Reading Time: 2 minutes

I woke up early this morning, pulled the curtains back, looked out at the snow on the ground and whispered, “Ahhhhhwwwwwwww, crap!”

It isn’t that I wasn’t glad to see the snow (’cause I am admittedly the biggest kid in the family when it comes to snow). I was. I was just expecting to see A WHOLE LOT MORE OF IT!!

I have all of the professional weather guessers – both local and national – to thank for it, because they filled my mind with deep shades of blues and purples that were attached to numbers like 6, 8 and on some maps, 10+ inches of pure fluffy fort-building bliss.

It was enough to send me to places of expectation even though I know better, and when I woke up this morning, I had a hard time being happy with the three inches of snow because I was too busy being Charlie Brown to their forecast-pulling Lucy.

[Tweet “It’s just so hard to not be disappointed when #SNOWmageddon turns into #OhSNOWyoudidnt.”]

It’s just so hard to not be disappointed when SNOWmageddon turns into OhSNOWyoudidnt, but I also need to thank them for reminding me yet again that the mercy and grace God gives us never disappoints.

“Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. (Isaiah 1:18)

Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23)

[Tweet “Like snow, the grace of God covers us. Unlike snow, the amount of God’s grace never disappoints.”]

Like snow, the grace of God covers us. Unlike snow, the amount of God’s grace never disappoints.  God never gets the forecast wrong.  He never over promises and then under delivers.  No matter how much junk is in our lives, he never has to update his projection models. As the real Paul found out when he couldn’t get away from his own weaknesses, God’s grace is sufficient. The promise of 2 Corinthians 12:9 is simple: no matter how ugly the yard, there will always be enough snow to cover it, and when you walk through the snow and muddy it up, the promise from Lamentations reassures us that there will be more than enough snow to cover that, too.

[Tweet “God is able to send down grace in such quantities that we never have to feel let down.”]

Please let that last sentence sink in, because there is so much hope in it, and none of it is about you.  It’s all about a Father who sent a Son to cover our filth with more than enough, because we have a Father who is able to send down mercy and grace in such quantities that we never have to feel the sting of the let down that I did when I peeked out the window this morning.

Meteorologists project; Jesus promises.

Meteorologists forecast; Jesus finishes.

That’s why Jesus will always be a better meteorologist, because when it comes to the grace that we can expect EVERY MORNING, Jesus isn’t guessing.

 

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Tonight, my daughter and I are going to a dance.  She’ll look beautiful in the dress that she’s been picking out for most of the week, and I’ll look clumsy as my feet try to find some kind of rhythm on the dance floor. And when it’s over, we’ll drive home smiling, not because we were the best dancers or even because they’ll serve the best punch. We’ll smile because we were together, and dances are all about dancing with the right partner.

Today is also the highly anticipated release of the movie based on the best-selling book, “50 Shades of Grey,”  and the numbers behind the book that is porn without pictures are staggering:

• Over 100 million copies have been sold (more than The Hobbit or even the C.S. Lewis classic, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe)
• It is expected to gross close to $90 million at the box office over the first 3 days (almost identical to American Sniper)
• The author, EL James, made 95 MILLION DOLLARS from sales in 2012 and still, almost 3 years later, is raking in $150,000 PER DAY

My takeaway from these numbers? In droves, people are picking the wrong dance partner.  Many have done so because they have no idea what real love looks like. But for the church, for those who follow Jesus, who have seen the best example of what real love is, and who have danced with the best Father, all I keep thinking is…

What the heck are we doing?

When did so many believers allow a man like Mr. Grey to cut in on a dance with Jesus? When did the church trade real love for a counterfeit lust? When did people who may not even love Jesus start making the judgement calls about this stuff that we’re too scared to make because we don’t want to sound judgemental?

Can I gracefully remind the bride of Christ that we can’t afford to trade real love for a counterfeit lust.  Love is just too valuable, and the love of God through us to the world is too powerful to risk losing it for the cheap thrill of “50 Shades.”  Look at the difference between the love that God designed for us and the lust that man has used to blind us to it.

Lust takes; love gives.  Lust uses; love serves.

What’s so bizarre about Christian women reading and watching this story is the fact that Mr. Grey is not the man that they would ever want to marry.  He’s selfish, and only uses Miss Steele to serve HIS desires and HIS pleasures.

[Tweet “We’ve bought the lie that love looks more like The Bachelor than the cross.”]

We’ve bought the lie that love looks more like The Bachelor than the cross.  Love refuses to use another in order to serve its own desires, because love looks like God, and when God loves, He gives.

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, emphasis is mine)

In real life, women would kick a man like Mr. Grey to the curb because they refuse to be used up by a selfish man.  Don’t be deceived just because they cast a handsome man as Mr. Grey.  Cast that character with someone a lot less “hot” and a lot more “lukewarm,” and suddenly he’s a creep and a perv and you’re running for the hills.

Run anyway.

Lust sees sex as a physical act; love sees sex as a spiritual act.

I’m not gonna lie: sex is mind-blowingly fantastic and is, without a doubt, the best wedding gift God could ever give a married couple.  But it isn’t great if it’s just a one-dimensional physical act.

[Tweet “If sex was just a physical act, prostitution would be the world’s most popular job.”]

If sex was just a physical act, prostitution would be the world’s most popular job. But it’s not. Prostitutes are broken physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually because sex is multi-dimensional.  Movies like “50 Shades of Grey” romanticize the physical act, but they miss out on the best part of sex: the spiritual intimacy and emotional security that can only come when a husband and a wife have abandoned themselves fully to one another in all the other areas of their lives that aren’t limited to a bedroom.

That’s the true love that God offers and that Mr. Grey cheapens, and the people who will be biting their lips as they fantasize about being in a book or a movie with a man like him will eventually find themselves clawing at the chains that were intended to place them in bondage all along.

Proverbs 6:27 says a man cannot put fire in his lap and not be burned, and that’s because sin entices until sin traps, and when we find ourselves enslaved by the very lusts that we thought would free us from our inhibitions, we’ll realize how much greater grace is than Grey. In fact, grace is in the gray, and in a bizarre twist of love that only God is capable of, grace is given in the gray to people who went too far and feel that they have ended up too damaged.

[Tweet “Grace allows itself to be trampled, and then extends itself to the very ones who trampled it.”]

Grace allows itself to be trampled, and then extends itself to the very ones who trampled it. While we may never understand a grace like that, it is exactly that kind of grace that will draw a church racked with porn and lust back to the only shade that matters…

…the crimson blood of Jesus poured out on the cross to redeem us from countless shades of gray.

 

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Recently, at the church where I pastor, I closed out a message about having faith like a child by reading the following passage from Hebrews 11:13:

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.

It’s a tough verse to swallow, because it cuts against the grain of our “results-based” culture that says we’ve failed if we don’t win, or achieve, or “fill this in with whatever result fits your situation.”  In the message, I was making the point that we need to believe TOWARD things instead of just believing FOR things, but what really grabbed me was what I heard some weeks later.

[Tweet “We need to believe TOWARD things instead of just believing FOR things.”]

As I was having lunch with one of the men in our church, he told me about that moment and about what he heard behind him when I read that verse.  As the words came out of my mouth about how these great men and women died without fully receiving what they were believing for, a soul-wrenching response came from the heart and then the mouth of a woman sitting behind this man. Barely above a whisper, almost as if the words had come out before she could even process that they were audible to anyone else around her, she asked the profound question all of us have asked at one time or another:

“But, why?”

I haven’t stopped thinking about those 2 words since my friend told me the story as we ate together.  In fact, I’ve sat down to blog about it a number of times but stopped because I didn’t know how to answer it, and then, it dawned on me.

I don’t have to, because God never did. At least, he never answered it the way we would have expected.

While that statement sinks in, take a quick journey back to the time of the most famous “why”-er of all time: Job. If you aren’t familiar with Job’s story, allow me a brief recap…

He was a good man, a righteous man. He was successful in business and was a father and a husband who enjoyed meals around a table full of family and laughter. He was healthy and strong. He was all these things until he lost all these things for no apparent reason, and that’s when he did what any of us would have done.

He asked God, “why?”

Four times in the third chapter of the book named for him, his grieving soul pushed that word through his heart and out of his mouth, the same barely audible plea that my friend heard in the row behind him in church.  In fact, for 37 chapters Job asked that question in various forms while his friends (and I’m using that term loosely) tried to answer it.

They told him to get over it, to stop whining and to start repenting for whatever sin had caused the tragedy.  In essence, his friends tried to help Job understand why, because they made the same mistake we do: they assumed that why was a question motivated by our lack of understanding.

But it isn’t.

[Tweet “Pain isn’t something that God will always explain. But it is something he will always comfort.”]

Why is a question of pain, and while pain isn’t something that God will always explain, it is something he will always comfort.

If why was about wanting to understand, we’d ask it all the time, not just in the bad times.  But we rarely ask it about the good things, do we?  “Why did I get that raise?  Why do I have such a great house?  Why is my spouse so good to me?”  We don’t ask why in our pleasure because deep down – in a part of our souls that we rarely tap into – we believe that we deserve the good things.

And because we don’t believe we deserve the bad stuff, we ask why when all of those good things go horribly wrong. “Why did I get fired? Why is the bank foreclosing on my house? Why did my spouse leave me?”  Again, I’m not minimizing the pain. I’m trying to highlight it, to help all of us see that when we ask it, we don’t really want to understand, we want to be comforted.

For Job – and us – that’s exactly what God did. But it came in the form of an answer that none of us would have ever expected.

Instead of answering Job’s question, God asked him a different one.

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? (Job 38:1)

It might sound harsh, but God took the next 4 chapters to ask Job that question over and over again.  He does the same with us.  We ask questions of pain, but God gives answers of perspective.  He shows us his strength, his ability, his greatness.  He doesn’t do it in a way that minimizes our pain, but rather in a way that maximizes his plan.

[Tweet “Perspective allows us to see that OUR story isn’t THE story, but rather it’s a part of HIStory.”]

Perspective allows us to see that OUR story isn’t THE story, but rather it’s a part of HIStory.  It allows us to see that there is a greater purpose than just our lives, and that we have not been overlooked by God. The men and women in Hebrews 11 understood that, and that’s why they were able to die believing forward, or as God put it, “seeing the promise and welcoming it from a distance.”

What does it all mean for you and me?  How can this possibly help us struggle through the pain? I mean, perspective is great and all, but it doesn’t stop the hurt.

To answer that, let me tell you about the inner-ear infections I regularly got as a child.  They hurt, and even now as a man, the pain would be enough to bring me to my knees.  There was some comfort in perspective – I knew the pain of that infection would not last forever! But what helped me the most was laying my head in my mother’s lap and having her hold me close.  Being with her didn’t heal my ear, but in a way that I cannot fully explain, it eased my pain.

We have what those men and women in Hebrews 11 saw from a distance. We have Jesus, and the fact that God sent Jesus into the middle of our pain-filled world shows that he was never content to simply give us perspective. He wants to give us his presence.

Job asked “why?”  God asked “where?” And in Jesus, both of those questions are answered with “here.”

“Here I am. Here I am in the storm. Here I am on the cross, in the tomb, on the throne. I am with you in – and through – the pain that pushes the words ‘but why?’ over your lips.”

[Tweet “”Why” is a question of pain. “Where” is a question of perspective. “Here” is an answer of presence.”]

“Why” is a question of pain. “Where” is a question of perspective. But “here” is an answer of presence. God is with us.  In Jesus, God saw our pain, heard our cry, and answered it with himself.