Lincon's Hat

What would you say if I rolled a golden cow in front of a mirror and the reflection was you?

“In god we trust”

I was praying this morning and really started thinking about that statement. I started thinking about all the views there are of God. I have recently come into contact with a few Mormon’s and some Jehovah Witnesses who both claim to have a proper understanding of the God of the Bible. Then there are Muslim’s and numerous other monotheistic religions out there that would all claim they know God.

What do we do with this? Do we side with the relativist who says these all hold bits and pieces of the truth, but none can know what is absolutely true? By no means!

That is another discussion in and of itself. Here is the main concern in my contemplation, how many people in America claim to know the same God I claim to know, but have a totally different view of who he is? Where are these views formed?

You often hear people say, “Well, my God would never…” Then you look at instances in the Bible where God does just what they said their God would not do.

Here’s the problem… People have created a god in their image, and made him out to be who they want him to be. He would not create someone a homosexual and then say that being homosexuality is wrong. He would not send someone who did more good than bad to hell. He only sends the Hitlers and child molesters to hell. Everyone else gets in on the “You did your best” card. The list could go on, but I’m sure you get the gist of where I’m coming from.
So many people trust in a god that has not been revealed to us through scripture, so many people believe in a god that doesn’t exist… and to be completely honest, THIS IS PURE IDOLATRY.

People are trusting in, and serving, and worshiping an idol.

Let’s be honest here… if our God can be defined by us then he is not worthy of our praise.
God must be defined by something that transcends us, His holy and revealed Word. We are the finite trying to understand the infinite. So what we have of his revelation is more than enough to lead us to a basic understanding of him and a saving knowledge of him, but it is not something we can fully wrap our minds around.

God cannot and will not fit into a box that we’ve created.

Please do not form an idea of who God is without scripture at hand. If you do this then you will create a god in your image. What a manipulative trick Satan has used. Sure, a golden cow would be easy to spot and destroy; but we’re not looking at a cow… we’re looking in a mirror.

In what God do you trust?

From Finger Tip to Finger Tip is the Same Length as Your Height

A simple question was asked to me the other night. This simple question had a simple, yet complex answer. One of my students asked me, “Do you cry?” The simple answer was, “no,” but the reason to the “no” is very complex.

I do not think it is more “manly” to not cry, and I even think a good cry can be healthy. However, for me, I can count on one hand the number of times I can remember crying.

The only answer I could give him as to why I do not cry is that I have become numb to most things in life. Being my friend can be a very frustrating thing because I tend to keep people at an arm’s length. This is not healthy, but it is something that I began to do from a very young age.

My dad was in the air force, and that caused us to move quite a bit. I never wanted to become too close with anyone because I knew when I moved again it would be emotional and sad. My parents were always perplexed at how well I took the moves, but the reality was I did not become close with anyone in order to make the moves easier.

It is a very scary thing to open your heart up to someone. This makes you vulnerable to heart break. Let’s face it, sometimes you have very dark areas that you do not want people to know about, because you fear that if they knew about them they would run.

I guess to put it simply, letting someone know your heart is a great risk, and it is much easier to keep people at an arm’s length.

I fear that so many of us have kept God at an arm’s length. We sit in church services and attend Bible studies week in and week out, but we experience little transformation in our lives. It is almost as if we fear letting God truly take hold of our hearts.

God does not delight in the petty “sacrifices” we make for him. At least in the Old Testament they had to get their hands dirty. But in reality, our hearts are in the same place as those in the Old Testament. We feel that if we make some sacrifice of our time to attend church, or a sacrifice of our time to lead a Bible study, or if we sacrifice the “fun” of doing worldly things, that God is somehow delighting in our actions.

It is almost as if we give God this, this, and this, then we can justify keeping this, this, and this (fill in the blanks). We keep GOD at an arm’s length because we know if he takes hold of our hearts we will have to undergo some major surgery, bones will have to be broken, cuts will have to be made, cancers will have to be removed, and ultimately it is going to really hurt before it gets better. So we keep him at a distance and offer him crappy sacrifices while we go through the motions and deceive ourselves into thinking we are just fine.

Christianity has become vain repetition to us.

The imagery of a deer desperately panting for water, knowing that a quench of its thirst truly means life or death, and comparing that to the way we should thirst for God, seldom sets of an alarm in our heads. We do not thirst for God as we should, and it is because we have become numb to him.

When we run from God it will feel like freedom at first, but in the end, we will end up enslaved to something that is beyond our own will power to return from. God is most distant when he does nothing to discipline us in our sin, and this is a very, very, very dangerous place to be.

So here I am evaluating many aspects of my life and finding areas where I am attempting to keep God at an arm’s length. And here I am trembling as a pray an extremely scary prayer… “God capture my heart, lead me to repentance, and discipline me in the areas that I do not want to give up.”

I pray for all of us that God would not be distant, and that he would take action where actions needs to take place so we can escape enslavement and live in his freedom.

If you can pray this with ease, please do not pray it. Take the time to evaluate your heart and understand your condition before God. Know that the perfection God requires has been provided in Christ, and that nothing you can do can make you right before him. But also know that God does not take this lukewarm junk of keeping him at an arm’s length.

Give God your all, for her deserves so much more.

A Moment of Transparency

There was a time in life when I was really good at hiding things. I could be in the darkest place spiritually, but on the outside everything would look great. I would write songs that would be crying for help, but I guess no one actually listened to the lyrics, because looking back on them, I was desperate.

Thankfully I have had a few close friends in life that I have been completely transparent with, and these guys truly know me. I’ve written before on the importance of community (see “From Coke to Coffee”) and these are the men in my life that have walked step by step with me.

However, now I am far from all of these friends. I am living in Georgia by myself. My family is all in Texas, and my closest friends are in Texas and Kentucky. I do have my pastor who is a good friend, but do to the nature of our work relationship we just don’t talk about certain things.

Here I am being open and honest. This isn’t a blog that is a cry for help, or a cry for sympathy… it is just me trying to be transparent and human. I don’t want to fool the world. I don’t want to fool those around me. I want people to know my heart.

Here’s my heart on my sleeve…

I’m extremely discouraged right now. I feel like I’m failing at “ministry.” I want to give up on my “philosophy of ministry” and pursue something with immediate success. I’m wrestling with whether or not I am doing an injustice to the church by not appealing to the emotions and senses of this youth generation to” get them in the door.”

This youth ministry started out with a boost in numbers, which, even though I said was not my concern, was actually really encouraging to both the church and me. Then some of my youth started asking great questions about the Bible and this was also encouraging. But now the numbers are on the decline and the questions have ceased.

Am I fooling myself into thinking that my youth are growing spiritually? Is spiritual growth a false security to make me at ease with the numbers declining?

What about my friends’ youth ministries that are exploding? Are they seeking after God more than me? Maybe that’s why God is honoring their youth ministries? Is my own spiritual bankruptcy robbing the church of a better youth ministry?

I know that God can speak through the most incapable of people, and I know that God will lead people to a saving knowledge of him with or without us. But I also know that God honors those who honor him, and that he blesses our preparation.

What will happen when the church evaluates me? What tangible thing will they hold onto to decide whether or not I am doing my job? Will it be based on how effective of a trip planner I am? Will it be based on how many kids have been baptized? Will it be based on how much numerical growth the youth group has experienced? Will it be based on how much knowledge my youth have of the Bible? What will they use to evaluate how good of a job I am doing?

So what am I in this for? For the numbers? For the questions? For the number of kids getting baptized? Or for God’s glory? I pray that I would not take my focus off of God’s glory, but I battle with this on a daily basis.

I am honestly not looking for you to encourage me or tell me that things will be okay or to tell me that I’m doing a good job and to keep up the work. But I am asking for your prayers. Please pray for me and pray for my youth.

So if you’re one of the many that has asked me “are you doing okay?”, and I haven’t had a chance to actually have a deep conversation with you… then here’s the answer… no, I’m not doing okay. But I’ve been here before, and I’ll climb out again.

I Sold My First Guitar a Long Time Ago

One of the perks to being a Youth Minister is getting free meals. I’m not so much referring to people picking up your tab, but the meals that are prepared at people’s houses.

I really do cherish these times. It’s so nice to sit down in someone’s home and have true fellowship. One thing I’ve noticed that is without fail in the “south” is that dessert is always baked and accompanied with coffee. If you know me, you know that I love coffee, so that is often more enjoyable than the desert.

Recently I had dinner at the Morgan’s house. All of their kids (none being youth) have been incredibly shy towards me, maybe it’s the beard, who knows? But from the moment I stepped into their house they opened up.

Ame took me straight to her incredibly clean room and immediately began to destroy it! Abigail kept trying to pull me into her room to show me her bed and how high she could jump on it, and then Ame would quickly pull me back to her room. Wallace was still pretty shy, but he did manage to keep from tucking behind his dad’s leg the whole night… and anyone who knows Wallace knows that is making headway!

After play time, after dinner, and after dessert, Becky wanted to pull out Wallace’s guitar.

When I first heard that Becky wanted Wallace to learn to play guitar I had two thoughts: First, I flashed back to 1992’ when Acky Breaky Heart hit the airwaves and I was first inspired to play guitar. I was 8, quickly became discouraged, and put the guitar down for four years until I picked it up again. So I wondered if 5 might be too young? Second, I thought about the possibility of Wallace being a youtube sensation… a 5 year old guitar prodigy! And that would be awesome to be able to say, “Yea, we jam together.”

Once the guitar was out I strapped it on (without adjusting the strap… adjusting a guitar players strap is like moving someone’s car seat). I hit the first chord and it sounded out of tune. I tuned it up, and quickly discovered that the guitar was not in tune with itself. I would go into the technical side of things, but let’s just leave it at it doesn’t sound as good as it should.

As far as instruments go, this is all Wallace has ever known… a junior guitar, ran through a mini amplifier, that isn’t in tune with itself. He might think it sounds good, and he might think that this is just the way guitars are, but there is so much more!

I think this is how we so often think of life… we see things as they are and just except them. For example, I’ll give you money on the account that I get the same amount back; or love those who love you and if someone hates you then it’s okay to hate them back, or at least show strong dislike; people strugle with depression, some people are gay, and the list could continue. The point is that, these things are accepted as normal, but in fact, this is not the way God wants it to be.

Here’s the thing, we can live life like an out of tune guitar, and maybe that’s fine because it’s all you’ve ever known; or we can live life straight up like an August Rush Orchestra where every instrument is fine tuned, playing in perfect rhythm, in majestic harmony, in all its glory and splendor.

One path will lead you to destruction and the other will lead to life.

I want to challenge you to explore how Christ modeled for us to live. Take the time to pick through the gospel according to John and take notes on the people Jesus hung out with, the things that he concerned himself with, the things he taught his disciples, and etc. I think you'll find that there is a better way to live life than just excepting the way things are.

What would happen if we loved our enemies... that in the same way we hope that the Holy Spirit conforms our flaws into the image of Christ we had that same hope for people that hated us? What if we served others, even those who have nothing to give in return? What would happen if we actually lived a life that reflected Christ? Maybe if we stopped being a "church" of the world, and started living as the Church in the world, we would truly be light to darkness and people would start to know Christ.

"If I Can Control Him I Don't Need Him"

If you're sitting at my desk it doesn’t take long to find out that I’m a Texas Tech fan. I have an awesome red coffee mug with a huge double T on it, and then I have another Texas Tech cup for reinforcement. At the foot of my desk is a Texas Tech floor mat (thanks to my sister who is a UT grad), and then the most prized of all my Tech things is hanging on the wall.

No, not the Texas Tech football shirt (which is pretty cool), but my diploma… I have my Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing degree hanging up in all its glory.

Man, I’m proud of that thing. College was such a great time in life; but what they didn’t tell me in marketing was that there aren’t a lot of marketing jobs out there. Most marketing majors seem to end up in sales.

When I was in seminary I decided that I needed to have a job where I was making enough money to live. That ruled out most part time jobs. But I did find a part times sales job selling cars. I thought to myself, “Well I guess I do have a degree in marketing… how hard could sales be?” Big mistake!

I’ve always had a love for cars. When I was a kid I had a ton of hot wheels, and I used to go to car races with my dad all the time. Then when I turned 16 I started washing cars at a local car was called "The Wash Tub" in San Antonio.

Working at the Tub was a great job. Some people hated the heat, but I was making 10-12 dollars an hour… so the heat really didn’t bother me too bad as long as my pocket was stuffed with one dollar bills at the end of the day. My base pay was $5.50 and then we made tips on top of that. The harder you worked the more cars you would finish, and the more cars you would finish the more tips you would get. It was simple math to me. The more I worked the more money I made.

I continued this trend of working with cars once I entered the car sales business, but I ended up hating it! A little bit of the hate was routed in the fact that people just don’t like car sales man; but I worked at a really reputable company and I was paid a flat commission, which made me not the normal car sales man.

The reason I hated it was because you failed 90 percent of the time. If you sold a car to 1 out of every 10 costumers you were considered a success. But the thing was is that you could work 40 hours and make absolutely nothing, or you could work 8 hours and make a thousand dollars.

The amount of money you made did not directly correlate with the amount of hours you worked. This took its toll on me so many times. It didn't matter that you knew eventually things would pan out... when you were working a lot of hours and not making any money to show for it, it was just depressing.

While sales managers tell you that you need to be in control of the sale, ultimately it is the person buying that is making the call, and you can't control that.

The fact is that we like to be in control. We are control freaks (especially guys).

This last spring break some friends and I went from Kentucky to Florida. There were five of us, and two of them did not have cars. Then one of them had a jeep wrangler which just wouldn’t work for the trip. So it was between my F150 and a ford explorer. Of course I volunteered to drive. Some people might think I was doing everyone a service by sacrificing the miles on my truck for the trip, but the fact of the matter was that I wanted to drive.

I hate riding with people. Some people follow too close, other people multitask while driving, and some people are flat out bad drivers. I’d much rather be in the driver seat and be in control of the vehicle.

Let's face it, maybe it’s not driving, but everyone has something they want to be in control over.

I think this is why salvation is so hard for people to grasp.

We want to control God. If we do x,y,z then the outcome is (fill in the blank). So many people think that if their good deeds, which they can control, outweigh their bad deeds then they get into heaven. If you do good then God will bless you, and if you do bad then God will curse you… so as long as the good outweighs the bad then you’ll ultimately be blessed with heaven.

I can remember being in New York City and sitting down at the ESPN zone with a guy from Tennessee. We got to talking about life and he asked me what I was doing. I told him that I was in seminary and that I wanted to do church planting to reach the 20-somethings age group (that has since changed).

After he found out I was going to be a minister he started telling me about his lineage,\; how is grandma was a Christian and his mom was a Christian, and that when he died they’ll tell God to let him in; and because he tried to do good that God would let him in.

At this moment I was faced with a decision, do I want to talk to this guy about religion or do I want to get back to talking about college football? I’ll be honest, sometimes theological talk hurts me head and I need to talk about something light. I chose to take the rout of religion knowing that I might offend this guy and make things awkward.

I looked at him, my tone slightly changed, and I tried to make the gospel as simple as I could without robbing it of anything, and I told him, “Here’s the thing… you just said you ‘try to do good’, and that implies that you sometimes don’t. God doesn’t just want your good to outweigh your bad… he requires perfection.” At this moment you could see the wheels turning in his head… you could see it on his face… he might as well have said, “Then who can be saved?!”
After a short pause I continued, “But here’s the beauty of the gospel, what God requires, he’s provided.”

He was floored, he had never heard the gospel presented like that before.

Now that the conversation had taken a more serious turn, he looked back at me and said, “You know what… there’s a whole nother group that needs to hear that message and it’s the 40-somethings. I wouldn’t just tell that to 20-somethings, but I’d tell that to everyone.”

Our salvation isn’t something that we can control. God blows this idea, of us being able to control him, out of the water in the book of Job. Their thinking was the same as ours, if you do good God will bless you and if you do bad then God will curse you. Job was being cursed therefore he must be doing bad things; but that wasn’t the case.

God wants to make clear that we can’t control him by our actions.

Salvation is a tough thing to grasp because it is by Christ alone. Even if we completely fulfilled the law we couldn’t earn salvation. The law was never intended to save people… it was to point people to God. This means that the “good things we do” are not a means to salvation, but a result of the good work God is doing in our hearts.

What a beautiful place to be in… to know that no matter how many good things you do you will not be any closer to right standing with God; and no matter how many bad things you do you will not be any further from right standing with God. Our right standing with God comes from faith in Christ, and nothing else! We have no room to boast.

I think Derek Web said it best, “No more my God, I boast no more.”

From Coke to Coffee

I can’t wait to be a house owner. I really don’t need a big or fancy house, but you better believe I’m going to have something unique. I want to take a collection of ideas I’ve gathered from all the cool coffee shops I’ve been to and just make my own creation. I’m not talking about this fake/corporate coffee shop look, but something truly unique.

Is it sad that I’ve become such a coffee shop junkie that I basically want to create one to live in? Don’t tell me what you think… I just wanted to throw that out there.

Anyways, one thing that I have to have to complete my awesome future home is a huge front porch. I want a great backyard too… but the front porch is going to complete it.

I can’t wait to get up at 6a.m. and fix a pot of coffee (dark roast), walk out of my coffee shop haven looking home to my front porch, and just sip the morning away.

Later in life I am completely fine with my neighbors saying there are three things that are certain in life, “Death, taxes, and old man Martin hanging out on the front porch.” How cool would that be?

Sadly our societies are moving away from front porches. People get up, get into their car, open the garage, commute to work, come home, pull back into their garage, close the door, and go about their individualistic lives.

We have become so impersonal… yet we’ve mastered the cheap, meaningless, shallow “hey how are ya’s.”

“Hey, how’s it going?”… “Oh, things are going well.”… “Awesome! Well we need to catch up soon.”… “Sounds great!”… Done.

We need to transition from coke to coffee.

What I mean is that coke is fast… it’s a cool refreshing quick fix. Let’s face it, sometimes you just need a coke (and I mean coke in the southern since… sprite, root beer, mountain dew… all equal “coke”). But like I said, it goes quickly. You load your fountain drink down with ice because you want the thing borderline freezing, only to get frustrated with how quickly you hear that annoying “straw sucking at the bottom of an almost dry cup” sound. Sonic is a catch 22 for me.

Coffee, however, is something that you drink slowly. It starts out way too hot, and you just sip on it until it gets to the right temperature. But you can’t be careless here, because if you wait too long it gets nasty cold… so you have to be thoughtful in your approach to drinking a great cup of coffee. Coffee is something you sit down over and talk about life.

We have to move from quick shallow hellos to deep meaningful conversations.

How many people truly know you? And I don’t mean they know what you drive and where you’re from… but truly know the depths of your heart?

How many people do you truly know?

As glorified as the self made man is in our society, and as tempting as it is to want to just withdraw from this consumeristic/entertainment driven world we live in… we were not created to live alone. Community has been perfectly modeled for us in the Trinity; and community is actually necessary for us to live within God’s intended created order.

I want to encourage everyone to sit down over coffee with someone this week and to have a deep meaningful conversation. Start a true relationship with someone that you can truly know and that they can truly know you. Be vulnerable and honest, and see where the conversation leads.

If you are living life by yourself and not sharing the depths of your hearts with others then you are merely existing… but if you are openly bearing witness to what God is doing in your life with others then you are tasting more and more what it means to truly live life, and to live it well.

Introductory Matters

I recently moved to Covington, Georgia from Louisville, Kentucky; and before that I was living out in Texas. I would venture to say that besides my friends and family, one of the things I miss the most is tex-mex food. Now some people in Georgia have no clue what that is… but then again, people in Texas most likely have no clue to what a “pot-licker” is.

I guess I love tex-mex because of its unique flavor. I am sure many of the same initial ingredients are used to cook southern food that are used to cook tex-mex, but it’s in the way that the ingredients are complied that bring out the incredibly delicious flavor that arouses the taste buds of Texans and those who visit the great state on a daily basis.

Now that I’m hungry, let’s take a quick turn to our life journeys…

Everyone has a walk of life which they have begun and are in the mist of, and of which they will one day conclude. But until that conclusion comes each person seeks their own meaning to this world. Some people settle for merely getting by, others seek greatness and continually fall short, and still others accomplish great things whether they will ever be known for them or not.

I can remember taking a personality quiz when I was a senior in high school and there were four basic categories that you should fit into. Everyone in class fit overwhelmingly into one of those boxes, but I scored equally among all of them. My teacher said that it meant I was still searching for my identity; but I thought it just meant I was well rounded.

Since then I have taken many journeys… both physically and spiritually; and in each of those I would say my identity has easily been found, it is just still in the process of being fine tuned.

My identity is in Christ, but what does that mean, what does that look like?

I’ve seen countries where the majority of people despise the United States and Christianity, and in their minds those two things are intertwined. To them we are merely living in a pool of hypocrisy, and they want nothing to do with us or our defining religion.

I’ve met people that act as if they have everything figured out, and they feel as if they are enlightened because they have concluded if there is a God, no one could truly know him.
I’ve met people that are completely lost and openly searching for meaning.

And then I’ve met people that look so beautiful on the outside, but in their inner being they are completely torn apart.

In all of my journeys and in all of the people I have met along the way, each place and each person has a very unique story with many essential characteristics. All of these things have left an impression on me and added beautiful things to my character… everything around me serves a purpose in shaping and molding me into whom I will become, but none of those things define me, they merely add flavor to the mix.

But to those who are searching for meaning and identity, how do they handle the environments which they surround themselves with?

Do they let their surroundings add flavor to who they are, or do they let their surroundings identify them?

I contend that if your identity and worth are not in Christ that you will let your environment define you and control who you are. You will be unique, but not in your own way… not in a Christ-centered way… you will be unique in the way that society has formed you to be.

Remember this: We are called to be in the world, but not of the world. Therefore, let’s not be conformed to the perishable darkness that surrounds us, but let’s be transformed by God’s imperishable Word.

I hope that you join me in this journey as I seek to unpack some answers to what it means to truly live life in Christ. However, my greater hope is that you do not go through this life merely existing, but that you would truly live life, and live it to the full.