Tag Archives: God

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Where Is God?

God’s ways are not my ways…and that’s a very good thing.

If you are a Christian, all of your hopelessness died on the third day when God the Son killed death itself and rose to life again. Victory and power rests in the empty tomb of Jesus Christ, and because he holds the keys to life and death, I can trust that he knows exactly what he’s doing in my life through my pain.

Photo: Unsplash, Martin Adams

I’ve been a chronic pain patient for several years, suffering from degenerative disc disease that puts pressure on my sciatic nerve, causing radiating nerve pain in my right leg. It’s been absolutely miserable for me, but also one of the most spiritually formative things in my life.

I’m reminded here of the eulogy former NFL player Jonathan Evans gave at the home-going celebration of his mother, Lois Evans, when she lost her battle with cancer. He admitted to the hundreds of people in attendance that he had been wrestling with God over why she was not healed and allowed to live despite all the people who were praying for her around the world.

Evans confessed that he questioned God by stating, “[Her healing] was an opportunity for us to see your glory—where are you?”1 And then Evans told the crowd that as he wrestled, God answered. Here’s what he said God brought to his mind:

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He Pursues Us

Have you ever walked into someone’s house and immediately realized they were cooking or baking something delicious?

Photo: Unsplash

The wonderful smells of chocolate chip cookies, bacon, fresh bread, homemade pasta sauce, or cinnamon rolls all have the ability to saturate the entirety of a home, and fill it with the mouth-watering aroma of tasty food.

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The Main Reason I’m Alive

The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. (The Westminster Shorter Catechism)

Has anyone ever put you on the spot and inquired, “Why do Christians insist on trying to convert people?” Trust me, if it ever happens to you, you’ll remember it.

Questions like these, no matter if its tone is one of cheekiness or just plain curiosity, really make you reflect on the overall purpose of evangelism. Should we be motivated by results—seeing more people go to heaven? That’s important, right? Or maybe the reason for evangelism should simply be duty—being obedient to God’s command to go and make disciples (Matthew 28). After all, the Great Commission isn’t just a suggestion. What if our incentive is rewards—to one day hear God say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” and receive jewels in our heavenly crown? Sounds selfish, but it’s biblical. Or, perhaps a better motive is that of love—love for God and love for people’s souls, compelling us to share the good news.

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Fear and Anxiety During a Typhoon

How a Storm Eventually Spawned Peace In Me

I grew up as a military brat, meaning my dad was in the Air Force branch of the United States military, and we moved around quite a bit. As a kid, I lived in a lot of interesting places, and when I was in late elementary school, my dad got stationed at an airbase on the island of Guam. So for two years, me and my family lived in the tropics. In case you’ve never heard of it, Guam is this little island way out in the Pacific Ocean near the equator, about 4,000 miles west of Hawaii. It’s a place of tropical excitement and exhilarating adventure, but also an environment that is no stranger to these crazy storms called typhoons. Now, if you don’t know what a typhoon is, I describe it as a hurricane on crack.

And wouldn’t you know it, during mid January of our first year there, Typhoon Roy hit the island of Guam…and he hit it hard. All of our house windows were boarded up, trees were blown over and uprooted, coconuts flew through the air and smashed into car windshields, rain fell at monsoon levels, and electricity was inevitably lost from the island for days.

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The Lure of the Chicken Sandwich

Right around the time I started taking some proactive steps toward growing in my faith, something struck me about my lifestyle that made me want to reassess how I spent some of my free time. Midway through the first semester of my junior year at college, I came to the realization that I had planted myself firmly in the middle of the Christian subculture that existed at my school. Quite literally, all of my close friends were Christians. And, deep down, I knew there was something wrong with that. I knew I needed more motivation to be connected with people who wouldn’t call themselves followers of Jesus Christ.

The truth was, however, that I was surrounded by non-believers all the time every day on campus. I ate meals on campus with them, I was in a study group or two with them, and I even sat next to them every day in classes. So why wouldn’t I call any of the people I interacted with outside my Christian world a true friend?

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The Laziness Of Christians In The Hookup Culture

Hanging Out Is Not Dating

A lot of people talk about what they think dating should be like in order to give definition to it. I like to talk about that when I’m able, but let me take a different approach for a moment…here’s what I think dating should not look like. As Christians, we allow culture to define who we are and how we behave in our everyday lives way too often. This is especially true when it comes to the practice of relating with the opposite sex. What is widely accepted as standard or “normal” in the dating world at large, sadly becomes the standard for Christians as well.

According to a recent NY Times article1, many young singles are now in the practice of living inside a “dating culture [that] has evolved into a cycle of text messages.” Because we live and breathe and hide behind our phones, the non-committal “whatever” attitude in culture has downgraded this opportunity for encouragement into something referred to as, “one step below dating and one step above high-fiving.”

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Buying God’s Love With A Prairie Dog Funeral

When I was about 15 years old, I went on a camping trip with my sister, my ex-Step Mom, and her current boyfriend, who later became her husband. (This is a story in and of itself, but I’m not going to go there right now.) It was approaching the end of a summertime trip of seeing most of my extended family in California and I decided to take this camping trip with the aforementioned group of people to a lake in Oregon before the vacation was over.

Now, once we got there, we weren’t really going to rough it in tents or anything like that, because we had a huge pop-up fifth wheel camper in tow, complete with kitchen, shower, and one of those toilets you have to hook up to a giant hose to empty when you exit the campsite (think cousin Eddie from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation). So this was a “camping” trip in the loosest of terms.

When we completed the drive up north and pulled into the campground, the beauty of the area literally took my breath away. There were cedar trees that seemed taller than skyscrapers and the lake was the clearest I had ever seen in my life. There were small fields of clover and wildflowers, populated by deer and birds that literally came up to humans and ate tiny scraps of bread from the hands of children. And the coolest thing of all to me were the hundreds of prairie dogs that skittered through the patches of flowers, dodging tree roots and diving into their subterranean homes.

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Is God’s Spouse For Me On a Dating Website?

Singleness In The Technological Age

When we talk about romantic relationships today, there is now an added wrinkle in the conversation that comes with the onset of internet dating. This is a variable that simply didn’t exist for much of the time when I was single. We are just beginning to understand how this can be done in a healthy way, and how the Lord can work in the process. It brings into question the balance between our diligence and God’s sovereignty in a rather important way, similar to the way birth control did when it arrived on the scene.

How much responsibility do we have in this dating world, and how much responsibility belongs to God? Birth control brought this issue to the forefront by offering people control over when/if they wanted to conceive children. Many followers of Christ were (and still are) very much against it, and another large section of the Christian community embraces it.

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Don’t Over-Spiritualize Your Breakup

Christians have this habit of letting God take the blame for their dirty work when it comes to the end of dating relationships. Many Christian women and men have been on the receiving end of the phrase, “I just don’t feel called to you anymore,” or “I don’t think God is calling us to be together.” Myself included.

In my mid-twenties, I was dating a girl who essentially said this to me, nailing the proverbial coffin closed on our relationship, and I couldn’t help but think to myself after she said it, “But I feel that God is still calling us to be together…so who’s not hearing from God correctly?” Apparently it was me, because we weren’t dating anymore after that conversation.

And as sincere as I believe she was when she broke up with me, it kind of made me mad that she used The Creator as a scapegoat for what she actually wanted. There were many times in the weeks following our breakup when I wished she would have just told me what she felt straight-up, “I don’t like you anymore, and I think we should break up.” I know that probably would’ve stung more, but at least I’d have definitive closure without wondering why each of us was “hearing something” completely different from God.

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I Love Me Some Me

The Lie of Self Esteem

I really like thinking about how great of a guy I am. I know that sounds bad, but regrettably, it’s true.

I’m a genius when it comes to the subject of me. I’m literally obsessed with myself. Not a day goes by when I don’t think, “What could make me happier right now?” or “What do I want to do?” And if you were honest, you’d probably say the same thing about yourself. Am I right?