:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

I used to be a cluttered pack rat that clung to possessions I had no business keeping around. Moving to Connecticut changed that quite dramatically through the twin forces of necessity and shame.

When we planned our move to Connecticut, my wife wisely sat me down for the talk. We had to make a budget. I sat down to it kicking and screaming. I hated to think of limitations on our spending. As we came to grips with our limited income due to my career change from a mindless nonprofit drone into a hard up writer, we realized that we needed to downsize—big time.

I never would have put our extra book shelves up for sale. I never would have given away six liquor boxes worth of books to our local library. I liked our table. The couch was sorta comfy. The sleeper sofa was my idea in the first place. They all had to go.

Our storage shelves, our lawn mower, and all of the work we’d invested in completely renovating our home—all of it had to go. We had to move into an apartment that was half the size of our home. Some things we sold, but quite a few things were given away.

It was tough to part with so many things all at once. They were all part of the life we’d been planning at our home in Vermont. 

Moving day wasn’t easy. We drove our truck in and our landlord acted like a disgruntled child, throwing his hands up in the air dramatically when he saw how much stuff we had. Despite all of our sorting and thinning, we still had too much stuff. We filled our closets to the gills. My in-laws took a car load of items home with them.

We lived in a state of chaos for a few weeks. The rabbits weren’t happy. We eventually organized our lives to a certain degree, but it still felt cramped in our apartment. A year later we moved into a nicer apartment with a storage unit. That took the pressure off until a cross-country move loomed.

As if we couldn’t thin out any more, we set to work once again, dishing off yet another chair, our new kitchen table, and a bunch of my seminary books. We knew how to thin out by this point. It’s a miracle anything from our time in Vermont remained.

I’ve thinned out our possessions and moved about five times now, and I don’t miss one thing that I gave away or sold. Even the furniture that means something to me is replaceable. I’ve grown far less attached to my clothing, books, and furniture after passing through so many “thinning sprees.”

When you see how you feel about these objects in retrospect, you realize how important it is to love your family, friends, and even what you do for a living.

In retrospect, I can see that it was insane (for me personally at least) to think owning a nice house was more important than working at a job that I loved, doing work that felt significant and fulfilling. The house was the cart before the horse. I thank God every day that my wife was accepted at the University of Connecticut, that we sold our home in Vermont, and that I had to piece together some kind of writing career from our dark little Connecticut apartment surrounded by storage containers and books.

Having purchased so many things that I deemed important and then giving them away on such short notice changed me. I saw myself shift from really wanting certain items to living without them again and surviving just fine. It’s like shock therapy for the consumer lifestyle.

Perhaps some would say that I’m poor in possessions and property, but I would reply that I’m rich in time and meaningful work. Those two assets are priceless.

Having gone to seminary, I sometimes think that I should be able to whip up some pretty sophisticated and profound prayers. It’s not that I took any classes on “Effective Prayers Before Meals” or “King David’s Greatest Hits.” I just think that with all of this theology crammed into my head, I should be able to formulate some really awesome prayers.

OK, I’ll be honest—theology really does change how we pray. However, theological training does not make one particularly better at seeking out God, listening to his Spirit, and speaking to him.

While my theology has helped me pray with more power, there are some prayers that I simply can’t improve. They seem sort of lame. What’s even more surprising to me is that a lame prayer can still be quite effective.

Here’s my lame prayer. At the start of each day I say something like this: “God, I offer myself and my work to you and your purposes.”

I suppose I could say more. Heck, I’m a writer. I could get that sucker up to 500 words in 20 minutes. What I have there always seems good enough because it drives at the heart of what needs to happen.

When we offer ourselves to God and open our lives to him, that’s often all he needs to get started.

That prayer isn’t a guarantee that every day will be good. I still need to keep myself on track, focus, and make good decisions. I can still make selfish decisions or lose my temper. I also need to pray a lot more than that simple sentence.

However, by offering my day to God and letting him work through me, I’ve also moved myself away from taking all of the credit. Pride is a huge struggle for writers, and I’m sure I don’t even know the half of my issues with it. If I finish my day and want to take all of the credit for my accomplishments, I know that I didn’t offer myself to God as an act of worship.

If I feel like God has carried me throughout my day and empowered me to do my work, then I have a deeper sense of fulfillment and joy because I’ve experienced God’s presence in my life and drawn glory to him.

The difference is subtle, but you’ll know it when you see it.

God wants to work in  and through us throughout the day. Sometimes it only takes a lame prayer to change everything.

How do you carve out time with God throughout the week?

Read more about creating spiritual “white space” to meet with God at Faith Barista today: How Ordinary You Holds Extraordinary Value.

You haven’t really lived until you’ve sat around the dinner table with a bunch of Catholics in their 50’s and up who braved the ruler-brandishing nuns of Catholic parochial schools. It sounds like they survived a military campaign or a long stint in prison.

“And then the nun slammed that kid’s head smack into the chalkboard…”

I kid you not. That is a real story.

There are lesser offenses, such as the nun who paraded the aisles with a ruler and whacked every single kid on the knuckles because one person talked. Even the Catholic school I attended used the same policy of punishing everyone for the offenses of the few—this was a world where ADD and ADHD remained relatively unknown.

Of course there were some kind nuns about, but they never make it to the dinner time story selection.

After escaping something like Catholic school, it’s awfully tempting to mock what you once feared. That’s why the scene in the Blues Brothers is so hilarious and over the top. Anyone who has ever cowered before a nun loves the idea of a nun who exchanges her ruler for a sword and who can levitate when angry.

When we move away from the power of someone or something we used to fear, it feels really good to mock it. It’s like you’ve confirmed that it no longer has power over you because you can laugh at it. We swing away from one extreme of fear into another of joy and humor.

A lot of former fundamentalists such as myself have done our fair share of “swinging” as well. We swing in our beliefs over the end times, the nature of truth, judging others on appearance, the authority of the Bible, politics, ethics, and who knows what else.

I have a lot of friends who are swingers—that is, former fundamentalists who have swung away from their former beliefs into  a different notion of Christianity altogether.

One of the problems with swinging, is you alienate yourself so completely from your past, that you don’t understand how it has shaped you. I can call myself a progressive-ish evangelical all I want, but at the end of the day, I’m always going to be tempted to choose the non-fundamentalist path.

When I swing away from fundamentalism, I don’t understand how it impacts me or where its beliefs come from. Swinging leaves me vulnerable to blindsides, especially in my history of theology.

And this is nothing new for Christians. The fundamentalists did their own swinging away from liberalism, not realizing they were operating within the same confines set up by the agenda of the Enlightenment where all knowledge had to be grounded in scientifically verifiable facts—hello inerrancy.

I am pretty happy to swing away from fundamentalism into the relatively undefined world of progressive-ish evangelicalism, but I’m often reminded that swinging brings its own problems. I need to not only understand the impact of fundamentalism on my own life, I need to appreciate the ways God is working among fundamentalists today.

The truth is, if the Gospel I believe in is really true, then God has not swung away from the fundamentalists, evangelicals, progressives, or any other Christian camp. If we’re all devoted to the same God, then he is, in a sense, immovable.

God does not swing and shift with the times. Our perceptions of him will shift because we see in a mirror dimly, but God sees things as they truly are.

The amazing thing is that despite seeing us all as we truly are, God will not swing away from us. And even better yet, God is not afraid of nuns.

My wife was watching a British film called The Servant as part of some research. The movie was made in 1963, and when I walked by I had to laugh. The beautiful young woman who was a main character in the story had hair that was the short but puffy and curled style that you may find among senior citizens but no where else today.

She was also listening to the big band music that I associate with a by-gone era.

All of the cool, hip things from 1963 did not connect with how we define cool and hip today.

Humor works the same way. Have you ever tried to watch an older comedy? Some comedians are timeless, but at a friend’s suggestion I watched a classic comedy that was made in 1938 and didn’t laugh once. It was described as hilarious and screwball by critics, but I was bored.

Fashion, music, comedy, and who knows what else shift and change so radically from one generation to another.  Each generation has its own way of expressing its values—anything from reverence to humor will shift from one generation to another.

Last week a lot of folks were sharing a stat from the new book called The Millennials which tries to give a picture of this generation’s relationship with the church. The big money statistic was this: 70% of millennial think the church is irrelevant.

I suppose I didn’t find that shocking. In light of how radically our culture shifts with merely our movies, how we relate to God is also bound to change. The church has a relevance problem today, but I don’t think it’s quite as bad as we think.

In fact, we don’t have to let it continue to be a huge problem.

Read the rest of this entry »

I had a theology professor who once said, “Theology is not supposed to make you stupid.” At the risk of trumpeting the obvious, I like to ask myself sometimes, “Is my theology making me stupid?”

It happens sometimes.

Stupidity creeps into our theology when we take one aspect of it too far and allow it to dominate the other parts of our lives. This is particularly tricky with matters of making decisions and discerning God’s will (i.e. predestination). When it comes to making one of the most important decisions of our lives—who you will marry—predestination is lurking in the background.

I don’t think I can quite do predestination and free will justice in a small blog post, but let me at least say a few things before moving on to some thoughts on how we make important decisions, especially about love and marriage. For starters, the Bible holds us in the tension between making our requests known to God and interacting with him, while also teaching that God can set people apart and direct them.

We have extremes between “I make up my mind and do what I think God likes” and “I literally only do what I sense God telling me to do.” The former means that I like breakfast and I think God likes it when I eat breakfast, so I eat it every morning without stopping to sense if the Spirit is leading me in a different direction at the start of my day. The latter means I’ll sit and go insane waiting for God’s permission to eat breakfast every morning.

God has something to say about our decisions, but he doesn’t want us to become crazy robots who only seek input. Why else would Jesus tell us to make our requests known to God? We live in this tension where we seek first God’s Kingdom purposes and lay our lives down, while also making our requests known to God and expecting guidance and provision.

There is a huge buffer zone of mystery here.

This week’s Faith Jam is on the topic: “Finding the One,” and our theology always creeps into how we pursue our relationships.

Questions such as, “Is he/she THE ONE?” push us toward theological insanity. We could end up second guessing whether this guy or that woman is THE ONE, and we’ll forget how to prayerfully seek God’s direction in our relationships and make good decisions based on what we hear from God. Worrying about finding THE ONE simply isn’t helpful.

Does God have something to say about who we marry? You bet! However, to try to discern God’s divine foreknowledge in the midst of a relationship puts the cart way before the horse. And besides, who can think clearly about a theological mystery in the midst of a new relationship?

Trying to find THE ONE is an unhelpful bit of speculation based on a misapplication of theological mysteries. I’ve seen the fruit of people who have been completely stressed out over finding THE ONE or whether a certain person was THE ONE, and it’s not pretty.

God wants to direct us and help us make decisions. However, finding a spouse isn’t quite like a high-stakes search for a needle in a hay stack. There’s nothing I know of in the Bible that says we all have only one person who is perfect for us.

I only find very level-headed teaching that God gives different gifts of singleness and marriage to different people on different timetables. Our decision-making process is no different from daily life: seeking first God’s Kingdom, making our requests known to God, listening to God, and then obeying God. Adding anything else extra-biblical doesn’t help us with our decisions, especially those related to marriage.

I never prayed more than before I dated my wife. I wanted God’s direction throughout the process.

Looking back, I can see the wonderful mystery of God at work with us. God was both leading me and giving me the desires of my heart. The process of seeking God’s will should bring us closer to God, not stress us out or turn us into robots who only seek input before acting.

God works with us in the midst of our big decisions, speaking in so many different ways, and I hope that brings us to a place of peace and comfort. I’m pretty sure that’s what he wants for us.

Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to pray about what I’ve been predestined to have for breakfast.

I like to drive to church with worship music on. It often helps guide my mind to the right place. I sometimes see it as putting on my “game face” for worship. In other words, I’m putting on my mask.

This past Sunday I realized that may be a problem.

The fact that I feel the need to somehow change myself into someone different is an indication that I’m not always living my day to day life in touch with God’s Spirit. While it’s good that I could at least realize it and take steps to tune back into God, am I only taking these measures when I’m on my way to worship God in a room full of fellow Christians?

The word hypocrite comes to mind.

Honestly, this whole process is one of the reasons why I go to church: I need reminders and accountability to stay connected with God. Worshipping in community reminds me to pursue God, even if I don’t find most church services today particularly helpful in actually, you know, meeting with God. They tend to be rather busy.

From what I can see, my struggles with hypocrisy have an up side. I at least get an indication of when I’m not on the same page with God. The trick is to only care about what God thinks about this.

We all need to be built up by time with God. We need to be strengthened by the Spirit’s power whether we’re alone all day or  interact with hundreds of people.

When I feel that tug to get my spiritual “act” together for church, I have a clue about my need for God. The trick is to confess my misguided motivations. I need more of God all of the time, not just when I’m around other Christians.

That’s the problem with hypocrisy. It usually leads us to do good things for the wrong reasons. In the case of Christianity, hypocrisy can be exhausting and terrifying. We worry about what others will think about us if they find out who we really are. I forget that I typically have no problem overlooking the flaws of others, but if someone really looked at me, it’s all over.

I’ll be honest with you, I feel that tug to sit with God right now. I’m just sitting in my living room on a Wednesday morning. No one will see the immediate impact of God on my life, but I hope that as God changes me and I live for him, those incremental steps will make me the kind of person who can drive to church at peace with God, not worrying about the way I’ll appear before others.

I’ll still take my mp3 player along just in case I’m in the mood for some music.

I’m not really sure I can write the following post without offending some people. However, this issue comes up often enough, that I think it’s worth addressing head on. I’ll do my best to speak of my personal experiences, and I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to judge or condemn anyone’s calling.

About ten years ago, I thought I would enter into full time ministry on staff at a church. I never thought I would end up writing full time, though I had hoped to one day write a book. The more I thought about the dynamics of ministering on staff at a church in a salaried position, the more I became personally convinced I should not go down that road.

I hope that every church handles money, power, and ministry well, and therefore I think we need to talk about it. There’s a huge elephant in the room, and we don’t always address it: Churches hire pastors to do a job for them. If a pastor lets his people down, the congregation can fire the pastor.

Perhaps a little context is in order.

I heard horror stories in seminary about the way churches handled their pastors. I ate lunch with pastors who lived under the threat of losing their jobs because their eschatology wasn’t quite right, they didn’t succeed as counselors, or their congregations didn’t like the new praise songs.

In a rather extreme case, a pastor who lived in a parsonage was fired and told to vacate immediately—leaving him and his family in a terrible position.

I know that there are plenty of good stories about happy pastors and churches. I’m not out to drag anyone through the mud or to question anyone’s calling. What I do want to talk about is money, ministry, and how the two work together in the power dynamics of the church.

I’m not out to justify myself or to criticize anyone specifically. My beef is with our system, which may work in some circumstances, but has clearly proven less than satisfactory often enough. We stand to gain quite a lot if we can talk about these dynamics openly.

I’ll lay my cards on the table up front by saying that I support a particular ministry financially. That ministry relies on freewill offerings. In addition, there are some folks who send me free will gifts to support my writing ministry. I have no problem with financially supporting someone who is in the ministry.

However, we could run into problems when a Christian minister counts on a group he or she serves to provide a set amount of money as a salary. There is an unspoken power dynamic that may come into play when a minister is relying on specific people to provide a set amount of money. I’ve seen churches handle it well, and I’ve seen churches handle it poorly.

I’ve felt compelled that I personally, at this point in my life at least, can’t take an officially salaried ministry position. I have good friends who minister quite well as salaried pastors, and for that reason, I want to ask, “What makes a salaried ministry position work?” and “What do we need to watch out for when we have a salaried minister?”

Tuesday’s Post: What’s at Stake for Pastors

Wednesday’s Post: What’s at Stake for Congregations

At the start of 2011, I knew one thing for sure: I did not want my life in the new year to resemble the frustrating mud pit that was 2010. Things were ho hum spiritually and my professional work had only advanced in short bursts without becoming secure and steady.

I don’t know why I waited so long to do this, but I began asking God, “What’s happening? What needs to change?”

God’s answer came back, “Seek first my Kingdom.”

That seemed sort of like a no-brainer. That’s right in scripture. I know that. Why did God need to remind me?

Well, because I had forgotten it. I was stuck pursuing goals that were leaving me frustrated.

So I had to figure out the next big question: What does it look like for me, Ed Cyzewski, to seek first God’s Kingdom?

That was a tough question to answer. I mean anyone can take the theology test and fill in the blank:

“Seek __________ the Kingdom of God.”

Applying it is another matter.

The Kingdom isn’t a test we pass or a creed we recite. The Kingdom is something we seek by changing our to do lists and our actions. Based on my actions, the Kingdom was something I had sought third, fourth, or fifth in my life.

What did it look like to seek first God’s Kingdom? I began to ask God for help, and with his guidance, I took action. Here are a few things that I changed in 2011:

Minister in Prison

I don’t write about serving in prison much because I don’t want it to ever sound like I’m bragging about something that I count as a privilege and blessing. However, I want to share just how much serving in prison means to me. At the start of 2011, I’d put off some training and paperwork related to serving in prison, and God prompted me to get moving on it.

Each Wednesday night I’m part of a 2-hour meeting where I share what God is doing in my life, other volunteers share, and the inmates share what God is doing with them. Sometimes we encourage one another, and often we pray for each other. Driving home last night, I sensed that I had just been with members of my family.

I serve in prison because I looked into it, I had the opportunity, and God prompted me to do it. When God burdened me to serve someone else, I needed to obey his lead if I wanted to receive his blessings.

Pray Intentionally

I don’t quite know how to say this, but I felt that I needed to pray differently. For starters, I try to pray on my knees if possible, but otherwise I at least try to stand or sit up straight—communicating respect to God through my posture.

I’m also praying out loud when I’m alone, which both keeps me better focused on my prayer and feels a bit more powerful. There’s nothing like confessing sin by speaking it out loud before God and then claiming his forgiveness and healing power verbally.

Wake Up Early

This changes depending on how much sleep I need, but I generally try to wake up between 5 am and 6 am most days. This provides me with enough time to pray, read the Bible, and wander around the kitchen until I’ve had some coffee.

Waking up early also ensures I have enough time to work on some fiction and my blog posts for the day. My writing is a ministry, and writing for this blog is a big part of that. I want to make a significant investment in this site so that readers will be encouraged and built up.

Early mornings leave plenty of time to hammer out and edit my posts, while also providing enough time throughout the rest of the morning for my business writing.

Manage my Time

As God challenged me to seek first his Kingdom, he also prompted me to write this at the top of my to do list on my computer: “Be faithful with a little.” If I had one article to do during the week, I made sure I wrote the best piece I could as quickly as possible. Soon additional projects began to arrive, and I was grateful to have improved my time management skills. Here’s what I did:

I set up a simple schedule on my Google calendar for my time between 5 am and 5 pm. It’s grouped by hour or half hour-long chunks such as work for a company, magazine projects, search for writing gigs, marketing, networking, etc. I leave the calendar open in my browser so that reminders pop up when it’s time to move on to the next project.

Each morning I assign 30-60 minute tasks to each block of time so that I ensure I’m hitting the right mix of business writing, magazine work, and searching for new gigs. 

Some Results

Praise God, 2011 is nothing like 2010. It’s not that 2010 was a total waste of time. Some great things happened during that year, and I certainly learned some lessons about what not to do.

However, there were some places in my life where I felt stuck, and the biggest game-changer for me was figuring out what it looked like for me to seek first God’s Kingdom each day. That means I serve in a prison, wake up early to pray, and faithfully use my God-given talents for writing.

My hope is that the next time I face a theology test about the Kingdom of God, I’ll be declared exempt from it. I won’t need to be tested on my knowledge because the right answers to the test will be evident in my life.

What is something new God is asking you to step out in?

For more posts on this topic, visit Bonnie Gray’s blog today: 5 Principles of Starting New.

During the NHL playoffs I watch a lot of games through Canadian web sites that broadcast Hockey Night in Canada. It’s like I’m watching a different sport. The announcers are really into the game, commentators offer unfiltered opinions on the players, and features in between periods share interviews with the game’s best players.

The interviews of players add an element of human interest that makes it feel like HGTV for men. The sport of hockey is glorified, and you feel swept along by this great, amazing game with so many noble representatives.

Part of me wants to drive off to the nearest rink to practice skating backwards.

About a year ago, I spoke with a friend whose talented son considered taking a shot at professional hockey, but he decided against it. He offered a completely different perspective on the culture of hockey that didn’t necessarily spoil my Hockey Night in Canada moments, but revised the way I view the sport.

His angle gave me a dose of reality.

And honestly, why wouldn’t we want a dose of reality? Sometimes it hurts to realize we’ve had something wrong, but in the long run, we are usually better off, even if we’re a bit disillusioned.

As a growing Christian, I value doses of reality and challenges to my beliefs because I want to be sure I’m placing my faith in something solid. If my faith in Jesus is real, then it should stand testing. If it can’t, then perhaps I’ve had my faith in something other than Jesus.

Growing in Christ means changing our beliefs sometimes. That’s something that Peter, Paul, and John all had to learn. We’re in good company.

Our interpretations of the Bible and our theology may change sometimes, but how do we know we’re making a wise change? Here are some thoughts on how we can revise our beliefs faithfully:

Are We Departing from Tradition and the Global Church?

If we’re aware of what the majority of Christians throughout history and the world believe, then we should find out whether our revisions move us closer or further away from them. While joining the majority doesn’t always lead to the truth, it is proper to recognize the work of God’s Spirit among believers outside of our culture as a critical guide (see my book Coffeehouse Theology for more on this).

If we choose to depart from tradition or the global church, then we should have some really, really good reasons for doing so. Christians have been wrong about slavery, women’s rights, and colonialism, and there’s a chance we’ve made some other mistakes as well.

Are We Represented by a Minority in Christian History?

There are some church fathers who have both laid the foundation for our faith and held to some views that we would find quite disturbing today. Origen is one who preserved the Christian faith at a critical time and suffered for it, while also holding some views that would later be declared heretical.

Beliefs are tricky things, and sometimes our lines between heresy and orthodoxy are not as clear as we’d prefer. There are some church fathers who would probably like to have another shot at reframing some of their beliefs, and if the greatest minds of the church are in that boat, we’re in good company, even if we’re in the minority on a particular issue.

Are We Overreacting?

Christians are really good at swinging too far in one direction. Our latest trend is a movement away from certainty to doubt and questions. The danger is that we’ll embrace doubt, deconstruction, and questions to the point that we’ll never put in the hard work and faith required to find answers and to consequently do anything.

We can do this in our shifts over theology. On Friday I hope to apply some of these questions to our beliefs about hell, who goes there, and why. We’re at a time when perhaps an overemphasis on hell and punishment could be countered by an overemphasis on grace and salvation for everyone.

I’m not particularly interested in landing in the dead center of the two extremes, but I think it’s helpful to remember that in every time of shifting, we’ll be tempted to shift too far.

Friday’s Post: Perhaps we’ve made too much of hell in relation to the Gospel message, but let’s be careful that we don’t make too little of God’s justice, judgment, and the reality that anyone can reject God’s love and forgiveness

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Christianity after growing up with it, studying it in college, really studying it in seminary, and continuing to read extensively after seminary, it’s this one simple thing: I’m always wrong about something because I’m always changing or shifting one belief or another (usually small stuff, but still…).

Error is inevitable for every Christian.

N.T. Wright, the patron saint of theological awesomeness, often tells his students that significant bits of what he teaches them are wrong, but he’s not sure which bits are wrong.

I used to imagine God sitting up in heaven with the Westminster Confession or Ladd’s Theology of the New Testament and a scantron sheet with a pile of number two pencils. Perhaps he’d whip out a Wesleyan hymnal for an examination on classic hymns.

Perhaps he’d just tell me, “That bridge to life explanation of the Gospel was a good try, but you didn’t quite know enough about how the cross works. Sorry pal. If only you’d done a better job on your seminary homework…”

While I have no doubt that I’ll be amazed at how far off some of my beliefs are, I also have no doubt that God will be merciful to us even though we’re stupid.

Perhaps you think I’m overstating the stupidity of humanity, but scripture is quite conclusive on the matter. God declares, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” and then for good measure he adds, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

We may think we have a solid grasp of God, but it will always be a dim, imperfect sketch of God’s full-colored reality.

To my utter amazement, God seems OK with this.

Whether we rely too much on grace, the cross, God being a pushover, God being a wimp, sacraments, the Bible, icons, meditation, emotional worship songs, fixed hour prayer, incense, creeds, theology, or whatever else, God is still able to save us.

I’ve been switching between the New and Old Testaments quite a bit for the past few years, and I continue to notice over and over again the same theme loud and clear: Love the Lord.

Isn’t that refreshing in its simplicity? It’s as if God knew we are hopelessly stupid, that we would mix up our theology, that we would confuse worship of God and worship of country, that we would commit sins that we’d never see on this side of heaven, and that we’d need to repent times without number.

Loving God and letting him change us overshadows our faltering efforts and the times when we mean the best and still stumble into error.