So, last week the political process threw out another hot potato. Guessing it won’t be the last by November.

There is a world of difference between giving a “defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you” and “a knee-jerk response to anything we want to correct the world on.”

Its like many of us believe if the subject gets brought up, we have a moral obligation to give our particular take and denounce those who don’t agree with us … in the name of defending Jesus.

He probably doesn’t need such defense.

Has anyone else noticed?
-Most anymore don’t even bother to engage in conversations with most of the religious community, except for television news hosts looking for an odd angle.
-Most of our battles and sniping usually ends up against each other.
-Every time we play into this scenario, non-believers are given increased reason to mistrust that our faith would make any difference to their lives.
-Every time we play into this scenario-we ourselves lose some measure of hope that this life in Christ makes much difference in how we treat each other.
-Nobody feels better afterward, and everyone feels less safe to share their wondering or doubts.

Even a half-baked theory of learning and the learner reveals the futility in such shadow boxing.

*Most heart convictions are not swayed appreciably by those we do not appreciably trust
*Most aren’t waiting for us to share our particular nuance of conviction on the subject
*Most convictions are not formed only by well-formed argumentations
*Most shouldn’t be expected to carry positions bearing the heart of God without the nature of God within them.

You know we’re not a theocracy, right? You know non-believers are not only not able to, but are not held to whatever you or I might think is a Biblical position, right? About the only thing they’ll be eternally accountable to is what they do with the offer of Jesus. The only sufficient basis for any morality we want them to produce follows that choice.

It is much less important that we get it right on whatever position this presidential campaign throws at us, than that we display real love to those diametrically opposing our position.
And when tables were to be turned over, Peter didn’t do it. The Messiah did it. He still does and He still can.

Yes, there are times where you will either be required or needed to give your take.
Its fine that you have a position on every conceivable issue there is.

But usually such opportunities come with permission and trust. Without those two our takes won’t usually really matter much to anyone but ourselves.

Permission and trust. That’s the currency of real lovers, of real game-changers. They get in close enough through permission and the ability to be trusted, and from there they get to influence. Sometimes they get to influence the entire course of history. We’ve got several chapters, (six and seven) about this process in “The Cure”.

You want to defend Jesus?…then love. And don’t feel the need to feed controversy just because it shows up freshly again in the headlines.

When such Love showed up on earth:

It drove the Pharisees crazy.
It convinced the humbly needy they had found the right Messiah.
It revealed the damage the evil one had done on this planet.
It revealed how much damage sin had done to us.
It revealed who we would become if we trusted our new life in Him.
It formed a movement that nothing in the world has been able or will be able to topple.

If any political system could have produced a new nature to enact and live out the lofty aspirations of its platform, there would’ve been no need for a Savior, a Gospel and a Third Way.

It might be good for us to take a deep breath, relax and remember that Jesus comes back on a really cool horse. Oh, and the Olympics, they happen this summer. We’ve got that going for us.

John-one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace…

But we must admit this was all an intentional inevitability. We wrote The Cure and The Cure Study Guide and DVD to replace Truefaced. But take heart. Almost everything you may have enjoyed about Truefaced is found in The Cure, and the links at the end of each chapter. The new version is a fresh, street-level retelling of the Two Roads journey along with invaluable new concepts, truths, applications and principles we’ve not before put in writing. But wait, there’s more! In the Study Guide we have included Bible studies teaching how to see the Scriptures without a filter of moralism or shame. And that’s not all! There are dozens of DVDs used to introduce each study session, and almost endless supplemental videos in the book links. These all give incredible depth in how to nurture developing environments and relationships of grace, health and life. And there are pictures, cool graphics and enough fun that make your soul smile.

Still, some of you liked Truefaced very, very much, and you do not like change. We understand this. Granted, we have not enjoyed the angry threats, or the toilet papering of our homes. But we do understand your chagrin.

So, as a kind gesture to salve wounds, Bill, Bruce and John have agreed to drive to your home, and allow you to pick from a variety of customer appreciation options. We are willing, as a trio, to sing songs made famous by The Righteous Brothers, or ones your audience selects for us. Bill will offer brief woodworking classes, while Bruce will explain food paring with wines, (or non-alcoholic equivalents). I will be happy to give my take on the American League’s continuing use of the designated hitter. Additionally, our fellow team member, speaker and future author, David Pinkerton, will give his takes on the relative value of particular wood-fire pizza ovens.

(In truth, none of that will probably happen, ever…except for David’s willingness to talk to you about pizza ovens.)

But, if you have been taking groups through Truefaced and are now not sure how to transfer to The Cure, we would be honored to walk you through how these tools could powerfully be used in your teaching, smalls groups and counseling, in a wonderful way.

Just contact us through Info@truefaced.com or call us at 1-602-249-7000.

John, one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace…

And while it might always be preferable to understand the original languages and be proficient in historic linguistics, they are no guarantee you’ll have a better life in Christ than the soy farmer in Blanchwood, Iowa with a 7th grade education and twelve verses he trusts God to accomplish in his new nature.

Theoretically, you could memorize the Bible, word for word, and spend seventeen years on your knees, on a windswept prairie, meditating on it for insight and discernment and end up an arrogant, moralizing, obnoxious, miserable clod.

The problem is not with the Scriptures. They happen to be true and beautiful and life giving.

The problem is me. The problem is my flesh. The problem is this shame I still carry. The problem is some of the teaching I’ve been polluted with. The problem is the false voice I’ve attached to the same words that give stunning freedom to that soy farmer in Blanchwood. The problem is this lie I’ve carried with me since the Fall, which presumes my lunging, striving effort is superior to trusting in what Another has done. The problem is the condemnation and shame I presume the Scriptures are hoping I’ll get convicted by, so I’ll shape up.

Most of Scripture is not rocket science to understand. What part of “love one another” is tricky? In the original language, when parsed out and overlaid with the 1st century John Ryland fragment, gridded through several blend-coded lexicons, then studied in context of the cultural nuances of early Palestinian nomenclature, it still means the “love one another”-just like in the English translation you carry.

The problem is in how I imagine I will obey that verse. Ah, here’s the sacred place past hermeneutics, verse mapping and copious exegesis. There ought to be a major on how to teach the Scriptures without a private theology of sin-management, without my shame distorting the means to live out this Book which happens to carry so many requests, commands and longings.

This Book was meant to be trusted by those who are trusting who they now are-new creatures! …Adored ones, not on trial, not expected to drum up goodness, righteousness, humility, valor, love or any such virtue.

This Book was meant to be trusted by those who are trusting who God is in them! …Absolutely sovereign, able to mature such new creatures from the inside out, all day, without condemnation, disdain, impatience, or expectation that they can do anything spiritual without trusting the endless power and resource of His life in them.

I went to a really good seminary. I earned a Masters of Divinity. I graduated Kappa Tau Epsilon, near the very top of my class. I had brilliant professors. Most of my units were in the original languages and systematic theology. I also know a lot about a Pre-Millennial Kingdom. I know a lot about the subtle differences between Dispensational and Reformed theology. But I never heard word one about what I just wrote above. Not word one.

And I walked into the church I still am part of, trying to teach a buck-up, striving, guilt motivated, flesh appealed to gospel of bluffing that wasn’t working for me. It took a community already experiencing together the living theology of grace for me to start to be healed from the private shame of a doctrine I couldn’t live up to.

Our farmer in Blanchwood is having a great life in Christ. He appears to know who He is in Christ and lives out of it. And at the end of the day, as the sun sets and he and his wife sit out on the porch with iced teas, talking about the day, they carry very little angst about whether the Kingdom is pre, post or amillennial.

We should care about theological systems. And we want to interpret this Word more and even more carefully, circumspectly and copiously. But that’s just the beginning; apparently the preliminary stuff. Because we know far fewer who can read these same inspired, well parsed words, without teaching with a man-made filter over them.

More and more, along with others, we are learning to help each other to take a filter of shame and moralism off our reading of Scripture. And now we can’t stop talking or writing about it. In fact, our new Study Guide for The Cure has an exercise in it every chapter. It’s a game changer. Once I can see the Scriptures without the filter, my whole life can open up in front of me.

Heck, I might become a farmer after-all. I like iced tea.

John-one of the three amigos-part of the ever-growing tribe of grace.

If I’m in the Room of Good Intentions, striving to please God I may want to measure our effectiveness through an external criterion using the easiest measurable behaviors and convince myself that real change is taking place.

So, if I think the goal is to get our people to read their Bibles more, I might test how much people are initially reading their Bibles. Then I might teach on the need and command to read the Bible. Then maybe I’ll create a program that gives everyone a Bible and a chart and maybe even an incentive-reward program; like tickets to a local sporting event. And after maybe 3 months I’ll measure again to discover that folks are reading their Bible more. Then we’ll smile and be thankful that our community is growing in the discipline of reading the Bible. Check.

There are several problems with such a measure of evaluation: 1) Have I measured the right thing? 2) Have I encouraged a new heart condition or simply temporarily modified behavior? 3) Am I teaching people to comply and appease or obey from the heart? 4) Am I setting them up for eventual failure, guilt, shame and even less Bible reading a year from now? 5) Has the heart been effected in any way through the expectation that people should read their Bible more? 6) Have I appealed to the flesh or wooed the new nature by my efforts?

This same measurement assessment process can be enacted to test improvement in small groups, giving, attendance, missions, evangelism-whatever...And staff folk can have great statistics at job review time and we can all tell ourselves we’re good stewards…and such.

But none of it is worth a bag of denuded mulching salt when it comes to measuring spiritual health, spiritual maturity, or life in Christ. In fact, you may actually be teaching people to do wonderfully right things for terribly wrong reasons by ridiculously impotent means.

If instead, the “goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith”, then the methodology and the measurement and the behaviors being measured, even whether things need to be measured, might change completely!

I know this isn’t giving much help to folks who like to measure things and want to feel like they’re giving due diligence to stuff. And there is much right in trying to assess if what we’re doing and how we’re living is relevant, right, working, and making a difference.

But it is possible to prove nearly nothing by testing “success” through the most external, easily quantifiable events.

So, what might we want to measure? Well, if we’re measuring issues of the heart, then we might want to try to observe behaviors that reflect the heart. Getting a person to begrudgingly read their Bible more than they previously wanted to doesn’t prove health or ensure maturity any more than pushing a snail through a grain elevator will ensure the Chicago Cubs will win their division!

However, a person seeing God right and themselves right, will probably eventually cause them to read their Bible more and probably cause them to mature quite a bit, and receive love more and enjoy this life a lot, we’re thinking.

So, for folks who want to measure stuff, it might be a great exercise to spend some time figuring out how to encourage and discern heart freedom.

I actually might be able to measure to some degree how well a community is growing in spiritual health by observing whether we are:

*Being able to give and receive affirmation more freely
*Learning to give and receive love
*Learning to trust God and others with ourselves
*Believing we are “Christ in us” on our worst day
*Enjoying ourselves in the presence of God
*Not feeling condemned
*Beginning to experience safety in relationships
*Beginning to heal from unresolved issues
*Beginning to dream
*Becoming more vulnerable in what we allow others to know about us
*Giving some permission to protect us
*Risking to forgive before God and to pursue reconciliation with those who hurt us
*…and on and on.

Here’s the catch. You’ll probably discover these are much harder to quantify than small group attendance. But here’s hope. You may discover you can spend much less time assessing and more time enjoying. For an environment of grace has a “self-assessing, built-in validation” simply in the palpable and tangible sense and presence of God’s validation.

One Sunday morning in the funky community where the three of us are known, I asked from the pulpit how long it took for people to know they were in a “safe environment” where they might be able to be themselves and be known without fear or religious judgment. Every hand I could see went up when I worked my way down to “less than 5 minutes.” There is something palpable and tangible and experientially assessed in any Room of Grace.

…It’s God’s form of measurement. And it measures with His criterion. Our job is probably not much more than to just stay, as much as possible, in the right Room.

John, one of the three amigos, in the ever-growing tribe of grace…

We are convinced that many, if not most of us, have been reading the Word through a filter of our own shame or the religious moralism taught by other’s shame. It creates a presumed and inaccurate voice of God. It creates a presumed and inaccurate means to carry out the life offered in the Word. It creates a presumed and inaccurate view of ourselves and how God views us. It creates a presumed, inaccurate and artificial means to gain God’s favor and pleasure.

The exercise was a blast. We did it right out of the study guide for “The Cure”. For many of us, it was like we were wiping off windows covered with years of the grime and cloudy film that had for so long partially covered life-giving words. It was redemptive and freeing. Many were poking fun at themselves for how they’d read it and others joined in to admit their own folly. For some of us it was painful to begin to discover the deadening, man-made condemnation, or self-satisfied superiority we had built into our reading of the Bible years ago.

It’s a hugely important exercise and discipline this generation especially needs to learn. If the DNA of how I see the Word does not change, I will almost always default to either a Pharisaical or a self-condemning relationship with each passage I read. And the saddest part is that I will presume I’ve been transformed by the two-edged sword of the Living Word!

It is possible to read sacred words and denude them of power by my own presumption and not God’s intention. Ouch!

That’s why we finally devoted a huge section of “The Cure” study guide to such an exploration in every chapter.

I tell you, if you don’t take a group through “The Cure” study guide, you can still get to heaven, but you may have an obstructed view and there will be a two-piece daily limit on pie. (I could be wrong about this, but why take the chance?)

Truthfully, we can’t wait for you and your friends to discover whether you’ve been looking at Scripture with a filter or in unvarnished clarity.

We wrote on the cover of “The Cure”-“What if God isn’t who you think He is and neither are you?” As you begin to see God and yourself more clearly you’ll begin to see the Word more clearly. It may be equally true-if I read the Word more clearly, I will begin to see God and myself more clearly…and wonderfully.
John-one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace.

(…Well, there goes our attempts to get me booked in larger Christian venues.)

There is something disproportionately damaging when newly discovered capacity, gifting and talent is mixed with a sincere but immature ambition, clutching to a lofty spiritual goal.

I need to clarify. During those two decades I loved Jesus immensely. Not all my motives were self-centered. I had some of the greatest friends on the planet. We got to do some really rare, wonderful God things. We had more fun than any group of people should be allowed. In truth, I would probably do most all of it again. But I hurt some people…some I fear irreparably. I still look back and wonder how much beauty was squandered as we each slowly had to take our gloves and bats and go find something else to do with our time and gifts and love.

I’m now 59. I’m still capable of causing hurt, of burning all the ships in the harbor on any given day. I wish I could have another chance with that same group of people. I’m pretty sure I’ll never know a group like them again. I know they would say they love me and look back with great delight on our pictures of what we got to do. But if they had to answer honestly they might admit that my stubborn pride and need to be right eventually robbed a lot of the dream. I’m not blaming myself for the war in Vietnam, but this is my life. And unless my theology is way off, you only get one of them. So, allow me a moment to reflect. And give yourself a moment at this wayside to reflect, before you unwittingly risk spoiling a season you were made for.

Maybe being around the wise has had some impact. Maybe living in an environment of grace has broken through. Maybe this “Christ in me” reality does inevitably mature us over time. Maybe I’m now just too tired and my feet hurt-but I don’t see life the same now. Here’s what I didn’t know then, that I now know for minutes at a time.

*I preached grace and lived it with great affirmation and goodness…when there was little conflict. But I did not understand the power of grace to handle sin or broken dreams.

*I didn’t understand the sovereign, perfect and perfectly loving intention and ability of God. I didn’t yet trust that God was completely able to do His best for me, in His way and in His time, without me manipulating or overpowering the situation.

*I didn’t like His pace, or the influence He didn’t give, so I tried to create my own.

*I fought those who didn’t see it my way. I thought they would ruin this beautiful dream God had given us. In truth, the dream He had given us was us, getting to do whatever we did, together, in great love and delight.

*I didn’t allow almost anyone to tell me how I was affecting them. I am not easy to tell hard things to. People have had to dance around me, in trying to protect me, most of my life. I hate that. But I can at least now type the letters onto a page describing it.

*I had too much to lose. To fail, to not reach our goal, would further cement my shame story-that I wasn’t a person worthy of God doing something incredible through.

*I made myself the issue. That’s what seems to always happen when unresolved issues meet conflict or difficulty. People were reacting to me instead of us solving the actual problems, so we could go forward.

*I wanted to be great. Dang it! I did not want to write that. Wait, there’s more. I still want to be great. I’ve told people I’m free of that. But I’m not. I want every man, woman and child in the free world to think I’m the greatest human since Jimmy Dean. It’s just that back then I didn’t know how to give others access to me to look at what was behind that self-centeredness.

*I didn’t yet believe if you knew the worst about me that you would love me more, not less…so I was forced to try to figure out and fix my stuff on my own, while appearing to be deeply invested in allowing others in.

*I thought I was justified in my overbearing, overly-emotional response to being wronged.

*I was really quick and good with my words and could do great damage before anyone even knew what was happening. I could sound absolutely right and be absolutely wrong.

So there. There’s the seedy underbelly that those really close to me have come to know.

Here’s the deal. I don’t think maturity is about any of these messed up things getting fixed. I believe I’ll have many of them, in some measure, for the rest of my life. It’s my particular, built-in mixture of pain, unbelief, family, hurt, loss, and the Cuban missile crisis back in 62. But I am growing up. That simply means I am learning to receive the love of some trusted others. I am risking against incredible fear that it is possible that some others can know the worst about me and not have it cause them to love me less, but beautifully more. I’m telling on myself, telling the hidden failure I’m intending and watching the cycle get stopped in its tracks.

It’s not a straight line. It’s messy. My own son Caleb recently had to step into the ring with his dad and patiently and gently call me out when I was powering up with some hobbyhorse or other.

But the shame story is slowly being dismantled. I’m healthier and more free to love and give up and let go of than at any other time of my life. This is Christ in me.

And I’ve got protectors who are in it for the long haul. They know me. And they know how to call me off ledges and kindly kick me under the table when I start ramping up.

I used to think I squandered the best years I’d ever be given through my immaturity. And that the rest of the life would be just filler until I discovered coconut cream pie in the rest home. But I’m starting to wonder if growing health brings the hope of new seasons…if God times healing and maturity to match the wonder of new glimpses of destiny.

Anyway, I’ve got that going for me.

John, one of the three amigos, in the ever-growing community of grace.

#5-Dingle Peninsula, Ireland
#4-Venice, Italy
#3-Lake Louise, Canada
#2-Anywhere in Hawaii
#1-Augusta Georgia, sleeping, if necessary, in the lawnmower shed, during the Masters

I love the Masters. I do not like the politics and sometimes defiant backwardness of the Masters Club. But I love everything about the history, lore, and magic of the tournament played there each year. It is the greatest golf tournament in the world. I was there one year. On that week I lost my permission to ever again complain to God about anything.

This year the Masters outdid itself. God said to the angels, “Watch. I’ve been preparing this one a long time.”

Bubba Watson won the Masters. Oh, happy day! There is so much to like about Bubba Watson.

*He’s never had a swing coach. Ever.
*He’s never had a sports psychologist.
*He hits the ball further than I can run.
*He enjoys putting himself in positions where he’s forced to hit previously unimagined shots
*He cries ugly when he wins
*He admits that his nerves get the better of him almost every tournament
*He buttons the top button of his shirt, just because he can
*He loves Jesus with an innocent, playful and contagious faith
*He hangs out with the most fun and goofy group on the entire PGA tour. Hands down.

I’ve always thought the way a cynical and smug post-Christian culture would best have a chance at responding to the Gospel would be through Christ followers who were less worried about their “testimony” and more intent on living in authenticity, love, grace, humor, innocent absurdity and audacity. Non-believers expect us to try to look better behaved than them. It doesn’t impress them. They usually imagine it’s just an externally manufactured show. But someone more outrageously fun and funny, more disarmingly playful than them, without a single agenda to manipulate, that freaks people out. That can cause folk to reassess their lives.

Bubba Watson leads such a group on the PGA tour. His bible study on the road is filled with some of the coolest, funnest, funniest, goofiest, delightful, genuine, kind golfers on tour. They are contagious. Almost everyone on the tour enjoys them and wants to hang out with them. Believers and non-believers. Reporters flock around them. Fans chat it up with them. They are on Twitter often. They film themselves golfing through a course they created in their hotel lobby.

In their free time, after practice rounds, they deal with tension by making absurd and geeky music videos. The videos are so embarrassingly absurd, they are hilarious! These handsome, talented, wealthy stars making great fun of themselves.

I recently watched one of the players in that group, Ben Crane, so winsomely and naturally talk about God after winning a tournament that the golf announcer was genuinely disarmed and laughing along with him, not wanting it to end. It was great television, great life. I’m watching more and more athletes able to express themselves in such unforced and unrehearsed delight.

Its what I always dreamed could happen. That we could talk about Him in such a way, that we could live with Him in such a way, that instead of interviewers having to endure us, they instead couldn’t wait to interview us, because we were some of the most delightful, engaging, relevant, insightful and meaningful people they’d ever interview.

Almost immediately after he won, standing on the green, there they were-his Bible study buddies. The brilliant golf stars and music video goofs who have fallen deeply in love with Jesus…and each other. There was Ben Crane, Ricky Fowler, Aaron Baddeley, Hunter Mahan, and many of the others-hugging, laughing, crying and playing like kids who’d just discovered what balloons filled with helium can do to your voice.

I honestly don’t even think they have a plan. I don’t think this is their “evangelism technique”. I think they’re just being them in Christ, loving others and almost unconsciously letting the joy and pure goodness of Christ to come out. I hope they never figure it out. Because it might change and become forced. Someone might try to market it and turn it into another 501C3.

We’ve been endeavoring to model and teach this way of life, Bill Bruce and I. And we’re finding more and more each year, who are taking the risk to trust to believe God enjoys it more than we do.

Meanwhile, I just want to emulate Bubba and his buddies everywhere I go.

No, I want more than that. I want somehow that one of them would read this…and someday invite me to hang out with them. For they are heroes of mine. Not because they are great golfers. But because they have figured out what love looks like when Jesus is trusted.

Rock on boys.

John, one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace.

I tell people that I would make the world’s worst POW. I would sell out after 3 minutes of water depravation. I drink a lot of water in a day so I like to cut myself some slack, knowing that this is most people’s 30 minutes. 

I know without doubt, that I need people around me. Even when I can’t stand the people, or when I get hurt; I am absolutely convinced I need to let others into my life. This is one of the greatest pains for many of us who long for such a community, we don’t have it, and we don’t see it on the horizon. I say this fully knowing the privilege I have to be around those who are steeped in this way.

We know this isn’t easy. This is why Truefaced exists; to try and give you the tools to invite others into this way of life.  The Cure small group experience, blogs, podcasts, Cure Experience Events, etc.... we are trying to give language to this way of life so you can experience it with others and speak the same language. 

I get fantastic opportunities to share my heart and use these same tools, but I can go to that place, where I imagine so many fellow carriers of this message go. I can’t carry this message the way that I wish I could. I don’t have the voice, the following, the position, the platform, etc… if I could just… I imagine you can fill in your own personal angst here.
And while you might be thinking I just set you up for a post on how thankful you should be; instead I say hallelujah. In the midst of our mixed motives and emotions; God is powerfully propelling this unquenchable desire. 

This desire to know, to live, to speak, to share His incredible Good News… it’s good news. It is good news that we can’t help but want to be prophetic about the gospel once again. It is good news that we want to carry this gospel to the ends of the earth. And while we may not know how to move this message as far and fast as we would like in our communities, it is more than ok to hope and pray God would use us to do that very thing. That is the exact prayer of the Truefaced team all the time.

But we get to carry this a little differently than we might have carried our first evangelical efforts. Bruce is fond of telling us, “You don’t sell grace, you offer it as a gift to the ready. And if you realize someone isn’t ready, just love them. Grace has time. This is a hard banner to carry when you are more used to measurable outcomes and control. It takes an insane trust in our new identity in Christ to wait; to offer love even when it seems like it is dropping into the void.

So with that said, Thank you. You are the men and women who are drinking deeply of this message of grace and freedom; turning your relationships on their heads with this original good news. We carry this message together, for our friends, for our kids, for our church communities, for the thousands of people that you see daily who can’t fathom a Jesus who loves them. This is a love that could shake off the shackles and apathy that bind those we love, and those we wish would let us love them. We are praying that our newest resources will be the catalyst for just such a reality in your life and for those you influence.

For those of you who haven't seen it yet. Here is a page where you can preview The Cure Small Group Experience online. 

http://truefaced.com/thecure-preview

Hmm. Me filling in for John Lynch.
Imagine buying Springsteen tickets and instead, getting Springfield, as in Rick.
Instead of Born to Run, you get Jessie's Girl.
It's not that Bruce is greater than Rick. (Well, of course, he is, but that's not the point.) It's that Bruce is what you signed up for. It's what you've waited on, what you've paid for.
So, to my spiritual Springsteen, (that'd be you, Lynch) thanks for the space. To John’s loyal followers, sorry. Bruce will be back in the next couple of days, I'm sure.
I've read enough of your comments to know that we sit on the same bus. We've embraced the grace theology wholeheartedly. We've risked it all on this being the truth, the Original Good News. We've put on that robe of righteousness, and it fits. It's who we are. We can't screw that up, and we've finally come to believe that is true.
But many of us haven't totally accepted that the kind of grace community that John talks about is available for us. Have we?
I mean, we've all tried it before. Right? And we came out on the other end hurt.
Or worse, we came out numb.
I know you people because I am one of you, one of the millions who read John Lynch's blogs and buy “The Cure” and “The Cure Study Guides” (Millions is what you told me to say, right John?) and think: If only I lived in Phoenix. Or, if only John and his Truefaced buddies lived in my hometown. Then, I'd be part of a community of grace. I might even be the vice mayor of this community.
If I had a dollar for every small group and Bible study I'd been in, I'd have, like $20, which come to think of it doesn't sound like much. But 20 small groups – now that sounds impressive. Or, perhaps oppressive.
Every one of them, eventually, died off. Most never had life to begin with.
Now why is that? How is it possible that so many well-intended Bible studies or small groups had so little impact?
For one, they were too sterile. Authenticity is not sterile in this messy, ugly, fallen world. Pretending it is, particularly in a small group of believers, is just a waste of time. In our real lives, nothing is a pretty picture of constant peace. We struggle. We doubt. We fight. We get hurt, and we hurt others. In our groups, too often, we wear nice polo shirts, pray nice prayers and eat nice snacks with clean hands.
Or, at least we used to. Eventually, most of us saw that pretension for what it was. We left it behind and replaced it with nothing.
So, here I am, on the verge of jumping in that pool again. It's too much to stand on the deck, sweating in the Deep South heat and humidity of Atlanta when a pool is right there. Staying with the metaphor, jumping back in the public pool will have its downside. I'll see a lot of shapes and figures that aren't that great to look at. Those people looking back at me will think the same thing. It also might be too cold in there. And likely, someone has just peed in it.
It really is safer on the outside, with my shirt on. But it’s so stinkin' hot.
If John is willing, I'll report back in a few months. Armed with a fresh perspective – grace is a gift, not a sledgehammer – and a tolerance for people who haven't seen our friends at Truefaced model this lifestyle so well, for so long. I'm certain I'll be kinder, more patient and less willing to bail than in the past. If this doesn't work, I'll get out, let the sun dry me off, perhaps pout a few minutes while I get sweaty again. Then I'll give it another go. Because I'm convinced we're not meant to do this thing alone.

This last week a total stranger walked up to me and said, “those two blogs about the neighbor’s dogs, oh, those were the best ever!”

I wrote those like three years ago! I couldn’t believe someone in North Dakota would have read those pieces and actually remembered them. It was so delightful to share that moment. We were instantly friends. The story is one of my very favorites. In that moment, I realized I needed to present it for some of our newer readers. So, at the risk of giving you something that will take you a few minutes to read, I give you, “Living in the Light” and “Living in the Light Part 2” for your viewing enjoyment.

The Lynches have a nice backyard. It used to be crab grass mixed with dirt and a rusted swing set. Over the years we’ve added a pool and some dear friends surprised me one birthday with a giant, tiled “grilling center” and glorious fireplace. Wealthy and famous people come by just to gawk. I am the envy of nearly every man, everywhere.

The only drawback is we have two neighbor women with two incessantly barking dogs. Any hint of activity from our yard and they start yapping. My nearly perfect dog, Bali, is tempted to want to bark back. I’m sure they’re saying:

“What’s your problem? Master won’t let you bark? Bummer. It’s a lot of fun. You ought to try it.”

I’ve tried reasoning with the dogs: “Hey, big fella, what’s all the racket? We’re nice people over here…There’s no need to yell.” I’ve yelled back at them. I’ve barked at them like a big, scary dog. Nothing works.

Recently, I was cleaning our pool’s leaf basket with the garden hose. The dogs were out and barking. In a moment’s decision I aimed the garden hose over the fence and sprayed where I thought they might be. To my great delight, they stopped! It took only a few seconds to do the trick. After a minute they started barking again. So I fired another round over the fence. This time I heard: “What is going on!” Then a scream. Then, all within about a half second, “Who is doing this? Stop it! Oh, the nerve. I can’t believe-Who is spraying me?! Were you spraying my dogs?!” Then more shrieks of moral indignation.

I panicked. I had to make a quick decision. What do I do? I could hide, but the water clearly came from my yard. I could tell her the truth and apologize. Nope. I’m a pastor and they’re not apparently Christian folk. So I called back over the fence. “Hello, it’s John, your neighbor. I’m so sorry. I’m cleaning my leaf basket and well, I must have missed with the hose while I was cleaning out some of the debris. I’m so sorry.” She looked over the fence at me standing there with the hose and leaf basket, corroborating my story. She quickly responded, “Oh, I am so sorry for over-reacting. I thought, for a moment, someone was spraying my dogs. Will you forgive me?”

Magnanimously, I responded, “Not to worry. It was my fault. I’m sure sorry.”

“No,” she answered back, “I’m sorry for my rudeness.”

Whew! Dodged that bullet. It was several hours later before I reflected upon my deed. Here’s the problem. Not that I lied. Yes, that, but more, that I thought I must lie, must hide. That somehow I must cover for God, to prove, especially to “outsiders”, that I am above the ability to wrong others for my good. At it’s source is this thought:

“God, I’m not sure you’d take care of me when I get in a mess like this, so I’ll just take things into my own hands and get out of it on my own.”

It is the same logic that allows me to lie about other things. It is a fear based, shame based expediency overintegrity. Among fifty other problems, it leaves others not sure they can trust me. Yes, I’ve got the alibi, but I’m not sure everyone’s always convinced. That’s not great for a man who wants to be trusted on a Sunday morning and every other hour of the week.

If you asked my neighbor today if I was telling the truth I think she might say,

“Well, I’m not sure. He did have the evidence. But it sure seemed like there was a lot of wet patio for just a moment’s miss-aim. But what am I gonna do? I’m already in enough trouble with God without calling His preachers liars.”

This truth will never change: the more influence, position or audience we have to lose, the more susceptible we are to being dishonest or disingenuous.

What if I had told her the truth?

“Hey, I’m sure sorry. I didn’t mean to get you wet. I was just trying to get your dogs to stop barking. That was wrong for me to do. Will you please forgive me? I don’t have the right to do that.”

What would have happened? She might have been outraged in the moment. But she would’ve known I was authentic. “That religious guy may be a jerk, but he’s at least an authentic jerk!”

Then I could have gone over later with a peace offering, maybe some dog bones and had a great conversation. Eventually we’d probably laugh about it, both better friends. Maybe she’d even be more sensitive to her dog’s barking. Most importantly, I might not be another installment of “those religious hypocrites. They’re no different than anyone else.”

To do that, I must continue to grow in trusting God that His arm is around me, that He has already seen every knucklehead thing I will do in this lifetime and chooses still to adore me as much as His only Son. I must believe that He is able to convince that dear woman that He is real and good, even when His servants aren’t. I must believe that I don’t have to cover for God with a lie.

I preach and teach and write about these truths of authenticity. But, as Paul says in Philippians 3:12, (Lynch paraphrase)

“I teach all these things, but I haven’t yet got it all down. I still fail, a lot. I still am not fully mature. But I can only go on, trusting Him more, until I convince my own heart that I can live alive and authentically in His righteousness. And so I keep pursuing Christ. I don’t beat myself up for my past, I don’t pretend to be doing it all right in the present. But this I do: I keep reaching forward, in this moment. I want to know what life feels like, looks like when I apprehend the full experience of the Beautiful One who apprehended me.”

Who God seems to enjoy most (David, Moses, Paul, Peter, Rachael, Jacob) are real people who fail real often, in real time. People who need a present Savior, not those who bluff like they don’t. God is not angry, God is not disgusted. God just continues to invite us closer, so that we are free to live, free to be free, free to stop hiding, free to be authentic

I really hadn’t thought a lot about her since the incident. I guess I just sort of thought that I had blown the whole opportunity to apologize. That it might even be best for all concerned if she never had to hear what I had actually been doing. She was just the most recent in a long list of those, over the years, whom I had “repositioned” the truth to, in order to avoid an awkward situation. At best, maybe I thought that if everything lined up right, and she and I stumbled upon each other in an exactly appropriate setting, well, then maybe I would be able to tell her and make things right.

But my friend Bruce asked a number of you, in a Friends of Truefaced letter, to ask me about how things turned out with her. Thanks a lot buddy! Several of you commented, in kind and perhaps not as kind ways that I might want to consider facing that little issue. Since then God’s been gently but firmly nudging my heart, “So, John, what do you think we should do about this?”

Well, I sure wasn’t going to go over there to assuage my guilt from a “perhaps not as kind” reader’s post. I wanted to do it for right reasons, not compliantly checking off a sin by going through the motions with a certain behavior. I hate that like I hate biting into something hard in a fast food hamburger.

And so God had to rescue me.

In the late afternoon on Saturday, after returning home from working on Sunday’s message, Stacey called me to say that she had been talking longer than expected to some of the mom’s of the group going to homecoming with Carly. She’d be coming later and would push back our dinner arrangements. I suddenly now had a chance to take my dog Bali for a walk.

…and that’s when it happened.

There she was. Her name is Lynn. The woman I had lied to. And suddenly she is walking toward me on the other side of the street. And, unlike every other time I’ve ever seen her out, she has no dogs with her. Thirty yards away, closing fast. I thought something like, “God this is you, isn’t it? You set up this moment.”

I was overwhelmed. What do I do? Then at about twenty yards, “I can’t do this. I’m not ready. I haven’t showered, my breath is bad…and anyway, I don’t want to freak her out. I don’t want to come off as a stalker or something. I barely know her. I mean she’s got her Ipod going. I don’t want to frighten her. But thank You God for bringing this reminder that I should talk to her. And I will. I’m gonna do that. At a more appropriate time, I’m gonna go see her and apologize. So, thanks again, for this really clear reminder.”

But I knew better. I knew that this was His gift to me. And that it was not for a reminder. In about the time I had to decide on the day of the hose incident, I had to decide whether to smile and keep walking or go across the street and talk to her.

And so, I made up my mind to just keep walking, to avoid this present awkwardness, like I have done so often, all my life.

But apparently nobody informed my feet.

I found myself crossing over towards her and from somewhere inside, without formal permission, a voice came out, saying, “Hello. May I talk to you?”

She pulled out her earpieces, a little startled.

“May I talk to you?” I repeated. And then these words rushed out of my mouth: “Hey, I just wanted to speak to you about that deal with the hose the other day.”

Immediately, a giant grin broke over her face. She knew.

“I really was trying to spray your dogs,” I said sheepishly. “I’m so sorry. They were barking and-”

She wouldn’t let me finish.

“Oh my gosh!” she interrupted. “I was so caught off guard when it happened. I wanted so much to tell you right then that it was alright. I am so embarrassed by their barking. I don’t know what to do. And I thought how humane! What better way to stop their barking than just spraying them with water? You can spray them any time you want.”

We were both desperately trying to get words out before the other.

“That is so kind,” I said. “I just didn’t want you to think that I was the kind of person who would lie like that to you about such a thing. I obviously am, but I didn’t want you to think I was.”

She interrupted me, laughing, “Oh, thank you so much for saying that! I’m sure I would have done exactly the same thing. Bless you. Thank you for risking to tell me this. Bless you. And again, you may spray my dogs anytime you want.”

As we both started walking past each other, I shook my head and said, “You are so kind. You could have responded twenty others ways. Thank you. And, if I ever do it again, I will at least call out to make sure you’re not standing there.”

And that quickly, the moment I had grown to dread, was over.

God let me make a friend on Saturday. And He helped me off a hook I’d placed myself upon. How good is my God? Before the world began, before hoses were invented, He saw this day and actually went to the care of strategically placing Lynn, alone on a walk, without her dogs, in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

The rest of the walk I was almost skipping, free from the weight I was carrying. I came home and immediately called half a dozen friends who’d walked this brief journey with me. I shared it Sunday in my message and now I share it with all of you. Thanks for walking it with me.

And the moral of the story is…I’m not totally sure yet. But I do know this: God is really good…and I get to spray those dogs anytime I feel like it.

He waited in the background. Until the students hanging around after chapel had dispersed. A handsome, bright, thoughtful, Midwestern college sophomore. He walked up to me, looked into my eyes and said something like this: “When I first came to believe in Jesus a few years ago, it all was so powerfully alive and real. I couldn’t believe I was given this incredible new life. Everything seemed vital. I felt great about me and was stunned at the love and wonder of God. I knew He was really there and that He really liked me. Life was suddenly very important and people deeply worth caring about. I wanted everything this new world was about.” He then paused before saying, “What happened?” Before I could answer, he answered himself.

“Looking back, it seems like the very pursuit of trying to get closer to Him has made Him seem further away. I’ve been pretty miserable for quite awhile now. I beat myself up for doing it wrong. I beat myself up for not doing enough. I beat myself up for not being able to figure it out. I beat myself up that He wouldn’t want to be close to me. I have no idea what happened. The worst part is that it feels like He’s grown weary and disappointed with me.”

This is not an over-sensitive student with an over-active conscience. He’s a really well-adjusted young man, who feels betrayed. He knows its nonsensical to blame God, but he’s tired of blaming himself for not knowing what he’s done wrong.

He represents the oft-unexpressed experience of millions. Our very pursuit of trying to get closer to God has made many of us feel further away. And now we are religiously uptight, second guessing our motives, and looking for some religious experience to make it all real again. He doesn’t doubt God is real, he just doubts that he’ll ever be able to figure out where it went-that unforced, beauty of sacred awe and wonder and playful joy.

Please don’t smugly dismiss his state as a young believer pining for that magical first season of experiencing God. He’s not describing infatuation. He’s describing a real, living, breathing relationship of worship, love and adoration. He’s describing the experience of loving and being loved. He’s describing a relationship he had every reason to believe would continue in its richness and unfettered delight.

So, what happened?

We’ve been trying to learn helpful and liberating words to his question for decades. The sad truth is that probably he unwittingly did it to himself. Like Peter on the water, he was walking by faith, overwhelmed that this kid in middle America could be so deeply and intentionally loved by the very God of the universe. And then something crept in. Shame maybe. A season of dryness or less dramatic day-to-day. And he wasn’t prepared for it, this tempo-changing, rhythm of God’s wooing and love. From the loud tapes of his existing insecurity still playing in the background, it would cause him to think he’d again done something to mess up the relationship. This might cause him to doubt if he’d ever been worth being loved like this in the first place. In that moment, instead of resting in the peace of undeserved love, he changes the terms of the relationship and sets out to prove to God that he’s worthy of His love. But how can anyone be worthy of the love of Jesus? So, he must never let himself rest, be content or at peace. He must become more consecrated, more diligent, always pushing to feel something approaching enjoyment and acceptance from God again. There was always more to do, more to prove, more to maintain, appearances to keep. Soon he would find himself drawn to teachers, mentors and books who would unwittingly dangle that carrot of what he could do to get back into God’s favor. And each time the effort would feel right for awhile…but always, invariably, each time, it would send him deeper into hidden disillusionment, feeling like there was something particularly wrong with him. He would live daily with the picture of God on the other side of his failures-justifiably impatient, frustrated and growingly disdainful of such slow growth.

This scenario is played out tens of millions of times each day all over the world. It is what happens when we try to make ourselves worthy of Christ’s love. It is what happens when we lose confidence in the righteousness we’ve been given and set out to manufacture one of our own. It is what happens when we try to employ old methods of trying to will and change myself into something else instead of trusting that who I now am is completely and already completely changed.

Many of us, we’ve been hoodwinked.

Love, lived out from a completely new nature is still hard work. But it’s the right work. The hard work that tries to prove you’re someone you’ve lost confidence you ever were, is wasted work. It is crippling, anesthetizing work.

…And this is why you and I get up each morning and keep risking this trust in what Christ has done in us, instead of trying to learn to run even faster and harder. Because we must model it and offer it to this next generation, many of whom have already taken the bait…

…And all of this was true-until this last weekend. I was at the board meeting dinner for Truefaced on Friday evening, stayed the entire meeting on Saturday and hosted with Stacey a post-board meeting dinner at our home.

And it was one of the finest weekends of our lives.

In those 24 hours we heard Dave Dravecky and his wife Jan share about how their world has been turned upside down by these truths of the Original Good News they’ve read in our books over the last twelve months. In Bill and Grace Thrall’s backyard, I sat there stunned, humbled, grateful and overwhelmed. God was revealing shining hope we might otherwise never know until heaven. And there was food, dessert and beverage the likes of which I may not see for quite some time.

The next morning began with over an hour of each revealing some of our most real challenges, pain, loss, fear and devastation, mixed with brave hope, trust and deep encouragement. I heard God’s Word applied to real life by business executives and educators more deftly, confidently and articulately than I had ever preached. I watched Bruce McNicol lead a group of men and women into facing the most difficult financial season of our ministry history with grace, kindness, protection, honesty and vulnerability. No one had a personal agenda. There was no leveraging, no finger pointing, no blaming, no attack, no grandstanding. I watched great love, great beauty, faith and courage in the midst of incredible stress and cold, hard, immediate reality.

That evening fell on St. Patrick’s Day. Around our kitchen island, I gave a series of Irish toasts, in full accent, to these board members and their spouses as we each held a shot of fine Irish whiskey. I dreamt aloud that these truths of relational grace would become the majority voice in the land of my ancestors and all of theirs.

After dinner, around my fireplace, we circled our chairs and shared some more, because we were unwilling to leave. We were risking to speak to each other without masks. It was not the stuff easily tied in a bow. There was all manner of facing present sadness we would never have chosen. All manner of trusting God even amidst questions of how we’ve understood His sovereignty following unthinkable loss. No judgment, no correction, no fixing, no one-upmanship. Only safety, deep caring, a place to be known, a place to reveal what might stay hidden.

I sat there marveling at how this board was stunningly modeling the very truths we long to carry to this world. And in a season where my own confidence has been rocked, I felt the strength and confidence that comes from placing your heart under the protection of others.

And even as the night drew colder, between the fire and this sacred love, I needed no jacket.

…And I found myself thinking words I’d never before thought-“I deeply long for the next board meeting.”

This way of life, it is transferable. Grab this book and study guide. Find some you want to love and be loved by. Experience The Cure.

John-one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace.

“…There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from the fear of opponents, who have the laws on their side and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in the new things until they have long experienced them.”

Carriers of the Original Good News, of our righteousness in Christ, of living out of who Christ says we are on our worst day, we are very familiar with these sentiments. It caused us to write a piece that was recently put to film. We sincerely hope you find yourself and many others standing near you, in reading these 21st century words:

“Here’s to the dreamers, the zealots, the picture painters of the barely yet visible. The trouble makers, who disturb normalcy, who stand in the street calling out the opening stanzas of a new Reformation. Who refuse to allow the Church to wither into smug and smothering irrelevance. You can call them heretics, rebels, lawless, or antinomians. You can quote them, misquote them, misunderstand them, hide from them or violently disagree with them. The only thing you can no longer do is stop them. For they are now beginning to articulate a Cure. And the upwardly weary, the cynical, the self-imprisoned and dogma imprisoned are beginning to find their voice through them. And a restoration of grace, of living out of new identity for the purpose of love, it is moving unyieldingly forward. You may call them disturbing or alarming, even unbiblical. But we call them heroic lovers. For daring to push against what is, they may actually be drawing us back to our first love, the Original Good News.”

I wonder if people who laugh well really do live longer. I wonder when I’m pretending to be famous, waving at people in public, if they think I’m funny or just annoying. I wonder if I’ll be funny when I’m old. I wonder if God and I will make each other laugh when I get Home. I wonder if one of the clearest indications of those who have trusted God’s grace is the ability to suspend the tyranny of urgency, to enjoy the ever-present humor in even hard seasons. I wonder after I’m gone, if people will do impersonations of me and laugh in fond remembrance. I wonder if I’d run for political office and refused to tear down an opponent and used lots of humor, if I could have won. I wonder where that carpet layer is, who one rainy evening, in Connecticut, told stories to a room full of people and had me laughing so hard I thought I would wet myself.

I wonder if the people I trust the most with me are ones who laugh the best with me. I wonder if most of the best evenings of my life involved laughter. I wonder if part of maturity in righteousness involves learning to give humor that builds up and doesn’t manipulate or hurt others. I wonder if beautifully woven humor actually does heal and free. I wonder if the clearest indication of my health, is being able to enjoy humor. I wonder if friends will forget my unkindness and remember my playfulness. I wonder if what I’ve been placed on this earth to do was to affirm others by allowing them a place, a home, by the ritual and rhythm of safe humor.

John, one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace…and affirming laughter.

Last week I’m flying into Indianapolis to speak two main sessions at a conference. After the 1st talk, I’ve also been scheduled to meet and speak with a group of 40 from a wonderful faith community in Kentucky.

It’s that one I am most anxious about.

For I am not on my game. And I so much want them to see me on my game. This group has been vitally employing Truefaced across the face of their ministry. I’m a huge fan of what they’ve been daring to live out with thousands. And I so want them to see, in me, and in my insights and answers, a validation that they have chosen well, living in the Room of Grace.

And I am currently in a season where I am battling something not unlike a free-floating, anxiety. My heart is good. I love my life. But its like my body is betraying me. Sometimes I find myself cold, shaky and constricted; like adrenaline is running rampant throughout my body. That is not a good thing for a speaker who’s entire approach to speaking is built around timing, rhythm, cadence, transitions and volume control.

The first main session goes wonderfully. Once I’m running around on stage, I pretty much can suspend distraction from anything else.

But then onto this gathering, where I will have no notes, and will probably be asked to speak, off the cuff, on many controversial subjects. I take a deep breath and walk into the room…

There they are.

Smiling at me, like they all know a secret they’re about to tell. They’ve been waiting for this moment. They have not come to ask me anything. They don’t want anything from me. They’ve asked to meet with me for one reason-to lavish love and appreciation upon me. They have assembled so I could take back home to our team a message of how deeply grateful they are for these truths that have transformed their lives and the lives of their friends. They begin to tell me redemption stories. They affirm and bless and affirm and bless. At first I felt embarrassed and clumsy, like I should say something wise and profound, to prove worthy of what was being said. But, in the kindness and gentle strength of their words and expressions, it dawns on me that I should not deflect this. Regional members of the tribe of grace are meeting each other on the road. And blessing and affirmation are the gifts they exchange.

Then they ask if they may pray over me. Not to fix me, not because they were sad for me. Not because it was the religious thing to do to close our time. But because they thought it to be the highest honor they could give me…to stand with, around and amidst what we are doing and what it costs. To bring us all into the midst of Jesus and proclaim our common need, and proclaim how He has met all our needs all along.

And I felt peace. And calm. And safety. And destiny. And love. The peace of sensing God saying, “How about this, huh? Before the world began I put this little soirée together, my boy! I’ve got many more of these along the way. Just relax and believe them and let Me inhabit their words by trusting that I will act upon them. These are some of my most mature and delightful servants I’ve picked for tonight. I hope you liked it.”

I don’t remember walking back to my room. But I still carry with me the power of that evening.

Here is what I think I am beginning to learn in this season. God does not need me to prove the rightness of this Original Good News by being on my game. In a message that is about learning how to meet needs in loving and allowing ourselves to be loved, it might be nice if this messenger allowed himself to be loved every now and then. It might actually validate the message and give others a chance to do what they want to do most with their lives-meet the needs of another in love.

And so, this 59 year old is maturing in this season of chills and constricting adrenaline rushes. And, at least, for that evening in a side room of the Marriot Hotel in Indianapolis, the feeling of contentment, affirmation, delight, awe, and sacred worship-it was all worth the cold.

So, this is The Cure, for even such a one as me.

John-one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace.

Scripture is replete with the concept that I have died with Christ. But it also teaches that I must die daily. Yikes! What in the world is that? Perhaps some of the most spooky, frightening, ridiculous, shame driven, damaging and dangerous teaching in the history of the Church has been built upon a filtered teaching of such verses.

Most often you’ll hear or read an explanation something like this: “He died for me, but it’s now up to me to die daily to make less of me. I must promise and fight with all my power to kill my evil desires and bad behaviors. If I love God enough, I should be able to pull this off.”

And you’ll hear all sorts of “man-up” slogans, like, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” It all sounds so heroic and valiant. It sounds like God is asking for you to make something of yourself, by yourself, by finding a way to get less of yourself.

These verses are appealed to as part of the groundwork for a performance theology of man-made independent, self-effort. It invariably plays into my deep fallen longing to desperately try to assuage my shame before God by something I can do to pay Him back.

And the result?

I guess that there would gradually be less and less of me and more and more of Him. Doesn’t that sound right?

Except its not.

Not at all.

Remember? I’ve got all of Jesus I’m ever going to have. And He doesn’t want less of me. He’s fused Himself with me. He wants to see all of me in full living expression! His goal is not to pare me down to a mere shell of myself filled only with God. Why would He want that? He loves me. Remember? He made me to love. Remember? He made me to love Him. Remember? It’s Christ in me. And its me in Christ. Remember?

Whatever it means to die daily has to jive with whatever being crucified with Christ means.

Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”

Then Paul describes the nature of what this death will reveal daily in my life:

“…and the life which I now life in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

Wow!!!!!

Look at the distinction of what he declares to be the result of having died with Christ. To die daily means to choose to “live by faith (trust) in the Son of God.”

To die daily is for John Lynch to say, “No longer do I live this life by the self-sufficient, self-protective, self-defensive best efforts of my own old strategy. I trust His life in me for any good that will now come out of me. Every day, I have to make that choice to die to my “right” to self-protective strength of my own independent effort.

*I will live out of who He says I am on my worst day.
*I will trust the Spirits power over my sin instead of my will power, promises, or resolve.
*I will trust His love of me as motivation rather than the ought of obligation.
*I will trust the power of the resurrection which lives in me to fight sin for me.
*I will allow others into my hidden stuff, so that Christ may protect me through them.
*I will learn to believe that Christ took my shame identity with Him to the Cross.
*I will learn to believe that Christ gave me a completely shame-free identity at the Cross.
*I will each day choose to live out of the total lack of God’s condemnation.
*I will chose to stop giving myself permission to live out of my own condemnation.
*I will grow to trust in the redemption found in Christ’s shed blood for every failure.
*I will die daily to the lie that I ought to, should be more than I am.
*I will die daily to the lie that I am not enough.
*I will die daily to the lie that one day I will be almost righteous enough.
*I will die daily to imagining that I have the power to kill sin by my good intentions.
*I will die daily to imagining that I have the power to manage my sin.
*I will daily grow to enjoy this new life of His power and freedom beyond my wildest dreams.

Now, that’s a death we can live with…

John-one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace

It looked as though they’d packed in the dark…while maneuvering through a wind tunnel.

The mom was exasperated. The pre-teen daughter was full of answerless questions such ask when they’re tired, irritable, and just want their mom’s attention. The mom gave the short and exasperated responses one gives when they are publically embarrassed and just want to be left alone for five minutes to figure out next steps.

Eventually she asked me if I lived in Phoenix. I told her I did.

She looked into my eyes and said, “We’re moving there. My daughter and I. We’re starting over.”

Her voice contained a mixture of fear, false bravado, and the thinnest tenor of hope.

We spoke for a bit until her daughter reclaimed her full attention.

The mother looked back at me, feeling the need to apologize for the commotion that could ensue for the rest of the trip. She said, “I’m very sorry.”

I smiled and told her not to be. Inside, I braced myself for a potential four hours of flying horror.

Then, within minutes, almost instinctively, they curled up with each other and fell fast asleep for nearly the entire flight.

And I sat there for much of the four hours, imagining their story. A beautiful young woman falls in love in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has so many dreams. They have a daughter. He works in a factory, but they’re getting by. The economy goes south. He gets laid off and now drinks too much. She works two jobs while raising a daughter now mostly by herself. He has an affair, mostly to childishly prove to himself he’s still a man. She discovers it. And in a blind rage of betrayed trust, a car is hastily packed and a driver is paid to haul it across the country. It cuts a third off of what she has remaining from before her husband spitefully shut off the bank account. And now the mother and daughter are sitting next to me, on their way to a new everything. They’ve chosen Phoenix because they’d been there once to visit a relative.

Just an hour ago, I was judging this woman for how poorly she was parenting her daughter. Now, asleep in each other’s arms, they both look incredibly and sublimely heroic.

I could have the story all wrong. But the fact that the daughter was with her, was enough grounds for me to suspect I might not be far off.

When they awoke, as we made our final approach, they were both now so kind and tender to each other. They just needed sleep. They just needed to regroup. They just needed to remind each other that in a world pulled out from them both, that they would not pull away from each other.

And this occurred to me again:

*Not only Christ believers are heroic.
*Not only Christ believers can love sacrificially.
*Not only Christ believers can continue to have hope in near hopelessness.
*Not only Christ believers desperately need each other.
*Not only Christ believers desperately need to know the surpassing love of a God who loves
them more than they love themselves.

I wish I could tell you that in those next five minutes of waiting for the cabin door to open, I shared the love of Christ and now that mom is a small groups leader in our church.

That moment never happened. They were preoccupied, down on the ground, increasingly concerned about a missing shoe that apparently had slid several rows forward.

Before we got up, I caught her eye. I smiled and nodded to her. I was trying to say with my eyes that I was proud of her. Trying to say that she was not alone. Trying to say that she and her daughter are not far from the Kingdom.

What do I know? They may both know Him more tenderly than I.

I do know this:

The Kingdom is found by those who know they can’t make it without the King.

“Jesus, you love them both more than I know how to fathom. Bring them to Your safety. I do not ask as though you need to be reminded. I ask because you love it when I’m moved to do so…

…and thank You for finding me…wandering around with belongings spilling all over.

This entire process is written down for us in chapter five of “The Cure”.

I only know it might be experienced something like this. One day, you’ll awaken, too tired, too weary, disgusted and shattered. Someone will say something that will trigger something. And suddenly you’ll be hit square in the face with this thought, as for the first time: “I’ve been going this alone. Somewhere back there, I stopped trusting that God could or would restore, defend, protect and fight for me. So, I went it alone. And I lost the tenderness of my relationship with God.”

And your only thought will be to run to Him. Then you discover before taking your first step that He long ago ran to you and has been standing beside you every single moment of this madness.

And you will become keenly aware of how ill you have grown. You will describe it accurately now. It is bitterness. You will confess this to your God, stumbling over yourself to get it all out. This suddenly will become more important than rehearsing again all the accusations of the wrong you have suffered.

Then you will admit to your God what you both know: you’ve played, in self-protective pride, the role of judge and jury against your offender…And it has been killing you.

Then you will choose to give it to Him. All of it. A moment before it would have been the most difficult thing in the world to do. But now, at this moment, seeing the endless love, sovereign ability and willingness of your God, it is the only thing you want to do in the world.

You trust. You place your fortunes, reputation and all sense of justice into His hands.
You trust that God is completely, absolutely for you. And that He will make no mistakes regarding you. And that you can now pour out every hurt, complaint, the continuing horrible consequences to your life-and leave it there with him. He is not playing you mocking you, making an example of you or any such lie. He is totally for you, with you, in you, over you, in the middle with you, carrying you, endlessly in love with you.

You are choosing in that moment to be done with carrying what you were never meant to carry. This is called forgiving the other-for your sake. It is between God and you. And it lets you only off the hook. In an instant it takes every one of those embedded barbs out of your heart. You are free.

Later, you may have the opportunity to go to that offender and seek their repentance so you can forgive them-for their sake.

How will know you actually did what we just spoke of? This: you’ll find yourself going to that person no longer to hear them say some magic words of groveling that would finally free you. No. You’ve already been freed. You’ll go to them as a freed lover, wanting their freedom.

And then you’ll walk into the rest of your life in great joy and purpose and peace…

And that moment will be as miraculous as any you’ll experience until you are home in the land where great pie is available 24-7.

It is available right now, right here, right where you are. If you look to your right, that’s Him. He’s been there all along. Off with you then. My work here is done. The two of you know how to take it from here.

John, one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace…

“What about the forgiveness I can’t give myself? How do I forgive myself?”

Bill and Bruce would do this much better, but they’re probably on some Polynesian island with friends, drinking fun concoctions from the shells of coconuts. So, today I’m all you’ve got.

Ready?

To forgive myself demands I not only trust the shed blood of Jesus to completely purchase my salvation with God in heaven. I must be absolutely convinced it allows Him to never be disgusted with me while I am maturing into who He says I now am. He says I am righteous even though I often don’t yet behave like it. He says I am holy though I surprise even myself with the outlandishness of my selfishness. He says I am absolutely and completely beloved. He is actually unable to love me more and refuses to allow anything I do to cause Him to love me less.

It is stunningly and overwhelming shattering to face that He saw every single betrayal, obsessive repetition of failure, and my repeated hurting of those I most love long before I performed them. And having seen even the degradation I’ve not had a chance to yet act out, He said, “Yes, that one. That’s the one I want to bestow all my love upon. All of it. Uniquely, particularly and with as much unbridled love as I have for my only begotten Son.”

And now, what delights Him most is that I’d just believe it. Not perform penance for Him. Not beat myself up to prove I mean business. Not take the all-forgiving nature of that love as a reason to carry disgust for myself when I fail. Not degrade myself before Him under the self-disdaining groan of “What’s wrong with me? I should be better by now. What a loser!” Those words no longer fit; not for one now literally fused in nature with the God of the universe.

It’s hard to conceive that the very power over the next failure you will not want to not forgive yourself for, is found completely in trusting the power of this scandalous, outlandish, stunning love. Trusting God with my sin, allowing His solution, is the entire basis for releasing the redemptive power of the Cross. Period.

The only thing I might want to be upset at myself for is refusing to take this gift. For me to somehow imagine that I “should be…if I were any kind of Christian”, diminishes the sacred purpose of the cross and thinks far too highly of myself.

It is a choice of humility that says, “I’ve played judge and jury far too long. I’m weary of it. You alone have authority to judge and prosecute. I’ve been dragging around what has never been mine to carry. I’m done fighting this one by myself, foolishly imagining You don’t care enough or have the power to redeem every one of these failures. Either You are God and can fully vindicate, validate, redeem, protect, exonerate, defend, make me blameless, or this whole thing has been a cheap carnival magic show. I’m done with the trite contention that I’m just too failed to be forgiven by You or myself. I’m done demeaning what you did for me. Forgive me for this arrogance most of all my dear God.”

When Paul says in Romans 8 that no one gets to bring a charge, condemn, or separate us from every fiber of His unfathomable love, included in that “no one” is us!!

This all sounds good and well-until you do the one thing you thought you’d never do. The really big one. The one God lovers don’t do. That’s when we may have to go through that dark night of the soul to discover whether we’re convinced the shed blood was that powerful.

No, this does not excuse my sin. Yes, I will need to make things right with those I’ve wronged. Yes, I will need face the reality of what I’ve done, along with the consequences. But there are two things I must not do:

*Refuse His complete, absolute forgiveness and unchanging assessment, love and affection.

*Refuse to accept His complete acceptance, fellowship and delight after what I’ve done.

For these, as noble or pious as they might sound, actually deny the efficacy of what Christ did for us.

He has no need of such rehearsal of shame. That day is over. You are free. You are right on time. You are deeply, always precious and front row with Him. And this new life within you will never want to take advantage of it, given the chance to live in it. This magical, all encompassing love, when risked and trusted, forms the basis for real, beautiful, stunned worship.

The Cross was that powerful, your God that incredible.

John-one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace

So, I got hurt.

“Suddenly, in a fight you never wanted, you discover you’re not only the victim but the issue.” (“The Cure” p. 66)

There’s a moment, somewhere in the season, where you believe it is taking God too long to solve this, to vindicate you and prove to all mankind the guilt of the other! A moment where you wonder if God’s paying attention. And then a settled resentment that maybe He’s siding with the one who hurt you. Because apparently everyone is just going on with their lives, unaffected. You see your offender across the room in a coffee shop, laughing blithely, without an apparent care in the world.

That’s when it happened. The moment I thought, “God, you don’t get it. You either don’t care, don’t understand, or I don’t get your sense of justice!” That’s when I took over. That’s when I began to go it alone. That’s when I became the issue. And that’s when dozens of hooks got embedded into my heart and enflamed me into a new distorted reality of subjective anger, alienation, and resentful victimization.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but rehearse the scene over and over, complete with a soundtrack. I could recall everything; the smell of the room, the color of his shirt, the exact words said.

And then, just so others could “pray more effectively” I began telling the story of being wronged to a larger and larger audience. I had a 3, 5, and 20-minute version.

*I became a prosecuting attorney, consistently build my case
*I became obsessed with “justice and accuracy”
*I became less and less able to love well, neglecting the needs of others
*I became unable to see from any other vantage point but my own
*I became more and more uptight and my joy was robbed
*I became progressively more unhealthy
*I became intent on telling “my side of things” to as many as possible
*I became unable to interpret history accurately
*I became gradually to alienate myself from all unwilling to carry my banner
*I became willing to question God’s motive, intentions and care

And I got tired. And weak. And empty. And dark. Eventually, I was less concerned anymore about justice as I was just getting my life back.

But I was stuck. My offender was not owning his stuff. God apparently was not convicting him. And I was wounded. I couldn’t imagine that the God I knew would just want me to bluff a forgiveness that wasn’t in truth. I stayed in that conundrum for a long, long time.

The first step home was to face my pride that sent me out into the wilderness. I know those are hard words to read. But I needed an understanding of forgiveness that would free me. I needed a way to admit that I stopped trusting my God and went it alone. I needed a way to allow Him to solve what I absolutely could not.

A friend wrote on my Facebook page, in response to the last blog, these incredibly true words: “Forgiveness is setting a prisoner free only to find that the prisoner is you.”

I needed to allow God back in to stand for me in this fight that was killing me. And that meant letting go of the right to be judge and jury. I stood at that crossroads I long, long time.

“This is a unique moment when faith becomes a risked action. I’m putting everything on the line, because, after all, this is my life, my pain, my reputation. Never is the proof of new life more evident than when I cede control because of my trust in His character, love and power.” (“The Cure” p. 74)

Next time, we will walk through a forgiveness that does not deny truth, does not pretend, and does not ignore injustice or my pain.

The first stage of this forgiveness is for me. It involves God and me only. It takes the hooks out of my heart and brings me home, free, and full of renewed and restored life. It is a step most of us have ignored before rushing to the second forgiveness, involving me and the other.

Again, I know of no experience of the miraculous more profound and beautiful than what happens to one released from unforgiveness.

If you are in the middle of this madness, take heart. God may be about to invade your closed system and bring back all you feared might never returned.

You know, that is why they call Him God and all.

So proud to walk with this crowd.

John, one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace.

You make sincere attempts to reconcile, to own your stuff. But it just gets more tense and strained. Soon your discover they’re coughing their justification to an ever growing audience with supposedly dear friends now buying the other’s version of the story.

Soon, you’re increasingly alienated in your pain, forced to defend yourself against lies. God’s silence makes you begin to wonder if He too has been poisoned by these fake accusations! Suddenly, in a fight you never wanted, you discover you’re not only the victim but the issue.”
(“The Cure”-page 66)

I spent three years in those paragraphs, and all the madness that follows. There is a way home. But it will never come by pretending you’re over it, or by offering up the knee-jerk formula of “I forgive you” when you don’t. Time does not heal it. Rehearsing it only gives it more power. And revenge winds you up in lawsuits or jail.

I’m not sure there is a more dramatically tangible experience of miracle than when one is freed from the bitterness of lack of forgiveness. But the first step always involves you and God, not you and your offender. It involves giving up your self-entitlement to fight this one yourself. It involves an immensely practical application of this word “trust” we talk about so much.

A close friend told me recently he’s beginning to realize when it involves something really important, he’s, all of his life, ultimately deferred to his own self-protection over God’s assessment and direction. I’m not sure how different he is than many of us. It is great heroism to learn to stay in the pain, not take over with your own medicating fixes, and instead allow God to stand with you in it’s midst.

So, maybe the next time or two we’ll all walk this path together. We’re proud to walk with such heroes.

John, one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace.

“All over the world, a company of people stand with us, loving us in our vulnerability, earning our trust, so they can give us wisdom and influence to strengthen our ability to accurately speak and live this Gospel of God’s grace.

Countless thousands encourage us simply by living out the life we are attempting to paint. They form a community that folds in and out of hundreds of businesses, universities, churches, families, individuals, ministries, media outlets, coalitions and organizations. They are musicians, authors, theologians, counselors, doctors, pastors, students, journalists, educators, missionaries, politicians, professional coaches and athletes, homemakers, executives…and addicts, the incarcerated, victims of trafficking, the estranged, failed and defrocked leaders, the ideologically oppressed. They represent all ages and transcend all cultures, ideologies, age, gender and ethnicity. We write and speak with them.”

True dat…

John, one of the Three Amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace.

Learning to take off the filter is not a series of techniques, but choosing to see God and myself as revealed by the Original Good News. Still, I can start to diagnose when I’m allowing myself to be deluded by a moralistic filter. Here’s a few signposts.

When I read Scripture through the “filter”:
*I will confuse intense passion for Him with severe self-indignation against me
*My initial predisposition is often to be self-disgusted at myself, at how short I fall of the goal
*My response is one of will power, self-management, trying harder, an appeal to try to be more
*Or, I defend myself, justifying and comparing-imagining I’m doing better than most
*I see each passage as a new set of behavioral challenges to check off
*I see Him out there, over there, up there, but not fused with me, with His arm around me
*I lean more into techniques, or external behavior modification than trusting His life in me
*I don’t see myself righteous, beloved, without condemnation-but as saved sinner.
*I hear “should, ought, why don’t you, haven’t you, when will you, what’s wrong with you
*I will come to it to find how much I don’t match up to the “standard”
*I will read it to find what I should be doing more of
*I will think it is pious to tell others how short I fall of what I read
*I will feel behind, and disappointing to God
*I will sense a scolding, almost weary, impatient, disgusted voice
*I will want to try to fix something, try to be better
*I will start to avoid the Word and tell myself I “should” read it more
*I will want to make a promise to be better, do more, or less
*I will be tempted to compare with others
*I will layer this new condemnation over my self story history that says I’ll never get this
*I will be convinced greater effort and sincerity will make greater change
*I eventually grow increasingly numb to hope, aloof to believing I’ll ever do differently
*I will think He wants me to feel disgusted or frustrated with myself, never at rest
*I will sense His disappointment, His impatience
*I will think there is something peculiarly wrong with me that keeps me from getting it
*I try to put on a better attitude or behavior and try to hide what is really true about me

Well, doesn’t that make us all want to skip through this day in perpetual joy…?

Many of us are tired of such a parody of God’s intention. Many of us are grateful to so how far we’ve come from such a parody. Some of us have grown up in life without the filter and can’t even understand what the big deal is. And some have too much to lose to give it up.

Maybe next time we’ll look at what it feels like to read without the filter.

…Wait, I shouldn’t promise that. I’m not certain of what I’m having for lunch.

John-One of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace.

Now, stop for just a moment and stare at that question-“Aren’t we supposed to do something?”

Then think about when you first fell in love with another person. Do you remember how you only wanted to learn everything about her or him? You couldn’t do enough. You couldn’t receive enough. You’d lay in bed, with your hands clasped behind your head, smiling and imagining what you could do next that would delight their heart, and bring them good. It was free, unforced, and uncoerced. You probably were never so productive, creative, or most living out of who you were made to be!

Can you imagine how ridiculous it would have felt if someone had challenged that relationship to do something more through should, or ought, or raising the bar, or duty or any other lesser motivation. Love was a stronger and more powerful impetus than any man-fashioned ought could ever be. Only after other junk slipped in and love was marred or no longer trusted, were we ever driven to seek out lesser motivations.

As soon as you find yourself asking, “Aren’t we supposed to do something”, you know your ladder has found its way up against a wrong wall.

We’re not naïve. There are thousands of expressions of love that God reminds us we get to be about. But lovers do them without being manipulated or goaded. They express them by being freed to live out of the very love that has captivated them.

There’s a very, very good reason why Paul says in Romans thirteen that every single possible ought or should is summed up in getting to love your neighbor as yourself.

The reason people feel the need to have someone motivate them, through an appeal to duty or ought or, guilt, or shame, or tough talking…is because they’ve already traded away the best motivation. It is the only motivation we are built, as new creatures, to live out of. The only one. Its what we’ve wanted to do all along. And when we’re not forced into rebellion or compliance by coercion, we take to it like a New Yorker eating an overstuffed deli sandwich.

We don’t need more moral lectures on how we’re supposed to be better, do more, or shape up and not be so lazy in our faith. We know that. We get it. And maybe you can even shame us out of lethargy or laziness for a few days using enough religious patter or inspirational appeal.

But what we really need are winsome teachers who can remind us of why we came in the first place. We need teachers who know how to encourage and woo our new hearts to come out. That’s where the power is, in that new life-the one that has Christ and all of His sovereign strength, love and goodness fused through it.

I know how to avoid, get around, or ignore what I’m even convinced I should, or ought to do. What I cannot avoid, don’t want to avoid, is the aggressively heroic and tirelessly productive response to love. In such a state, I not only do something, I do more than I ever dreamed I would. I surpass duty’s obligation before mid-morning coffee!

It is much easier to motivate by moralism, ought, guilt, compliance and discipline than to teach how to receive love. That’s why so few do the latter. But when you see it in action, when you see it risked, you witness an environment, more often than not, loving each other and the world around them really well. You don’t see it often, because it’s not often tried. But, more and more, people are just about weary enough to start considering this Original Good News again.

This next generation is not negligent to obedience because they haven’t been talked to strongly enough. This generation isn’t lazy or disinterested in spiritual things because they’ve been taught too much grace. This generation has been taught compliance through “ought” that has robbed them of the one gift that will free heartfelt obedience.

The gift starts with the letter “L”.

So, for instance, I might want to convince you that I am this incredibly amazing person who can do all that he does, have time for every friendship, and still, almost effortlessly create an artful, insightful, profound, smart and moving blog piece every few days.

In truth, my last 24 hours have been a blur, most of which I wouldn’t want you to see.

-Yesterday I wrote up and delivered a eulogy for a precious 19-year-old-girl who took her life in her ongoing battle with severe bi-polarity. I saw her the hour she was born. I baptized her. Ever since we got the call several days ago, I’ve been undone, staggered, weak and cold inside. Yesterday I remained fragile and undone. And that fragility was heaped upon the fragility I’ve been carrying the last few months. I just survived the service and hoped to have given God’s comfort.

-I got home and took off my suit-which is too big on me and ridiculously out of style. It makes me look like a missionary out trying to raise support.

-Then Stacey and I, overwhelmed from the emotion and tragedy of the service proceeded to get into an argument.

-Then we shared some wine and had a beautiful talk.

-Then I made a fire and we prepared dinner for a wonderful Facebook friend in town from Virginia. She and her family are incredible carriers of the Cure. She came over with a lifelong friend and we all talked as though we’d known each other all our lives. But every moment up until she arrived I was roughing myself up with this thought: “She’s gonna be so disappointed at the very normal and average person I am in real life. And why didn’t we make appetizers, anyway?”

-I burned the potatoes on the grill.

-Nobody seemed to care.

-We ended the evening realizing they had been a gift send to us in the center of our sadness.

-I slid into bed feeling like a very weary 90-year-old man.

-I was awakened in the middle of the night by my cat, who wanted out. I spent the next hour and a half trying to get back to sleep by imagining playing a round at a local golf course.

-I awoke feeling like a man who had wrestled a bear and an angry raccoon during the night.

-I ate fat-free cottage cheese to make up for the coconut cream pie the evening before.

-I had a hard, real, good, honest, hard, real, honest, good, hard meeting with Bill and Bruce, about our relationships.

-Our staff went through one of our study guide chapters. It was wonderful, but it left me with much more editing work, when I thought we were just about done.

-I texted back to my son telling him that I wouldn’t be able to meet him at Windsor’s restaurant because I wouldn’t be able to break away in time.

-I drove home aware that I have not yet started on my message for Sunday morning.

-My adrenalin continues to keep me tied up in a ball of tension.

-I forgot to get more firewood, to replace what we used up the night before, for the couple we’ll have over tonight.

…But God.

I come home to find two gifts from a friend at my door. They’re just simple gifts but ones that tell me I am known. As I sit down to compose this my daughter Carly calls me from college, just because she’s got a free moment going across campus and wants to tell me about her classes. I read a deeply encouraging text from a friend, telling me how grateful she was that I was the one God picked to do the memorial service yesterday. And then my funny and totally cool wife bursts in the door, and yells out, “Hey, its me. I’m home!” She says it in such a tone that tells me everything is going to be ok and that I am loved by her more than she loves chocolate.

24 hours. Not clean, not neat, not easy…but orchestrated by a God who says, “Kid, just stay in the arena. I’ve got you. All you need to do is show up. I’ll use whatever you can give me. Just don’t cover up and hide away. I can do a whole lot with even your sighs.”

God’s goal for the non-believer is conviction of sin-so we’d run to His love.
God’s goal for the believer is conviction of His love-so we’d run from sin.

Amongst about 700 other implications from this statement is this one: Everything changed at the cross. He doesn’t deal with us the same, He doesn’t motivate our behavior the same, He doesn’t have the same goal to accomplish.

Everything has changed. Every intention, from the moment the Mosaic covenant was penned, was to convince mankind that his self-righteousness wouldn’t cut it, and to weary him out until he cried uncle and ran to love to a Person, instead of compliance to a list.

And now the great weariness experiment is over. It really is over. God will never appeal to it again…unless you have not given up yet. In which case, the Law is still internally driving you to weary of your empty self-sufficiency. But if you are His, you must know this: every moment of every day, your God is wooing, drawing, calling out that new heart. He is not compelling you to try harder, strain more, prove your love more or even trust harder. Instead, He is drawing you to become daily more and more convinced of His love, your new identity and His power in you to mature you into who He has called you-Righteous.

In chapter three of “The Cure” (Two Gods) we are begging the Church to believe and risk living out of this incredible truth: You, yes you, are completely, absolutely, fully righteous, right now, exactly where you are! You will never achieve more of it. Believing that is the very truth that will allow you to mature into the expression of that righteousness. And that alone will free you from the sin which entangles you.

The new day has dawned. It would be great for us to stop begging in private for it to happen. Instead, we could just walk outside and stand in it’s bright, warm glow; stunned, next to a bunch of others of us, all with squinting eyes, gradually and wonderfully adjusting to the Light.

John, one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace.

And like five hundred times before, for a few minutes last evening, I lost touch with whatever we thought was important enough to type onto an agenda. And I just took them in. Slowly I looked at each of them, without their notice.

And once again, it overwhelmed me. We have so danged little in common. I’m pretty certain we each have wildly differing opinions and convictions on political candidates, political deal-breakers, immigration, child raising, spiritual disciplines, worship preference, Calvinism, millennialism, homosexuality, the earth’s age, alcohol, cigar smoking, or the viability of a playoff system for college football. We’d have 8 different views on the books, “Love Wins”, “Erasing Hell” and probably even “The Cure.” Only one or two of them have anything close to the quality of my taste in music. Several don’t have a Facebook account, and one thinks Twitter is something you do with your fingers when you’re bored.

…and none of us seem to care about this at all.

Somehow, for almost 40 years, God has given this community the freedom to not have to care. To not have to take a stand on the latest controversial new take. To not have to separate ourselves from each other, to not have to find something we believe different than the others. To not have an agenda, or a hobby-horse, or a minority report. To not have a superior spiritual insight, or an aloof cynicism that finally gives permission to leave the relationship.

But there are some things on which they are of complete and unbroken, perfect, stubborn unity. It has been true from the very beginning, in each one who has carried the role.

They each doggedly hold to this:

*Jesus is our way home.
*Jesus is the Son of the Living God.
*Jesus paid His life on a cross, for everything we have ever done wrong
*They will live this life by trusting His power, sovereignty and fusion in them and with them
*The giving and receiving of love is their highest value
*They are trusting that behavior change will follow the two points above
*They will draw closer when the other fails
*They will protect the one who is weak
*They will not discard the one who fails
*They will learn to not hide their failures and weaknesses
*They will learn how to forgive, repent, restore and heal
*They will put at risk their career, reputation and lives to ensure that everyone has a chance to be messy in finding their own faith in Jesus
*They will never coerce anyone to believe what they do
*They will guard this place from being defined by positions of any lesser conviction
*They will put everything on the line to have the freedom to deeply enjoy each other
*Safe and knowing laughter will permeate the community
*Deep and tender compassion will permeate the community
*Affirmation will be the language of the community
*Trust will be the currency of the community
*Kindness and love will trump “being right” in the community
*They will give their very lives to create an environment where it is safe to fail, safe to be known, safe to risk, safe to dream.
*They will admit what they do not know, understand or can’t figure out
*And a thousand more freedoms that come out of trusting Jesus in an environment of grace

And that is why this weekend, during our retreat, probably at about 6 pm, I will pour my heart to them. I will tell them the difficulty of the season I am in. I will let them see the worst and weakest of me. I will make myself vulnerable to them. I will not hide. I will let them love, protect and stand with me. This environment that none of them started, but have faithfully promoted, has taught them to live this way. And these days I am more recipient than giver.

I know many people mistrust places where there is any authority, leaders, structure, program or plan. Why wouldn’t they? They’ve been burned by leaders with an agenda, a motive, an egotistic empire. But for 28 years I’ve only known this. It’s a mess. It gets it wrong almost as often as it gets it right. But it is genuine. And so I imagine it can be replicated. In fact, it is being replicated. All over this world. More and more every day. By thousands who can no longer stand the alternative. By those who no longer want to live in isolation, religious arrogance, or cynical anger and wounding. They are finding each other.

There are still not enough places like this. Friends we send out in pursuit of it, often come back angry at us, saying it doesn’t exist for them. Even some who live in the place I’m describing would say it has let them down. But we are all hungering for it. We’re made for it. Maybe not the way it currently looks, but we were created to get to love and be loved by each other in the presence of loving and being loved by Him.

So leaders, young leaders, wake up. Read chapter 6 in “The Cure”. Let that be, more than any lesser position, what you allow your church to be about. You may never become ten thousand, or have a fog machine for Sunday morning, but you will have influence. Beautiful, life-giving influence of Christ. Your children will thank you. Your children’s friends will thank you. People who wander in off the street will thank you. And that, at the end of the day, is not a bad gig at all.

John. One of the Three Amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace

I loaned the book to someone long ago, never to be returned. I thought I’d never see it again. I’ve referenced it hundreds of times. But never thought that I might be able to find it again.

And there, at the end of this collection at Azusa Pacific, it stared back at me. Table Talk. Carly and I both laughed and jumped around, whispering like we’d found a secret treasure of antiquity. For she had heard me reference the book so many times. I joked that I would now travel from Arizona to Azusa if only to sit and pour through the book I’d missed for so long.

Carly noted the moment. And on Christmas Day I opened what she had procured for me on Amazon. A slightly used and wonderfully intact, Table Talk. And that is why Carly will receive all of my inheritance when I pass on…

But as I’ve been pouring over it, the last few days, I’m struck with how little Luther had learned to live out of the grace he so powerfully and wonderfully fought for. He’s often arrogant, petulant, overbearing, short-tempered and rude. Granted, he’d been ex-communicated four times, by four different groups and his life was always in grave danger for the enemies he created in high places. But throughout his conversations it appears he appeals to the flesh to convince others to not come under the Law.

…It reminds me of two things at least at this moment. One, reformations are often started by people you’d rather not spend a week with in a car. God appears to disproportionately employ people who are a lot of work, just to get the ball rolling. Love song-writers and botanists simply do not have the anger or the grouchiness to wage long battles against injustice and untruth. I have never been at ease with carrying this message of the reformation of sanctification by grace. I’d rather have all men and women and animals throughout the entire world enjoy me and laugh at my humor. Maybe its Bill or Bruce who have issues allowing them to willingly step into such battle. We imagine the chapter “Two Gods” in “The Cure” may bring at least a bit of the scorn and attack Luther received for his message of the reformation of justification by grace.

Two-it makes me keenly aware that none of us live this life we promise with precision. I’m an absolute wreck, Bruce can get quietly over-bearing and Bill is annoying when playing behind a slow foursome. The message of our actual righteousness is so true it’s from God. But the ones being asked to carry it, well we’re maturing into the righteousness we already possess.

So, I think I’ll cut Luther some slack today…and maybe myself also.

John-One of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace.

It got me thinking. I come from a family where we were taught not receive almost anything without a plan of paying it back. My dad was a child of the Great Depression and though I can only remember him saying it once it was eminently clear that the Lynches were not people who would receive from other’s generosity or would take a handout. We would not be beholding to anyone. My dad was maybe the most fair, honest and hardworking person I’ve ever known. But somewhere he learned you don’t receive without quickly devising a payback plan. The goal was to get things even. He was a very proud and conscientious man. He was unselfish and gave generously. But I don’t think he really ever learned well how to allow himself to be loved. Most men, probably because of the perceived expectations of culture and role, struggle a bit with that. But male children of the Great Depression turned it into an art form.

I remember when I became a believer in Jesus, my dad, a brilliant, self-made man, talked about faith in God being a “crutch” for people who needed a “handout”.

He was right.

Anyone who wants to follow Jesus must get very comfortable with handouts. It’s the only way God will have it.

He gives everything, I can earn nothing and what I can repay He doesn’t need.

You see, there’s a way self-made people live and a way people live who understand gift. Self-made people keep score. You can be assured if they know who they are beholden to, they certainly know who is beholden to them! They also imagine they’re earning something by what they give. They’re not certain how it all plays out, but pretty sure when the Big Bell Cure is revealed, they’ll be sitting very pretty. And they’re self-assured that even at this moment, they are more in the center of God’s will than most others because of deeds they can count.

There are people who presume on gift, who take without ever responding to the love of the giver. They lose both ways. They feel ashamed for taking and they never get to experience what it feels like to give.

But those who trust their new life in Jesus, well, its an altogether different animal. It’s depending upon the reality of this new heart that makes all the difference. We, at once, learn that everything is gift. Everything. And we also find ourselves, filled with the very nature of God, unable to co-exist with self-centeredness. We no longer have the nature for it. We find ourselves responding and receiving the endless love of our God. And because the nature of love is to lavish it upon others, in needs-meeting ways, we eventually can’t help ourselves.

It’s the difference between proving ourselves by our deeds, and receiving a life we couldn’t earn, that releases loving deeds.

As we trust the giver of the gift, as we trust the very nature of receiving gift, we find ourselves making a decision to allow our entire life be returned as gift!

We don’t keep score. We just can’t imagine living any other way. It’s who we now our, reborn people, fused with God’s nature, defined by love. It begins to erode our shame, which created the “no handout” policy to begin with.

So, we become unashamed to receive the love of others. And we are unguarded with giving away our lives to others, to glorify the One who needs nothing. He needs nothing, but chooses to build His kingdom on the expression of the love received by the ones who trust Him.

Because He first loved us, John says, in his letters, that’s why we love him. It’s why and how we love others. Many people can love, but the love that emanates from His love in us, that’s the only magic that makes God’s heart smile and accomplishes His will in this Kingdom.

This season I’ve been receiving a lot of this love. And it humbles me. It renews me. It woos out my new nature to give itself away. …This is the way love is.

(We’re about a month away from “The Cure” study guide and DVD being released. We can’t wait for you to take groups through it, to keep freeing such a way of life.)

John. One of the Three Amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace