"Soooo..you're telling me there's a chance?"..that tomorrow is the end of the world

 Okay, so I'll go ahead and tell ya right off the bat that I am pretty certain that the world will not end tomorrow.  Here's a few reasons why...

If you do want to put any kind of stock in the Mayan calendar then you need to understand that there has yet to be a unified interpretation that the calendar even shows that the world ends tomorrow...

If you want to put any kind of stock in the Mayan religion at all then just keep in mind that the Mayans practiced human sacrifice and well...that's just not real cool by any standard and it makes me strongly doubt that they had any kind of hotline to the ultimate decision maker about the date of the end of the world..

I am a Christ follower and I have found that the words Jesus spoke have proven to be very reliable and trustworthy in my life...he said that no man will know the day or the hour of the end..
so based on the words of Jesus (though any day could potentially be the "end of the world"), the more people convinced that it is a particular day, the more likely that that mentioned day is NOT the day...

"So you're telling me there's a chance.." you may still be saying.. yeah, there may still be a chance but the chances are more like those of Mary Swanson falling in love with our beloved Lloyd Christmas....you know..more like one in a million.

The Jim Clause

I have a friend named Jim.  He is on the volunteer landscaping team at my church and because of his humility and servant's heart, I admire him greatly.  Jim is one of three brothers and over the past five years, the other two brothers have passed away.  I sang at both of their funerals.  I have also given Jim my word that no matter where I am, when he passes away I will also sing at his funeral.  In fact, we 'upped the ante' just this last week when Jim asked me if I would not only sing at his funeral, but also to officiate his funeral.
I'm not sure how long it's gonna be before I am required to deliver my end of the deal with Jim.  I hope it's a really long time from now and if it is, I can't guarantee that I'll be living in the same city or state as Jim.  But, no matter where I am or who I am working for, I have decided to insert a "Jim Clause" on the front of any contract or obligation outside of that to God or my wife or my sons and daughter.
The "Jim Clause" reads something like this..
"no matter where I am, or who I am working for, or what my contractual obligations are, if Jim dies, then I will drop everything I am doing and travel as far as I need to in order to fulfill my promise to my friend Jim"
I think I may have the "Jim Clause" literally written into whatever  contract that I may sign in the near future because it reminds me that people and our promises to them, especially in the most important seasons of life, will always be more important than any other obligation that we may commit ourselves to.

Blessed Are The Pure In Heart For They Will Write Great Worship Songs?

As a worship writer, if I am writing from a place of right motives, I am trying to use the vehicle of a song to let people see a new picture of God or a more familiar picture of God that will remind them of who God is and what He has done. Hopefully, that reminder or that new perspective will cause them to want to engage God directly and gush over how amazing and beautiful and merciful He is. But in order to describe something I have to have seen it or, more importantly, in order to describe someone, I have to know them.

It's interesting that before the fall, Adam and Eve could engage God directly with all of their senses. They walked in the garden with their creator and were able to see Him, hear Him, touch Him, and I would imagine they could even smell the air of Heaven on Him. But after the fall, they could only hear Him and that has been the plight of man since that time for "no man could see God and live"...and then there was Jesus.

Jesus came and once again, we could see, hear, touch and smell the Creator. Maybe we didn't know it at the time but God was allowing us back in to the intimacy that was once shared in the garden. And it was Jesus that uttered these beautiful words especially for anyone who may one day seek to describe God and His attributes.."Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God". Now, obviously, this present generation doesn't get to experience what must have been such the amazing experience of getting to engage God in every way through Jesus but it is through Jesus and what He did to restore us that makes it possible to have a pure heart and, based on his words, allows us to once again see God.

So what does it mean to have a pure heart? what does it mean to be pure? I don't know if I have a complete answer for that but I have a few guesses at least in how it relates to songwriting... I think having a pure heart means that you fight to have right motives that are agenda free in dealing with people...I think it means that you are a person of your word..I think it means that you fight the tendency that is within all of us to use people or even use the Gospel for personal gain...and when you do find yourself crossing that line, that you make it right by confessing it and apologizing to whom you have wronged...I think when we begin to fight for these things, we begin to see God a little more clearly and that allows us to describe Him with right motives and a love for sharing with God's people through our songs what we have seen in Who we know.

The Kingdom is like.... Captain America

I will not ruin the new movie release of Captain America for you bc I have not yet seen it. I, like you, have only seen the trailer but there is one scene from the trailer that so moved me because it reminded me of God and what He values in His Kingdom. In this particular scene, a military officer and a scientist are walking through a bootcamp of soldiers in training and they are talking about the qualifications and type of man they need to be a candidate for the new super soldier experiment. The officer unexpectedly throws a grenade into a crowd of men and the skinniest, most unlikely hero dives on the grenade to save the other soldiers from being harmed. Turns out, the grenade is fake but the test was real. The skinny guy ends up being the candidate and eventually...Captain America.

I love the message that this scene conveys because it reminds me of all of the 'unlikely heroes' that God uses in His Kingdom. God, like, but far superior to, the super soldier program, can provide all of the strength, ability, and skill for the calling. The things that we in the world value are exterior things....things that God can add to any man at any time because He is God. The beauty of it all is that Captain America was Captain America before he had the powers and the shield and the cool costume because he already possesed a hero's heart. The heroes of God's Kingdom in the Bible had a hero's heart first, and then God added the powers and miracles as they were neeeded. If we are to be heroes to the broken world around us, we must first seek to have a Kingdom heart and then "all these things (strength, miracles, and maybe even a cool costume) will be added to you as well."

Cigarette Smoke

I love the smell of cigarette smoke, particularly Salem cigarettes. I think it's because my mom smoked that brand when I was a child (she quit after we started doing the 'stop, drop, and roll' bit every time she lit one up) and the smell reminds me of being a kid.
It's funny how the societal perception of smokers has so drastically changed over the last couple of decades. Now when I walk past the designated smoking area in the airport, I immediately rush to hyper-judgement of the 'dirty' smokers with their 'dirty' cigarettes huddled together in their glass chamber of addiction. In our modern caste system of addictions, cigarette smokers are at the bottom of the pile...the lepers.
I have a pretty good idea of how God feels about cigarettes overall but I suspect that there is one particular type of cigarette smoke that God may actually like. It's the cigarette smoke that you smell outside of an AA meeting. Every Tuesday night, I lead worship for our college worship service and as I'm leaving, I always see the AA crew hanging out in the parking lot of our church because they have just wrapped up their meeting. Not everyone is smoking but someone almost always is and I love the smell because of what it represents. It's a step forward...it represents getting up one more time after getting knocked down... it represents the transition of going from a greater and more destructive addiction such as cocaine or alcohol to a lesser and more non-consequential addiction such as cigarettes. I know that God's ultimate design is that we not be addicted to anything but, in a fallen world, sometimes, we just have to take it one step at a time. I'm sure, in their journey to freedom, there will be a place where they realize that they need to be free from their addiction to cigarettes but for now, the smell of their smoke will be the smell of little and daily battles fought that lead to life changing victories.

"The Head Punches Of A Friend Can Be Trusted..."

Last week, I had the privilege of training with John B., who is a friend of mine who has an extensive background in competitive kickboxing and mixed martial arts. We were working on a combination where I would throw a left hook to his head followed by a right leg kick. As we were practicing the combination, John pointed out that I was continually dropping my right hand as I threw the leg kick, leaving my head very exposed. I asked him to go ahead and pop me everytime I dropped my right hand...and he did. It only took a few times of him landing a clean left hook to my head that I started learning to get my right hand up and protect my head. Fortunately, he wasn't hitting me full-on or he very well may have knocked me out (even with head gear on) but he was hitting me hard enough for me to know that I had been hit and hard enough for me not to want to be hit anymore.

As I thought about our training, a scripture passage in Proverbs that says, "The wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses" kept running through my mind. I greatly appreciated the fact that my buddy was letting me have it because I knew that he was actually looking out for me. From his experience, he knew how important it was to make me protect myself so that when I faced an opponent who actually wanted to knock my head off, I'd be ready.

I'm pretty sure that as men, we need to surround ourselves with guys like my friend John. Guys who are willing to 'hook' us in the head with statements like "hey man, I see you spending a lot of time with that lady and she's not your wife...what's up with that?" or "dude, you're out playing golf or hanging with your buddies almost every weekend and when you are home, you're buried in the t.v. or your computer...if you keep it up your kids are going to be grown up and gone and you'll have nothing but regret." These hooks might hurt initially but in the long run, they'll force us to get our guard up so that we don't get knocked out.

The Gospel According To Imi Lichtenfeld

Not long after the first Karate Kid movie came out in the eighties, I'm pretty sure that there was a huge epidemic of butt kickings. Let me play out the scenario for you...kid goes to movie, said kid is inspired to learn martial arts and begins to take classes at local dojo, kid learns a wide variety of katas and forms and builds a false sense of self confidence, kid gets into fight with football player thinking that he will overwhelm football player with a whirlwind of spinning round house kicks and crane form, football player slams kid to the ground and beats him senseless. Have you heard that story before?

This type of scenario is one of the reasons that the a form of martial arts called Krav Maga was created. If you have ever seen a Jason Bourne movie then you have seen many of the techniques and efficient brutality utilized in Krav Maga. This type of efficiency and simplicity is what drew me to and started me on the journey of learning this martial art. I have only been at it for about 4 months now but as I have been studying Krav Maga, I can't help but notice a correlation to the story of Jesus and the new "system" that he exemplified and taught.

To make this correlation, let me first explain Krav Maga's history and origins. Krav Maga is a fighting style that was developed by Imi Lichtenfeld in the early 1930's. Lichtenfeld had a background in boxing and wrestling but came to realize that, because of their complexity, those fighting systems in their pure forms did not translate well to a street fight scenario so he created a fighting style that was built on efficiency and natural human movement. In essence he took away all of the complicated forms and systems and created a fighting style that was compact, efficient, and highly effective which is the reason that it is being taught to special forces and law enforcement agencies all over the world. Ultimately, Imi Lichtenfeld created a fighting style that actually worked in a real fight.

And that's what makes me think of Jesus. Jesus came into a context where Judaism had become a really complex system of laws and rituals. There were very specific laws for every single minute detail of life. This system of laws was initially given by God (though this was not God's final plan for man's salvation) in a simpler form but Israel's religious leadership found a way to greatly complicate it by adding countless "fence" laws on top of laws on top of laws....basically, you had a system that was so complex that it no longer applied to real life.

....and then you have Jesus...who comes telling stories instead of implementing systems. You have Jesus talking about love and then demonstrating love by healing the societal outcasts and spending time with the city's "low lifes" and "losers"...You have Jesus simplifying the entire religious system down to two requirements.. "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength...and love your neighbor as yourself. All of the law and prophets hang on these two commandments.." Basically, Jesus was showing us a way of living that was in line with our natural human movement, a way that works in real life...simple not sophisticated....relational not religious.

Ultimately, you have Jesus speaking and then embodying these words; "greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends...and I have called you friend". The need for salvation could not be remedied with a system...the need for salvation can only be remedied by a Savior.