In the days of the kings during Old Testament times, there was a classic showdown between good and evil that took place on a mountain.  There was plenty of finger-pointing and “my God’s bigger than your God” trash talk going back and forth, and before long, the 2 sides decided to have a little fire-starting contest to see which side’s God really was bigger.

On one side was a prophet named Elijah.  He was on the backside of a brilliant career and had seen a lot of amazing things take place during his run as an all-pro prophet.  There was the never-ending flour and oil miracle, the boy raised from the dead, the ability to make rain start and stop.  This man had seen it all.  But there was an uprising, too.  Prophets of Baal and Asherah (2 false gods who God’s people should never have treated as real gods) were selling a false religion to the Israelites and Elijah had seen enough.  And so this wily veteran challenged the arrogant young leaders to a showdown on top of a mountain:

“Prepare a fire and then call on your god and I’ll call on mine.  The one who answers with fire is the one true God.”

This past Monday night, there was a classic showdown between good and evil that took place in a stadium (I’ll let you figure out who was good and who was the Patriots).  There was plenty of finger-pointing, trash talking and face mask grabbing.  As a die hard Carolina Panthers fan – and an even bigger Steve Smith fan (as evidenced by my other post about him last year) – I’m not gonna lie: seeing Smitty getting into it with New England defensive back Aqib Talib during the Panthers MNF win made me want to jump into the TV and mix it up, too.  Not even 5 minutes into the game, Talib was grabbing Smitty’s leg and doing everything he could to provoke a fight.  Tempers flared, fans cheered, and the lines were drawn.  Now, the game had a game within the game and the showdown raged on until the end.

Nope.  That’s not right.  Talib couldn’t answer the bell in the 4th quarter and watched the rest of the Panthers’ win from the sideline.

I’m surely not mocking a person’s injury (Talib aggravated a previous injury – probably happened while he was chasing Smitty around the field), but it reminded me of the ending to the first showdown on top of the mountain.  No matter how big the false prophets talked, no matter how much they hyped the media and worked the crowd into a frenzy, when it was all said and done, it was a bunch of smack about nothing.

Not only was there no fire when the smoke cleared, there wasn’t even any smoke to clear.  Epic.  Fail.

Sometimes we get caught up in the moment and we hitch our cart to the wrong horse.  Sometimes we see youth, or energy, or relevance, or coolness and get so caught up in the next big thing that we miss the faithful old things that have always – and will always – work.  An aging prophet named Elijah saw his God answer with fire, and Monday night, while walking off the field, an aging Steve Smith knew that he had answered a challenge with fire, too.

You’re probably facing – or have faced – showdowns from an enemy who is loud, arrogant, and wrong.  He screams lies at you about how unable you are to beat him, let alone compete with him.  But your battle isn’t with him, because years ago during another showdown on top of another mountain, Jesus Christ defeated that same foe, and the Bible tells us in Colossians 2:15 that he didn’t barely beat him, but publicly humiliated him.  Like Elijah did to the prophets – and Smitty did to Talib – Jesus did to the greatest loser this world has ever known.

All of them answered the challenge with fire, and because of that, the victory for you and me is on ice.

So when the devil tries to convince you that you can’t win, remind him of what Jesus has already done.  Heck, just tell him the same thing that Smitty told Talib:

“Ice up, son. Ice up.”

One of the hardest things in church planting is defining the win. Wait, let me rephrase that. One of the hardest things in church planting is remembering how we defined the win. Yes, much better. Let me explain why.

Most new organizations (and a church would fall into that category) don’t have a hard time defining the win early on.  Of course, most of those wins are on paper, which is worthless for the most part because it doesn’t actually count. (If wins on paper counted, the Carolina Panthers really would go to the Super Bowl this season!)

Early on churches say the right things, like “we reach people for Jesus” or “we invite the unchurched” or something similar.  But lots of times those wins disappear in a flurry of activities that feel very different than what we expected.  Let’s be honest: coming early and setting up a heavy sound system week in and week out doesn’t feel very much like a win, and it doesn’t take long for us – and I don’t care who you are, if you’re breathing, you’ve struggled with this – to start to wonder if we are, in fact, winning.

(Insert your favorite Charlie Sheen joke here, even though it has been way overplayed and you should stop telling it.)

Back to the point.  This past Sunday was one of those days when all of us who have invested our time and energy shaking hands, pouring coffee, smiling at first-time guests and making phone calls were able to get in our cars after The Gathering’s worship service and say, “Ahh!  Now that’s a win.”  While I appreciate all of the kind words and all of the effort that went into making Pastor Appreciation Day so much fun, it was the constant pointing to Jesus that made my day.  Did you see it, too?  Did you hear how many people told different stories with the same themes?

“Umm.  This is the first time I’ve ever shared my story in public.”

“I used to attend church but didn’t like it.  I came to The Gathering and loved it.”

“I used to wake up on Sundays and think, ‘Man. It’s Sunday.’  Now I can’t wait for Sundays!”

“This place doesn’t have a layer of religious crap.”

“This place is real.”

“This place just has…it.”

To everyone who shared a testimony about what Jesus is doing in your life, thank you.  You could not have done a better job of defining for all of us again what it looks like when Jesus wins us over.  To everyone who has worn an orange shirt, has come early, has spent time in prayer asking Jesus to shine His glory on our city, let me say congratulations!  Sunday was the day that you could enjoy the fruit of so much of your labor, and I know you felt the same way I did: it is worth it to see the change and hope in people’s lives.

Are we done? Heck no!!  We’re just getting started, and I can promise you that there are days ahead of us when we will all feel tired again and the win won’t seem to be quite as clear as it was on Sunday.  But that’s what happens when  ordinary people answer an extra-ordinary call. This task is bigger than you and me combined, but on the days that we feel overwhelmed, I invite you to pull this entry back up, read it, and remember that we are winning!

I LOVE MY CHURCH!!!

Yes, I stayed up way too late last night to watch the end of the Seattle vs. Green Bay game on Monday Night Football.  No, I can’t stop thinking about the unbelievable job that the replacement referees did at the end of it.  The only way I can describe it is that it was total – no, wait – TOTAL chaos.  A phantom pass interference call on a Packers DB who got mugged by the Seattle wide receiver, and then the jump ball at the end of the Hail Mary pass by Russell Wilson that was called incomplete, no, an interception, wait, no, that’s not right – a touchdown on the last play of the game.

Whoops, my bad.  The second to last play of the game, because after all the on-the-field post-game interviews the teams had to send back out 11 players each from the locker rooms in order to kick an extra point that was meaningless unless the spread for the game was 1.5 points (in which case you were either a very happy or very sad gambler).

All of this took place in a sea of screaming Seahawks fans with some disbelieving, drooping Cheeseheads sprinkled in.  The announcers were beside themselves in unbelief of the touchdown call, and I think I heard Jon Gruden say the same thing about 20 times (which is almost normal for him, anyway, but not 20 times!) as he tried to process what he’d just seen.  More than one player and/or coach made comments like “in all my years in football, I’ve never seen anything like it” and as a fan of neither team, I felt my neck getting hot just thinking about how hard it would have been to watch the same replay for the hundredth time if I had been a Green Bay Packers fan.  In a word, it just felt…

wrong.

And while I could spend the rest of this column debating whether or not the NFL has lost its integrity by allowing men who used to referee women in skimpy underwear to now referee men bigger than trees, I’d rather point out something a little less obvious but probably more important: if you live on this planet, at some point, somewhere, you’re gonna get screwed.  It’s not a matter of if, but when.  And as much as Christians (especially here in America) want to think that following Jesus provides a magic exempt card from unfair calls, even we get handed a raw deal from time to time.  In fact, I would almost argue that because we follow Jesus, we open ourselves up to more unfair situations than they average person, but you don’t have to agree with that to get the point of this post.

Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, it just feels like life is a game being called by replacement refs.  We do the best we can and then out of nowhere comes a bad call and we are helpless to change it.  We feel like the Packers team did last night.  The wrong is so obvious, and yet it’s equally as obvious that it won’t be corrected…yet.

In Luke 18:7-8, Jesus talked about how Packer nation felt shortly after midnight last night.  He said that God is a God of justice, and that he will not ignore the cries of his people.  Thankfully, God isn’t the National Football League, who will more than likely continue to ignore the cries for justice from coaches, players, fans, and water boys all over the country.  I won’t hold my breath waiting on the NFL to bring back the real refs, but I do have to answer the question about whether or not I’ll keep the faith while I wait for God to correct the wrongs in this life. And so do you.

Jesus said that when justice comes, it will come quickly, and then he asked a simple question: “when I return to bring justice, will I find faith on the earth?”

The real issue isn’t whether we’ve been treated unfairly in this life, but whether or not we’ll allow the injustices of this life to move us closer to Jesus.  At the end of the day, bad calls get made – by real refs and fake ones alike – but how we respond to them is 100% in our hands.  Nobody likes injustice, including God.  And since he’s ultimately the only one who can fix it, I’m choosing to keep holding hope that some day he’ll return and right the wrongs in this life.

Keeping the faith won’t reverse the bad calls from last night (or the last 3 weeks of games), but it can reverse something a lot bigger than a professional football game.

It can reverse the course of our lives.