Farmville Witnessing

This blog is inspired from a conversation that took place in my small group at church regarding witnessing.

To elaborate on the background a little, one member of the small group was lamenting that after bringing a coworker to church for three Sunday's, that coworker had not made a decision to accept Christ yet.

I feel that this is analogous to Farmville. Farmville is a ridiculously popular (for no reason in my opinion) game on Facebook where one can manage a virtual farm and raise crops. I'm sure its as thrilling as it sounds. However, it is hyper successful due to the fact that it constantly rewards players with a series of achievements that they can illustrate to their friends via incessant postings on how many stupid chickens they kicked out of their corn that day. Hurray!

People have even rearranged their sleep schedules to make sure their crops are getting watered when they need to be, and they check in on their neighbors farms to get more points. Ultimately, what has this game brought them?

They are not ever going to be real farmers, but they get to "reap the benefits" of a virtual farm in a fraction of the time a real-life growing season would take. I think sometimes we look for this in evangelism. We plant a spiritual seed and expect to see immediate results.

This is despite the fact that the Bible clearly tells us that one man may reap what another sows and that there are clearly people who invest into someones life and never see any "results" from it as the harvest will not come till after that person is through.

I also think that this may in fact hamper our desire to even attempt to plant a seed. Afterall, who wants to put in work if we can't see any results? We crave those little "achievements". But I'd propose that it is actually easier to scatter seed than to reap in the harvest.

I challenge myself, and each of you, to scatter as much seed as possible. If you get to reap, or water, or get punched in the face, great! But if we scatter as much seed as possible, we're doing our jobs! Also, if you see any chickens in my corn, feel free to kick them out.... or make nuggets out of them.

Amazed by God recently?

Last Friday the Catholic Church celebrated the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord (or Feast of the Annunciation). For those non-Catholics among us (I assume that's all but me) that aren't quite up to speed on their Catholic feast days, I will explain. This is the day where the Church celebrates the announcement made by the the angel Gabriel to a young Jewish girl in Nazareth that she would become pregnant with the Word, that the Holy Spirit would come upon her to conceive, that the long-awaited Messiah was finally coming, that God of the universe would take on our flesh. Pretty big deal in the course of history.

Why last Friday? Because its March 25th. Think ahead 9 months...what's the date? December 25th. Christmas. The Incarnation. (Yes, of course Jesus was the perfect pregnancy lasting exactly 9 months, or so the Church celebrates).

As with all feast days involving Mary or any other saint, none are about the people themselves, rather they point to God. Yes, Mary's "yes" was a big deal and her faithfulness a model for us to follow. But the bigger reason the Church celebrates this day is that its the moment when Love decided to come to earth, to live in our shoes, to humble himself for our sake. It also points to the amazing reality that God used humanity in his plan of salvation; that he uses me and you in the plan of salvation for others. Unreal. I'm always humbled by that.

All that aside, my wife and I have been through some trying times over the last year plus. Long story short, having been married 4.5 years and desiring a family, we've been unable to conceive. God put a passion for adoption on our hearts through this period. Then last fall a God-orchestrated opportunity came about and we pursued and adopted our son, only to have him taken back by the birth mother after about a week.


It was obviously a difficult experience, and we've learned and healed a bit since then. You always ask the "why me" question in the midst of suffering. Where was God and his plan and his love in that moment? The answer is not that God doesn't love me, but that he loves everyone. For our faithfulness in times of suffering give others strength, it bears witness. And God's plan is not to give us our desires, but for our salvation, that's his ultimate goal.

Then last night the Holy Spirit gave me another word. In saying goodbye to our son (Josiah) before we gave him back to his birth mother, we prayed over him and I baptized him (we can talk apologetics in another post). And last night it hit me that in some weird way, God affirmed my wife and I through the experience by saying, "I wanted you to be parents to Josiah even if you'd have to give him away, because I know you will lean on each other and me in tough times, and I trust your faithfulness." But it was never about us being parents to our son. It was about God using the week that we had with Josiah to culminate in baptizing him, so that he could be GOD'S SON.

God used us, not for Josiah to be our son, but for him to be God's son, for he is baptized into God's family now. That doesn't mean he's assured salvation, but no matter which way his birth mother goes, which way his family goes, Josiah is under the grace of God.

We are spiritual parents to him now. It was never about us and our desires, but God using us to particpate in his plan of salvation. How humbling! That God would use us in our humanity to help others know the Divine. The Annunciation of the Lord lived out. That is what God desires for us, for everyone...salvation.

To realize that hard as the experience was, God would use us as parents for just one week, not to fulfill our desire for family, but to adopt Josiah into HIS family...the whole thought of it...just blows me away. Praise God!

We are never called to match our intellectual ability to God's divine plan. And that means we may never understand how he works, but praise God that his plans are so much bigger than we could ever imagine.

What if...

What if you actually believed that God's dream for you and your dream for yourself were the same? I mean believed in it so much that you acted on it, took the first step towards achieving it.

Does having a dream and not pursuing it equate to being a poor steward of the gifts and talents that God entrusted you with?

What if you really did rely on Him for your daily bread? No savings accounts, no 401ks or IRAs. Maybe even no mortgage payment; or at least a MUCH smaller house and payment. Think about that for a second....what if you were literally broke at the end of each day, having provided for your family and used every cent of the remainder doing God's work?

What if the idea of "Go-ers" and "Senders" is just a logical way to rationalize not having to put yourself in an uncomfortable position? Maybe even take that a step further...what if "Senders" is just a politically correct way of saying, "They lacked the faith to take action."?

What if you took money out of the list of decision-making criteria? How many dreams/ideas/solutions/inventions/etc. die on the drawing board because of financial decisions? What if you were to say, "OK, here is what I'm going to do. Now how can I make it work financially?"

I'd love to know what you guys think about this, and feel free to ask more questions of your own. I'm certainly not pointing any fingers here at all, but for the most part, American Christian lives look like more polite versions of American non-Christian lives. I'm wondering if He has more for us. Thoughts?

Decisions

Note: I'm aware that I am taking this verse slightly out of context. However, the principle remains the same and is applicable in other areas of life.

Romans 14:23 "...and everything that does not come from faith is sin."

Your 20's are filled with tons of decisions, some that you expected but feel unprepared to make, and others that you had no idea you would even encounter. My generation (I'm 28) seems to have a particularly hard time making decisions. Maybe that's because we are spoiled, or lazy, or have too many options to choose from. Cases could be made for all of the aforementioned, but I'm beginning to believe that none of those are it.

I think this generation is more socially aware. We recognize hurt and injustice in the world and want to do something about it, but there seems to be a HUGE chasm between where we are and where we want to be. It would appear that the lion's share of indecisiveness comes in discovering a way to bridge that gap without settling in comfortably on the "knowledge without action" side. Which bring us to Romans 11.

When I first read that verse this morning I was bummed. I have huge plans and dreams, and about 75% of the time I fully believe that God will come through because my dreams and visions are from Him. But then 25% of the time I doubt that He will because it all seems so impossible, and according to Romans those doubts are sinful. Just what I needed to start my day, the awareness of yet another habitual sin.

But then I looked at it from the other end. The opposite of sin is God and His will, mercy, love, etc. So then if you're acting in accordance with the Bible and the Spirit, and your actions come through faith, then you are in accordance with God. What at first appeared restrictive is actually really freeing.

The sin isn't that we try something in life even though we're not sure if God is "calling" us to it or not, the sin is actually not having faith that God will get us across the chasm no matter which route we choose to take! It's time to stop waiting for some divine confirmation. Test the scriptures, say Amen, and make a plan!

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

We’ve all heard that familiar phrase based on the best-selling book. It is clear than men and women are different, so different in fact that the author of the book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” proposes we are from two different worlds entirely!

Hyperbole aside, the differences between the sexes, emotionally and spiritually, were brought to the forefront of my mind recently with a situation going on in my family. I’ve already discussed this with Matt A., and received some solid understanding and truth, but I’m opening the floor a little to the anti-bloggers.

Here is the deal:

We’re in the process of an international adoption. We know this is God’s will for our lives. We view adoption as a form of international mission work and both of our hearts yearn to fulfill this desire God has placed in us through the adoption of a baby boy. We initially started the search for our son in Ukraine. We were drawn to Ukraine because we were told it had an abundance of boys, it was a very desolate and hopeless place for orphans, and it had a unique adoption structure. Ukraine has strict rules against working with adoption agencies and is not a Hague country, as such, it is much cheaper to adopt from there than many other countries in and around the same area.

Logically, it made sense, because it met my self-imposed time frame, cost, and ease of completion requirements.


Months into the process, the country came under some political turmoil and the threat of closing to international adoption to become a Hague country loomed over us. Word spread throughout Ukrainian adoption message boards we subscribed to that the country was in fact closing. We decided to look elsewhere before we became too invested in the process. After all, the news we received was that the Church in Ukraine was helping to support a large amount of the orphans there… this created a diminishing “mission field” which gave us the extra push we needed to switch our focus to a new country.

We stumbled into Russian adoption next. Why? Because it is just as desolate for orphans, just as many boys, and there was a region in Russia, Nizhny Novgorod, which would actually let us follow the same exact process Ukraine had via an “independent” adoption. Granted, we would need help, and we began the process of getting an agency to help us through this.

Logically, it made sense to pursue this, the cost would be only a little bit extra, the time frame still manageable, and my wife was darn good at paperwork so the ease of completion factor was pretty good too.

Clearly this must have been God’s will for us, right? So we started sprinting toward this goal. We had all documentation, plane tickets, visas, and even our bags packed 3 weeks ahead of time. The count down was on. Two weeks to go and we hear, again, the region we’re looking at going to is shutting down thanks to a terrible parent who went on Dr. Phil and showed the world how she poured hot sauce down her adopted Russian child’s throat as punishment.

Our sprint skidded to a halt. We had to back up and make some decisions. Why did this happen if it was God’s will? Were we doing something wrong? What do we need to change to make this happen?

Logically, it made sense that the next step would be to determine how much damage we’ve taken. What money had we actually lost due to this change? What could we do to retain some of the money? Are all regions of Russia closed or just this one? Will our paperwork transfer? Do we need to look at other countries? Once all of these questions were answered we could make a rational choice as to how to proceed…..

This is where my wife and I diverged.

At each step in this process, I felt like we had made the rational, logical choice. Did I have emotions invested into this process? Absolutely. I wanted to be a father. But, if the process took 3 or 6 months longer, it didn’t bother me. I knew that God had our son waiting for us, and in His time He would make this happen.

My wife, on the other hand, took it hard. This was the second time she was moving backwards from getting her son. She invested her emotions more and more at each stage of this lengthy process. We had finished our son’s nursery room, purchased cribs and clothes, and already had all of his bath toys. She was ready for our son to be home. Getting the news about our region in Russia closing was hard on her. However, unlike me, she viewed the closing of that region not as a sign to back up and re-strategize, but to pray harder and prepare for God to do big things.

She didn’t want to cancel the plane tickets to recoup any losses early; she didn’t want to unpack our bags so we can wear those clothes. She didn’t want to look at other options or countries; she didn’t want to wait for a better time. My wife fully believed that with the faith of a mustard seed, God would work it out to get us to Russia in the same time frame or better. She started looking at all of the varying options for other regions and found out, with the help of the agency, that there was a potential to turn in our adoption dossier by hand in Moscow, running the risk that we could be designated a child from any region in Russia that was accepting adoptions. This scared our adoption agency representative because she doesn’t have contacts in every region of Russia and we’d essentially be flying blind. My wife, though, new God could and would work it out.

So my questions are these:

- Clearly guys think more logically and girls think with more emotion, but in this situation does my wife’s faith that God will take care of it outweigh my faith that God will handle it no matter the situation?

- Did I demonstrate a lack of faith that God can do big things?

- Did we overlook a purposely closed door and try to knock the closed door off its hinges?

- As leader of my household, I found myself debating about how to pause and approach the situation logically or if I run full steam with my wife who still sees us leaving in the same time frame, how do you make that choice?

- I clearly don’t want to discount her faith, perhaps she sees what I cannot, how do you balance that in a marriage?

- Why would God create a pairing with such disparate ways of viewing things?

- What happens when a married couple prays for the same outcome but different methods?

- Am I not leading my household as God intended if I let my wife pursue a direction if I feel differently?

The Heart of the Matter....

James 1: 19-20-" My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires."

NCLEX Student Status: Fail. The words hit me like an uppercut from Kimbo Slice. My heart drops into my stomach and leaves a crater where my guts used to be. Fail? No way- I've worked too hard to fail-This can't be right. But on the screen, just as defiant as it wants to be, that 4-letter F word- FAIL. WAIT- NO! ALL THOSE QUESTIONS! ALL THAT TIME! FOR THIS? Slowly, the feeling that I know all too well begins to flood my senses: Anger. My heart sprints, and my palms are sweaty. NO, PLEASE, it was supposed to be different this time- I was supposed to PASS!

I think at some level, everybody deals with anger. But when it comes to guys in general, it seems that we can just blow up at the drop of a hat. Or maybe this is just me. I have had a long love/hate relationship with my friend/nemesis Anger-I hate what I do when he is around, but I have caught myself loving how it makes me feel and especially how people react when I am angry.

Take the scenario from the paragraph above- I just found out yesterday that I didn't pass my boards for Nursing. I am devastated to say the least. I've have been working so hard to do the best that I could, and I failed. Now, instead of looking to the next thing that I had to do yesterday, I decided to stew. My wife (who is an awesome Godly woman) asked me the most important question I had thought about all day-"Michael, have You talked to God about it?"

In my heart of hearts, I KNEW that prayer was the best thing for me to do, but some part of me just wanted to be upset.mad. Angry. And the truth of the matter is not that I didn't want to talk to God because I was upset at failing my boards, I was upset because my proud and selfish heart was wounded, and I didn't want to bring that to my Dad. I was more worried about how everyone would look at me for failing my boards, and how I was going to save face, instead of being worried about how God can change my heart so the next time I feel let down or disappointed, I don't point a finger to the sky saying, "What? Did you forget about me?!"

"Because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires."

Dag, Dad. I need You. Because this ebb and flow anger is going to be the end of me. Please change my heart- or could you just give me a fresh new heart that is slow to anger, and has deep desires to please You? I don't know what this setback means right now, but Lord, could you show me? Lead me? Forgive me for being so angry.

a window into our hearts

A few weeks after Campbell had finished the new chapel on campus there was a little bit of fuss concerning how distracting the clear windows were during worship. Outside you could plainly see students, their hustle and bustle to class, guys skateboarding and throwing footballs.

Though I have no way of knowing the actual architectural intent, I for one am glad those windows are see through. Too long has the Church hidden behind its stained glass, hiding behind iconic pictures of the God-Man who in reality spent just as much time outside the temple than in. We have turned the church into an impenetrable stronghold, one where insiders feels safe and comfortable and outsiders seem timid to encroach upon. Instead of being a lighthouse on a hill we have become like a young boy playing with a flashlight in his tent.

I am reminded of the song many of us learned growing up which goes, "This little light of mine, I'm going to hide behind some stained glass, my race, my socio-economic status, the way we've always done it, and definitely my comfort." As complex as those lyrics sound, it doesn't seem long for even the youngest of children to learn the song well. Obviously that isn't how the lyrics really go, but listen to the real ones. "This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine." Even in our kids' music we imply that it is my light, my Church, my Gospel, my Jesus, My God... and not yours. Matthew 5:14-16 says:

¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

See that "you" at the beginning of verse 14, and the "your" in verse 16? In the greek these are both plural, not singular. So it's not "This little light of mine" which implies a possessive singular, but it's "This little light of ours." Ours as in the Church's... and light as in Jesus... and we must let Him shine.

Instead of stained glass, Campbell's new chapel has clear windows. Clear windows that seemingly distract, but actually focus us on God's mission and therefore our own. As we look through the windows of our church and see people, and consequently can be seen by those people, we remember that Church is not about us, it's about our God. Our God is about bringing outsiders in, not keeping insiders comfortable.

How about we let our Light shine?

Running Cows and Jesus

If you think about it, how you feel about what you pay for an item really is based on how you feel about the item.

6 bucks for a steak, good deal. 6 bucks for a pair of shoes, super deal. 6 bucks for a running cow, super good deal. See how this works?

What we give up to get something is based on what we feel that something is worth.

If we truly understood the blessings, the love, the mercy, the Life that God is willing to give us if we believe in His Son, then the amount we are willing to pay to get that would be all that we had!

How can we not give up our lives to get God?

If we are not willing to "pay" that much, then we don't really understand what we are getting in return.

What is He worth to you?