“Blessed are the poor in spirit”

In Matthew 5:3 Jesus said, “ ³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The word “blessed” in the original Greek simply means happy. Jesus is not referring here to the physically poor. Jesus is talking about a spiritual condition that is absolutely essential if we are going to experience him and his kingdom.

There were obviously many in Jesus’ day that did not believe that he was the Messiah. The Jewish people knew the scriptures and knew the prophecies that a Messiah would come. What is crazy is that Jesus came onto the scene and began fulfilling these prophecies to the letter and yet many did not recognize him. The Jewish people knew the scriptures inside and out so how in the world did they not know who was with them? In fact, the religious leaders who knew the scriptures better than anyone were the ones who were the most hostile toward Jesus.

You see, many had become convinced of their own self-righteousness and were blinded to the true meaning of the scriptures that they had memorized. Jesus’ message declared that people did not have it together and that they needed a Savior. This message did not jive with those who were convinced that they had achieved righteousness by their own merits. They were so certain that they had it together that they put the long-awaited Messiah to death.

³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Invariably it was those who recognized their spiritual poverty that found in Jesus the salvation that they were looking for. The same thing happens today. I believe that Jesus kicked off the Sermon on the Mount with this passage for a reason. If we do not realize that we are poor in spirit, we cannot experience the kingdom of heaven.

This passage applies to both Christians and non-Christians alike. To take the next step closer to God (whatever that next step may be for you), you have to recognize your spiritual poverty. It is only in recognizing your need for Jesus that you will experience him. We try to do and look to a large number of things to convince ourselves that we are righteous on our own. Deep down inside however, I think we all know the truth. We can go around all day long and act like we have it together but who are we fooling?

It is only as we humble ourselves and recognize our spiritual poverty that we can experience the happiness that Jesus mentions in this passage. John 15:5 makes it clear that apart from Jesus, we can do nothing. Have you taken this to heart? If not then you are living in a place of self-righteousness that will make you miserable. You think it all depends on you and that your righteousness is about what you can do on your own. My hope for all of us is that we will realize that it is the poor in spirit who are truly blessed.

(The general idea for this blog post came from a sermon that I heard from Pastor Robert Morris of Gateway Church)

Angry at God

I have to be honest and say that I really have a tough time believing people who claim to be atheists. The purpose of this blog post is not to try to convince you that God exists but I think that as people we all have a pretty decent sense that he does. The claim that we are given to believe is that a really great and powerful God sits on the throne of the universe. We are told that he is loving, gracious, powerful, all-knowing, generous, wise and personal. There are a lot of other attributes but these are some of the things that we are told to believe about God.

I think that if any of us were to be truly honest with ourselves, we would have to say that this is tough to believe. When we look at all the corruption in the world and all the pain in our own lives, many of us have a difficult time believing that God could actually exist. If this struggle could be vocalized in terms of questions, this is how it might look:

1. If you really cared, why would you allow this person to get sick?

2. If you really love me, why are you allowing me to go through this?

3. If you really exist, why is there so much dysfunction in the world? Why is there so much pain?

4. If you really exist, why do my prayer requests seem to bounce off the ceiling?

The questions could go on and on but certainly you get the point. For some of us these questions are not merely intellectual in nature but rather personal. In fact, you would have to say that you are Angry at God. I will be totally up front with you guys and say that this is something I struggle with. I really do believe from the bottom of my heart that God exists. I believe that he is a good, gracious, powerful, compassionate and loving Father. That being said, I would be lying to you if I told you that I never had doubts. There is a long distance between us and heaven and we don’t have a perfect perspective. There have been plenty of times that I’ve really wondered how he could allow certain things in my life. Can you relate with that? There have been times that I’ve really struggled to believe that he is good and powerful.

There may be a struggle going on in your life. There may be a loved one who is sick. There may be tragedy in your past and deep down inside, perhaps you are angry at God. This isn’t exactly something that most would dare to vocalize in church but I think it needs to be discussed. I believe that God is big enough to handle our questions and our deepest doubts.

The challenge of course that we run into when we allow ourselves to become angry at God is that we have finite minds. God operates from the perspective of perfection and infinity. When we doubt his goodness, we are presuming to know what true goodness looks like. When we doubt his sense of justice or righteousness, we presume to know what true justice and righteousness look like. The reality is that if we presume to know these things, we presume too much. Is it not possible that God is so much greater, so much wiser, so much more loving and so different than we are that even at our finest intellectual moments our comprehension falls infinitely short of his? We would have to admit that this is the case.

So what do you do when you are angry at God? Tell him. I believe that God wants honesty in prayer and I think you should vocalize how you feel to him. I believe that as you do that he will meet you in that place and perhaps reveal more of himself to you. If we really want a picture of the heart of God amidst all of the tradegy and confusion that surrounds many of us, we must look to Jesus and what he did for us. Jesus is God in the flesh and by looking at him, we can see the heart of God. By dying on the cross for the sins of humanity and rising from the dead, God wanted to show the world once and for all that he is loving…that he is good….that he is powerful…that he is worthy of all our worship and devotion. My challenge to you would be to read through the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and study the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus was God’s intention to reveal himself to a world that was lost in the darkness. As you look to Jesus and what he did for you, I believe that you will begin to understand that God is far greater than anything we could ask or imagine. When we struggle with being angry at God, we are essentially saying that we could imagine a God who is much better than the one that exists. I believe that as we look to Jesus we will see that God is far greater than anything we could ever dream of.

Unshakable

Hebrews 12:26-27 says, “²⁶ At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.”^{[e] 27} The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.”

It’s interesting how pressure seems to shake us isn’t it? When I think of pressure I think of golf. There have been a ton of times when I have tried certain swing changes in my yard and they have worked beautifully. I’ve learned over the years however, to not trust a swing change until it is proven on the course. Something happens when I get out there and if the swing change I made wasn’t legit, it will fail when the pressure is on.

I would imagine that all of us want to live a life that doesn’t crack under pressure. It is in trials and storms that we find out what works and what doesn’t work. It is in trials and storms that we find out what can be shaken and what cannot be shaken. Sometimes it is in a trial that we realize that a relationship that we depended on is actually quite shakable. We may find that when the heat gets turned up, a lot of things that we thought we could depend on are actually not all that helpful. It may be an addiction….a religious belief….a friendship….money…the house…the retirement plan….it could be a lot of different things. The bottom line is that trials, storms, internal and external pressures have a way of shaking things that can be shaken.

I have to be honest and say that I don’t like being shaken. I actually sometimes try to live in such a way so as to not be shaken at all. I try to avoid situations, people and things that challenge me. I don’t do this all the time but it is a tendency I have to deal with. I am beginning to find however, that trials can be quite helpful. Looking back at the passage above we can see that it is God’s intention to shake those things in our lives that can be shaken. He doesn’t do this to just mess with us…he does it “so that what cannot be shaken may remain.”

I would encourage you to become a student in the midst of trials and storms. It is super easy to just complain and try to come up with a plan so that you will never have to go through anything again. The reality that we all have to embrace is that trials are going to come. We can either hopelessly fight against them or we can choose to learn from them. In trials I would encourage you to pay attention to the things that can be shaken and the things that cannot.

You may have certain self-manufactured theological beliefs that don’t matter at all when trials come. These are beliefs that you have made up for yourself but you realize when the heat gets turned up that they are not really valuable. I have learned some different things from being shaken over the years…

I don’t have faith in a religion. I don’t have faith in my ability to have faith. I don’t have ultimate faith in my intelligence. My faith is based solely in the person of Jesus Christ. The reason that this is the case is because he hasn’t been shaken in my trials. My entire being has been shaken at times but it has been abudantly obvious that he is the constant. He has shown that he can provide the strength and peace to see me through anything life can throw at me. This is not something that I just woke up one day and realized. I have weathered enough storms and have paid attention to what can be shaken and what cannot be shaken.

Become a student in your trials. What can be shaken? What cannot be shaken? Make sure your faith is in that which cannot be shaken.

 

Confirmation Bias

“Confirmation bias is a cognitive bias whereby one tends to notice and look for information that confirms one’s existing beliefs, whilst ignoring anything that contradicts those beliefs.  It is a type of selective thinking.”

I don’t know about you guys but I like to think that I’m pretty objective most of the time. I’m a pretty passionate individual so when I think something, it’s usually with a sense of conviction. I have always found it easy to write papers and can generally find support for the argument I’m making regardless of how ridiculous that support might be.

I came across the idea of confirmation bias and it really stuck out to me. Just to give you an example as to how this could work, I’ll give you a personal example. I tend to struggle with a fear of rejection so I have a heightened sense of awareness when it comes to rejection. Because I believe that rejection is much more likely in any given situation than it actually is, I will see rejection in what someone says or doesn’t say to me even if that’s not what they intended at all. I take the data that others would view in a totally different way and spin it to confirm my existing beliefs.

The reality is that we do this a lot as people. We need to really ask ourselves if we are aware as to how we do this. If we are not, then it is quite possible that we will think that we are being objective when that is not the case at all. I have seen confirmation bias come into play in different situations but one common one is when it comes to depression. Some people just have an ingrained sense that nothing is going to work out. These people will look at data that others may see as hopeful and spin it to confirm what they wholeheartedly believe to be true. Pride can also cause a certain confirmation bias. If you believe that you are smarter and better than everybody else, you will find information throughout the day to support your incorrect assumptions.

Confirmation bias should cause us all to take a step back. We all are prone to this in different ways which means that we cannot always trust our thinking. This is tough because it is really easy to trust our own brains. As we confront the reality that our own minds can lead us in the wrong direction, we will be forced to look to a different source for direction. For people who believe in Christ, this can be a liberating revelation but for those who have no source outside of themselves…this can be very unsettling.

Jesus came into the darkness of this world to be the light. The only thing that prevents people from being led by Jesus is the wrong belief that we can see just fine on our own. The reality is that you cannot see just fine on your own but you have every right to believe that you can. My hope for all of us is that we will gradually develop a deeper sense of our need for a source outside of ourselves. My encouragement to you would be to look to Jesus as he is the One who came to lead the blind in ways they have not known. (Isaiah 42:16 “And I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground.”)

The Power of the Next Step

If you are anything like me, you always want to get “there.” The “there” in life changes all of the time but you always want to get “there.” “There” can seem pretty overwhelming sometimes because there seems to be a large distance that separates you from “there.” While it is true that generally you cannot press fast forward and get “there,” you can certainly take the next step. I don’t know what the next step is for you but I am always looking for the next step. I believe, of course, that there are certain things that only God can do in my life. There are times when we just need him to show up and you may be in a place where it seems that you have exhausted every step you could possibly take. One thing that I have found consistently though, is that there is always some kind of next step. The next step for you may just be waiting or praying but this is still a next step.

Another thing that I have found is that God usually doesn’t answer my prayers by revealing the whole plan to me but rather by revealing the next step. I may just get a hunch to call a certain person or read a specific book. I’m not saying that every time I get a random prompting that God is speaking to me, but I do believe that sometimes he is. There have been times when I have made that phone call, read that book, listened to that message, gone on that trip or whatever it happened to be in the situation and it was very clear afterward that taking that step was a part of a bigger plan.

We live in a culture that doesn’t generally capitalize on the power of the next step because we celebrate books and ideas that promise to press fast forward so that we can get “there” as quickly as possible. The reality is that mountains are not climbed by pressing fast forward. Incredible dreams are not accomplished by pressing fast forward. Dreams are accomplished and mountains are climbed by taking the next step.  You’re not all of a sudden going to become successful,..you’re not all of a sudden going to become spiritually mature…you’re not all of a sudden going to get in shape…….but you can work out today. You can read your Bible today. You can set up that meeting today. You can….take the next step. You may be surprised that if you’ll start committing yourself to just taking the next step whenever you realize what that step is, that you can cover great distances that way. You may just find yourself looking back someday and realizing that you climbed an impossible mountain by simply deciding a long time ago that you would take the next step whenever the next step presented itself.

E.G.R.

One of the things that I hear people talk about sometimes is other people who are E.G.R. E.G.R. stands for Extra Grace Required. This is my 100th post and so I thought I would use it to go on record saying that I am an E.G.R. Usually when someone refers to someone else as an E.G.R. they mean a few things by it. They mean that the other person is kind of high maintenance. They mean that the individual needs a lot of grace and love from others because they don’t have it all together.

I gotta be honest and say that lately this expression has begun to offend me. The more and more that I grow in my spirituality, the more I learn that I need God daily. I’ve heard it said before that the more you learn, the more you realize how little you actually know. I would definitely say that there is a lot of truth to that saying. I don’t have it all together and won’t ever have it all together. I’m not ashamed to say that I need a Savior and that if it weren’t for him, I would be lost. Whenever you look at me please don’t make the mistake of assuming that I have it all together. Please don’t assume that I have anything all figured out. I’m not trying to be overly humble but I am trying to be honest.

11 years ago I asked Christ to come into my heart to be my Savior and I’m so thankful that he did. I honestly don’t know what I would do without him so whatever good you see in my life, know that he is the source. I have no problem saying that I am an E.G.R. and if you have any kind of maturity, you know that you are too. If you ever hear someone calling someone else an E.G.R., I would encourage you to gently or not so gently correct them. We all need a lot of grace and I think the least we could do is be honest about it. I for one am thankful that we serve a Savior who understands our need and is able to give us the grace that it takes to make a difference.

I had a crazy dream last night…

I think sometimes God chooses to speak to me while I’m sleeping because I can be so dense when I’m awake. This is just a thought but if you know me well you know this can be true (-; So last night I had a dream where I was in this intense battle. I was in this poor neighborhood and I was in a shootout. I had a gun and I was in a death match with I think just two guys. It felt like a very guerilla warfare type scene so needless to say…it was pretty intense. I was hiding behind walls and trying to outsmart the guys that were coming after me but I couldn’t seem to do it. I was getting frustrated because I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t make it out alive. I was getting tired and I couldn’t seem to get a drop on this one dude.

Then the dream shifted and got a bit more real….

I started running in the neighborhood away from the battle and I began to get frustrated with myself but it was clear at that point that my frustration exceeded the scope of the dream. I started feeling like I couldn’t make myself fight to the death and I began to get angry at myself for being afraid and running away. It was at that point that I briefly realized that I was dreaming. As soon as I realized that I was dreaming I started to pray. I was still in the midst of this battle but the dream just seemed to take on a new dimension. I was still running from the guys who were trying to kill me but I was also praying. I said something like, “God, I hate that I’m always afraid. This is your dream and I give it over to you so do with it whatever you want.”

The strangest thing happened at that point in the dream. Remember I’m still running away in this poor neighborhood from guys who are trying to kill me. You would think that maybe God let me turn around and just start kicking butt and taking names. As soon as I got done praying I literally started to fly. I felt a force come over me and I started flying in the dream. I flew over the neighborhood and almost into the clouds. It was clear that I did not have the ability to fly but whatever force came over me started carrying me and I was out of the situation….then I woke up.

Moral of the story: Have you ever found yourself in some type of battle? You might be in a battle right now and if you are in one, you know it. Sometimes I find myself in battles and I’m winning. It may be something small like a sports battle or a battle to get something done but I know what winning feels like. But then there are battles like the one in my dream. I couldn’t win. I was trying as hard as I could to get the drop on these guys but I couldn’t outsmart them no matter how hard I tried. Battles like this can be a blessing in disguise if we can begin to understand the purpose behind them.

Have you ever just stopped to pray? What’s funny to me is that I have experienced God’s ability to come through many times and yet I forget how easy it is for him to rescue me out of impossible situations. What for me may seem like an impossible circumstance is for him an easy solution. Sometimes I think God allows us to get in these situations just so that he can demonstrate how strong he is.

So here’s the question of the hour….have you stopped to ask him for help in whatever battle you are in? Have you realized yet that there are battles that you just can’t win? I may not be one of the smartest people you’ll ever meet but I’m really determined. It is hard for me to admit defeat in any arena but sometimes this is exactly what we need to do. There are some battles out there that you can’t win on your own. My challenge to you is to stop and pray. If you really believe that God loves you and that he is all powerful…why wouldn’t he come through? I’m not saying that it’s going to look like an immediate answer to your prayer but he is good all the time….give it a shot.

Thanks,

Chris

A night like any other…Christmas Eve Spoken Word

Easter Video from 2010

Impression Management

   

Proverbs 27:2 says, “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; someone else, and not your own lips.”

Have you ever met someone that clearly got the job as their own PR representative? They may not go around with a billboard that says, “Aren’t I awesome?!” but that’s clearly one of their main goals in life. You are in conversation with these people and it’s clear where the conversation is going. They creatively drop rhetorical hints at strategic points that are clearly intended to illicit instantaneous praise from the listener. Of course, because the person has learned to be discreet about it….this is all going on beneath the surface of the conversation.

I have a confession to make: I am a recovering self promoter. This may not be news to anyone but I’m trying to take some steps forward in this area. Self promotion comes from insecurity. People that do not feel confident in themselves feel the need to manage impressions in their favor so as to evoke the affirmation that they feel that they are lacking.

People like this are draining to be around. The bottom line for them in social interaction is to get their proverbial cup filled with praise and affirmation. They don’t come right out and say it but that is the undercurrent of most of what they say. You find yourself just wanting to go locate a little crown and put it on their head to end the seemingly limitless number of discreet insinuations that are intended to cause you to be impressed.

I have entered far too many conversations with this intention and I’m tired of that in myself. Why don’t we all step up and confront the elephant in the room: insecurity. Why do you feel insecure? Why do you enter a conversation and not feel good enough? Why don’t you walk around feeling affirmed?

I believe that if we will start to wrestle with these questions, we won’t feel the need to enlist others in our job of self promotion.

Thanks guys!

Chris