transparency

Something may be personal, but never private.

I’ll bet you don’t like that statement. You probably don’t even agree with it at first. It goes against the grain of our human nature. See, we’re sinful, selfish people. And we like to think that we’re in control of our own lives. We think our issues are, well, ours. And we like to think that certain things are public and certain things are private. And if our private issues are ever addressed…if someone dares to poke around in “my” business…back up, Jack!

But God isn’t scared of our rage. And He isn’t intimidated by our threats. And (this may hurt a bit) He isn’t terribly concerned about our temporary happiness. See, this isn’t about you. And it’s not about me. This is all about Him. We exist for His glory, not our own. And the way we live is a reflection of who we serve. If we choose to serve a loving and kind God, we are loving and kind people. If we choose to serve our sinful and selfish egos, well…

If you would be honest with yourself (and God), you are pretty messed up. Even if you’re a follower of Jesus and have been for years, you are pretty messed up. Every one of us is dreadfully and chronically ill with sin. We try to stay away from it, but we can’t. We work hard and discipline our bodies to do the right things and think the right thoughts, but we fail. Over time we certainly do mature and grow and get better, but we never “arrive.” We never achieve sinlessness. So, the secret is this: stop pretending.

Transparency is all about being open, honest, simple and confessing. It means we stop acting like we have it all together. We cease the performances. We take off the masks. We allow the light of God to shine into and through our lives, driving away the dark prison of sin. It is intimately connected with our core value of authenticity, but with an important difference. Authenticity means knowing ourselves. Transparency means showing ourselves. It’s one thing to know our sin exists. It’s a whole different matter to willingly expose it.

And let’s not be naïve or foolish about it—not everyone needs to know everything. We would be complete morons to parade our deepest, darkest sins to the neighborhood. There is a time and a place for everything. But we all—each and ever one of us—need to find and use that time and place.

You know what I’ve never seen? A good secret. A healthy, helpful secret. We keep our secrets because we’re ashamed of them. We’re embarrassed and humiliated by some of the things we’ve said and done and become. And we think that if we can just keep them to ourselves, maybe they’ll go away. Maybe we’ll miraculously heal on our own. Maybe God will fix it all on His own. Of course, God will forgive us. He’s the only one capable of the forgiveness of sin. But we have some work to do also. If we really want healing, if we really want freedom, if we really want to live like Jesus, it requires a life of transparency.

Who do you know deeply enough to talk to about anything? No, I mean anything?! What person(s) in your life has permission to walk up to you and say, “What’s wrong with you? Something is not right.” Who loves you enough to be bold and honest, yet still loving and gracious? Holy Seed Community Church is that kind of place. It’s an environment of safety and trust that’s filled with flawed, sinful people. We expose our junk not to gloat or compare, but to share the journey and find true, lasting healing. We dare not try to hide our real selves because, well, in the long run it’s not possible anyway. Eventually you realize that something may be personal, but never private.

new season

God spoke to us very clearly. It happened late Monday night, September 1st. Carla and I had already crawled into bed and turned out the lights. We thought it was time for sleep, but the Holy Spirit had other plans. It didn’t begin with any kind of excitement. Carla asked me a harmless, rather generic question. But, for a number of reasons, I began to unpack a lot of spiritual and emotional mess. I was able to articulate and verbalize some deep, inner feelings and thoughts that I had only vaguely sensed for an entire year. It was like a light came on in my spirit and I could finally recognize my surroundings. I told Carla (and God) about how difficult and trying the past year has been. I confessed my doubts, fears and struggles. Whew! I felt better after that. I closed my eyes very peacefully and assumed we could now get some rest. Wrong again. Carla sat up in bed. Now God had something to say.

September 1st marked the one year anniversary of our move from Tennessee to Washington. It had been exactly one year ago, to the night, that we experienced our own spiritual “D-Day.” God had already warned us about this experience. We knew what we were in for! More than two years ago He told us that, like Jeremiah, we would begin this new journey with uprooting and tearing down (1:10). Now, we assumed this was the uprooting and tearing down of the religious spirit and false assumptions of the people of Seattle. Right?! We were going to come sweeping in here, like wonderful little heroes, and, as always, fix it all. We were the blessed saints of the real faith that these poor heathens always needed. We simply had to uproot and tear down their ideas and give them the truth. Well, that wasn’t exactly it. We misinterpreted the message. Maybe that’s happening in some senses, but upon reflection it seems that the uprooting and tearing down was mostly about us.

Quite frankly, I am utterly astounded at how much of this experience has centered around us. Weren’t we coming here to minister to?! This wasn’t supposed to be about us! Yet, it has been. Over and over again God has uprooted our false assumptions, torn down our pride and our ideas and our plans. Carla and I have found ourselves, on many occasions, at the absolute end of our rope. It’s has been a brutal death match on so many levels: physically sick, emotionally lonely, spiritually confused and stuck. We have come to the end of a very difficult year as much more humble, contrite, broken and prayerful people. And we thank the Lord.

But that season is over. God told us. Through Carla, He spoke to both of us. The uprooting and tearing down has come to an end. Not that we’ll never experience it again. Not that we won’t see traces of it as one season naturally bleeds into the next. But, as a whole, it’s over. It’s time for a new mindset and a new perspective.

The next phase, according to Jeremiah 1:10, is to “destroy and overthrow.” We don’t know what that means exactly, but we do know it’s different. Thank God it’s different! For several weeks we have sensed it was time for a shift. We even made the monumental decision to meet more often and in the mornings instead of evenings. That was huge for us! Now, God has confirmed the hugeness of it all. That decision was in obedience to this new season, this new phase of the journey. And I have a feeling…my gut just tells me…year two is going to blow us all away! YES LORD!!!

authenticity

What you see is what you get.

I am an active member of the most cynical generation that has ever walked the earth. Well, at least it seems that way. My peers and I have the astonishing ability to find something wrong with anything. We could spot the negative in a cloudless summer day. In fact, I was recently talking to a guy who was complaining about the heat of summer and the cold of winter…in the same sentence!

This might be a bit of a stretch, but it’s my attempt at being positive, okay. I want to find something good about my cynicism and negativity. If there’s anything that can be gained from such skepticism, it would be this: we crave that which is authentic. We have such a passionate disdain toward anything fake or untrustworthy, we will line up to see, touch and experience that which is real, dependable and accurate. Thus, Jesus shows up and transforms the way we live. Thus, the Church of Jesus has a powerful opportunity to truly influence society.

In today’s culture, there is very little you can immediately count on. How often do you find yourself meeting a new person or using a new product or seeing a new advertisement and intuitively trusting him or it or them? How often do you really think to yourself, “What you see is what you get.” Rarely, right? I know I’m not alone in this boat. Instead, we’re looking for what’s hidden, reading between the lines, waiting for the catch. My generation is desperately yearning for the authentic.

But how can we be authentic when we don’t know who we are? How can we be true to ourselves (and, therefore, others) unless we like and accept ourselves (and, therefore, others)? I have sadly observed that most people really don’t know themselves at all. And, what’s more, they’re petrified to find out! Do you know anyone like that? Have you met those people who are uncomfortable with deep conversation, quiet settings, worship experiences, their own skin? Maybe you are one of those people. What are we so afraid of?

At some point we all have to face our junk. Eventually our past catches up to us. And the key is to stop running. If we will only muster up the courage to turn and face our history, we will discover a miracle. For in the middle of that pain and suffering and mess, there is also grace and joy and peace. Jesus is there. God will meet us. We can find healing…if only we’re willing to endure the discomfort. We can find true life…if only we’re brave enough to be honest.

Children don’t seem to have a problem with authenticity, do they? They are brutally honest about how they’re feeling, what they want and who they are. You always know where you stand with a child. And Jesus seems to like that. In fact, He pushes us to be more like them (read Mark 10:13-16)! How different would your life be if you stopped playing the games? What a change it would make if we could take off the masks? Freedom! Satisfaction! Life! Real life!!!

I can’t stand the fake. It sickens me. So, I’ve dedicated myself to being authentic. That means I’m going to face up to my past—both victories and defeats. I’m going to be real, dependable and accurate as a human being. And we’re going to be that kind of church community too. Holy Seed Community Church is going to be an authentic gathering of believers. We will certainly make mistakes and most definitely don’t have all the answers. We’re just a rabble of misfits who are trying to live like Jesus. After all, what you see is what you get.

faithfulness

It’s not about perfection, but persistence.

At first, that may sound a little patronizing. It might have the ring of a little league coach who’s trying to encourage that one kid who could not catch the fly ball. (That was me, by the way.) But I can assure you that the above statement is not patronizing in the least. In fact, it is an amazing word of grace that compensates for our uniquely human ability to completely destroy everything that’s good and right in the world. There. Is that better now?

Even if you don’t like the movies, you certainly know the story of Rocky. He is the stereotypical American hero. He’s the down-and-out, poor, average Joe who decides to change his whole destiny by becoming a boxer. Quite frankly, he isn’t very good. He is continually getting the snot beat out of him! But he has this one quality that makes all the difference. There is one personality trait that separates him from all the rest of the boxers. He will not stay down! No matter how hard you hit him and how many times he falls, Rocky is going to keep getting up and coming at you. He is tenacious, gritty, tough. Rocky knows all about faithfulness.

Rocky sure wasn’t perfect. I mean, it wouldn’t be a good movie if he was, right? But it’s not about perfection. It’s about persistence. I’m not perfect either. I hope this statement doesn’t shock you, but you are not perfect either. None of us are. I mean, life wouldn’t be very interesting or exciting if we were, right? But, thank God, He doesn’t expect us to be perfect. He didn’t create us perfect. He created us “good” (check the story in Genesis 1). None of us will ever reach perfection. Stop beating yourself up over that fact! Instead of being discouraged and feeling depressed, change your perspective. God doesn’t want you to walk through life without ever tripping up and falling down. Instead, He wants all of us to learn to get up, dust ourselves off, hopefully figure out what tripped us in the first place, and keep going.

Since faithfulness is so difficult to define and understand, we’ve found it helpful to throw in a couple synonyms. Words like “consistency” and “integrity” help us get a picture of what faithfulness might look like. A faithful person understands the weight of and is driven by his/her "responsibility." The last one, which is actually a phrase, is my favorite picture: “life of honor.” To me, that phrase conjures up images of Arthur and Lancelot. I see medieval knights fighting vicious dragons and Aragorn battling the evil Sauron. It seems that the men and women of these stories had a true sense of honor. They did the right thing because, well, it was right. It wasn’t about looking good or fitting in or being politically correct. That is faithfulness.

Taken literally, God is the only One truly faithful. He is the only One who can always be counted on. His is the only word that will never fail. And I want to be like Him. I want to follow that example. Holy Seed Community Church is a place of faithfulness. We’re going to model our lives after Jesus, the Son of God, the ultimate Faithful One. No, we’re not going to be perfect like Him. Yes, we are going to make mistakes unlike Him. But that’s okay. When we fall down, when we sin, when we mess up, we’re going to get up. Even if we fall 100 times, we will get back up 101 times. After all, it’s not about perfection, but persistence.

longing

In my faith community, we are currently talking about the transition from loving like Jesus to living like Jesus. Those are the first two elements of our mission statement (love, live, lead). And as we make that move from love to live, I find myself thinking about my chronic dislike for church in general.

In my estimation, it seems that most church leaders (at least in my Pentecostal tradition) put their primary emphasis on living like Jesus. Now, that sounds great from the outside, right? But when you get into it, it’s a life of guilt, condemnation and struggle. Most of these messages lack the grace, mercy and love of Jesus. They come across sounding like, “God is mad at you for doing this and that and for not doing such and such! If you don’t turn your life around right now you’re headed to hell!”

Isn’t that what so many of us believers have always cringed from? Don’t you think that’s why so many unbelievers resist the Church? Instead of hugging their necks, we’re slapping their hands. Jesus never said or even implied that we have to live like Him before we are loved by Him. Life transformation is His job and it typically begins after we surrender to His grace and forgiveness and compassion—His love.

On the opposite extreme, however, is a very liberal group that claims to be followers of Jesus Christ, yet look nothing like Him. They don’t resemble even a hint of the holiness and righteousness that we see modeled in the Scriptures. They allow basically any behavior, dance around very serious issues of sin and practice “tolerance” in the most blatantly immoral sense of the word.

Isn’t there something more to the Christian life? Did Jesus really die just so I would have the freedom to live any way I please? This life of “mine” is not really mine at all. It’s not about me…or any human…or any group of humans, for that matter! We don’t exist to pursue the American dream. And bigger is not always better. The way we live is supposed to be modeled after the way Jesus lived. And we are supposed to reflect the life and way of God our Father, Creator of the heavens and the earth. (That includes you and me, by the way!)

I have two longings deep within that seem to be at odds with one another. They have been with me my entire life although I wasn’t able to articulate them until college or beyond. And from the countless conversations I’ve had with other disciples of Jesus, they seem to be universal. I think we all deeply and powerfully feel these two longings. And we really aren’t sure how to handle them or what to do about them.

The first is a longing to measure up. I want to matter. I want to have a purpose and a reason. I don’t want to feel insignificant and small. I don't want to feel like an accident. I want to know, deep down, instinctively, that I am vital to someone, somewhere. I want to be important and valuable…priceless even. Basically, I want to experience true love.

The second longing is for more. I want to grow and mature and get better. I intuitively know that there is a higher and better existence out there that I want, but can't quite reach. I don’t want to make the mistakes of yesterday or last year or even of my spiritual predecessors. I strive and try and push and work. Basically, I want to experience true life.

Don’t those two longings seem to contradict each other? It sounds like I want to be loved just for who I am. It shouldn’t matter what kind of life I live. I am loved, period. On the other hand, though, I want more than that. I want to grow out of my infancy and develop into the man I have always known I was created to be. But I usually fall short. Which leads to feelings of insignificance and emptiness. Which makes me want to quit trying. It’s a vicious cycle, huh.

I think Jesus addresses both of my deep, inner longings. I’m still figuring out how it all works together. But He seems to be loving me even though I don’t measure up. He even helps me grow and develop and move on. He also seems to be urging me away from the good and toward the best. He has a higher standard for me. It’s not that He will stop loving me if I stumble and fall…again. It’s just that He wants the best for me.

Maybe God Himself has those two longings. We are created in His image, after all. Maybe He wants us to love Him no matter what. And maybe He wants us to follow His lead even though it’s hard and we fail a lot. Maybe the tension between the two is not only good, but necessary. Like a rubber band, maybe the two longings hold us together. Maybe it makes the whole thing work. Maybe…