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This past Sunday, the following passage of Scripture was read and discussed at the church we attended:

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. (John 9:1-3, ESV)

Jesus and his disciples are walking past a blind man, and the disciples are curious as to why he is blind. They assume, probably due to beliefs held by most at the time, that someone’s sin was the cause of the man’s blindness. They wanted to know who was to blame. Jesus surprised them by saying that the man was not blind due an act of sin by him or his parents.

We often ask the wrong question when we face valleys in our lives.

Years ago, anxiety and panic attacks warred against me. Fear reigned in my life. I felt crazy most of the time, as if I was actually losing my mind. I struggled to find a cure…something…anything to ease the suffering. I wrestled with what in the world could be causing me to go through such a difficult time in my life. And to add to the misery, I went a prolonged period of time in which I could not find anything to make me feel better. I felt hopeless. The question that the disciples asked Jesus in John 9:2 came to my mind. “God, what have I done?!?!!? What have I done to deserve this? What sin have I committed that you would punish me like this?”

We often make the false assumption that God is out to punish us.

I was desperate and the answer did not come to me. Therefore, I moved forward for a while thinking my question was not only the right question, but that the answer was key to me escaping the struggle I was in. I wanted so badly to know what I had done so that I could try to fix it, or at least never do it again! Just like with the disciples, I was also asking the wrong question and making false assumptions about God.

A better question to consider might have been, “What if this has nothing to do with God punishing me for some sin I’ve committed?”

We need to revisit the original Good News often in order to challenge and tackle false assumptions that trip us up.

For those of you who, like me and Jesus’ disciples, believe misfortune is always punishment for sin and that God is out to punish us (his children)…here’s some really, really good news…

God is not punishing us. He is not asking me to atone for my sins. Christ took on all of our sin and the punishment for it on the cross. When we trusted in Him, our relationship with God was solidified in a way that can never be broken. We are in His loving hands, now. Everything is about His grace. Grace is the foundation. Our walk with Him is not about performing well for Him to avoid His wrath. God loves us, unconditionally. He is not angry with us. Sin is not His focus when He looks upon us. He loves what He sees in us! He actually likes us! Is there discipline? Yeah, sure there is…but His motive is never punishment. Rather, His motive is always love and a desire to direct us to be everything He created us to be… in order to fulfill the destiny He has planned for us.

The Good News is hard to embrace when we face hurt, loss, pain, sickness, and other sources of suffering in this broken world.

Despite the freedom we can experience in the Good News laid out above, there will be times in which we will find ourselves far from resting in the truth of the Gospel. There are no cookie cutter answers to how to handle each and every time that we struggle with this (if you find one, please know that that particular “fix” will probably fail you at some point). From my experience, trusting myself with those who love me during those hard times is the best thing that I can do. When I am unable to see clearly, I must trust those who can see more clearly than I can. Their perspective and their love for me will become the caveat for God’s love and direction.

-Neil

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This may sound like a ridiculous topic to write about. Having fun should come natural right? Well, for some of us (me included), it’s not so easy. For those of you who are like me and need some guidance on how to let loose and enjoy yourself, here’s some thoughts I picked up recently that may help.

God is not opposed to us enjoying ourselves.

Right out of the gate, let me expose a lie that may hold us back from having fun. God is not a stick in the mud. He loves uninhibited enjoyment of His relationships with each of us, and He loves to see us enjoy our relationships with each other. We all too often view Him as only wanting us to be hard at work for Him all the time. Instead, He guides us into being who He created us to be, enjoying the gifts and talents He has given us as we share them with each other. Yes, we can most definitely have fun being in Christ and loving each other…and He is very pleased with that!

To really let loose, we must be spontaneous.

This one is a hard one for me. I like having a plan. It makes me feel safe and secure (I have issues that we won’t discuss here today). However, to really have fun, I must give into spontaneity. It’s hard, if not impossible, to be moved emotionally through a rigorous step-by-step process that I’ve meticulously planned all by myself. I always know what’s coming…or at least what I want to have happen. However, my plans get messed up so much that they often lead to frustration rather than fulfillment or pleasure. When I find myself following along with someone like my son, who’d rather burn a map than follow one, I smile and laugh a lot easier and frequently. I mention this because, for someone like me, it’s good to engage friends who are NOT like me in order to have some fun. It may appear exhausting and stressful to surrender my plans for a while and really let go, but it’s a requirement if I want to experience some fun in my life.

We cannot have fun with suffocating masks on our faces.

Perhaps one of the biggest inhibitors to having fun is trying to please other people. The human race is notorious for our masks. Many of us are bent towards impressing others and/or trying to keep them happy. We can often catch ourselves not really being our true selves. Instead, we try to be what we think others want us to be. Guess what. There’s no fun in that…not at all. Instead, it is exhausting and leads to frustration (possibly even all-out anger and depression when our efforts to please others fails). In the book of 2 Samuel, King David was having a good time as he danced in the streets when the Ark of the Covenant was finally returned to Jerusalem. His wife scolded him and basically told him his behavior was unacceptable. Instead of allowing her opinion to dampen his mood, he chose to embrace the truth that his celebration was pleasing to the Lord. He just continued dancing and having fun. As Neil Anderson says, “It is a lot more fun pleasing the Lord than trying to please people”.

-Neil

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What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? (James 4:1-5, ESV)

My wife, son, and I got into watching the television show Big Brother a couple of years ago. I’m not sure how many of you reading this have actually watched the show, but it’s basically a group of people locked up in a house for a couple of months competing for $500,000. People are voted off each week until only one remains and that person is the winner. Needless to say, since the people in the house are the voters, there are all kinds of mind games being played. Everyone wants to win the money, so everyone is trying to figure out how to get everyone else to keep them in the game. Although many seem to be fooled into thinking they have developed great relationships with fellow cast members, more often than not, this is only a charade by the others to get what they want.

It is really easy for me to sit back and be critical of the casts and how they are often willing to do and say anything to get what they want. However, truth be told, we all struggle with being real with others to some degree. We are all guilty of manipulating others to get what we want.

With the needs that we are all walking around with (things like love, acceptance, security, and significance), we often find ourselves desiring for one or more of these to be met in our lives. Instead of a cash prize, our needs being met is the thing we seek. That’s when we come to a fork in the road: will we choose faith in our Father to provide what we need or manipulation to get what we want? The path we choose determines whether our relationships thrive or take a nose dive. James 4:1-5 is clear that when we focus on getting what we want, we will do sinful things to make it happen. When we choose to manipulate, we argue, fight, cheat, steal, and hate others. We treat others like objects that we can use to get what we want.

Walking by faith is synonymous with trusting the Lord to provide for my needs. If I am manipulating, even in a seemingly small way, then I am not trusting Him. I am taking my life and my needs into my own hands. I am deciding that He may not provide, so I will find a way to get what I want on my own. I will put on a mask and make everyone around me think I am something when I am not, to gain their acceptance. I will fool others into thinking I am capable of things that I am not, to gain a sense of significance. I will be nice to others so that they will take care of me, to feel secure.

But we are not the authors of manipulation. Satan is the great deceiver. In other words, he is the great manipulator. He wanted what he wanted and turned from God to try to get it. He even blatantly tried to manipulate Jesus to do what he wanted Him to do. When we manipulate others, we’ve been manipulated by the Enemy. We’ve been deceived into thinking we can do something to provide for our own needs. Even though we may feel that we are in control, we are not.

Manipulation strips us of our ability to be real with others. It destroys any chance at authenticity in our relationships. It thoroughly prevents us from enjoying others just as they are. And at the end of the day, it never gives us what we really need. At best, it gives us false security, acceptance, etc. because those giving us those things are giving them to us on false pretense. They are loving the act I am putting on (the cunning manipulative device of the day), but they are not freely choosing to love the real me!

Manipulation is a type of bondage: once you go down that path, there’s no way out except to keep putting on masks, or choosing to come clean and enjoy the life and freedom that comes from trusting Him. Maybe that’s one big reason why many cast members on Big Brother start “losing it” emotionally after a few weeks. Manipulation stresses us, traps us, and drains the life out of us.

Maybe we can take a look at shows like Big Brother and realize the cast members are not struggling with different things than us. The show might simply demonstrate the wide-spread issue of the desire to get what we want through manipulation rather than looking to our loving and perfect Provider. It can serve as a reminder of just how dependent we must be on the One who can truly meet our needs.

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19, ESV)

-Neil

(originally posted Aug 25, 2013)

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This past weekend, I watched a movie trilogy that I had not seen in a long time. As I watched the Matrix, Matrix Reloaded, and Matrix Revolutions, I noticed that I had forgotten many of the scenes in them. I caught myself on the edge of my seat at times, as if I was watching them for the first time. The truth is, although I had forgotten many of the scenes, I knew exactly how it all ended. Spoiler alert…the good guys win. At one point, I wondered to myself, why am I tense while watching all of these action scenes, as if the good guys might actually lose? I know what happens. In the end, Neo (the hero of the movie series) defeats the enemy and wins freedom for all of humanity. When I would remind myself of the ending, I just sat back and relaxed.

The ending of the Matrix trilogy was spoiled for me, because I had seen it all before. However, I watched it anyway, and I enjoyed it! I pondered the way this experience of knowing the ending could help me with my own everyday struggles. As I face rejection, failure,  hurt, and loss, I rarely see them coming. They blindside me like the forgotten scenes in the movies where the bad guys seemed to have the upper hand. These valleys of life are hard and we often have no idea how in the world we will possibly make it through them.

If we could only “know the ending” and know that it turns out okay, maybe we could at least hold onto the hope we need to carry us through the parts of our story that catch us off guard. Perhaps that’s why God focuses so much on telling us certain details of who He is, who we are, and what some of His ultimate plan is. Knowing, remembering, and residing in some of those core truths just might give us the ability to sit back in our seats a little when our life seems to be going the wrong way, rather than being completely overcome with anxiety, anger, and feelings of hopelessness.

The promise of God’s unconditional love and His desire to give us good things are good examples. Love without conditions is a love that lasts forever. It is not reliant upon our efforts to earn favor. He does not withhold His love when we fail. He does not stop offering good things to us just because we have done something bad. The rejection by others is never an indication of how our Heavenly Father feels about us. Our very identity (who we are) is wrapped up in this unconditional love. We are loved. Period. Because of His love, He gave his Son to free us, and He continues to meet our needs. That is the beginning, middle, and definitely the end of the story. Nothing we experience will change that, even though in some of life’s moments it will certainly FEEL like nothing good will ever come to fruition.

In the end, God’s perfect will is done. As His children, we get to experience all that comes with having a relationship with God through Christ. Nothing will change the fact that, after all is said and done, there is a happy ending in which all that God has promised will be realized and fulfilled. Evil, brokenness, hurt, rejection, and failure will not triumph in the end. Love, restoration, peace, healing, and all that is deeply significant will win. And we can trust in that truth because God loves us and always keeps His word. He never fails.

-Neil

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Melissa and I married and became parents at a very young age. We had no clue what we were getting into with marriage, and adding a child on top of that…we were utterly lost! Thankfully, I think we were just ignorant enough of how much we didn’t know that we didn’t completely panic. With a lot of help from family and friends, we were able to find our way through a maze of relationships, school, work, and everything else that we encountered.

Our goal early on was to give our son freedom.

I knew early on that I wanted to give my son freedom to figure out who he was and BE who he was. As parents of a young boy that was absolutely full of life, we got some pushback at times from others. He has always been energetic and has not met a stranger yet. Of course, there were times that others just wanted him to settle down. With needed discipline, of course, we allowed him to live out his excitement for life and his love for others.

My goal changed due to fear.

Something happened in high school that changed my perspective, and it led to the darkest days in my relationship with my son. I realized he was not doing some of the things I truly felt he should have been doing. At first, I could let it go. However, as I saw him going further down a path that I disapproved of, I became more and more anxious. Fear took over, but I’m not sure I realized that at the time. I feared what would happen if I didn’t do something to change his direction. That’s when it happened.

Fear leads to control issues.

I went into full-on control mode. I began checking up on him constantly. I made sure that I did not miss an opportunity to hash something out with him until I felt he would do what I wanted him to do. I told myself (and others) that I was doing this for his own good. I said I was “protecting him”. I think I may have called it “tough love”.

Attempting to control others costs us the most valuable thing we can have in relationships.

I lost something during that time that was invaluable, but I didn’t realize it until later. I thought I was pursuing what I really needed to be a good parent: my son’s compliance. It took me a very long time to reacquire the precious thing that I exchanged for the pursuit of compliance.

What I lost was my son’s trust. Before I went bat crap crazy trying to get him to do what I felt was best, he would come to me with questions about life. He trusted me with struggles he was having. He knew I would listen and respond with direction. However, after fear took over in my life as a father, he knew he couldn’t trust me with himself anymore. If he told me something that was not in line with my new goal of compliance, instead of listening until I understood, I might would flip out on him with an hour long lecture. Whether he realized it or not, my love for him was stifled by my drive to control him. My view of him had changed from me being able to see who I knew he really was at heart to an opponent to tackle and force into submission. That may sound harsh, and I did not see it that way at the time, but it’s sadly true.

When we lose sight of who our children really are, we treat them as if they are someone else.

Looking back, my perspective was very warped by fear. I was scared of what would happen if I didn’t jump in and control things. I no longer trusted who I knew my son to be…that loving, spirited boy who could light up a room…that boy who truly cared for others…that boy who could break from routine in order to enjoy life in the moment. Yeah, he wasn’t acting like himself at the time, but instead of remembering who he really was, and coming along beside him in order to invite him into that identity, I treated him like he was none of those things. I treated him like he needed all the bad strained out of him in order to force something good back in.

Trust is the basis for all that is good in relationships.

I eventually realized the error in my approach to my son. Like I said before, it took a long while to build back the trust I had lost. Now that it is reestablished, I would take NOTHING for it. There is nothing more valuable than trust in a relationship. There is nothing better than trusting my son with me, and inviting him to trust me with him. From trust, everything good about relationships begins to flow naturally.

If my son has an issue, he can trust his father to listen and understand before responding. I might mess that up sometimes, but I can trust him with me by owning it and talking out how my own fear gets in the way sometimes. That trust maintains and strengthens what we both cherish more than anything…loving each other.

God’s reflection can be seen in our relationship with our children.

I believe the parent-child relationship to be a wonderful illustration of God’s relationship with His children (us!). Nothing is more important than trust. He wants no part of us being coldly compliant, or fearfully obedient in order to keep Him off our back. What He desires is for us to trust Him with ourselves so that we can experience the love He has for us. We especially need to trust Him when we are NOT acting like ourselves and getting ourselves into trouble. He puts much effort into cultivating that trust by offering endless grace and love to us. He guides us into the opportunities in life to be who He created us to be. He doesn’t want us to be anything else, and trusting who He says we are is key. He wants us to trust that we are loved, accepted, significant, and secure in Him. If we don’t trust these characteristics of who we are as His child, we will try to do things in order to be loved, accepted, significant, and secure…which are things that we already are in Christ!

-Neil

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I had the opportunity to revisit my favorite passage of Scripture with a friend this week. I love it when God helps me to strip away all the extra “stuff” in life that seems to confuse and bog me down, as He holds me at a certain place in order for me to calm down and remember what’s most important. Here is the passage:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10, ESV)

It’s all about grace. God’s amazing grace.

It is by grace…nothing other than grace that we are saved. By His grace, we are set free from the bondage of sin. Sin does so much damage. We commit sin, hurt others, and then experience the horrid guilt and eventual shame that comes with it. Other people in our lives commit sins that hurt us, leading to disappointment, broken relationships, and…again…more shame. It is by His grace that sin and all the issues it causes for us are resolved. Our relationship with Him and others thrives on grace alone. Gifts of grace, such as forgiveness, repentance, and love allow the opportunity for the hurt, guilt, and shame to be washed away.

We get to experience His grace when we trust Him.  

His awesome grace is always there. He woos us into it by his expressions of love…the biggest having been Christ coming to earth, living on earth, dying, and then being resurrected. But to experience His grace, we must trust Him. Without trust, we fail to engage the relationship He has created with us through Christ. He doesn’t move or go anywhere, but it feels like we are miles away from Him when we aren’t trusting Him. Humility, true humility, is trusting Him and others around us with who we really are. If we allow our shame to cause us to hold back anything, we begin hiding from Him…just like Adam and Eve did in the garden.

Our hard work and striving does not result in us having changed hearts.

It is tempting for us to get into the pattern of trying to earn our way into a deeper relationship with God. We might think, “I really messed up and that is why I am stuck right now. God is waiting for me to get some things right in my life before He is okay with me.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. It saddens Him when we take control of our lives and attempt to earn our way back to Him. He knows  we will wind up frustrated, anxious, and perhaps even feeling hopeless. That’s not how relationship works with Him, or anyone. Genuine relationship is about trust, not striving to follow rules to impress someone. We cannot fix not one sin or even the effects of that sin in our lives. When we trust Him, we essentially say, “God, I know I cannot handle this. I need you and the unconditional love you have for me to cover, heal, and resolve this. I need you to remind me that what sin and shame tells me is a lie. There is not something inherently wrong with me, although I may feel that way. I am in Christ, and He is in me. I am what I am because of you. I am loved, accepted, significant, and secure in your grace and love.” By His grace, NOT our works, we are set free to live out of who He created us to be. Grace through faith changes, restores, and matures us.

Living by grace through faith leads us into what God has destined for us.     

As we trust Him and experience His grace in our lives and relationships with others, we begin to follow the path of good works He has planned for us. These good works are our destiny. It’s what God wanted for us all along! We get to discover and do the very things that fit who He created us to be. We do not conjure up these acts ourselves. He surprises us along the way, one step of faith at a time, with gifts/opportunities to act out of who we are in Christ. These gifts may include an opportunity to listen, help, serve, give, teach, encourage, or offer other acts of love. We can actually enjoy those things, instead of just striving to make a way for ourselves, doing day-to-day things that never satisfy us. By His grace, while we continually mature in loving and trusting others with ourselves, we get to embrace and experience more and more the acts of love God offers to us through others.

-Neil

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