we are a few weeks away from our Grand Opening at 312 E. Wood St. we are celebrating with 2 identical services. we would simply LOVE for you to join us for this special day. Registration (to help us plan well) is OPEN. Join Us.
what if you believed them?
kristen + i hung out with a woman the other day who spent years wandering from her faith. she got with the wrong guy, stuck with the wrong choices, and dealt with a lot of pain as a result. after a decade away from church, she is finding her way again. yet in re-telling her story to us, she stated, ‘no matter how far i wandered, i never lost my faith. i just wasn’t following it.’
i got a text the other day from someone i care about a lot. a long time friend who struggles to stay attentive to practicing his faith in Jesus. he will come to service every week + then disappear for weeks on end. i know him really well, so i know he is genuine. he just struggles with distraction. he always returns, hyper-apologetic, i am never quite sure the most helpful way to respond to his promises that this ‘will never happen again.’
a friend in california shared a story that marked me forever. he was in counseling for a long term sexual addiction. better said, he was in counseling again. like the woman with the issue of blood in mark 5 he had suffered for a long time + with many doctors + spent all he had, but still couldn’t break free. the turning point in his life (he told me 10+ years later living clean) came when after pouring his heart out to a new therapist about how badly he wanted to be free + living in victory, a new therapist looked at him and said, ‘I believe you.’
we tend to see people who are struggling as rebellious, but often they are weak or ignorant.
but healthy relationships require a lot of tools, a dexterity for knowing what and how and when. encouragement, instruction, rebuke, space, listening, etc etc etc all help you build a beautiful relational house, but not if they are the only tool you use.
when you to use a chainsaw to hammer a nail, you end up with mutilated wood and a frustrated carpenter.
if newlyweds only develop a physical connection, then a baby or an illness can tear them apart.
if parents only utilize fun to build camaraderie, when the child is old enough to find their own fun, the parents are useless.
if christians only know how to punish those they perceive as sinful, they can’t actually complete the cycle of redemption.
often when you find something broken, it’s because people refuse to develop new ways of communicating + solving problems + building trust. usually when someone describes to you a right way + a wrong way, they are really expressing that only their way is acceptable.
so go buy a bigger tool belt and develop some new tactics. maybe the most important one is … if someone is telling you something, believe them. it helps you love well.
1 Thessalonians 5.14
And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.
There’s a pumpkin out front of our house and ya’ll might think we live in the jungle after our story of Reid and the clawing hawk (LOL) but we have crazy squirrels in our suburban neighborhood as well. It wasn’t enough for them to devour a gourd, they also have made it their aim to eat through the decorated pumpkin in record time. Every time I open the front door to get the mail, I look at the pumpkin and feel as though it’s a visual with what we do with our words to one another. Even when I write these words I tend to shrink back because I get caught up in my words daily and I don’t want you to think that as I communicate that I have this one figured out.
I think that as long as we have breath in our lungs and a heart that beats, we will be in a constant battle as Paul says,
“for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15)
Proverbs 13:18 says, “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”
I think we could agree that we know what it feels like to receive rash words, there’s probably a story that comes to mind of a moment when words that were said to you were so ugly that it could bring you to tears in this moment. Just like my pumpkin, sometimes the words are so painful that you feel like there was a chunk taken out of you. But, if we are being honest we have also been the person that has had the sword in our hand and delivered them.
Maybe it was in the heat of the moment or maybe they had been bubbling up for years – either way I believe we could all say that we have been there. I know that it grieves the Father when we hurt each other with our words. And incidently, when I looked inside the pumpkin to see it from a different point of view the wound was deeper than I thought; a different perspective made me realize that the hole was all the way through the other side.
James 3:8 says, “no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”
But, that doesn’t mean that we give up the fight for saying anything good. Scripture exhorts us to build each other up with our words. I believe that our process matters; the self control, the reflection of the foolish thing versus choosing wisdom instead. If we know we will feel the tension of this difficulty for a lifetime then we ought to embark on a glorious journey toward the good that it can do as well. This verse in particular says that, ‘the tongue of the wise brings healing.’
It’s really easy to remember someone else’s harsh words. Funny enough, while I was writing a scenario came up where someone else’s rash words could have caused offense. More often than not we are comfortable saying that we didn’t mean our own rash words because we are tired, overwhelmed… the list goes on. What is a whole lot harder is looking in the mirror to assess our own words and our tone toward the people in our life.
The kids were watching Home Alone and the whole premise of the movie is that the relatives of Macaulay Culkin were all annoyed and yelling at him so he ended up in the attic and that’s how his family left him home alone when they went on vacation. Those words reverberate in his mind over and over. But in my experience, healing words can have the same effect. A week ago, we sat down with some friends and as we were talking this friend spoke into my life a word of encouragement that has stayed with me ever since. The power we all hold can bring very differing affects, I pray that it would more often than not look like healing salve and less like a sword.
Super Christian Guy
Monday Morning Book Review
live no lies: recognize + resist the three enemies that sabotage your peace
by: john mark comer
after his breakthrough success with ‘the ruthless elimination of hurry,’ john mark comer returns to attack the familiar trio of the flesh, the devil, and the world. seeing the false ideologies invading so many families, john mark wants to stand in the gap and help. 3 things i liked about this book.
john mark sees the world through a left coast more progressive ideology, YET this book is con-servative theologically in many concrete ways. i like the merging of categories.
the book challenges many elements of modern culture, but through reason, not just prophetic condemning. this approach of ration + rigor is refreshing and useful.
the book is modern. this isn’t a manual for pondering following Jesus in 1921 or 21 BC, its rich with context to help us in this post-covid world.
check it out…
Things to Click On
I know CRT is increasingly a wedge issue used to divide … if you have a bit of curiosity about it, i found this profile of one of its originators interesting reading.
two amazing poets collaborated on this song … its honest + raw, i think you will love it…
have a great weekend…
Luke + kristen