"Be Real"- Insights

Sports wouldn't be sports without the risk of losing; gambling wouldn't be exciting and addicting if there wasn't a risk-reward factor involved; extreme sports wouldn't be extreme without danger; and Memorial Days wouldn't be significant if no one died in wars. So why should it be anything different with REAL Christianity? Like the prison chaplain, Jesus' words never held back any punch; never sugar-coated the raw truth of the Gospel; and what he said, even if it hurt or made the listener uncomfortable, he said it all out of compassion.

If we look at Luke 9, Jesus spells out what Christianity should be like. He asks the disciples who He is. The answer is a confession of Jesus being the Christ, and immediately Jesus follows that up with the fact that He is going to die, and "if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?" (v23-25). Basically He is saying, if you are going to call yourself a Christian, then be prepared to live a dangerous life. Brent you are right in saying that Jesus and the rafting guides have the same message and approach.

I do not think we are hearing this Biblical message in the American church. From what I can see from Christian reports from all over the world, I would easily conclude that if we preached to our teens and young adults in America that Christianity is dangerous and extreme, I think we would have an incredible revival here in the States. Time and time again, we here that the postmodern generation is looking for authentic Christianity, church leadership that is Real, looking for someone or something to believe in. Meanwhile in persecuted countries across the globe the church is flourishing where Christianity is dangerous and/or life threatening. As I sit here and write these last thoughts I am asking myself what is different in my ideals than that of the rhetoric we here from fundamental terrorists? Compassion, love for God and every human being. Crusades and terror threats are an attack on flesh and blood, but as we know from Ephesians 6 are fight is against "spiritual forces of evil...".

As a side note, not only is the prep speech by the rafting guide there to provide essential safety rules to ensure survival, but I think it is also used to heighten the extreme sporters awareness of risk to make the ride more exciting and abundant. Two people can be on the same raft with two totally different perspectives. I think the one that is aware of the risk will enjoy the experience more because he is aware of the danger.

Isn't it time we preach a more dangerous gospel?

"Worst Ever?"- Insights

Last week I wrote a Lesson Learned article called "Worst Ever?" - Here are Bill Masek's Insights into what I wrote...

Masek's Insights (for a lack of a better name)

What can I learn from your lesson since I know you are not telling us to practice being inadequate? I have found there is only one time that is beneficial to seem inadequate... and that is when you are dealing with the opposite sex.

For instance, I remember being in the college laundry room looking very inadequate trying to clean my clothes. The next thing I know there is some strange female doing my laundry and folding my clothes. The only thing that I learned was to always look pathetic when doing laundry, or vacuuming, or washing dishes... the same thing goes for girls who want guys to fix their car or carry something heavy.

Unfortunately or really fortunately God is not that naive for us to take advantage of Him. So as I said, trying to be inadequate to let God shine brighter probably wouldn't work in the long run.
Besides God working in spite of our flaws, what is the common thread in all of Brent's examples? Being ready to do whatever God asks 24/7! For all of us, there are going to be times when our tries are less than stellar and we feel like fools. We know that we will never be perfect, but at least there was an attempt. God can work through attempts and show His power and glory through these jars of clay He calls humanity.

It is when we don't try, or have excuses of why we didn't do something that God cannot work through us. We are not defeated until we decide we will not do what He calls us to do. To this day I think Nike's motto "Just Do It!" is the best advice.

The younger generation will always model what the generation before them is doing. It is up to us whether they will be a generation who will try to do amazing and impossible things, or a generation of emotionally paralyzed people who do not know how to succeed, actually do not even know how to try to succeed.

It's time that we all start being fools for Christ. It's not about trying to look like a fool, we do just fine without trying, but being a fool because the world cannot believe we have enough faith in God to believe it is worth trying the outrageous and unbelievable.I've said it may times to Brent, "You are a fool, don't stop being this fool. You are a fool for preaching while drugged up. You are a fool to not only be at an all night-er but trying to preach to a bunch of teens at 4am. You are also a fool for being a youth pastor, and even more of a fool to give that all up and be a missionary that trains other fools." Again Brent, don't stop being this Fool.The only question is, how can we become more foolish?

Time we all start being a little more foolish.

"Excuses, Excuses"-- Insights

If only you could go back and let "Junior High Brent" know that most likely most guys his age, in the same circumstances would end up doing the same thing. Even at the age of 37 I think if I ran across an episode of Scooby Do I would sit there with great expectation hoping that Scrappy would appear. We can admit that now, but back in those teen years we do not have the realization that almost every guy is in the same shoes that we are. If we haven't grown out of cartoons by the time we are forty we certainly hadn't grown out of them during our Jr. High days. A truth like that would have saved all of us a lot of shameful feelings about ourselves.

What does God do with Excuses? He brings truth to them! Whether we are talking about Moses or our own lives, He sees through our excuses and calls us on them. Moses' excuses were based on feeling inadequate and insecure with who he was. God didn't give Moses a chance to believe his own excuse of why he was the wrong person for the job Right away God made it about who He was and not Moses.

As I walk away from your (Excuses, Excuses) article I am realizing that we have to look at excuses from two perspectives. First is on a personal level, where we all need to reflect on how we label our own excuses. What are we trying to hide with our excuses? Maybe we make excuses to put the blame on others, or maybe our excuses are made to hide our ugliness from the rest of the world. Either way, and no matter what the reason is that we make so many excuses, God wants us to call things as they are, and with this action we can have freedom.

The second perspective is seeing how we can use others excuses as ministry opportunities. Whether there is truth in the excuse or not, there are opportunities to open the door for deeper conversations. In the example of your "bizarre excuse", I am sure the young musician wasn't late to practice because of the incident the night before. He got away with not having to give a truthful account of why he was late because everyone was preoccupied with his injured face. For this teen he used his "victimization" to hide the truth. Imagine what could have been revealed if at some point you took him aside and said, "I'm sorry your nose got caught up in the bass, but can I ask why you were actually late tonight?"

I think people gain respect when they challenge someone's excuse, especially if it is a real poor one. Even more important, I think people gain respect when they reveal truth in someone's life. As a youth leader, once you prove that you care and cannot have the wool pulled over your eyes then teens tend to listen and be more truthful. This kind of happened with Jesus and the woman at the well. As soon as the woman realized Jesus knew everything about her she knew that there was something divine about Jesus. With that realization about Him, she opened up and gave her whole life to Him. Likewise we shouldn't let these ministry opportunities go by. With an excuse there is a shame, hurt, embarrassment and/or ego that needs to be healed and freed.

"Sitting at the Kid's Table"- Insights

Yeah God is good. From an eternal perspective, you are dead on with Heaven not having a Kid's Table. But the funny thing about Heaven it will be filled with everyone that was seated at the "Kid's Table" here on Earth. Isn't that who Christ came to save the Kids Table. The rejects, the left outs, the lame, the sick, the forgotten will all be invited to the Big Table in Heaven. (Insert Bible stories of who Jesus came to save, and the story where the guy was having a party and no one came, so he went to the highways and bi-ways and invited everyone else who didn't have the social stautus to show up in the first place... and they all came!)

From a more temporal perspective with eternal consequences we can also say that according to the Gospel God would have given up his place at the head of the big table and found a seat at the Kid's Table, and he would have loved it. That's the Gospel in a nutshell, the Incarnation of Christ coming down to earth, giving up everything in Heaven, his seat at the Adult Table, to eat 33 years of meals at the Kid's Table.

And... He is calling us to be Incarnational in our walks with Him. We need to be like Him in attitude and humility. We need to always look for opportunities to find out where the "Kid's Table" is and sit there. It might be the goofy crowd in the youth group, it may be the Table all the way in Africa, China, India, or even the slums of your own dysfunctional family. We really need to stop worrying about the comforts of the Adult Table and worry about the incredible opportunities and joy that can be found with the kids. Hopefully if we do our jobs right we will be getting yelled at from the other table because we are making too much noise, making to much of a mess and disturbing the "Adults" at the other table.