Reflections of a Ragamuffin

“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”
James 5:16a

Can I be honest?

I mean really honest?

For years I conveniently glossed over verses like this when I would came across them in scripture. Because my core belief was that I seriously defective and the only guy struggling with big, significant sins (in my case pornography, adult chat rooms, and infidelity), I conveniently rationalized that James must have been speaking only to those Christians who wrestled with sins along the lines of speeding on the freeway, getting angry with a co-worker, or laughing at a racy SNL sketch. Even if James did mean confess all sins, I pictured everyone running for the exits after I confessed to a deliberate one-night stand…especially if I was following the guy whose confession was that he failed to witness to his neighbor.

I was a big sinner in a little sinner paradigm.

Frankly, a little sinner paradigm has no place for James 5:16. Or if we do take a stab at confessing sins while living in this little sinner paradigm, even our confessions are often manipulations to ensure that others see just how spiritual we are. I was a master at this technique.

Confused? Follow me on this…

I’m in a small group of guys meeting for accountability and we are to that point in the meeting where we bare our souls and get real with each other…to share any struggles and challenges that we are facing. This is what I share, complete with pauses and concerned facial expressions for effect…

“Guys, please pray for me. I’ve been reading Andrew Murray’s book on prayer and committed last week that I was going to start getting up at 4:30 every morning and pray for the lost around me. Well guys, I slept in til 5:00 the last two mornings and didn’t feel like my heart really wanted to pray when I did finally get out of bed. Pray that I’ll be more disciplined to stick to my commitment.”

Or what about this one?

“Guys, I’m really embarrassed to tell you this, but it has been two weeks since I have shared my faith. There are at least 4 or 5 guys at work who really need Jesus and as far as I know, they don’t even know that I’m a Christian. Pray that I will have the courage to share with all of them before we get together next week.”

The whole point of those “confessions” was to leave the other guys thinking “Man, I’m not even thinking about prayer and sharing my faith and not only is Tray thinking about it, he is upset with himself that he slept til 5 and hasn’t shared Christ with his co-workers! I sure need to start developing more discipline in my Christian life like Tray has in his.”

When we live in the little sinner paradigm, we are forced to hide, pose, and pretend because, frankly, we are not little sinners. The fig leaves that we hide behind are often noble, but at the end of the day, we are still hiding. The gospel paradigm makes it clear that we don’t have to hide anymore…we are free to be the big sinners that we are.

Big sinners need a big Savior.

Little sinners need a little Savior.

Martin Luther had a friend who was living in the little sinner paradigm. Luther wrote him a letter calling him out of his little sinner paradigm and into a big sinner, gospel paradigm…

Here is a portion of that letter…

“It seems to me, my dear Spalatin, that you have still but a limited experience in battling against sin, an evil conscience, the Law, and the terrors of death. Or Satan has removed from your vision and memory every consolation which you have read in the Scriptures. In days when you were not afflicted, you were well fortified and knew very well what the office and benefits of Christ are. To be sure, the devil has now plucked from your heart all the beautiful Christian sermons concerning the grace and mercy of God in Christ by which you used to teach, admonish, and comfort others with a cheerful spirit and a great, buoyant courage. Or it must surely be that heretofore you have been only a trifling sinner, conscious only of paltry and insignificant faults and frailties.

Therefore my faithful request and admonition is that you join our company and associate with us, who are real, great, and hard-boiled sinners. You must by no means make Christ to seem paltry and trifling to us, as though He could be our Helper only when we want to be rid from imaginary, nominal, and childish sins. No, no! That would not be good for us. He must rather be a Savior and Redeemer from real, great, grievous, and damnable transgressions and iniquities, yea, from the very greatest and most shocking sins; to be brief, from all sins added together in a grand total.”

I am thankful that I have a group of “hard-boiled sinners” I meet with every week. Men who have a big sinner paradigm. Because we understand how scandalous and damnable our transgressions are, we also know how wonderfully amazing God’s grace is.

Last Monday night, one of our guys shared a public confession in a room full of thirty men. The sins confessed publicly weren’t nominal…they were great and shocking. My friend feared that men might run for the exits or pass judgments because of the nature of what he confessed.

He discovered just the opposite.

He found the healing James promised in James 5:16. Rather than run away from him, he experienced true intimacy as men came toward him and affirmed him. There were lots of tears. His courageous confession led four more guys to do the same. Our experience in community Monday night swallowed up the lies that each of us brought into that meeting…

“If they really knew me, they wouldn’t love me.”

“I’m the only one who is struggling at this level.”

“I am not so sure this group is safe for me to share my particular sins.”

Because of our brother’s courage, each of us had our lies exposed.

Are you living in a little sinner paradigm? Could you be missing a deeper healing because you are hiding?

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Kary Oberbrunner’s latest book, Your Secret Name: Discovering Who God Created You to Be, just released and I can’t wait for my copy to arrive. This is my review that I posted on Amazon:

“We see brokenness all around us. Living east of Eden, we desperately attempt to quiet the ache in our souls with whatever we can find…work, drugs, sex, religion, politics, family. But the ache remains and we feel more and more broken and isolated. Like we are the only one who is hurting. That no one would love us if they knew how we really were…what we were REALLY like.

But ‘you must accept who you are in order to discover who you were meant to be.’

In Your Secret Name, Kary Oberbrunner helps us make sense of the ache by reminding us that we have a Creator who is crazy about us and has placed us in a bigger story. Rather than deal with the symptoms of our brokenness, he gently exposes the root.”

In working through the 12 steps in recovery…especially step 4…God gently and lovingly introduced me to myself. It was a painful and gut-wrenching process, but one that left me staring wide-eyed and God’s wonderfully scandalous grace. After watching the video trailer for Your Secret Name, I am reminded that before we can discover our Secret Name, we must first confess our Given Name. It also helps us understand our divine wound that helps us step fully into our new identity.

Here is the trailer…

As I was writing this post, Kary announced that for a limited time you can get the Your Secret Name audiobook absolutely FREE. Click here for the details. Also, you can take an online test to determine your Secret Name by clicking here.

What is your “divine wound” and how is God using that to reveal your “Secret Name”?

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Yesterday’s worship at Oak Mountain was powerful. Thanks, Jason, for introducing me and many others to Gungor and their amazing song, Beautiful Things.

This is Gungor singing Beautiful Things. I’ve provided the lyrics below. If you are feeling less than beautiful due to your shame, I pray that the truth of these lyrics will be pressed into you deeply today.  Enjoy!

All this pain
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found
Could a garden come up from this ground at all

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

Maybe you too find yourself wondering if you will ever change. Have heart. God is at work and has not and will not abandon you.

Do you struggle believing the message of this simple song? Why or why not?

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I was asked to do a guest post for “Man Week” last week on Jenny Rain Schmidtz’s blog Rainmakers and Stormchasers. “Man Week” lasted a full two weeks and included this great line up of guys talking openly about the stripping process of God and how it has shown up in their own lives.

Week 1:
Tuesday, July 27: Tal Prince
Wednesday, July 28: Justin Davis
Thursday, July 29: Jason Wert
Friday, July 30: Brian Clayville

Week 2:
Monday, August 2: Ryan Spilhaus
Tuesday, August 3: Traylor Lovvorn
Wednesday, August 4: David Goodwin
Thursday, August 5: Grant Jenkins
Friday, August 6: David Ridenhour

It is well worth taking the time to read and re-read each of these posts that provide great insight into living authentically and transparently.

Thank you, Jenny, for the privilege to be a part of “Man Week” and for you own openness and authenticity in dealing with these important issues.

*****

Another Sunday morning.

Another Sunday morning after a Saturday night of binging with porn and adult chat rooms on the Internet.

I walked into the sanctuary a few steps behind my wife and kids with a smile plastered on my face. I made small talk, shook hands, and replied with the token “Fine” when asked how I was doing or how my week had been. As we made our way to our seats and sat down, I glanced around the room, carefully studying some of the other families near us.

Then came the onslaught.

“Look at Randy and his happy family. He wasn’t up until the wee hours looking at smut last night. What is your problem? When are you going to get serious and get more disciplined?”

“Joe’s wife is radiant today. Look at how she looks at him. Maybe Melody would look at you that way if you were more of a spiritual leader.”

“Frank is such a godly man. He would be appalled if he knew your dirty secret. And he is such a great dad. Your kids are stuck with a dad who is always looking for his next time alone in order to get his fix.”

“If you really appreciated the sacrifice Jesus made for your sins, you wouldn’t constantly be seeking out pornography. Why can’t you get it together like these guys? You are really making a mockery of God’s grace.”

Sunday after Sunday, the Accuser and my own inner critic would blast me for my sin and I was left as an empty shell, cowering in shame, looking for a place to hide.

And boy was I good at hiding.

I hid because I was comparing my absolute worst with everyone else’s pristine mask. I hid because I felt I was fundamentally broken and defective. I hid because I didn’t believe anyone could love the real me. I hid because I could not fathom the thought of another human being knowing my secrets.

I hid because, fundamentally, I didn’t believe the Gospel.

Hiding is our flesh’s natural reaction to sin and failure. We get it honestly. The first thing Adam and Eve did in the garden when they blew it was to hide.

But their Daddy came looking for them.

Genesis 3 is the chapter where sin entered the world, but it also gives us our first glimpse of grace, way back there in the beginning. God mentions the “seed of woman” in Genesis 3 and there has only been one who came from the seed of woman and who did not have a human father…

Jesus.

And the wonderfully scandalous Gospel says this…

Everyone is wrong. Everyone is loved. Everyone is called to recognize this and allow God to change them.

But, like the brothers in Luke 15, we struggle to believe it can be that simple. We vacillate between an elder brother heart, thinking we have God’s love and approval because of our dutiful service, and a prodigal heart, believing we have forever squandered our rights to be sons because of our past failures. Both brothers missed the heart of their father and, as a result, they hid…one in plain sight and one in shame.

We hide in direct proportion to our unbelief of the Gospel.

It has been over 15 years since the Sunday morning onslaught that I described earlier occurred. I now know that most of the men I was comparing myself to were hiding behind their own masks.  The sexual sins of at least 15 men…including the senior pastor and worship leader…have been brought to the light over the years.

I sometimes wonder how things might have been different if one of us had had the courage to take off our mask and to be authentic. What kind of awakening might have taken place? What kind of deep community might have been created? By cowardly holding onto our secrets and hiding behind our masks, we assisted the Enemy in perpetuating the lie that we were the only ones struggling…especially with such a “big” sin.

Because the Gospel is true, we can be ourselves and drop the masks. We are free to connect with others at our weaknesses rather than try to impress others with our strengths. Because we are loved as we are, there is nothing that has to be relegated to the shadows. Whether we are hiding in plain sight or cowering in shame, we have a Daddy who is looking for us.

Drop the mask. Step into the light.

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I joined 3 other fathers in a study of Robert Lewis’ Raising a Modern-Day Knight: A Father’s Role in Guiding His Son to Authentic Manhood and the corresponding DVD training series a few months back. This is the second group of dads I have been involved with like this. I wrote the post Epic Fathering in February of last year in an effort to describe our intentions with these groups and what we are trying to accomplish in the lives of our sons. The first group still meets every Thursday morning at IHOP during the school year and we have seen very encouraging things happening among our young men.

Since I started the first group 3 years ago, my youngest son Gabe has been asking when we were going to get things started for him and his buddies. We were finally able to coordinate our schedules last Friday night and held the first of four ceremonies that we will do before he leaves our home for good. In this particular ceremony, we pledged to being intentional, strategic fathers and sought to drive a stake in the ground for our boys. Gabe is now 12 and it was so amazing to be able to provide a definite starting point to his transition into manhood.

Here are a few shots from the ceremony. We didn’t get any shots of the 9 or 10 enormous bass we caught beforehand and the great swim in the lake afterwards.

Men, what “coming of age” memories do you have from growing up? How has that impacted you as an adult?

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For those who knew Jim, this video celebrates his active and adventurous life. If you didn’t know him, hopefully this will give you a glimpse into the story of this amazing man.

I miss you already, brother.

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My best friend Jim Elliott is about to lose his battle with cancer.

This makes me very sad. And, if I’m honest, a bit angry.

His fight started in October of 2008. Last December I went to see him after his first major surgery and wrote this post.

His Caring Bridge site has been visited almost 60,000 times. I’m confident that almost everyone who came to the site to offer Jim encouragement instead left encouraged themselves by Jim’s faith, attitude, perseverance, and overall will to live.

I know I have been.

This past year, while fighting for his life and dealing with round and round of chemo and surgery after surgery…Jim sold 3.2 million dollars of educational software. 3.2 million.

I went to visit Jim in the hospital last week and was able to shoot a few videos while I was with him. In one of them, Jim spoke directly to the many who have been following his situation closely on Caring Bridge. You can see it here.

What strikes me most about the video is that Jim is offering encouragement to those watching and there is no hint of self pity for himself in light of his situation. He speaks of coming to a peace and that is so very obvious with the grace and dignity that he has fought these last two years.

Jim is now at home with round-the-clock hospice care. Even with the inevitable end in sight, Jim has been walking two laps around his pool every day with the help of his mother and his brother.

I spent the night with Jim in his hospital room last Friday night. We both were awakened when the nurse came in at 5:40 Saturday morning to check Jim’s vitals. As I watched Jim go through the routine he had been through hundreds of times before, it all of a sudden hit me that my life had been impacted greatly by two Jim Elliotts, and that both, for reasons I will never know in this life, were taken in their prime.

The missionary Jim Elliot’s story has been made famous by the feature film End of the Spear and Through Gates of Splendor, a book written by Jim’s wife, Elizabeth, that chronicles Jim’s life and his untimely death at the hands of the Auca Indians. I started reading The Journals of Jim Elliot when I was a Junior at Samford University and felt an immediate bond with the young missionary, especially since he had started writing in his journal as a Junior at Wheaton College.

Over the years when I would mention my friend Jim’s name to other friends who did not know him but did know the story made famous by the book and movie, they would inevitably say, “THE Jim Elliot?”, referring to the martyred missionary. I would always smile and say “No, my friend, Jim Elliott, not THE Jim Elliot.”

After witnessing the journey that my friend Jim has undertaken over the last two years…how he has persevered through a painful trial that most will never know…how he has tirelessly wrestled with God about his illness but never once doubted His goodness…how he has taken every opportunity to encourage others in their own journey rather than seek pity for his own…

If someone were to hear my friend Jim’s name today and ask me “THE Jim Elliot?”, I would answer…

“Yes, THE Jim Elliott, my courageous brother who has finished well and taught me much.”

Thank you, Jim.

You are going to be greatly missed, brother.

I love you.

Here are a few more images of Jim over the last few weeks. The picture of him catching the fish was made on July 3rd, the day before he went into the hospital.

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(I just wrote this post for the Route1520 blog and wanted to repost it here…)

Picked up a memoir yesterday of a man who has battled addiction to cocaine and alcohol. The name of the book is “Broken” and this quote is on the first page…

A disciple asks the rabbi, “Why does Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon your hearts’? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?”
The rabbi answers, “It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.”
—From “The Politics of the Brokenhearted,” by Parker J. Palmer

This speaks to the painful “beautiful undoing” that each of us must experience in order to truly know ourselves and our desperate need for God’s amazing grace. In recovery circles, we refer to this as our “bottom”…that point in time where we realize that not only have we put it in the ditch, but that we are powerless to get our lives out of the ditch. As God lovingly exposes our desperate need for Him, our self-sufficiency is stripped away and we begin to understand in new terms what a daily life of faith looks like.

Unfortunately, so much energy is spent among Christians trying to hide weakness and brokenness, rather than embracing it and connecting with others at that level. At the heart of our hiding is a deep unbelief of the Gospel. We say we believe that God loves us as we are, but live as if God is disappointed and even angry when we fall short. This line of thinking causes us to live as orphans separated from God trying to manage sin on our own and keeps us on a perpetual cycle of shame. We then put on our masks and “Sunday Best” and parade into church comparing what we know to be true about ourselves with what we think is true about those around us. What we fail to realize is that comparing our true selves with someone else’s pristine mask is always an unfair comparison. We are left believing that we must be the only one struggling, which causes us to retreat even further into the shadows.

Are you living today as a beloved child or as an abandoned orphan? In what ways are you hiding in the shadows instead of living boldly in the Light?

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I watched the movie “Taken” with Melody and our two oldest children. (Watch the trailer here.) I remember sitting in shocked silence for at least 10 minutes after the credits started rolling. Ryland, my oldest, is 15 years old. I imagined the absolute helpless and hopeless feeling as a dad if she were to be taken like the teenager in the film. Unlike the father in the movie who was successful in rescuing his daughter in some remote corner of the world, I’m not a former FBI badass I-can-kill-you-at-30-yards-with-a-paperclip-while-eating-a-turkey-sandwich kindof dude. I don’t possess the “skill set” mentioned in the trailer.

I imagined Ryland and Keller with tears streaming down their faces longing to be rescued and it felt like a 2×4 to the gut.

And the harsh reality is that this is not happening in some remote corner of the world, but exactly 149 miles down Interstate 20 from where I sit writing this post.

Watch this heartbreaking video and pray. Pray not IF you will get involved to make a difference, but exactly HOW God wants you to get involved to fight this injustice and to rescue these precious girls.

WARNING: WATCHING THIS VIDEO WILL BE THE END OF BORING, STATUS-QUO CHRISTIANITY.

500 young girls forced to have sex with 7,200 men in Atlanta every month! Not in some third-world country…in ATLANTA!

It is time to start kicking in some doors in Jesus’ name. Jesus ransomed us and set us free and there are thousands of children who desperately need to be ransomed and rescued as well.

Here is a list of organizations that are on the front lines fighting for these children. Take a few minutes and look over their web sites. Pray that God would make it abundantly clear what part you will play in this fight.

Not For Sale
International Justice Mission
Beauty from Ashes
Love146
The Home Foundation
Children’s Hope Chest
The A21 Campaign

Each of these organizations is making a difference on the supply side of this business. We are also making a difference on the demand side with Route1520. Please consider getting involved with us as we minister to those who are perpetuating this injustice as well.

Thank you to my blogger friends JC Wert and Jenny Rain Schmitz for bringing this to my attention again this morning with this post and this post.

Now that you know, what will you do to make a difference? Will you join the fight?

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I heard this catchy tune today and it reminded me of a great talk my friend Jim Doggett gave a few weeks ago…

One of the main points that Jim made to that room full of young men has been on my mind since…

“Evil wants to make little of where you have been and much of what is left to do. God wants to flip that and make much of where you have been and little of what is left to do.”

Our growth in the Christian life and the daily transformations that God is bringing about are never as quick or as dramatic as we would like for them to be.  Evil is constantly whispering in our ear…taunting us with our past failures and shortcomings and encouraging us to give up and throw in the towel. When we look to the future, evil shouts “you’ll never get there”, or “it will be too hard”, or “how will you ever figure out where you are going?”

My youngest two have been at my parent’s farm all week this week. When I see them tonight, I will most likely notice slight changes because in the last week that they have been gone, they will have grown. This growth is happening all the time, but when I see them everyday, I don’t notice the subtle changes that their growth brings about. When I see them in the morning and my mind is comparing their image to what I saw the night before, the change is so slight that I can’t see any contrast. When a week goes by, however, enough time has passed for me to pick up change that their growth has brought about.

Rather than allowing evil to beat us up over our past, let’s take a long look and realize “just how far we’ve come.” Instead of comparing yourself to the way you were yesterday, why not remember where you were 6 months ago…a year ago…5 years ago…20 years ago. If you keep a journal, go back and read entries from June of 2009 or even June of 1999. Most likely you will be amazed and encouraged by the growth you have experienced spiritually between now and then.

As you look to the future, God wants you to realize it is not a big deal because He is leading the way. Your recovery…your sanctification…your changed life is in His hands and is in His control. Ours is to simply live in the moment in absolute freedom because of the finished work of Christ.

Watch the video again and remember. Remember how far you’ve come and celebrate! God is at work in you and no matter where you find yourself today…He is not finished with you yet!

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