1. my relationship with God
2. my wife, carie
3. isaac
4. isabelle
5. iliana
6. freedom found only in Jesus Christ
7. great friends
8. my growing family at lakeshore community church
9. sunshine
10. changing seasons

God, I just wanted to take a time our and say thanks!

"i like your Christ, but i do not like your christians. your christians are so unlike your Christ." (Mahatma Gandhi)

"i have been crucified with Christ and i no longer live, but Christ lives in me. the life i live in the body, i live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).

"so the question may be asked, 'if we are indeed crucified with Christ and we no longer live, why do we still sin?' the answer lies in the fact that all believers still have flesh, and flesh is that corrupt principle within every person. the flesh is not who we are; it is what we live in. it is not our identity; it is our adversary. and so, we are told to die daily and go on putting to death the misdeeds of the body (the flesh) through the Spirit of God (romans 8:13). the flesh is not removed until the day we die; or, if Jesus returns first, it will be removed when we are changed 'in the twinkling of an eye.'"

"if we have broken our covenants with God and violated our relationships with one another, the path to reconciliation must begin with the act of confession" (john dawson in healing america’s wounds).

"if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 john 1:9).

“if you thought you were 'just playing' with sin or immorality, please know this: it will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”

proverbs 9:8-9
rebuke a wise man and he will love you. instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning. “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

there's this great verse in matthew 5 that is very encouraging for those of who struggle with sin. it goes like this:

matthew 5:29-30
"if your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. and if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell."

i don't know about you but i feel better now after reading that!

i think if we all followed this literally, we would all be walking around mamed... i know i would. so what's Jesus getting at here?

i think, if i can offer my thoughts (and i can because it's my blog and there is nobody here to stop me), he is speaking metaphorically of the severity in which we need to deal with the sin in our life. there comes a point when we keep falling into the same sin traps that we need to say, "enough is enough" and not put ourselves in those situations anymore.

if the internet is causing you to sin, limit, filter and/or cut off your access to the internet. if the television is causing you to sin, turn off the cable. if there are certain places you go that lead to sin, don't go to those places anymore. if there are certain relationships that lead to sin, cut off those relationships. it is better to hurt a little and to be inconvenienced than to spend eternity in hell.

and it isn't about just making it difficult for us to access the things that lead us to sin, it's about making it impossible. because if we only make it difficult, we will find a way around the difficulties when temptation comes. but if we make it impossible then when temptation comes we cannot and will not fall to it.

i heard the story recently of a guy who used to travel a lot for work. spending the night in hotels frequently with no one around, gave him easy access to pornography on the hotel movie channels. he would certainly feel remorse and guilt after participating in the sin and would convince himself that next time it would be different. but next time would come and temptation would hit and he would inevitably fall again. after doing this over and over again for years and years, he finally learned about the concept of radical amputation from matthew 5. now when he went to stay at a hotel, the first thing he would do is literally unplug the tv and remove it from his hotel room. now when temptation came it was no longer an option for him to fall to that sin.

find the patterns of sin in your life and radically amputate them. it might hurt a little bit, and it might inconvenience you a bit but the rewards will far outway the challenges.

a couple years ago the group all american rejects put out a song called "dirty little secrets." the lyrics and video are below. in the video you'll see people holding up index cards in which they express the "dirty little secrets" that they have never told anyone. these are actual secrets sent in by anonymous people. some are quite funny, others are pretty serious.

i wonder what would happen if the church actually created an environment where people could feel safe sharing the junk in their lives, their "dirty little secrets." and not just to get it off their chests but to actually find hope and healing. i pray if nothing else this will become a safe place for you to do that. feel free to post a comment if you need to get something off your chest.





"dirty little secret"

let me know that i've done wrong
when i've known this all along
i go around a time or two
just to waste my time with you

tell me all that you've thrown away
find out games you don't wanna play
you are the only one that needs to know

i'll keep you my dirty little secret
(dirty little secret)
don't tell anyone or you'll be just another regret
(just another regret, hope that you can keep it)
my dirty little secret

who has to know
when we live such fragile lives
it's the best way we survive
i go around a time or two
just to waste my time with you

tell me all that you've thrown away
find out games you don't wanna play
you are the only one that needs to know

i'll keep you my dirty little secret
(dirty little secret)
don't tell anyone or you'll be just another regret
(just another regret, hope that you can keep it)
my dirty little secret

who has to know
the way she feels inside (inside)
those thoughts i can't deny (deny)
these sleeping thoughts won't lie (won't lie)
and all i've tried to hide
it's eating me apart
trace this life out

i'll keep you my dirty little secret
(dirty little secret)
don't tell anyone or you'll be just another regret
(just another regret)

i'll keep you my dirty little secret
(dirty little secret)
don't tell anyone or you'll be just another regret
(just another regret, hope that you can keep it)
my dirty little secret
dirty little secret
dirty little secret

who has to know
who has to know

i struggle with why i struggle so much.

and yet i think it's healthy that i struggle with why i struggle.

and yet in the midst of struggling there's this tension of not only struggling with who i am and the things i do but with whose i am and what that means for my life. i have been bought with a price. i am not my own.

galatian 2:20-21 says,

"i have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. the life i now live in the body, i live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. i do not set aside the grace of God, for if righeousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"

the scriptures speak over and over again that we as believers are in Christ. if we are in Christ that means that the person of Christ overshadows everything that I myself am and also everything that I have done. it's a tough thing to wrap your mind around but it's grace.

that means that when the Father looks at me, he only sees Christ and what he has done for me.

1 timothy 2:5-6 says,
"for there is one God and one mediator between God and human beings, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as a ransom for all people. this has now been witnessed to at the proper time."

for Christ to be the mediator between us and God means literally that he stands between us and connects us.

i heard it said once that it's like the greatest eclipse that has ever occurred. Christ steps in between us and God and overshadows everything we are and everything we have ever done so all God sees is Christ and what he has done for us.

so then the question arises, why struggle with struggling. if all God sees when he looks at us is Christ and what he did for us and we don't have to earn his approval, why do what is right?

i heard it said this way once and it rocked me to the core: "we don't do what is right so that daddy will love us more but so that others will see daddy."

maybe it isn't just about me and my relationship with God afer all. maybe it's about him and his name and his kingdom. maybe i'm part of something that's bigger than myself. maybe me doing right is more about others seeing daddy than it is about daddy loving me more.

in the midst of the struggle, he'll never love me more or less than he does right now...

and that fact alone makes me want to keep struggling with the struggles.

"to fear the Lord is to hate evil." (proverbs 8:13)

i was reading this verse today and it smacked me right between the eyes.

i've been coming to this realization lately of how numb i am to the ways of this world. things like violence, profanity, sexuallity, perverseness, drunkenness, etc. have become so much a part of our culture that i find myself unaffected by them.

it's not that i'm engaging in these things, but it scares me that i've become numb to it.

i looked up the word "hate" in the dictionary. "hate" is a verb that means "to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward."

i don't know that i can honestly say i "hate" evil. i am pretty numb to it. i am pretty unaffected by it.

i certainly don't like it, but i don't know that i have an extreme, passionate hostility towards it. i can exist around it and it doesn't ruin my night.

i wonder how many of us "followers of the Way" aren't really following "the Way" at all? i wonder how many of us "followers of Jesus" have grown numb to the evil around us in this culture we live in and rather than truly picking up our crosses and follwing him, we just exist in the culture we are in? i wonder how many of us really "hate" evil? i wonder how many of us really "fear the Lord?"

Lord, teach me to fear you again. break my heart with what breaks your heart. forgive me for my complacency in standing up for what is right. forgive me for being unaffected by evil and sin.

God, may we let our light shine before men like a city on a hill for all to see.