Heart GPS: Consider Your Paths

I'm a sucker for a good road trip story.  Frodo and the gang on the way to Mordor.  Luke and the gang on the way to destroy the Death Star.  Chief Brody and the gang looking for a great white shark.

In the Bible, however, we see that our hearts are often linked to a journey.

Jesus and the Bible talk about the heart a lot.  We are to guard it for some reason.  It is where our treasure is. Out of it flows our true nature.  And the peace of God will guard our heart if we lean into Him.  The heart is somewhat like a GPS for our life.

Now a GPS system is great.  We use them all the time on road trips.  And usually they are good.  Sometimes--not so much.  Ours has gotten us lost before. Especially around Washington D.C.  For some reason our GPS has no idea what roads are there or not when in the DC area.  We often end up taking some random offramp into the slums of DC and driving around in circles until we find our way back with no help from our GPS.

And of course, every time we drive near DC we say "let's try to remember what the correct road is this tie because the GPS will be wrong."  And every time, we've forgotten so we follow the GPS into the heart of DC one more time.

So the damages of past hurts, of fear and doubt, can screw up your heart's GPS system and send you meandering through places you don't want to go to.

Consider the call of wisdom in Proverbs:

"I walk in the way of righteousness, along the paths of justice, bestowing a rich inheritance on those who love me and making their treasuries full." Proverbs 8:20-21 

"The prudent keep their knowledge to themselves, but a fool’s heart blurts out folly... Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up...In the way of righteousness there is life; along that path is immortality." Proverbs 12:23,25,28

Now, as an English teacher, I enjoy a good motif.  Notice that in these verses that our life here on earth is likened to a a journey.  It's a path.  We either move on a good path that leads to life and immortality and a good inheritance or we move on a path of folly, anxiety and destruction.  If you're like me, you are probably humming "Life is a Highway" right about now.

So much can be said about how to end up on the right path, but the simplest directive can be found in Proverbs, and reiterated by Jesus in Matthew:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5-6 

Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Matthew 22:37

And like most things in the Bible, those statements are tremendously profound and true, and seemingly simple to do and yet in practice they are often so very hard to do.

And there's a reason for that.  In pop culture, you pretty much know if someone is told "whatever you do, don't do (insert instruction here)" that sometime during that movie they will do that thing.  Walk off the yellow brick road.  Feed Gremlins after midnight.  Leave before the Jedi training is done.

As human beings our heart has tremendous potential for good but it is also easily ensnared in emotions and damages that war against your very soul.  The very thing that helps us to identify God and lean into Him can also be the instrument of our undoing.

And there is no quick fix.  Yes, pray early and often.  Yes, read your Bible daily.  Yes love God and love people.  And yet, there is still something askew in the inner sanctum of your heart.  And when you least expect it, it can pop up and rip you from the path you were on.

Like Michael Scott from The Office, it can direct you to drive your car into a lake.  And that can turn you into a Michael Scott rage-monster.

The truth is like those verses in Proverbs suggest, life is a journey.  Faith is a journey.  And we usually follow our heart in determining which path to take.  Oh, and SPOILER ALERT, the Bible tells us that ALL OF US will fail at some point.  That none have succeeded in this whole right path thing for the entirety of our lives.The best thing we can do is to seek God with all of our heart, mind, and strength.  If we lean into Him and not our own understanding, we increase the likelihood that we choose the path of life.  And that's because of our own heart being strengthened by proximity to God and because of the promise in Philippians 4:7:

"And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

There is protection for our hearts and our lives in leaning into God instead of our own understanding and emotions.  There is a reason why God's peace will guard our hearts and minds for us.  It's because we are incapable of doing it ourselves.

The fact is, you are ALWAYS on a path to somewhere. You are never STAGNANT.  You are either skipping down a PATH OF LIFE or stumbling down a PATH of DESTRUCTION.  And sometimes, like a faulty GPS, your heart can't tell the difference.  What seems right to you in that moment, later will be the right that sent you into the lake.

Consider your paths.  Guard your heart.  Seek God and lean not into yourself, your feelings, your conceptions of people, places and things.  Let God sort it out for you.  He will guide you and make your paths straight.

Heart Wounds: Fear Leaves A Mark

Recently, I said some very harsh things to someone that I love dearly.  It was a tense conversation and something that probably needed to be addressed long ago, but as the conversation progressed, I found an intense anger rise up within me.  I ended the conversation with very angry words that I regretted saying the moment they came out of my mouth.

As I continue to strip away the damage that FEAR has done to my HEART over the years, I have discovered that FEAR generally damages your HEART in THREE MAIN AREAS:

• FEAR distorts how you SEE GOD and how you RELATE to HIM.  Fear will destroy any real intimacy you have with GOD because it will prioritize other problems and things above God. It DENIES GOD access to the broken places in your HEART and stops up the access to healing.

• FEAR damages your conception of YOURSELF and breaks the God filter that allows you to see yourself as God does.  Instead you focus on how horrible you are and allow yourself to sink into depression, and into a personal spiritual and relational paralysis.  FEAR will destroy any real self-reflection of yourself and will cause you to see yourself in a skewed light.  Instead of being able to see your flaws and learn from them to get better, you will see them as unfixable messes that make you unworthy of love.

• FEAR mutates how you see OTHERS.  You will no longer see them as God sees them.  You will see their worst qualities.  You will mock them,  You will not be capable of COMPASSION because your focus is always on yourself and your own problems.  FEAR will destroy any intimacy you might have with others.  It will make them a punching bag for your own hurt heart.  

And although I've begun to break the cycle of FEAR in my own life, I've discovered that breaking free from FEAR is a lot like becoming a Christian.  Yes, you can become a Christian in an instant, but it also will take a lifetime to actually work out what that means.  In the same manner, you can break free spiritually from FEAR in an instant, but it will take time healing some of the wounds that were inflicted on your heart from that fear.

JESUS deals with this in Matthew 15:17-19:

“Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”

The things that come out of a person's mouth come from the heart.  And these defile them.

The focus is so often on external things, but Jesus refocuses us onto the HEART.  And the things that fly out of your mouth come from that heart.  And there's a reason.

So when you find yourself lashing out at someone and can't seem to understand why you can't control that anger, there is a reason for that.  There is an unaddressed hurt.  There is a wound that needs healing.  The same is true of others who might lash out at you.

And here's the thing--just because you've overthrown FEAR from ruling your heart, it doesn't mean that the damage is completely undone.  Just like following JESUS is a relationship that needs daily tending and leaning into Him, so does our heart need time and healing.

Too often, however, we choose to hold on to the hurts.  We don't want to let go.  We don't want to resolve it.  It's just who we are.  Deal with it.  We tell it like it is.

God's plan for you is so much bigger than that.  There's a reason that Jesus famously tells us in Matthew 6:21 that, "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  What you keep in your heart and refuse to let go becomes your treasure.  It's like Gollum's "precious" in the Lord of the Rings.  If your heart's treasure is not GOD, it will destroy you.

That's why God tells us in Ezekiel 36:26 that,  "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

GOD wants to give us a new heart.  He wants to heal us from our past hurts.  He wants to restore our view of OURSELVES, our view of HIM, and our view of OTHERS so that we can embrace the plan that He has for our lives.

For some of us, we find it impossible.  God couldn't do that.  He can't use me.  He can't heal me.  This won't ever get better.  Well, that's the wounded heart speaking within you.  That isn't the voice of God.  That's the lie of the enemy planted in the fertile soil of your wounded heart.

The truth is found in 1 John 3:20: "If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything."

GOD is greater than your heart.  LISTEN to HIM.  Pray to enjoy healing in your broken parts.  In fact, your restoration is meant to not just benefit you but also others.

American author Ernest Hemingway put it like this, "The world breaks everyone, and afterward many
are strong in the broken places."  The broken places of your HEART are fertile ground for GOD's HEALING and RESTORATION not just for you, but for the wonderful hurting folks that God will place in your path.  You will become STRONG in the BROKEN PLACES if you allow God to work.

It's my prayer for my recently revealed wounds.  These are wounds carried around by nearly 40 years of submitting to FEAR.  And these are wounds that can't be worked away.  They can only be LOVED away by the perfect and unfailing love of the FATHER.

Begin your path to healing today by allowing GOD to make you STRONGER in the BROKEN PLACES of your HEART.  FEAR has no place in your life.  You were born for a purpose.  Break free.

The Deferred Dream: A Sick Heart Becomes A Tree of Life

The poet Langston Hughes famously posed the question, "what happens to a dream deferred?"  He used some very gross imagery in trying to capture the impact on the heart of someone hoping for their dream to come true.  Words and phrases like "dry up like a raisin in the sun," "fester like a sore" "stink like rotten meat" and "sags like a heavy load" capture the deflating, debilitating, and outright draining impact that a deferred dream can have on a person.

The Bible puts it this way, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life," (Proverbs 13:12).  A sick heart can be the epicenter of a destroyed and broken life.  It is the battleground for the control of our very lives.  For that reason, the Bible actually talks about the heart a lot.  We are to not let our heart be troubled.  Mary treasured the things of God in her heart.  Out of our heart comes a great deal of wickedness.  Hardness of heart closes us off to God and our fellow man.  A soft heart that focuses on the things of God is often sought after.  As Christians we are supposed to "have Jesus in our hearts."


The Bible clearly refers to the heart as the core of our being.  It shapes how we see God, the world, ourselves, and others.  How we feel in our hearts can radically alter our path in life.  And that's why the Bible repeatedly urges us to guard our hearts.

And so deferring a dream has a tremendous impact on a person's life because it makes a heart sick.

For our family, we have waited 8 years for a dream to be realized.  For the past 8 years, we have wanted to move to the Atlanta area of Georgia.  It's something that I can't really explain to most people.  Having lived my entire life in New Jersey, my wife and I visited Georgia for the first time 8 years ago to see Andy Stanley's North Point Community Church and tour their children's facilities as a part of the program we do with our church up here.  We loved the church and instantly wanted to attend it, but we also felt at home in the Atlanta area.  We began thinking about moving.  From almost the moment of our first visit, we have talked endlessly of our desire to live there.  We've felt unsettled, uncertain, and uneasy living in New Jersey.  And that's not to say we didn't enjoy ourselves in New Jersey.  We have people here that we love dearly.  We always try to make every event an adventure with our family.  It's just that we felt out of place.  Our DREAM was something other than the Garden State.

Every summer as we traveled to the Atlanta area to visit, we once again had that love of the area re-ignited.  And over the years there have been job opportunities that just didn't pan out.  A few times we really thought that I was going to get the job and at the last minute it fell through.

Over the course of those 8 years, our hearts were sick.  They were heavy.  They were sagging with disappointment and a sadness that was just life-draining.

After 8 years, however, that door has now opened.  I've accepted a job in Georgia and we will be moving to the Atlanta area this summer.  We have now transitioned from the "sick heart" portion of Proverbs 13:12 to the "tree of life" phase.  And in the short week since we received the news, we have begun to say our good-byes and make plans for our new life in Georgia.  It's a time of mixed emotions, but it's a time of great HOPE and ANTICIPATION.

Ironically, we were just about to give up on our Georgia dreams when the job offer came through.  In other words, we were about to settle for "good enough."  So often in our lives we embrace mediocrity because we are afraid to pursue a dream.  We are afraid to leave our comfort zone.  We are afraid to really rely on God because secretly we don't believe that He will come through.

Our move to Georgia will not be without drama.  It's going to be hard to say our good-byes and find a place to live in the short amount of time that we have.  There will be those, intentionally or unintentionally, who will attempt to discourage us or steal our joy.  After 8 years of waiting, however, we have learned not to lean onto our own understanding, but rather to trust in the divine direction sprawling out before us. When God opens a path before you, it would be foolish not to follow.

And a dream fulfilled being equated to a "tree of life" in Proverbs makes a lot of sense.  Trees, like people, go through phases.  There are times of death and hardship during the winter, and times of great vibrancy and life in the spring and winter.  And trees, like people, need to be connected to their source.  Without roots, the trees will die.  Having our dream to move to Georgia delayed by 8 years has forced us to deepen our connection to Christ and has strengthened our faith.

As we begin this new adventure in our lives, we find ourselves strengthened, encouraged, and hopeful for the plans that are laid before us.  Deferred dreams can seem like a death sentence, but if you hold on long enough to see their arrival, you will see HOPE in its purest form.

Generational Faith - The Cornerstone is Relationship

It's easy to look at the anger, violence, and cultural disintegration of our nation and become fearful.  It seems rather hopeless.  It seems like lives are being wasted on the pursuit of the frivolous and that "claiming to be wise" we have become a nation of fools.

And that's partly true.  Selfies seem to matter more than selflessness these days.

But then you remember the power of GOD and how His love can transform a life in a MOMENT.

Children form their conception of WHO THEY ARE and WHO GOD IS from the adults and peers in their lives.  IDENTITY is typically realized in the context of community.  It isn't one person that defines who we are, it's a mosaic of the people in our lives.  The same is true of our view of God.  We typically don't form our opinion in a vacuum.  It is forged through the people in our lives, our experiences, and our own sense of identity.  So, when a kid's view of God and self is obstructed, it's devastating for their future.

As a high school English teacher, I once had a student who was a senior in high school and a pretty angry girl overall.  This was my first year of teaching and everything was new and confusing to me as I attempted to navigate old British literature with a room full of dynamic and sometimes explosive students.  This girl was often angry and combative, but she was usually fine for me.  Toward the end of her senior year, she asked me for a letter of recommendation.  She wasn't a stellar student, but she was on average a decent student for me, and I knew that my class was actually one of her better ones.

I agreed to write the letter, but I wasn't quite sure what I could say in it.  Before I had an opportunity to attempt a letter, she came in one day and lashed out in her anger at me.  She called me a curse word and made a scene.  I had no choice but to send her to the office and write her up. That afternoon, I called her home to share about the day's events and to tell her mom that I wouldn't be able to write a letter of recommendation at this time.  

I was not prepared for what came over the phone line.

Her mom assaulted me with a line of cursing directed not at me, but at her daughter.  She exclaimed, "I don't know why my daughter would want you to write a letter of recommendation because she is nothing but a B---- and a whore.  And if that whore thought that I was going to spend one penny on her to go to college to do nothing but sleep around, she's nuts.  That B----- is worthless.  I'm not surprised she acted like that.  She's trash."

I was stunned.  And in that moment, I realized how much power we have over the young people in our lives in defining who they are and what path they will take in life.

Suddenly, I saw this girl in an entirely new light.  If that level of anger and hatred was directed at her on a regular basis from her mother, no wonder she acted that way!  She defined herself in the confines of her mother's anger.  And that set her on the path leading to a lot of bad things.

Fourteen years later I still think about this girl.  I still pray for her on occasion, hoping that she somehow found a way to find peace in her life.  I hope that someone came into her life to speak words of hope and encouragement to her.  I hope that she had someone share with her that there was a future and hope planned for her before her birth and that she was loved beyond comprehension by her heavenly Father.

The sad reality for this girl and for many like her is that she's completely divorced from the idea of a loving parent.   Any concept of God that she might have had would spring out of that sea of anger and dysfunction.  God created her with a purpose and a plan.  Unfortunately, she might not see that because there are so many other voices shattering her self-image and obscuring her view of the path of life marked out for her by her Creator.

And here's the thing.  Maybe that started out small, but consider a ship at sea.  Personally, I get seasick on boats, so I don't like to think about them, but it's a good example, so stay with me.  If a ship is off course by just a small degree, it isn't noticeable at first.  But after a long time traveling on the wrong course, the ship gets farther and farther away from where it is meant to go.  The same is true of us.  When we start out life with a false understanding of who we are, who God is, and what it means to actively pursue and follow a relationship with Him, we end up off course.  It isn't noticeable at first, but after years pass by, we find ourselves nowhere near where God wants us to be and like nothing He designed us to be.  And that brings hurt, disappointment, and brokenness.  

The truth is that we all need someone speaking life into us, not just kids.  Parents are supposed to do that.  The church can help parents find a way to do that by partnering with them.  When you look at Deuteronomy 6:4-9, you will see that Moses spoke about the importance of the leaders in the community partnering with parents to ensure that the next generation of faith understood God in a personal way:

"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

The transferring of faith from one generation to the next was about community and relationship and the cornerstone of this generational continuance of faith was to be the family.  Why?  Because following Jesus is not about an institution or a set of rules.  Following Jesus is about relationship and the best way to model and convey that to the next generation is through relationships.  That's why families and churches need to be intentional about how we convey a relationship with Jesus. 

It is for that reason that generational faith matters.  In his children's ministry book, Orange Essentials, Reggie Joiner said of children's ministry workers:

"You are the CHAMPIONS of family.  You are the ADVOCATES for the church.  But most
importantly...you are the MESSENGERS of of God ILLUMINATING, LOVING, and DEMONSTRATING His story of redemption to SONS and DAUGHTERS."

Imagine how different our culture would look if we just embraced this fully.  What if instead of focusing on PROGRAMMING in our churches, we focused on COMMUNITY? What if instead of focusing on filling the family calendar with ACTIVITIES, we focused it around being intentional and using every second to build relationships and impart GOD's INDENTITY for our children?  What if instead of seeing church as a place to SIT, we saw it as a place to SERVE and intentionally created opportunities for our kids to serve alongside of us?

There are so many angry and evil voices competing for your child's attention.  Don't let yours be one of them.  Don't passively accept that this is just the way things are.  Be intentional about finding people who will share your love for your child and impart the wisdom and hope that you do for them. And if you never had that yourself, there is good news--Jesus is all about restoring broken people.  There is a hope and future for you beyond your comprehension if you will just lean into Him.

The Father's Heart: MDW & Why Sacrifice Matters

To judge from the culture, Memorial Day Weekend is a time for people to hold cookouts and for a bunch of people to get drunk and make bad decisions.  In other words, it is a time to engage in pampering yourself and focusing exclusively on you having a good time.

And yet, we know that the holiday is set aside as a time to remember those men and women who have sacrificed their lives in the defense of the United States of America through military service.  It is a day to commemorate self-sacrifice and valor.  These admirable qualities are often overlooked in today's increasingly self-centered society.

Sadly, many churches have the same problem.  With an ever-increasing consumer mentality dominating our culture, so many people ask, "what's in it for me?"

In culture, we can easily attribute this to the falling away from faith.  In the church, however, we can probably trace this back to a lack of understanding about the foundation of following Christ.

A lot of people boil Christianity down to the idea of proper behavior.  If you follow Christ, you should follow this lengthy list of do's and don't's.  The focus is constantly on the rules.  The problem with a fixation on rule-following is that it misses the point of following Christ--RELATIONSHIP. Also, when someone falls short of the ideal that God has for them according to those rules without a proper understanding of the healing power of God in restoring broken people and using them for great purposes, they might understandably walk away from Christ in shame.

Even looking the grand-daddy of all rules--the Ten Commandments, we can see that the law that God had given to the Israelites was really more about relationship than behavior.

What?  Did I just say that?  How can that be?

Andy Stanley writes in The Grace of God, that we should note that the rules came AFTER the relationship.  God initiated a relationship with Abraham, like a bazillion years earlier.  He pursued Abraham's heart and the heart of each succeeding generation.

He was a personal God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  And Exodus 20 begins by reminding Moses that "I am the Lord YOUR God"  not "Lord THE God."  Before God hit Moses with the Ten Commandments, He reminded Moses of the pre-existing relationship with the Israelites.  Andy Stanley writes, "God initiated a relationship with His people even before he told them what the rules were." 

Wow.  If you are like me, you probably never looked at that from that perspective.

Why is this important and what does it have to do with Memorial Day and sacrifice?

Because as Andy Stanley points out, "Rules without relationship lead to rebellion.  God understands human nature.  So He gave the Israelites rules after they shared a relationship."

Because God is a God of relationship.  Your value to Him is not found in WHAT YOU DO FOR Him.  Your value is found in YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO Him.  He wants your heart.  And from that heart will flow obedience, service to others, worship, and yes, sacrifice.

So many people miss that point. Sacrifice and serving others is born out of relationship.

It is not in our own strength that we can keep God's commandments, but out of the overflow of an intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father.

Putting others first and sacrificing your life for something larger than yourself is not commonly found in human nature, but it can be!  It is a reflection of the Father's heart for us.  Jesus made that point abundantly clear in his brief time here on earth and through His heart-breaking sacrifice on the cross borne out of love.

Those men and women who have willingly laid down their lives for us have given a powerful example for the world of the kind of self-sacrificing love that would be commonplace if people would just embrace their identity as a CHILD OF GOD.

If you think that being a Christian is all about following restrictive rules, you are missing the heart of God.  Yes, He wants obedience, but He wants your heart first and foremost.  Jesus wasn't a huge fan of the pharisees--a group of "rules" fanboys if ever there was one.  He was looking for something more than simple rule-following.  He was looking for something more INTIMATE, like RELATIONSHIP.

Not convinced?  Just think about it this way--most of the time when you mess up and do something really destructive in your life, it is born out of a selfish motivation.  In other words, you usually hurt yourself and others when you are motivated by prioritizing yourself--your needs, your wants, your desires.  When you put other people first by serving them and sacrificing for them, you very rarely end up engaging in destructive behavior.   Nowhere is that contrast more dramatic than on Memorial Day weekend as people engage in binge-drinking and self-indulgence to commemorate those who gave up their lives so that others could taste and retain freedom.

So, given that context, let's re-examine Jesus' greatest commandments in Matthew 22:36-40:

Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Obviously, not every person who has died in the service of the military was a Christian.  They do, however, give us a glimpse of the power that "the greatest commandment" has in changing our world. Loving God will transform you.  Loving others will change the world.  Doing both is the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its purest form.

Take some time this weekend to thank God for the people who sacrificed for your freedom.  Take a moment to think about what motivated them.  Take some time to seek the heart of God and just see if it will motivate you to do the same.

Branding Your Identity

Who are you really?

Who or what do you measure yourself against?  Honestly.  Think about this right now.  We all have this ongoing internal monologue about who we are.  Wait, you don't?  It's just me?

Assuming I'm not crazy and you have also spent a lifetime measuring your self worth by some standard somewhere, what is it?

Do you even know?

Our culture is kinda obsessed right now with branding, and re-branding, and image, and social media projections that have no basis in reality.  We're all obsessed with pretending to be something that we are not.  And this overwhelming focus on our false facades has completely cut us off from anything real.  For that reason, so many in today's society feel unsettled.  Unaccomplished.  Unimportant.  Unheard. 

We're binge-watching and tweeting away a FALSE life of no significance when GOD has an epic adventure awaiting just outside our door if we will just focus on what is TRUE.

In the JRR Tolkien novel, The Hobbit, there is a special moment early in the book where Gandalf touches on this idea.  Gandalf has mischievously selected a hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, to join a throng of dwarves on an adventure to reclaim their treasure from a dragon named Smaug.  For those of you who aren't nerds, I will explain that a hobbit would probably be the last creature you'd take on an adventure of any kind.  They are short, fat, lazy, and not the sharpest tools in the shed.  They don't stray far from home, and they spend most of the day eating.  

The dwarves were not amused.  They questioned Gandalf's selection of Bilbo.  In response, Gandalf said of Bilbo, "There is a lot more in him than you guess, and a deal more than he has any idea of himself."

Gandalf saw a potential in Bilbo before anyone else did--including Bilbo.

And recently, I've been realizing the same is true of us.  In my own life, the voice that I've listened to in the inner monologue of my self-identity has been a hostile one. It told me that I didn't measure up.  It told me that I messed up too many things to be a success in life.  It told me that I wasn't as good as this person, or that one, or really anyone.  I'm not worth it.

It sounds childish for a nearly 40 year old to write this.  I get it.  And there's good reason for that. It's because I really was like a child cowering in fear.  The feeling of helplessness is like nothing that I can truly put into words.  Fear paralyzed me from moving forward and from seeing who I really am.  Fear caused me to passively accept defeat and embrace definitions for myself that were not TRUE.  

I believe that each person deep down inside answers two questions:

1.  Why was LOST cancelled? 

2.  What was that ending about?

Just kidding (for the most part.)  I believe the two questions that define everything in our life are:

1.  Who am I?

2.  Why am I here?

And how we answer that about ourselves determines our response to every aspect of life.  GOD has one answer for us:

Jeremiah 1:5:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;

Before you were born I sanctified you;

Jeremiah 29:11:

11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

2 Corinthians 6:18:

“I will be a Father to you, And you shall be My sons and daughters, Says the Lord Almighty.”

Sons and Daughters.  Known before we were formed.  Planned.  Created.  Given a future.  Thoughts of peace and not evil.  HOPE.

How often do we really listen to that?  Honestly?

If you are anything like me, not much.

Too often we compare ourselves to just about everything else--other people, standards and ideals that we will never meet, expectations, the words of others, our past.  These voices and thoughts drown out the still, small voice that assures us that we are LOVED.  That we are FORGIVEN.  That we are PRECIOUS.  

FEAR is one very powerful stronghold in the life of a human being.  It can keep you from the things you are destined to do and drive you to destructive behaviors designed to deaden your heart's pull toward your purpose.  It can simultaneously be a hidden and unseen force and a powerful prison from which you can't seem to free yourself.  FEAR can completely cut off the supply of HOPE coming from God and cause a person to be completely immune to words of life and hope spoken by loved ones and friends.

Just like Gandalf, however, God wants to silence those doubting voices.  God has a bigger plan and dream for your life than you could ever possibly fathom.  

Like Bilbo, however, you need to awaken your true identity and stop falling for false comparisons. When you stop accepting the false identity you believe about yourself, you will begin to see the sunlight.  A new day will begin.  God will reveal Himself to you in a new and more powerful way.  

When you correctly answer the question of who you are, you will be open to what massively important and amazingly life-altering journey that God has for you.  

Walk with me in this struggle.  Let's cast out fear and embrace our purpose.  I bet the world will thank us for it.

You are no longer a SLAVE of FEAR, you are a CHILD of GOD:

The Perspective of Volcanoes, Cobblestone Streets & the Faith of A Coffee Bean

Guatemalan volcanoes like Agua are awesome!

We've been home from Guatemala for a week now, but I felt it was important to record some thoughts about our trip!  (Besides the fact that Cafe Barista is awesome.)

During our last night in Guatemala, I spent part of the evening sitting atop my sister-in-law's house as the sun slowly made its way toward the horizon.  As I sat there enjoying the cool breeze of the Guatemalan highlands, a word came to me: Perspective.

Coming to Guatemala is always a lesson in perspective.

I've written often about the majesty of the volcanoes and mountain ranges here in Guatemala.  As someone who grew up in the flat as a pancake southern portion of New Jersey, I am not used to seeing volcanoes in person.  This is my sixth trip to Guatemala since 2008 and I am still not used to seeing those majestic giants.  I could sit and stare (and often do) for hours at the various volcanoes here in Guatemala.  Their vastness reminds me that I am very small indeed.  And that's a good thing to be reassured of when you struggle with your weight!  The sheer magnitude of each volcano just envelops you and brings vividly to life the Biblical truth of "who am I that you are mindful of me?"

At first glance, it is the size of each volcano that mesmerizes you.  However, as truly enthralling as they are to behold, there is an unfathomable power contained deep within each volcano.  The lava that occasionally makes an appearance atop each volcano and the force with which it sends plumes of fire and ash into the sky is a mind-blowing taste of the power of God.  It reminds us that we are not only small but weak in comparison to the divine power of the Creator behind such wonders.

I remember during one of my trips to Guatemala, being at a school in Santa Maria de Jesus, a small poverty-stricken village on the base of the Agua volcano, when a storm came rolling in.  Suddenly, as if from a scene in Lord of the Rings, the clouds engulfed the streets of the town until all you could see was cloud.  Watching the clouds crawl over the top of a mountain from a distance is pretty cool to see.  Watching it engulf the town in which you are currently standing in, can be quite mesmerizing, albeit a bit scary as well!

Beyond the volcanoes, you are also grounded in the antiquity of places like Antigua.  Antigua is a beautiful town that is over 500 years old and which is filled with cobblestone streets, open air markets and ruins of a bygone era.  The remnants of life throughout the centuries in this majestic town reminds you that in the perspective of human history, our own self-important lives are but a speck.  In the age of social media, we put so much importance on the temporary fleeting peripheral stuff of humanity instead of prioritizing that which lasts.  Just as a selfie is a hit online today and forgotten tomorrow, so our time on earth is limited indeed.  Seeing a town like Antigua that has spanned the ages is a reminder of just how short our own time here on earth is and how each life is connected in the big story of humanity that God is telling.

And then there are the people of Guatemala.  Emerging from the horrors of civil war and genocide just 2 decades ago, they are a surprisingly joyful people.  They are survivors.  And when you go into some of the poorer villages of Guatemala, you see the very definition of "joy that surpasses all understanding" among the Christians there.  These are people who don't have the "first world problems" of perhaps having to wait an extra minute or two for a latte or having our name spelled wrong on our cup.  And yet, as I have written before, they could teach the church of America a thing or two about joy in all circumstances.  The American church has become too dependent on our stuff.  We are just as materialistic as the world.  We don't truly rely on God because we don't need to with all of the stuff that we have.

Visiting with a full-time missionary in Guatemala reminds you that your brief trip to the missions field is really more about you than the people you come to serve.  The impact on our lives of having this experience will most likely outweigh any small impact we have made on the kids that we visited with during our trip.

The school that we visited is called Wisdom and Grace School, or Saber y Gracia in Espanol.  The school is located in a village near Antigua called Santo Thomas.  The leadership of the school have a big vision for impacting their community and have pretty much reached capacity for the number of kids at their school.  They currently have somewhere over 300 kids attending the school and when you attend the chapel service in the morning, you can see that they can't fit another person in the room!  They also use the building for a new church that they have started to begin sowing into the families of the community as well.  The leadership of the school understands the importance of involving the family in their children's faith and education journey.  You can read all about the school in this magazine from World Next Door.

They have land set aside to build a new larger facility and are praying and believing God for over 1,000 students.  We had the privilege to walk through the field where the new school would be built and get a sneak peek at the vision for this next step for the school.  It was so very humbling to stand there looking at the volcano in the background and remember the promise of Scripture in Matthew 17:20:

"So Jesus said to them, 'assuredly I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you."

Now, perhaps a better analogy for Guatemala is the "faith of a coffee bean" but you get the idea!  In that small town of Santo Thomas, stands a group of believers walking out that very promise of Scripture in a way that most of the church in America could only imagine as a fairytale.  They see the mountain looming in the distance and instead of fear, they see confidence that God will provide the mountain of funding needed to build a new school to reach even more families for the kingdom of God.  What a tremendously audacious faith!

Taking a family missions trip is definitely worth your while.  God can use those experiences to really remind you and your children to have perspective: to understand how BIG and POWERFUL God is and to understand that you have a small but vital part in the BIG STORY that GOD is telling throughout history.  These trips can remind you that God is still actively at work today in the world telling His story and bringing the Father's love to a world in need.

To financially support the work that my sister-in-law is involved in, you can visit www.wisdomandgrace.org.   You can donate to the school in general or you can volunteer to sponsor a child at their school.  Please consider sowing into this amazing work.