What's Your Motivation?

We often take what we understand from our earthly parents and apply it to God.  It’s natural and it seems fitting, but it is unhealthy and can cause tremendous damage to our walk with Jesus.

No matter how well intentioned our parents were they installed three programs to keep their children on the right path.  (And if we are parents now we do it too!)

PROGRAM #1- Fear.  If you don’t pick up your clothes from your bedroom floor this instant you don’t even want to know what will happen! I might yell, I might ground you, I might take your allowances away!  It’s threatening, it has illusions of power, and it works.  If it didn’t work we wouldn’t use it.  Bosses, lawmakers, coaches, and teachers wouldn’t use it either.

PROGRAM #2- Fortune. If you finish your vegetables you can have some ice-cream.  If you do your chores you get some money.  If you don’t cry at the doctor you will get a new toy.  Fortune, prizes, junk food.  Oh yeah that works too right?  In fact it works better than fear sometimes because kids love fortune.  Businesses, banks, insurance brokers, bosses, coaches, and teachers use it as well.

PROGRAM #3- Favor. We know our kids crave our affection and our praise.  So we will withhold it sometimes for when they have earned it.  As kids we will do anything to gain that favor.  And so in some parental cases it’s harder for the child to get than in others.  Do I even have to explain how this works in our careers?  And hey it works.

They all work, but that doesn’t mean they are any good.

So as a child we walk the line out of FEAR, we set our behavior according to the FORTUNE’S available, and we jump through hoops to gain FAVOR.  It’s a constant battle, our relationship with our parents is battle, our relationship with our children in a battle, our relationship with our employers and employees is a battle.

Then we apply all we have learned from this life and expect Jesus to work the exact same way.  And He doesn’t.

What so I have to do for You to not smite me? 

What do I have to do for You to bless me?

What do I have to do for You to love me?

Why do you obey your Heavenly Father?  FEAR, FORTUNE, FAVOR?  Is your Christianity an arrangement or a relationship?

Colossians 3:4  When Christ who is your life appears, then you will also appear with Him in glory.

Because of Jesus you don’t have anything to FEAR. 

Because of Jesus you don’t have to strive for FORTUNE.

Because of Jesus you don’t have to earn His FAVOR.

We can be wholly motivated by the fact that Jesus is our life!  He defines you. 

You are a new creation, positionally perfect and holy before God, primed for His opportunities coming your way every new day.

Unsinful Mistakes

Oh man, I messed up this week.  I have been administering SAT10 tests all week and everything was going fine, but a mistake on day 1 that was exposed on day 5.  Thank goodness it doesn't truly affect anything.

Here is what happened. The students needed to fill our their personal student ID numbers on the answer sheets.  The school gave nice labels with the students name and ID number on it for me to pass out and use to fill in the bubbles.  Easy right?

I noticed a section on the answer sheets that said, "Place ID labels here' so I instructed the class to put the labels there.  It seemed the most logical thing to do.  

Five days go by.

I turn in my tests today and the ladies look at my labels with frustration and try to take them off only to make sticky spots.  How embarrassing.  I was the ONLY one.  I didn't say it was my fault or why I instructed it, I just said I was sorry and went on with my day.  But it's been on my mind.(Not in a end of the world, high stress kind of way, but in a "why did I do that?" kind of way)

How often do I do things that are logical to me but don't make any sense to others or drive other people crazy?  My wife would say often.  Is it often?  Like these labels the must be things that don't truly matter in the big picture or I'd be cut out of a great amount of communities.

But the fact that it doesn't matter, doesn't matter.  I messed up.  Was it sinful?  No way.  So what does God say about this?  What should I do when I mess up in unsinful ways?  Jesus would say to me and to you what He says in almost every fathomable situation; the two powerful words...Trust Me.

He would say, Jeremy, there isn't anyway you could have avoided this with the information you were given and the way I wired you to process things.   But you did it.  It really happened.  You might have to deal with others thinking you are inept.  So trust Me with that.  Do not worry over this any longer.  Do not think about what they think about you.  Trust Me.  Together we can move forward.  If it were sin I'd be working in you to clean it.   But it's not, it's just you, and you are Mine.  There was this one time on Mount Hermon that I was transfigured with Moses and Elijah and my friend Peter saw it, and he didn't know what was going on, I hadn't given him very much information in clear terms about it, and he offered to build us tents, haha.  That wasn't sinful either.  That was just Peter. 

That is all I need for today.  Trusting Jesus is a light unto my path.  

Next time I will ask for more information.  Next time I will know what question to ask ahead of time.  Next time I might mess something else up.  But that will simply be another opportunity to trust Jesus.

Grace!

I go to a very unique church.  Instead of the lead pastor preaching every Sunday morning or even most of the time, I've heard him once.  We have a rotation of speakers that stick to the same theme, for instance we are going through 1 Peter right now.  Before that we were in Nehemiah.  It's the most fun I've had in church in my entire life...well other than when I'm teaching.

One of the speakers is an author himself (long before me) named John Lynch.  I taught his daughter at NCS when she was in high school and I reference his book True Faced in Opportunity Jesus.  Well, I was going to write a little blurb about grace today when I saw the TrueFaced twitter link to his blog.  It's short and sweet and to the point so I share it with you all.

"Until we actually believe this is what God wants for us, we’ll hedge our bets. We’ll see grace as a garnish; or a spice, a condiment, like paprika, to be sprinkled sparingly. We’ll constantly keep using that same lame cliché that it must be balanced with something else. I always sigh at that line. It’s like saying you must balance your intake of air with something else. If all truth is in grace (and it is) and all grace in truth (and it is), then we can probably let go of that ridiculous, falsely religious, nonsensical parody of truth."

Amen!

Pickles!

I have to get something off my chest.  I hate it when restaurants put pickles on the plate.  I hate it.  Why do I hate it?  Because the pickle juice gets on everything, especially the fries.

Why do they do that?  The internet doesn’t even know.  But a user named Snow on Yahoo answers says in the 1850’s saloons were trying to attract people with free food and pickle wedges hid the taste of the often spoiled meat.  Well guess what restaurants of 2013…you can stop! 

The pickle juice taints everything!  Pickles ruining fries is a parable.  Did you know that?  (A parable is using something familiar to describe something unfamiliar.  Jesus parables are about sheep, and lost coins, and wheat.  In 2013 that’s like trying to teach us something unfamiliar with something unfamiliar.)

Matthew 13:33  The Kingdom of heaven is like leaven (picklejuice), which a woman took and hid (placed) in three measures of meal (on my dinner plate) till it was all leavened (ruined).

Why did I make the leaven evil pickle juice?  We all like fluffy bread, but in Scripture leaven is used to describe evil (13 times in the New Testament).

Our pickles are evil.  However, they are part of our Christian experience as Jesus predicted in Matthew.  Those pickles will keep appearing our our plates, and we need them off. 

The pickle in your life might be a person, it might be people, it might be an app on your phone, it might be a website you look at, it might be something big or something small.  It might be something with huge consequences.  It be something nobody will ever know.  It might something that you think makes you cool.  It might be the thing that keeps you apart.  Only you know what your fry ruining pickles are.

But don’t try to remove the pickle on your own. You have tried it with your dinner plate right?  

We can dab our fries with a napkin the juice doesn’t come off. 

We can blow on the fries, the juice remains

We can try to cover the fries in a bath of ketchup to cover the taste, but it DOESN’T WORK. 

In the same way…I cannot clean sin out of my own life.  I cannot cover it up with any lasting success.

But I do try, I’m telling you I have year and years of covering my pickle juice fries with ketchup to make them acceptable not only to me, but mostly for you.

We don’t want people to know our fries got ruined.  Meanwhile, everyone has ruined fries.  We don’t want people to know our lives have been infected by sin, meanwhile, everyone else has.

But believe it or not God can even clean pickle juice if you let Him.  

Most of you probably think I mean salvation.  But only the people who aren’t thinking that need to think that.  Many of you have already entrusted your life to Jesus.  But is it still His?  He cleaned you in the eyes of God, but is He getting the opportunity to clean and transform your life now? (That's a matter of trust)

He can clean you if you let Him.  Alone we cannot do this.  This is not a work of us.  In whom do we abide?  God alone can make sure your fries are pickle free.  And that’s something we all need. 

I have Aspergers...for now

I was diagnosed with Aspergers this week.  Weird right?  I am 34.  This on the heels of my son being diagnosed with it this year.  As we started studying what Aspergers is and how he can cope with it my family had many, “Wait, that sounds like daddy too” moments.  I did a bunch of Google research and took about a dozen online tests all confirming that I too might have it, so I went and sat down with Dr. Pinnel.  "Dr. Pinnel, is there any chance I don’t have it?"

She says I have it…for now.  In May 2013 the psychological manual for diagnostics, the DSM-5, will not have Aspergers as specified disorder.  Instead 91% of Asperger cases will be lumped in ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder).  A majority of the 9% left over will have their doctor’s fight for their ASD diagnoses so they can continue getting help (it's not curable or treatable by medication, but coping mechanisms do wonders.).  A small percentage of people will be told they no longer have a quantified disorder.

I expect the Aspie (Aspergers) culture to hold onto the name for years and maybe even see the diagnoses make a comeback in the DSM-6.  But next month it’s gone.

In May I will not have Aspergers any longer…except I still will.  Just like I had it long before I was officially told so this month.  It’s part of who I am.  But thank God it is not the only part.

Like all of you I was born a sinner and had a desire to run away from God.  But God drew me to Himself through the power of the Gospel and the love of His Son Jesus Christ and for many years now I have been a new creation in Christ.  My true identity, who God says I am, is holy, blameless, and beloved.  He is making it happen in me (Romans 8:29).  What He says is true, and I trust it.  But I often still feel the tug of the old me wanted to run away from God.  That is a battle of faith, do I trust Jesus work fully or not?  That is an adventure.

Unlike most of you I also struggle with neurological things that have nothing to do with a sin nature, but look like it to many people.  I appear aloof, without empathy, self-absorbed, and well, I don’t like how most clothes feel, how certain foods feel in my mouth, or the sound of anyone breathing.  But God designed me with ASD and I am dependent on Him in completely different ways because of it.  For instance my brain is hyper-wired to long for black and white rules.  That made my journey to the land of grace and opportunity a mighty struggle.  But I can see clearly how God steered my desire for a new law into a journal of opportunities in Jesus.  Honestly, the diagnosis is a relief to me and my wife.  It already has helped me explain so many things that happened in my life that I didn’t understand before.  I now know why I can never plant a church on my own, and why I can preach and write but struggle to share encouragement in person.  Knowing allows my wife to laugh when I do something that used to agitate her.  It allows everyone I have hung up on too early or said 'goodbye' way too late to forgive me.  It allows my son to see that there are ways to cope with the NT’s (Neurologically Typical, the term ASD people use for normal’s) and experience love, life, success, and failure.  Hopefully with Jesus. 

Can I trust Jesus is at work even in my Aspergers/ASD?  Yes!  This is going to be an adventure.

Idea: Next book…Aspie for Jesus.  Haha.  Ok maybe not.

Ah-Ha

My family and I headed to a church not near our house one Sunday morning.  I was broken from a failed church plant experience.  My wife was wounded from a series of church experiences including mine. 

            We picked this particular church for a couple reasons.  First, we hadn’t tried it before.  Second, my co-worker and long-time friend highly recommended it.  It sounded interesting.  They didn’t have a lead pastor and on Sunday mornings a rotation of powerful speakers took turns.  The first speaker captivated me.  I said, “Ok God I will let you teach me here.” 

            Haha, what a funny thing to say.  He was going to teach me no matter what.  But that gives insight to where I was.  I felt abandoned by God.  It’s a scary place to be, even if it’s fully fictional. 

            My wife and I attended the New Comers class and shared our story.  I was fascinated that nobody was impressed with me.  I was a former pastor that teaches Bible 5 days a week.  Please say, “Oooh.”  What a funny thing to expect, but I was insecure in Christ.  One Sunday they asked us to go around the circle (the bane of my existence by the way) and share our…ok I have no idea what they actually asked.  But I interpreted the question as “What do you do with God that is fun or cool?”  I shared with the group about my Live Like Jesus class.  The lady who seemed in charge bristled and said, “We don’t really stress on checkpoints of spirituality here.” At first I was mad.  Then I was confused.  Then I was illuminated.  Of course!  Why was I stressing checkpoints?

            As the weeks went by I asked questions about the churches biblical soundness, their selections of leaders, their youth ministry, etc.  I came away disturbed but with resolve to stay because I told God He could teach me there.  (I wasn’t disturbed because they were wrong, but because they were different.)

            Sunday after Sunday passed by.  I told friends that I was going there because my family was already solid on the “black and white” this church could teach us love.  They did teach us love, but they also kept freedom and grace in front of us.

            The funny thing is I should have been transformed by the Sunday messages.  But I wasn’t.  (Maybe nobody is anywhere?)  Maybe because I was infrequent in my attendance because I serve as a substitute pastor for the denomination I grew up in.  Maybe not. 

            Over the span of a year I drew near to God and through personal study and walk/talks with Him I discovered freedom and opportunity where I once only saw obligation and standards.  As this occurred everything being said and done at church made sense.  It was a total ‘ah-ha’ moment.  A moment that happened in the middle of writing Opportunity Jesus.

            Don’t get me wrong.  I didn’t discover a new better Christianity.  Haha.  But I joined the many men and women before to me to find Jesus’s freedom and grace (post-salvation even) to be overwhelming, satisfying, and life changing.  

Will this be your story too?