I’d read John 3:16 and walk away with more anxiety than I arrived with. “Whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” In English, “believe” is a mental agreement. So I either intellectually arrive at the correct conclusion — or I don’t. And if I can’t quite get there, I’m apparently going to hell.

That’s not Good News.

But the word in Greek isn’t “believe.” It’s pisteuo. And pisteuo means to trust. To entrust. To put your full weight on something. The opposite of pisteuo, used just a few verses later in the same passage, isn't "not believing." It's apeitheo — disobedience.

Non-surrender.

To truly believe is to let go.

One word. Completely different God.

The first version has me trying to mentally maneuver my way out of hell. The second is an invitation to stop white-knuckling my life and fall into the only thing that will actually hold me.

And then there’s the word “saved.” The Greek word is sozo. It means to rescue. To heal. To restore to wholeness. The same word Jesus uses when he heals someone physically. Sozo is God saying I don’t just want to get you into heaven. I want to make you whole. Right now. In this body. In this mess.

That’s a different offer entirely.

And it matters because trusting that God actually loves you is hard — especially if most of the love you’ve experienced has come with strings attached. Most people have been told someone has their best interest at heart, only to find out it was just manipulation wearing a smile.

Agape love — the love God has for you — is the rare kind. Others-first. Costly. The kind that gives rather than takes.

Which brings us to the cross. My God is not a far-off deity demanding a sacrifice. My God is a close and personal friend who is the sacrifice. He put on skin. Suffered emotionally, spiritually, physically. It actually cost Him something. That’s not a transaction. That’s the most extravagant act of love in human history — and the English language barely scratches the surface of it.

English is like a dumb phone.

It makes calls, sends texts, gets the job done. But it has no depth, no texture, no ability to carry the weight of what these words were actually trying to say.

If you’re showing up to seek God— reading, seeking, genuinely wanting more — but it still feels flat or worse, terrifying — you might not be the problem. The language might be failing you, not God.

The point is the thing being described. Encounter. Relationship. The disorienting reality of a God who refuses to stay theoretical.

Language points to that.

It is not that.

If you're looking for a fresh encounter with God through Scripture, here's what helps me:

I slow the reading down. When a word snags me — feels important, feels off, feels like it's carrying more weight than it's letting on — I don't just reach for another translation. I look up the original language. Find the word picture behind it. More often than not, it helps.

The words got thinner.

The Love behind them didn’t.

—

I offer Positioning Prayer and Spiritual Direction — one-on-one sessions by Zoom that create space for you to encounter God. No advice. No middleman. No formulas. Just you and God, with someone to help you lean in.

These sessions are free. Not free-with-an-asterisk. Just free. This ministry runs on the generosity of donors who believe you deserve access to God regardless of what you can pay.

I don’t want something from you. I want something for you.

housemoneycollective.org

NOTE: I originally wrote this about 15 years ago. It later became part of a book called Wreck Your Self. I'm reposting these essays here alongside my current writing. They've held up pretty well- although I've come out the other side with a lot less anger and a lot more peace. I regret none of it.

Is it possible that underneath the fighting, fear mongering, and self-righteousness of this election season lies a genuine desire to connect?

Even as I write this I’m confronted with an awareness of how much I want my words to count for something.

I want to be heard.
I want to matter.
And I want to belong.

This awareness awakens childhood wounds of feeling invisible, helpless, and unlovable. Through this lens of my own suffering I’m able to see others hurting in their own desperate attempts to be heard, to matter, and to belong.

The fear and anger (read: shittyness) around elections makes me wonder if voting is as important as we think it is, and if its actual importance is for the same reason we assume it to be important.

Sometimes voting feels like another distraction from owning up to my own negligence, failure, and inability to engage with what really matters in my own life.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t vote. I’m saying we should consider our motivations behind voting, its perceived versus actual importance, and whether there may be more impactful ways to invite others into the love of God.

One of democracy’s virtues is that it creates an opportunity for us to openly discuss our thoughts, values, and ideals. This creates life-giving space for us to connect with one another.

And connection is a vital part of what it means to be human.

But a quick glance at my Facebook feed shows me how bad we are at connecting with each other and how good we are at pushing each other away. Maybe this is because we put a lot of effort into being right and not enough into acknowledging the image of God in each other.

If we put a lopsided weight on winning and correctness, our exchanges cease to be a safe place for honest, intimate, and vulnerable connection. Instead, they drag us headfirst into a conversational fistfight for our lives.

It’s as if we’re afraid to not know everything.

In some ways I think we’ve mistaken the privilege of democratic dialogue for our right to demand our own way, using fear as a motivating force. I see a lot of drawing lines and choosing sides, but very little open, honest dialogue and connection.

Politics are about people, not issues.

Issues objectify us into talking points.

It’s amazing how little I know when it comes to the simpler things, let alone the vastly complex issues facing this country in regard to civil rights, healthcare reform, foreign policy, national debt, unemployment, war, and poverty—just to name a few.

Maybe there’s a distinction between making a good decision and making the right choice.

Because making a good decision is to give it your best shot knowing clairvoyance is not expected, whereas making the right choice assumes there to be only one answer in a given situation—one that requires complete comprehension of all variables and flawless execution of the correct selection.

Which puts a lot of pressure on us.

American culture has fooled us into thinking that the world revolves around us, and that’s why many of us walk around feeling the weight of humanity resting on our shoulders.

But what if God is inviting us to surrender the weight of humanity back to Him?

What if His yoke really is easy and His burden truly light?

What if God’s inviting us to trust Him in new and impossible ways but we keep trying to fix things in our own strength?

As much as I would like to believe the solutions to our nation’s problems can fit neatly into a one-hundred-and-forty-character tweet, I get the feeling it’s not that simple.

This brand of simplicity sets up the dangerous idea that we can actually fix everything if we could get our collective act together. This type of thinking leads to self-sufficiency and self-righteousness. Contrary to the Sermon on the Mount, we begin telling ourselves that it’s the affluent, the educated, and the few who are blessed.

When we unintentionally presume voting to be important for the wrong reasons, we can be distracted from some of the substantial, tangible issues we can actually engage with in our daily lives.

Just to be honest, most of the complexities of politics are beyond my scope of experience or understanding.

To be clear, I’m not saying we can’t or shouldn’t participate in government, but I don’t think the news media and blogosphere are providing an adequate amount of unbiased information for the general public to somehow all be experts on how to run a modern-day empire of over three-hundred million citizens.

I’ve personally seen men of great character struggle to manage successful businesses, community organizations, and faith communities, let alone an entire nation. My point being that leadership is no easy endeavor regardless of political or religious affiliation.

(A quick reading of Moses leading the Exodus affirms the difficulties of ruling a nation of ungrateful brats like us.)

It saddens me that some of us have confused the virtually effortless act of casting a ballot as being a legitimate gesture of faith—while ignoring a multitude of daily opportunities to experience and invite others into the love of God here and now.

For some of us, casting a ballot might literally be the least we can do.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t vote so much as it means we might want to reassess the importance we attribute toward voting on issues compared to the importance of engaging with the issues in our everyday lives.

Jesus was murdered by the “church” and government of His time.

Through the prodding and manipulation of religious leaders and at the hands of the Roman Empire, He was killed.

Prior to His death He was given chance after chance to grasp at power and take the political reins as leader of His people—yet He constantly and resolutely declined.

Why did Jesus refuse to set up His own political rule?

What was He holding out for?

Jesus either failed miserably, was holding out for America to pick up the slack, or was up to something better.

I’m not saying there are no answers. I’m suggesting that we give the same consideration and attention to the process of our thinking as we do to our conclusions.

(It would also do us good to question the legitimacy of the binary options we are presented with in politics, theology, and life in general.)

Because to think we must choose between the lesser of two evils is to ignore the fact that we don’t have to choose evil at all.

If these elections are shaking the foundations of freedom, hope, or security in your life, I’d like to welcome you into a real freedom that liberates us from the lies of false hope, the bondage of self-sufficiency, and the emptiness of political promises.

To know politics as the arena in which we can find or lose our freedom is to never have known freedom at all.

So go cast your vote.

But don’t stop thinking through what it really means to be free when you leave that voting booth.

Try not to confuse civic duty with divine calling.

And for the love of God, don’t dismiss the love of God.

You are beautiful.
You are necessary.
And you are not forgotten by a God who loves you regardless of what happens in this or the next election.

May God guide and keep you in His love as you live out your calling and convictions.

May you know that you have already been saved from yourself at His great and willing expense and not your own.

And may the love of God liberate you from any illusion that your freedom in Him is in any way at stake against the principalities and powers of this world.

May the love of God heal our addiction to hope in political systems, to black-and-white thinking, and to suggesting simple solutions for life’s incredibly complex problems.

May we stay anchored in His love amidst a swelling sea of answers and assertions by men falsely claiming they behold the power to save us.

And may we rest in the truth that regardless of who is in the White House, the God of the universe hears us, we matter, and we belong to Him.

Now that’s one-hundred-and-forty characters worth getting excited about.

— November 2012

If this resonated, you’re probably in the middle of something important. Stick around.

I offer Positioning Prayer and Spiritual Direction — one-on-one sessions by Zoom that create space for you to encounter God. No advice. No middleman. No formulas. Just you and God, with someone to help you lean in.

These sessions are free. Not free-with-an-asterisk. Just free. This ministry runs on the generosity of donors who believe you deserve access to God regardless of what you can pay.

I don’t want something from you. I want something for you.

housemoneycollective.org

NOTE: I originally wrote this about 15 years ago. It later became part of a book called Wreck Your Self. I'm reposting these essays here alongside my current writing. They've held up pretty well- although I've come out the other side with a lot less anger and a lot more peace. I regret none of it.

Growing up I thought my church existed to preserve, protect, and promote the “good news” of the gospel to a lost world.

The problem with a heavy-handed focus on passing our faith to others is that we can forget to make that faith our own first. We can become so obsessed with information transmission that we forget this whole “God’s love thing” isn’t about information at all.

Information transmission depicts the Gospel as an answer to a cosmic riddle necessary for unlocking the gates of heaven for those who properly preserve, protect, and promote the correct gospel. It requires us to know the precise password in the correct sequential order and to do everything possible to share the correctly preserved password with others.

A theology made up of linear, sequential, and formulaic thinking sets the tone for constantly being afraid that we might not know the correct information in the correct order, presented in the correct manner.

It creates a culture of Christianity that is preoccupied with behaving well and emphasizes connecting with God later instead of now.

It uses fear, anxiety, and shame to perpetuate a performance-based, behavior-centric self-righteousness designed to control the human spirit and rob us of being with God in the present moment.

Sunday school taught me that if I didn’t believe in the right things I would spend forever in hell, separated from (a loving) God with no chance or hope of redemption.

WTF?

Isn’t the gospel meant to be good news?

What’s so good about a God who wants to save us but can’t?

Was Jesus sent to save the world or to give it his best shot?

How is this pseudo-salvation anything more than trading the self-righteousness of obeying the right things for the self-righteousness of believing the right things?

Is there really a new covenant between God and humanity? Or are we just polishing up the old covenant and calling it version 2.0?

God loves us so much he’ll let us choose to go to hell? Are these really our options? Love God or go to hell?

Using fear, manipulation, and intimidation to share God’s love is like dating at gunpoint.

It forces a high-stakes logical decision of not wanting to burn in hell more than it invites us into daring to know ourselves as loved and valued and enough.

Although I’m scared of it, I’m holding out for a love that stands in violent opposition to my performance-based self-righteousness and offers a radical new possibility for something truly scandalous and worthy of being called the good news.

If you think your pastor’s, priest’s, or minister’s role in your life is to hear God on your behalf and tell you what to think or believe, you will likely pay a price. Letting them dish out answers can deprive you of the process of entering into the mystery of God’s love for yourself.

These answers often try to explain God’s love at the expense of letting you actually experience it.

If I’m dissatisfied with the answers I get in church, I can point the finger back at myself because I’m just as much to blame for creating a demand for answers within community as any leader who pretends to have them.

Answers feed a brand of spiritual consumerism that devours and discards. It conditions us to crave biased sound bites and predetermined programming that reinforces what we want to hear instead of encouraging us to vulnerably engage in raw communal experiences that unleash the power of discovering whom and whose we are.

Before I become disgruntled with incorrect answers, a leader who can’t live up to their promises, or the dull sound of correctness in my ears, I need to take a good look in the mirror to see the person I’m most upset with.

Because getting upset with a church or minister for letting me down can be like getting upset with a prostitute for giving me cheap, meaningless sex.

It’s too easy to complain about Christian culture, throwing stones as we protest (protest-antism) for what we think community could or should be.

It’s too easy to point out the flaws and mistakes, insisting that if only we had more of this or less of that we’d be okay.

And it’s too easy to distract ourselves from the present moment, missing the presence of God by requiring others to be perfect when I am just as full of it as they are.

If you’re part of a church community whose leader is creating a culture of correct answers, maybe it doesn’t have to be your cue to leave (and maybe it does). It might be an invitation to engage further by taking them off the pedestal of correctness you’ve mutually constructed and allowing yourself to love them—just as you’re learning to love yourself.

Because at the end of the day, Christian leaders are full of shit.

And they’re a gift from God.

Reminding us that we, too, bring hope and heresy to the table of community.

Giving us permission to disagree and accept instead of disagreeing and discarding others based on their beliefs or behavior.

Showmanship, organization, and efficiency make running a church more comfortable, profitable, and fun—but it’s probably the brokenness, messiness, and incompetence that leave room for God to do His best work in us.

So instead of positioning ourselves in the world as people who have it all together, maybe we could try owning up to the fact that we don’t have it all together—and that we’re loved and celebrated by God just the same.

May we not miss the miracle of a loving God who continues to reveal Himself to us through bad theology, dysfunctional Christian community, and flawed human leadership.

— October 2012

If this resonated, you’re probably in the middle of something important. Stick around.

I offer Positioning Prayer and Spiritual Direction — one-on-one sessions by Zoom that create space for you to encounter God. No advice. No middleman. No formulas. Just you and God, with someone to help you lean in.

These sessions are free. Not free-with-an-asterisk. Just free. This ministry runs on the generosity of donors who believe you deserve access to God regardless of what you can pay.

I don’t want something from you. I want something for you.

housemoneycollective.org

NOTE: I originally wrote this about 15 years ago. It later became part of a book called Wreck Your Self. I'm reposting these essays here alongside my current writing. They've held up pretty well- although I've come out the other side with a lot less anger and a lot more peace. I regret none of it.

In Sunday school I was taught to love others by doing nice things.

Which is good, I guess, but…

I really wish someone would have taught me how to let myself be loved instead.

Because letting yourself be loved is a hell of a lot harder than doing nice things for people. I’ve found a faith based on doing nice things for people doesn’t amount to much more than self-righteousness masquerading as compassionate activism.

It’s not that I don’t want to do nice things for people so much as it puts me in an awkward position of thinking my role in life is to remove resistance, obstacles, and pain from the lives of others. As if I bear the responsibility for setting right all the wrongs in the world, serving as some sort of agent for a divine accountant.

I’m not saying we should stand back and watch people harm themselves or others. I’m talking about the difference between a time to intervene and a time to sit quietly with them amidst their struggles and pain.

I’m not sure what the ratio of intervention to quietly sitting is meant to be, but if I’m honest, mine skews kicking and screaming away from the sitting quietly.

What if our lives are perfectly designed to fail?

When we celebrate our successes, we often stand alone on mountaintops. But when we’re met face to face with our failures, imperfections, and limitations, we start to see how not alone—and how much like everybody else—we really are.

I want to be known as more than a nice little boy. I want to be known as a brave little bastard who dares to live like he is loved by God.

Because letting yourself be loved is a hell of a lot harder than doing nice things for people.

— July 2012

If this resonated, you’re probably in the middle of something important. Stick around.

I offer Positioning Prayer and Spiritual Direction — one-on-one sessions by Zoom that create space for you to encounter God. No advice. No middleman. No formulas. Just you and God, with someone to help you lean in.

These sessions are free. Not free-with-an-asterisk. Just free. This ministry runs on the generosity of donors who believe you deserve access to God regardless of what you can pay.

I don’t want something from you. I want something for you.

housemoneycollective.org

NOTE: I originally wrote this about 15 years ago. It later became part of a book called Wreck Your Self. I'm reposting these essays here alongside my current writing. They've held up pretty well- although I've come out the other side with a lot less anger and a lot more peace. I regret none of it.

I have a transactional dynamic with God.

A give-and-take where I do my part and He does His. I go to church, give to charity, and love my neighbor. In return, He keeps me safe and pays the bills.

This allows me to avoid having any kind of honest or vulnerable interaction with the Divine, letting me feel comfortable and in control of my life.

Surprisingly, this has actually worked for a really long time…

Until now.

After years of entertaining the notion that our interactions were symbiotic, God is strangling my idolatry to death before my eyes.

No more trades.

No more deals.

No more negotiations.

Now I can see that I don’t want God to love me. I want Him to tell me what to do and then leave me alone.

Because coming to grips with the fact that God actually loves me requires me to acknowledge a worth in me far greater than I can bear.

Of course I want God’s favor in my life and I want to be happy—we all do—but do I really want God to know me?

Me knowing God means I’m brought into the presence of the Totally Awesome, but God knowing me means He has to poke around my heart.

Who knows what He’ll find.

Not really the kind of swap I was hoping for in my transactional encounters with the Divine.

I just want to figure out what makes Him tick and then use that to get on His good side. (It’s the same thing I do in other relationships.)

I don’t want people to know me, I want them to like me.

If people like me they won’t see my faults. If they do, maybe they won’t care. And if I can’t get them to like me, I’ll try to position myself just outside the reach of their “normal” lives.

I’ve done this in my career, attempting to hide my insecurity by creating a larger-than-life persona for others to celebrate with accolades, awards, and honors. Such achievements leave me untouchable by mere mortals and allow me to insulate myself from the pain of vulnerability.

There is nothing like praise, adoration, and constant solicitations for advice to help me forget that I have no idea what I’m doing.

I still struggle with this in writing these essays and working on REHUMANIZE. I avoid working inwardly by thinking outwardly about what others might need or want to hear, or about what will make me look attractive, gifted, or wise.

When I focus on my audience, I sink. I forget that I create out of identity, not for it. I forget that I create to find myself—which has a way of leading me back to the love of God.

When I focus on the present moment of what God is doing in me, I somehow keep afloat.

I’m trying to be more vulnerable, but I still find ways to say to others, “Hey, I’m doing awesome, no need to probe any further!”

“Nothing to see here people, move along,” is my modus operandi.

But that’s not what I really want.

What I really want is to be known at the depths of who I am, for who I really am. But I assume from experience that whenever anyone gets too close they seem to get disappointed or disgusted and leave.

So it’s not that I don’t want to be known—it’s that I think I know what happens when others get too close and see me for who I really am.

And that’s why I keep God at arm’s length.

I can’t have God lurking around the depths of my heart. I can’t afford for Him to see me for who I really am. He ain’t gonna like—let alone approve—of what He finds.

There’s skeletons in my closet. (And for that matter, there are probably bodies down there that aren’t even dead yet.)

And then…

God wrecks me as I realize that while I’ve been tidying up the living room, He’s been sitting with the skeletons in my closet, waiting for me to join Him.

Not only does God know about my junk, He’s been sitting squarely in it, offering me unlimited unconditional love, acceptance, and approval.

Unfazed by the stench of death, God comes from within the brokenness of my life to rescue me, not from outside of it.

He’s not waiting for me to tidy up before I let Him in. He’s already inside waiting to blow the place wide open, starting with the closets.

This God doesn’t wait for an invitation to live within me. He just makes Himself at home while insisting that I may live in Him.

It leaves me thankful, and thinking that maybe love doesn’t always wait for an invitation after all.

Love never manipulates, intimidates, or dominates, and it always overcomes.

Love wins because there’s no way God isn’t going to get what He wants.

Admitting “I don’t believe God loves me and that I just want Him to tell me what to do” is not a confession of my will, nor is it the desire of my heart.

It’s an observation of my actual response to the love of God in my life so far.

Saying I believe in something and then acting contrarily is called being out of integrity with myself.

It’s when I say my body is a temple but I treat it like an amusement park.

It’s when I say I trust God for provision in my life as I hoard money and resources like a scared orphan.

And it’s when I say I want to selflessly love my wife as I make sex all about me.

I want the love of God.

I want to be able to take down the barbed-wire barricades in my heart so I can feel His love—but I don’t know how.

For now I can only surrender that I don’t know how to surrender as I give to God the helplessness of not knowing how to give Him all that is me.

I keep sweeping the floors of my heart because I don’t know how to put the broom down and walk into the closet with Him.

And so my leap of faith today is that I choose to trust Him in that closet without me.

I acknowledge that He’s sitting in the middle of my deepest, darkest secrets and desires, waiting patiently in complete awareness of His surroundings.

He isn’t freaking out.

(And He isn’t quoting Bible verses at me.)

I realize the “correct answer” at this point would be to say that I’m putting the broom down and walking into the closet with Him.

But I have no idea what it really means to put the broom down today, and I’m tired of conjuring up the correct answers at the expense of experiencing freedom and love.

So I’m not gonna do it.

I can choose to be “correct,” or I can choose to be free in honesty and integrity, accepting that I have no clue what I’m doing.

One god requires I tidy up before he visits, while this God sits in the closet holding up my skeletons with a huge grin on His face.

Because the skeletons in my closet don’t prevent me from experiencing the love of God.

They’re an invitation into it.

— February 2012

If this resonated, you’re probably in the middle of something important. Stick around.

I offer Positioning Prayer and Spiritual Direction — one-on-one sessions by Zoom that create space for you to encounter God. No advice. No middleman. No formulas. Just you and God, with someone to help you lean in.

These sessions are free. Not free-with-an-asterisk. Just free. This ministry runs on the generosity of donors who believe you deserve access to God regardless of what you can pay.

I don’t want something from you. I want something for you.

housemoneycollective.org

NOTE: I originally wrote this about 15 years ago. It later became part of a book called Wreck Your Self. I'm reposting these essays here alongside my current writing. They've held up pretty well- although I've come out the other side with a lot less anger and a lot more peace. I regret none of it.

Jesus said when we serve the “least of these” we do so unto Him.

He also said “the poor will be with us always,” as an expensive perfume was used for washing His feet—perfume someone thought should have been sold and given to the poor.

A guy named James thought true religion was caring for widows and orphans, while his brother Jesus warned of a certain kind of follower who could prophesy, cast out demons, and do mighty works in His name, and yet God “did not know them.”

Paradox makes it hard to pick a side and stick with it.

It’s only human to create neatly packaged and well-reasoned mandates for godly living—to pursue practical, linear, and sequential steps for pleasing God. But at some point, me trying to please God by determining what He “wants me to do and doing it” (like serving the poor, for example) becomes a cleverly disguised form of self-righteousness.

A faith that revolves around me determining what is acceptable to God, pursuing that, and then achieving it is called self-righteousness.

There’s a difference between following the Spirit and following our own carefully crafted, well-reasoned formulas for pleasing God.

(One of these approaches has me addicted to pleasing a god who isn’t real.)

In what ways do we obey the rules, play the part, and follow the recipe in hopes of “entering into the Kingdom of God”?

Is it possible to sponsor children, provide clean water, and rescue those enslaved in sex trafficking—all in the name of Jesus—and yet still remain unknown by God?

How is it even possible to do such “good” things but come up short?

Perhaps it’s the difference between letting God use me for His purposes and fighting for His favor by offering love and kindness toward others in His name.

Can serving the poor become an honorable distraction from letting God’s love invade our own lives?

Are we serving the “least of these” out of God’s great love for us, or because we want God to love us?

One approach has us trying to perform for God’s acceptance, while the other sets us free in the reality that God’s acceptance has no prerequisites.

The weight of suffering in this world is greater than any one of us can carry. There’s good reason to feel overwhelmed and helpless to make a difference when we come face to face with the depravity, suffering, and oppression that surrounds us.

We’re impotent to meet the God-sized need of this world.

Thankfully, the Kingdom of God is not advanced by our capacity, ability, or efforts.

God is not depending on our bank accounts, talents, resources, or achievements in order to advance His Kingdom. He’s inviting us into a movement that already has divine momentum—not something that needs resuscitation or rescue by our hands.

This is one of those truths that leaves me annoyed yet relieved.

Because while the over-achieving performance junkie in me is upset that I can’t please God or advance His Kingdom, another part of me can breathe again.

Perhaps Jesus saying “the poor will be with us always” doesn’t give license to ignore the less fortunate, but rather clarifies our calling to engage with poverty as opposed to ending it. Shedding interesting light on the myth that if we all just “come together” and “do our part,” we could put an end to hunger, poverty, oppression, etc.

Is there a difference between engagement and elimination?

Knowing “the poor will be with us always” has a way of taking the self-righteous wind from our sails, inviting us to lean into the resistance of poverty despite our inability to eliminate it.

When we engage the least of these we’re confronted with the fact that we, too, are the least of these.

As we’re met face to face with the horrors others face, we’re given eyes to see the same—but altogether different—horrors we suffer ourselves.

When I serve victims of sex trafficking, I see that I need rescue from my own sexual enslavements of another kind.

When I feed the hungry I’m made aware of my own dependence on the hand of God for provision in my life.

When I mentor inner-city teenagers I’m reminded that I’m not a self-made man and that it was not just my efforts but the unmerited favor, talents, and incredible opportunities that God has given me that have made me who I am today.

And when I accept the unacceptable person, I’m reminded of how recklessly God loves and accepts me just as I am and not as I should be.

I can engage poverty and oppression with humility knowing that although I’m unable to satisfy the greatest need of those around me, I’m tapped directly into the Source of One who can.

I can take heart knowing that the Kingdom of God is greatly advanced in and through me as I engage with poverty, and not so much when I am distracted by the task of trying to eliminate it (in myself or in others).

Without minimizing the very real needs of the marginalized and less fortunate, I draw attention to the continuing need for God in my own life—a need that has an interesting way of surfacing for contemplation and surrender as I engage with those less fortunate than me.

Let’s not indulge in a selfish lifestyle that ignores the pain of others, that assumes physical needs are not as important as the spiritual, or that’s content with hoarding the comforts afforded by the blessings of God. (It sucks that I even have to write that.)

The question is not whether we should help the less fortunate.

The question is this:

Is our love for the “least of these” coming out of the deep, wrecking love of God in our own lives?

Or are we serving the poor as a means of earning the love of God and removing a manifestation of resistance that Jesus said is never going away?

One approach allows me to encounter God, while the other has me doing “mighty works” in the name of a god who doesn’t even know me.

(P.S. Go help someone.)

— January 2012

If this resonated, you’re probably in the middle of something important. Stick around.

I offer Positioning Prayer and Spiritual Direction — one-on-one sessions by Zoom that create space for you to encounter God. No advice. No middleman. No formulas. Just you and God, with someone to help you lean in.

These sessions are free. Not free-with-an-asterisk. Just free. This ministry runs on the generosity of donors who believe you deserve access to God regardless of what you can pay.

I don’t want something from you. I want something for you.

housemoneycollective.org

NOTE: I originally wrote this about 15 years ago. It later became part of a book called Wreck Your Self. I'm reposting these essays here alongside my current writing. They've held up pretty well- although I've come out the other side with a lot less anger and a lot more peace. I regret none of it.

I see religious people selling God’s love, but not as many buying it for themselves.

What a difference there is between joining God in the redemptive work He’s doing in others, and accepting that we are the “others” who need redeeming.

We are the focus of His unfathomable love, not just peddlers of it.

I don’t think God is calling me to share His love with others so much as He’s calling me into His love, to be wrecked by it in such a way that others can’t help but be sucked inside as well.

One approach has me pounding the pavement as a salesman for God, while the other leaves me feeling pounded into the pavement under the heaviness of unthinkable love.

Not a pounding that says, “If we don’t let God love us, we’re going to hell,” but a pounding that weighs on us, revealing, “We are loved by God, so deal with it.”

If you’ve ever been ambushed by the love of God you know it can be a surprisingly heavy love that bears down on your soul when you least expect it.

It makes you instantly aware of your seeming insufficiency to be the focus of such love, but it sucks you in regardless. With the gravitational pull of a black hole it leaves you reeling helplessly.

Half of you resisting, half of you relieved.

If love is unable to weaken you at the knees it might be worth investigating whether you’ve bought into authentic love or a black-market counterfeit that fell out the back of a truck.

Some would have us believe that God’s recruiting for sales positions as if the world is a cocktail party God needs me to network on His behalf. Like I’m selling Amway or Avon or Tupperware and it’s up to me to expand the multi-level marketing empire known as the Kingdom of God.

The question is: are we seeking first the Kingdom, or the corporation of God?

There might be something more for us than just settling for the “corporate American gospel.”

If the good news of the Gospel boils down to information that needs to be packaged and broadcast, then we need to get off our asses and get this show on the road.

We need a better marketing strategy, more investment capital, and a revamp of our PowerPoint® deck because it’s thousands of years later and we’re still behind the eight-ball on our conversion quota.

But is God really recruiting a sales force?

Can we reduce the redemptive work of God down to a marketing push?

What if we suck at selling stuff?

And what if it isn’t God but me who others aren’t buying into?

If God’s counting on me in this capacity, I’m screwed. My sales are down, my prospects are low, and my TPS report just jammed in the effing copier.

Some might be able to shoulder the weight of redeeming humanity, but not me.

Seven billion people in the world and it’s becoming clear that my target market consists of a single person whose response to God I have any semblance of influence over.

Me.

So I’m through with sales pitches.

And I’m done trying to carry the weight of humanity on my outstretched arms.

It’s time to quit my self-righteous sales job and let myself crash and burn in the retirement of God’s love.

— December 2011

If this resonated, you’re probably in the middle of something important. Stick around.

I offer Positioning Prayer and Spiritual Direction — one-on-one sessions by Zoom that create space for you to encounter God. No advice. No middleman. No formulas. Just you and God, with someone to help you lean in.

These sessions are free. Not free-with-an-asterisk. Just free. This ministry runs on the generosity of donors who believe you deserve access to God regardless of what you can pay.

I don’t want something from you. I want something for you.

housemoneycollective.org

NOTE: I originally wrote this about 15 years ago. It later became part of a book called Wreck Your Self. I'm reposting these essays here alongside my current writing. They've held up pretty well- although I've come out the other side with a lot less anger and a lot more peace. I regret none of it.

When people demand Scripture be acknowledged as the “infallible, inerrant, Word of God” because it “says so in the Bible,” I can’t help but roll my eyes at the ridiculousness of The Bible referencing itself. It’s kind of like me saying this essay is reliable because it says so in this essay.

When I look at the Bible as an instruction manual for life, it becomes rigid and cold and lifeless, because an instruction manual can tell me how to put something together, but it can’t enjoy it with me.

This approach to Scripture leaves me feeling far from the story of love and liberation written on its pages.

How have we so confused Scripture for God?

And are we following Jesus– or a book?

Maybe we could take a step back from this idolatrous deification and consider whether or not The Bible has, or should be given a voice of its own.

Because the way we talk about, implement and regard The Bible is important. Although I personally find it uniquely incredible, extraordinary, invaluable, and authentic– there’s a world of difference between the Bible as the source of truth, and something that points to truth.

I bet it drives God crazy to watch us respond to his love with a kid’s song that opens with “Jesus loves me this I know, for The Bible tells me so”.

Really?

I know God loves me because The Bible tells me so?

This gives The Bible credit where credit isn’t due. It’s like thanking my cell phone for the great conversations we have.

My phone connects me to my friends. Their voices are pushed through my phone– but my actual friends are not contained within the phone. And although I appreciate my phone for its ability to connect me with my friends, I do not love my cell phone. I love the friend on the other end of the call.

Though The Bible may uniquely convey the essence of God, it doesn’t contain God—but don’t take my word for it. Read for yourself the words of Jesus as recorded in the cell phone book of John:

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” (5:39–40)

These words blow me away every time I read them.

Almost as much as when I realized that Jesus never read The Bible.

It seems the deification of Scripture is something that’s been going on for quite some time— long before America, the Protestant Reformation, and even the early Church.

So when I hear people say the Bible is God’s revelation to man, I wanna barf.

And maybe so does Jesus (being God’s actual revelation to man, and all).

I believe the writer of Hebrews when he presented Jesus as being “the exact representation of God”. And I don’t believe it because it’s in The Bible, but because it’s true.

The cell phone narrative of Scripture reveals the same fingerprint of the Living God I sense is pursuing me in the here and now. It’s in the cell phone pages of Scripture where I read of others who have come before me—others from different tribes and different times—whose encounter with the living God affected them then, much like it’s affecting me now.

So why are we afraid to consider that God might be bigger than The Bible?

What if The Bible isn’t a puzzle to be solved but rather an invitation into a story that is still being told?

In contrast to a “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it” approach to faith, what if there is more God wants to say? What did Jesus mean when he said,

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” (John 16:12–13)

Look. If Jesus was just a man who died two-thousand years ago, I can see the merit of clinging to a written account as being our closest connection to him.

But was he just a man who died?

What if we are made to live in reliance on the Spirit of God as our guide instead of reading the narrative of Scripture as a users guide or operating manual?

Perhaps (among other things) The Bible is more a reminder that we are not alone, that others have been recklessly loved by God before us, and that God will finish what he has started in all of us:

“A time will come, however, indeed it is already here, when the true (genuine) worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth (reality); for the Father is seeking just such people as these as his worshipers. (John 4:23–24)

There’s this notion that without The Bible’s explicit directives telling us what to do at every turn, life would become impossibly chaotic, heretical, and unmanageable (because living by the Spirit of God leaves us susceptible to misinterpretation and misunderstanding).

As if living life by the letter of the law isn’t “impossibly chaotic, heretical, and unmanageable, filled with misinterpretation and misunderstanding.”!

Because The Bible is clear, straightforward and tells us everything we need to know in an easy–to–read, easy–to–obey manner?

As if a just-tell-me-what-to-do-and-I’ll-do-it approach to relationships doesn’t kill the heart of intimacy?

I digress.

For people who claim to follow Jesus, some Christians quote the Apostle Paul an awful lot.

I don’t want to follow Paul.

Nor do I want to follow his interpretation of Jesus.

(And I definitely don’t want to follow other people’s interpretations of Paul’s interpretation of Jesus!)

I want to follow Jesus.

Here, and now.

— December 2011

If this resonated, you’re probably in the middle of something important. Stick around.

I offer Positioning Prayer and Spiritual Direction — one-on-one sessions by Zoom that create space for you to encounter God. No advice. No middleman. No formulas. Just you and God, with someone to help you lean in.

These sessions are free. Not free-with-an-asterisk. Just free. This ministry runs on the generosity of donors who believe you deserve access to God regardless of what you can pay.

I don’t want something from you. I want something for you.

housemoneycollective.org

NOTE: I originally wrote this about 15 years ago. It later became part of a book called Wreck Your Self. I'm reposting these essays here alongside my current writing. They've held up pretty well- although I've come out the other side with a lot less anger and a lot more peace. I regret none of it.

Some say that “God wants to have all of me,” and it’s often said in a way that leaves me feeling like if I’m not willing to give God all of me, He doesn’t want any of me.

But what if God’s really in love with me and He’s willing to take what He can get?

What if He’ll stop at nothing to get what He wants, and He’ll even take the seconds, scraps, and leftovers?

A God who wants all or nothing sounds like a God who’s never been in love before.

But a God who’ll take what He can get? He’s blinded by love and has a plan for me — a plan He has no intention of messing up, regardless of how much I do or don’t give Him.

This God doesn’t need me to prove anything.

He wants to give, not take.

Perhaps if I want to experience the good things He has for me, I need to open my hands so I can receive them.

Maybe I need to let go of whatever I’m hanging on to.

The God I’ve experienced is in it for the long haul. He doesn’t require that I be willing to give Him everything all at once. He’s far less concerned about what I can give Him than He is about what He wants to give me.

He’s in love.

He isn’t trying to trick me or ask me to prove I’m worth loving.

He just loves me.

He says I’m enough.

And goes to great lengths to show me that there’s nothing I need to do or think or believe to deserve or be worthy of such ridiculousness.

— November 2011

If this resonated, you’re probably in the middle of something important. Stick around.

I offer Positioning Prayer and Spiritual Direction — one-on-one sessions by Zoom that create space for you to encounter God. No advice. No middleman. No formulas. Just you and God, with someone to help you lean in.

These sessions are free. Not free-with-an-asterisk. Just free. This ministry runs on the generosity of donors who believe you deserve access to God regardless of what you can pay.

I don’t want something from you. I want something for you.

housemoneycollective.org