named Ben Fader, he is a curly haired theology student from Sea-Tac and his girlfriend’s (along with many others’) favorite word to describe him is, SASSY! He is a fantastic man and a dear friend. The other night Ben and I played “love drums,” a term I coined on the spot that night for drumming to bring God glory and tell him we love him. We played for probably fifteen maybe twenty minutes, we didn’t stop the whole time, we never lost time, and only four human words were said that whole; “let’s bring it down.” It was a grand old time and I think God provided a little soundproofing to the room we were in because it was one thirty in the morning and we were very, very loud and not one person complained, even though some people heard us down the hill.

The reason I bring up Ben Fader is that we have hung out five times by my count and never for more than an hour or two. Yet I consider Ben among my closest friends because we have a remarkable intimacy.

This is where some macho guys would shout, “GAY” and get really uncomfortable. However, I don’t see anything gay about exceptional openness and transparency due to a mutual feeling of comfort and understanding. Ben knows almost nothing about my history. He knows I’m from Lake Stevens, he knows I have had two real girlfriends, and he knows I am a youth pastor and a musician. Yet I have many other friends who know much more about me, more of my life story and more of how I react to things yet in spite of this they don’t see my heart and soul like Ben does. I don’t know why God established this between Ben and I but I wish more people could know one another like we do with as little time together as we have had. I know that to some degree this doesn't happen due to fear of people seeing who we are, and I spent a lot of time in my last blog talking about that so I won’t go too in depth here but I do want to share two relevant stories.

A week or so ago I was apparently sitting at a largely female dominated table at the SPU cafeteria. Some guys from my floor and girls from my sister floor were sitting one table over and apparently were spying on me. One guy in particular, big blonde and beautiful Collin, saw me being me and saw that some of the girls I was with were pretty entertained by it. At this point he said something along the lines of, “man, if I made half the crazy noises and said half the stupid things Kenny does people would think I was crazy!” I take that as nothing short of a compliment because quite frankly it means I pull off the role of Kendrick Barnes pretty well.

Today my friend Christa the highly convivial (I used a thesaurus for that one) art major from my sister floor told me a story that is quite contrary to mine. She said she was in one of her classes and was acting a little wild; as she said, “a bit too much like her self.” She didn’t really say what she did but apparently afterward some people basically shut her down for whatever it was. Hearing this did little short of break my heart, though I didn’t say it at the time. What I did tell her was that there is no such thing as being you too much and that I would whole-heartedly encourage her to be herself all the time in everyway, especially in front of me.

This is where I suppose I have to come back to Ben and I and how this all ties together. Our intimacy is born from the knowledge that there is absolutely no judgment in our relationship and that it is all love. With Ben I am more confident than I am with most people. This is also aided by putting God in the middle of us and praying together however, I also need to clarify something here. I cannot say that I am always, invariably myself. While I encourage everyone to be themselves and I always do my best to be me, when it comes down to it I am still human and still have fear of what “they will think.”

Last night I was thinking about condemnation and other social unpleasantries and I began to feel some confidence dropping and began to think, well maybe I need to chill out and be a little less… In the middle of those thoughts God said, “no you don’t, I like you just how you are.” Yes he said like, not love.

The reason he said like not love is this; we often see God’s love for us like we see our family’s love for us and that is that they love us despite our faults, however this is not what John 3:16 says. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son that who so ever believes in him shall not perish…” You have probably heard this before and maybe your thought right now is great, what of it? In this verse the Greek word phileo is used for love. Phileo is the term for brotherly love or the kind of our love that we feel for our friends. So lets look at this verse again. John 3:16 “For God so [desired to be you friend] that he sent his only begotten son [to die for you]…” God who knows you better than anyone (whether you like it or not) wants to be your friend! How much does that rock? God, who is the only one with a legitimate claim that he is better than us, who can see all our faults, but still wants to be our friend. How do we respond to this?

Like I said last week, we often judge people for who they are. I would so prefer it if we could kill this habit and become who we are, because there are NO pretty masks in this world. This starts with transparency with the people around us who we know (or maybe hope) won’t judge us. Our best friends, our family members, and our significant others because if we can’t be transparent with them then how can we ever become intimate with them. Again, I will point my finger at myself here. I didn’t tell my parents about my biggest regret in life until two years after it happened, and wish I’d told them sooner.

I hope we can all learn to be intimate with one another because it is amazing, especially when you hardly know the person. This starts with putting judgment behind us and looking forward to start becoming who we are. All of this is difficult, just like most things are when it comes to following God, but it is worth it, and it is best while done holding God’s hand along the way.

Post 4: I love Church-haters

I have a very dear friend named Wade Brickman and to be honest with you I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like Wade. To get a feeling for what Wade is like you have to know that this month for no shave November he shaved his whole head face and after doing so he looked like a 230 lb baby. What’s wonderful about that is that the image isn’t too far from accurate. Most people would describe Wade as child stuck in a football lineman’s body; he is the epitome of the gentle giant. My favorite thing about Wade is his Lego collection. When I was a kid I had Legos, a big purple tub full of them and I played with them a lot, not as much as I played with Barbies and Polly Pockets, but still I liked my Legos. At nineteen Wade still has an awesome collection of Legos that any child would be very jealous of. What is even better is that he still plays with them and loves it. I suppose at this point I should clarify that Wade does not have any developmental problems and is just as mature as any other nineteen year old, not that that’s saying much.

Last summer I was at a camp (the one with the holy-rollers and people speaking in tongues) and Wade was there as well. For worship one night, I was dancing and laughing and speaking in tongues, as I often do in such situations, and Wade was walking around with a little green ball. The joy on Wade’s face blew me away. He was grinning from ear to ear and he had the most genuine smile you’ve ever seen. He loved that ball and he would throw it around a little bit and hug it and then look up and keep singing the worship songs and then he’d giggle and do it all again. Can I just say little green balls are not that exciting, God, on the other hand, is. This is a spiritual connection that goes far beyond anything I will ever understand, but there is something very important I think anyone can draw from this. God wants us to be child-like.

I realize how ridiculous everything I just said sounds, but it was Wade’s courage and confidence in who he is that allowed him to forget what anyone thought about him and to just play with that ball and hang out with God at the same time.

Children are born Narcissicists, as my friend Tim the Kilted Southerner says, but this is a survival mechanism really. They cry when they’re hungry so they don’t starve, or when they’re hurt so their parents know to come and care for them. With this Narcissism, however, comes the knowledge that they are special. While we all hope that our children will stop putting themselves first and cease to be Narcissicists at some point, I would also hope that the children I may one day have would never forget that they are special. It is our knowledge that we are special that allows us to be confident in who we are. But can I just say it is so hard to feel that we are special when things we encounter everyday tell us we are not. TV, grades in school, things people say to us, even our own friends and family tell us directly or indirectly that we are not special. When that happens we begin to lose who we are. We shut down our natural reactions and revert to how normal people expect us to act out of fear that what we do or say might cause people to tell us yet again that we are stupid, immature, lame, un-cool, annoying… and ultimately not special.

I wish that children couldn’t learn put-downs until they were old enough to use them responsibly. We begin to lose our child-like selves and become who we are not when people attack what we are, because that HURTS. When our families tell us we are not good enough, when are friends say we are annoying, when our grades say we’ll never make it, it ruins us. What saddens me is that many Christians are better at this than most other people.

I go to Seattle Pacific University, which is a Christian college. Even though it has a reputation as being the “liberal Christian college” and some people seem to thing it is a joke of a Christian school, it isn’t a joke and it is Christian. I’m going to speak in very vague terms for this story so as not to embarrass anyone. There is a guy in one of my classes who has a particular habit that drives most people nuts. Often in class he acts on this habit and every time he does there is an audible groan from the whole rest of the class. Initially, I groaned with everyone else but at some point I realized that his habit was one that I have as well. While this sounds so cliché I thought about how I would feel in his shoes and the only answer is, terrible.

As all this was running through my head, I thought about a story from Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. Miller was attending Reed College, a super liberal, free thought, legal drugs etc. kind of place where nudists hardly received a second look, and there are probably three Christians in the whole place. In the story he talks about a man (whose name I can’t remember) who talked and looked just like Elmer Fudd and who didn’t know is left from his right. Miller was helping Elmer Fudd move into his dorm room and quickly found out that Elmer Fudd was essentially a genius. Miller also went on to say that through out that whole year he never heard a single person make fun of Elmer Fudd behind his back or to his face.

Isn’t that strange. In a Christian community where all should be welcome we mock this man whose habit doesn’t really inconvenience us or harm us or anything else, yet in what most would consider the most heathen of places, this man who is a little different is welcomed and a bad word is never spoken about him. This is terrible! God calls us to be child-like and confident in who we are, yet the “Christians” mock who you are and the “heathens” embrace you. No one wonder people hate church. This same thing is what turned me further from God in middle school.

In seventh grade I had a Mohawk and wore spiked bracelets, chains on my black pants, an AC/DC t-shirt and about five lbs worth of hardware on my body all the time. The principle of my private Lutheran school called me into his office when I showed up at school with the Mohawk and he informed me that my hair was a poor representation of the school and that I would have to cut it. I didn’t believe in God at this point so my thought was, “stupid Christians.” That same night I went to a new youth group where I didn’t know anybody. Right when I walked through the door I was welcomed with open arms and received lots of compliments on my hair. I have since abandoned the Mohawk and hardware but I have never stopped appreciating the people who loved on me that night.

Because of my experiences, many like the one I just described, I have developed a heart for people who hate church. I know your pain and I hate that that sort of behavior has been instilled in who we are. But I also know the love of Jesus. I know that he saved a prostitute from the pious mighty men of the church and I know that we are called to embrace everyone and that we have failed miserably at doing so. I am sorry for any of you who have been hurt by other Christians doing this very same thing and I wish I could turn back the clock and undo those things. But as it is, I am afraid all I can do is tell you that Jesus wouldn’t have wanted it to be that way, and that he does not judge you.

Post 2: Reverence or Holy Rollers

The most difficult thing about loving God may be that I never know where to start with him. I mean that about when I talk about him and when I talk to him. He really is cool enough to be the life of every party that ever happened and the last twenty-four hours or so of my life have been testament to that.

I was down in the Emerson Lobby just a few minutes ago with a few dozen-college students singing worship songs with an acoustic guitar. God was there! I’m not joking, he told me so. I was standing there wondering, “hmmm why should I raise my hands right now.” As I was thinking that, the song said “O God let us be, a generation that seeks, that seeks your face, O God of Jacob.” He said, “Reach up and touch my face,” so I did. Let me tell you about that. He was about seven feet tall maybe taller, his cheeks fit into my fully extended hands perfectly and he had a little bit of facial hair just barely past the length where it’s rough. He was wearing robes but he seemed very comfortable in them, in fact I think he let them get a little dirty just so he wouldn’t embarrass me, o yeah he was barefoot too. As I stood before him, hands raised, I didn’t need to say anything and neither did he. We just stood there, his contentedly smiling face in my hands, me adoring him both of our eyes closed just loving each other. It was great, a wonderful way to experience the love of the savior.

Last night, I was at the Gospel Service across the street at the Methodist Church just off-campus, God was there too, but it was very different. For one thing that was more or less my first time in a true “gospel service,” and it was just grand. If you have never felt the inclination to shout, “Hallelujah!” at the mention of his name you might not understand why these people keep bursting out at mentions of his glory. In fact, I imagine it would seem more than just a little strange. But this crowd had no problems with proclaiming his glory and having EVERYBODY hear about it. That place was so filled with joy bubbling over from heaven that people felt the need to shout about it. It was so wonderful; I couldn’t stop smiling the whole time. My friend Christine, who I was sitting with, was all kinds of into it as well, because apparently that’s the norm for her at her church in Boston where she is the only white kid in the youth group. I suppose the closest thing I have ever experienced to that was the Foursquare summer camp that is so near and dear to me. Basically, there are people laughing, crying, speaking in tongues, holy-rolling and being slain in the spirit everywhere. It is frightening for some, amazing for others but at the end of the night no one can deny God's power there.

For a third and still different experience with God, I went to the Compline service at the Episcopalian Cathedral in the U-District where the monks come out and sing Gregorian chants at nine-thirty on Sunday nights. The reverence in that church is remarkable, not to mention the peace of God. I like to lie on my back when I go to Compline and simply stretch out and relax in the presence of God; it’s sort of like Christian nirvana… maybe not. The monks sing for about a half an hour and it’s beautiful with soaring harmonies and the best reverb you will ever hear is in those old cathedrals. The monk’s version of “Amazing Grace” beats any version you will ever hear, without a doubt. It might be the most beautiful arrangement of any song ever written. However, my favorite part of the night was not “Amazing Grace,” nope it was what one of the monks said.

As the service came to a close the monk said, “Praise be to God, Amen.” I could not help but giggle a little bit deep down inside (and a little bit outside) because I was reminded of one of the speakers at the Gospel service who had said “Praise be to God, Amen!” in a glorious shout with his hands flailing in the air and the congregation cheering afterwards. When the monk said it however, he was very solemn, very pulled together, and only silence ensued. I was half tempted to jump up and shout, “Hallelujah!” but I didn’t, I just had a laugh with God as we remembered the moment. Yet both the monk and the reverend said it with equal amounts of love for the same glorious savior. And you know what else? His love for the two of them is equal too, but it’s also completely different.

God’s love for me is nothing like his love for the monk, or the reverend, or the gospel singers, or even the other SPU students that I was worshiping in Emerson with. His love for me is totally unique, and spectacular just like it is for all of us. I take it is a point of pride that no one knows Jesus like I know Jesus. There is no one else out there who can know the love of Jesus like I can, and dog gone I feel like a greedy little kid every time I say that and it’s AWESOME! My friend Tim the kilted southerner says that he is one of God’s favorite people, that he is definitely in his top ten people ever, if not in his fave five. I say I am right after him, and the only reason I am not higher is that I don’t have a kilt yet. What’s beautiful about that is every single one of us can brag about that same thing no matter what we have done, we can do nothing at all to make him love us less, AGAPE is something bigger than our faults. I was pondering this as I was worshiping in Emerson.

God showed up in the dorm lobby in Emerson Hall to spend quality time with a bunch of adulterers, liars, thieves, and murderers, hardly a desirable way to spend an evening. He went there to love people who have done him more harm than good. He wrapped us, his children, in his arms knowing that we will stab him in the back over and over again. As I was praying the other night God showed me that he would die a hundred times over for any one of us if that’s what it took. He would die for all of us one hundred times even if he knew we would never choose him. He would die one hundred times for a murderer who cursed his name just so that they could have the choice to choose him, even if he knew they wouldn’t. That’s how deep the father’s love is for us, and no matter who we are, where we are, how we worship or what we’ve done he wants us to know that.

Intro: What this is all about

Welcome!

If you are here your probably either a friend of mine or someone remarkably confused as to why I'm calling God a dork. Well the story behind the title is this. I was at Creation Northwest this last summer (2009) and I was watching Chris Tomlin perform. I'm not a huge Tomlin fan but the beautiful scenery of the Gorge at George, Washington combined with an atmosphere of worship is something to truly be treasured. Tomlin started playing the song "Indescribable," which talks about God placing the stars in the sky and knowing them by name and loving us despite our sin and all of those stereotypical and wonderful things that are contained in most worship songs. For most of the set I was relaxing, lying on my back, stretched out beneath the stars. Right as the band was singing their final chorus, "You placed the stars in the sky and you know them by name... you see the depths of my heart and you love me the same..." I saw a shooting star go flying by in a "blaze of glory." The first thought that ran through my head was, "That was awesome God! You're such a dork! Chris Tomlin's down there singing about how great you are and you're gonna choose a time like this to show off? How cheesy, your such a dork!"

God and I have an understanding. I really like him and he's a big fan of me as well, as that is the case he knows when I call him a dork it's a term of endearment, perhaps I should explain. I have some delightful friends and a wonderful family and the most wonderful thing about most of the people I know is how dorky they are. For example I dated a girl who was about five foot nothing and she had burps that could make the burliest of men feel wussy. For another example my dad; he has this delightful tendency to think that he has responded to whatever question you ask him, when in reality what he really responded with is something like, "Yea, it's in the..." and then he leaves you hanging. Some people would probably tell me that I love all the wrong qualities in people but that doesn't bother me.

Now that we have established that God is a dork, you're probably wondering what this blog is going to be all about. Basically, I want to share with anyone who cares to listen all the things that God shares with me. This will be about life, love, personal struggles, family, and much more I'm sure. My point of view has been described as unique and my connection with God is rather unique as well. I try to hear from the "big guns" upstairs everyday and hopefully the things he shares with me you can be encouraged by as well. In this blog I am going to be myself, I'm going to be honest, and I'm going to do my best to share only what God tells me to share and avoid any self-indulgent crap that most blogs contain. My plan as of now is to have a new post up every week or so.

I suppose that's about all there is to tell about this little blog I've started, I hope you enjoy and don't forget, God loves you and I do too.

-Kendrick