Do you need more?

When you take a look at the 10 Commandments, there are two important things to notice:

1. 0 out of 10 forbid us from doing anything that we are not naturally inclined to want to do, like "You shall not eat mouthfuls of sand." 

2. 10 out of 10 are very good gauges as to whether we really believe God is who he says he is. 

Let's focus on #10: “You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”

A modernized version might read like this: "You shall not obsess over someone else's wife, their job, their house, their toys, or anything else that's theirs and not yours."  

Q: Why does God care so mightily about this? 

A: Because he cares mightily about his people having a right relationship with him. 

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul unmasks "coveting" for what it is on a deeper level: "For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God."

When we covet, we worship something other than God. We agree with Adam and Eve that we understand better what it is that we need for a good life. We refuse to take God at his word and trust him to meet our needs. We become our own gods. We become our own arbiters of truth, deciding that we need "God plus [whatever or whoever it is that you think you need but don't have]." In our lusty ignorance, we believe that we are becoming like God, but we are becoming like animals. 

When we ask "why is God choosing to hold out on me," James' answer changes our entire perspective:

"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.

Like heroin addicts we run around looking for our next fix, coming to God saying things like, "Please, if you just give me this, I will serve you," and "I really need this to be happy," and "if you really loved me, you would make this happen for me." But God loves us too much to feed our addiction to power, money, sex, and prestige. Instead he bottoms us out. Like an addict who curses their family for refusing to lend them anymore money, we curse God for the way he is treating us. But we are too dumb to see that he is really saving our lives. 

We were created for right relationship with God. Jesus makes that possible for us by believing him when he tells us that he has given us all we need. When we find ourselves craving our neighbor's toys, wife, position, or prestige, that would be a great time to thank God for bringing this desire to our attention, asking him to reveal to us what it is that we are not believing he can give us, and asking him for help to repent for our sin of unbelief, for the ability to see what we can't see, and for the ability to believe what we cannot believe. He is faithful.    

When Favor Feels Like a Curse

This Christmas season, Mary's experience has something to say to us as we strive for professional accomplishment, relational intimacy, and significance. 

As told by Luke, Mary was a young woman, engaged to be married to an average man. Blue collar. Unlikely that she aspired to worldly greatness. What Mary likely wanted was to live a normal life: have a few kids, keep a roof over her head and food in her family's stomachs, and enjoy her husband's companionship. Similar to many of us. 

But God had a different plan for her, something other than eeking out a normal life. He chose her to mother the king of the universe. An angel appeared to Mary explaining all of this, and that angel told her that she was "favored."  

For much of Mary's life, being favored wasn't an enjoyable experience. Apart from a select few, no one knew or could believe that Mary was pregnant with the Holy Spirit's baby, instead believing her guilty of infidelity to her future husband. And her husband-to-be, being one of those people, would have left her had it not been for an angel's intervention. To many, Mary was an adulterous kook. When it came time to deliver her baby, she was exposed to the elements and surrounded by livestock. Had something changed since the angel had spoken with her?  

What about life as the mother of someone promised to be the Savior of the world? What women in the community could relate to that? As her son grew into a young man, he began talking about this stuff, and no one much wanted to hear it. Most people ostracized him, others plotted to kill him. What was it like for a mother to witness her son constantly mocked and isolated? Who could encourage her in that? Her own children refused to believe her. The end of all of this was Mary watching angry men beat her son beyond recognition and kill him. 

Instead of comfort, wealth, and respect from her peers, God's favor brought Mary alienation, fear, and sadness. But it also brought her hope. There was something in the way that Jesus spoke that helped Mary to hang on. Something in his words rang so true that not even death could silence him. His suffering was necessary to rescue all of God's people (including Mary) from their own guilty hearts and brokenness. One day he will return to set everything right.

Having the Spirit of Jesus dwelling in us, we experience God's favor in the same ways. At work, our own goals and hopes conflict with our managers' and with the bottom line. At home, we experience conflict with our spouses, and we suffer the pain of seeing our own children suffer. Even in our own hearts we seesaw between despair and self-worship. Though now we only experience God's goodness in fits and starts, a day is coming when we will dwell in the fullness of his goodness forever. On this day, God's favor will finally be all that we had hoped it would be. Merry Christmas. 

Hope for the Road

Last week I saw one of my favorite story-tellers in concert, and he played a song I had heard before (and really like) called "Carry the Fire." It's a song about hope and holding onto that hope when all seems lost. Even if it's the most feeble, fraying thread to which you cling, there is still hope. The chorus goes...

Sing on, sing on,
When your hope is gone
Sing on, sing on.

But hearing it live, the song spoke to me in a deeper way because the songwriter explained that he had been inspired to write it after reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road."

Wow. If you have ever read "The Road" or any of McCarthy's other works, then "wow" is sufficient. For those who are less familiar with McCarthy's catalogue, "The Road" follows a man and his boy on their journey through post-apocalyptic America, a journey riddled with cannibalistic killers, uninterrupted suffering, perpetual gnawing hunger, and horrifying nothingness. Man's vilest nightmares are reality. Life is black as the blackest night. Terrified eyes dart back and forth, searching for any sign of relief on the horizon, trying to remain hidden from those who hunt them.  But there's nothing and no one. Each new day brings more of the same: despair, suffering, and death. And it is absolutely gut-wrenching watching this father, desperately clinging to the hope of something better, fighting tooth-and-nail to deliver his son from this hell. All he can do is try to make his way toward the coast and hope that the rumors are true that there is something better waiting for them there.

It is very good news when you understand that the author of hope writes his song while he is intimately acquainted with the deepest and darkest evil imaginable. See where we're going here?

All of us men can identify with McCarthy's man on the road. We had dreams for what our lives would look like, but something happened along the way. Our course changed. Some unwelcome visitor happened upon our traveling party -- be it sickness, failed career, failed relationship, death of a loved one, an unsettling awareness of our own inadequacy, etc. -- and life has become a nightmare. Like the man and his boy, we (some of us with a wife and children in tow) are lost and scared as hell.

The Gospel speaks to men when they find themselves here. In the American South we do a really good job of prettying up the Gospel. It's become so sanitized in fact that exposing it to real sin "just wouldn't be proper." From wearing our Sunday best to an unspoken rule that it's not OK to admit that you are not OK, it's easy to believe the lie that your real struggles are too foul for the Gospel. As if the Gospel were some ticket into high society or like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. No, the Gospel is good news for the dirtiest and weariest of travelers. There is no sickness, no struggle, no evil that God left unaddressed when he dealt with sin in the death and resurrection of Jesus. And that same other-worldly power is at work in those who believe in the hope that is found in Jesus; the hope that leads a man to brave a fallen and sin-infested world in an effort to bring his family to the proverbial coast, hoping that God was telling the truth. That at the end of this life, there is a more real existence than the mess he sees here. Something eternal and secure. The Apostle Paul believed in such a hope. He wrote this encouragement to his fellow travelers on the road:

"Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."


What trouble or personal sin are you tempted to believe is beyond the all-encompassing hope and power of the Gospel?

It's not.

Chopping Wood

My wife and I bought our first house in March. We live in an older neighborhood beneath a great tree canopy. I love it. We are minutes from downtown and seconds from adventures in the wild kingdom that is our backyard. Last weekend was my first attempt at cultivating the beauty and order of this kingdom, using my hatchet, handsaw, and pole saw (insert throaty grunts here...the illustration to the left is an artist's rendering of what I looked like...in my own mind...minus the ox).

After consulting with a friend in the landscaping business, I chopped down a couple of precariously-positioned trees and cleaned up many others by removing a myriad of limbs. By the time I was through, I was wiping the sweat from my brow, staring proudly at my backyard and the massive pile of leafy wood that littered my lawn. I let this sea of branches sit for a couple of days, and then I returned to chop it all up, saving what I could for firewood and leaving the rest on the curb for the city to collect.

It was in the chopping that I noticed something significant: a drastic transformation had occurred. Something was different. On Friday, I expended a massive amount of energy wrestling these proud branches from their high perches. Healthy. Full. Strong. Now, on Sunday, I chopped and sawed with ease through these woody corpses, mere shells of their former glory. More significantly, I realized that I am like these branches. Jesus said:

As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ...These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. (John 15:4-11)

Despite all of my glory (whether real or merely perceived!), I am just a branch. Remove me from the tree, and you will discover that I have no power, merit, beauty, or life of my own. We as men want so badly to present to the world that we are big ole redwoods, strong, proud, and self-sufficient. But we aren't; we have to tap into something bigger than ourselves for sustenance and life.

Take some time to consider where you seek life and identity. Respect? Prestige? Power? Wealth? Knowledge? Physical appearance? Athletic ability? When you pour that stuff into your veins, do you bear fruit and live joyfully? Or do you wither up, hollowed out and lifeless?

The Deadliest Legacy of the Marlboro Man is Not Cigarettes (or the mustache)

The Marlboro Man concept was the brainchild of ad exec Leo Burnett, born out of Philip Morris Co.'s need to reposition Marlboro from a ladies cigarette ("mild as May") to one that men wouldn't be embarrassed to enjoy.

Leo struck gold. The cowboy in red took Marlboro from the bottom (less than 1% U.S. market share in 1954) and made Marlboro the #1 tobacco brand in the world by 1972.

Apart from his success pedaling tobacco, the Marlboro Man stands as perhaps the most iconic image of rugged manliness in American history (Look at that mustache!). The same cool customer who single-handedly turned girly cigarettes into manly ones also demonstrated to American males that true men go it alone. True grit. Real men do not need any help from anyone. Real men say, "Just give me my horse, my Stetson, my mustache, and my dangly cigarette, and get out of my way."

Alas, though, it turns out that that dangly cigarette and his carton of friends will literally kill you. And so will going it alone.

Men were made for community, but we have this deeply-embedded impulse to join every two-year-old on earth in screaming, "I can do it by myself!" And we can do most things by ourselves: we dress ourselves, we shave our own faces, some of us can ride horses by ourselves, and a select few can even do our own taxes. But we cannot overcome the very real enemies that are constantly at work to undo us.

The apostle Peter (arguably one of the manliest men in history) issues a grave warning to us men about going it alone. Peter explains, "Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." (1 Peter 5:8). Peter likens the devil to a lion because, like a lion, he hunts and devours by separating the individual from their community. So once you find yourself cruising around on your horse like the Marlboro Man, it doesn't matter how much you can bench press or whether you have your bolt action repeating rifle at your side, you are about to go down. Hard.

Isolation is so effective as a weapon against men because of the other enemy at work in our lives: us. We know that we are not OK. We are ashamed of things we have thought and things we have said and things we have done. Especially the things that no one else knows about. And we are afraid that if we get too close to other men, they will find those things out about us. So we hang our heads and follow the lion into the darkness and away from our community where he will kill us.

And it's not just the guilt and shame. There is something evil at work in our very flesh that works to undo us. The apostle Paul knew this enemy well. In great anguish he laments, "but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand....Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:14-24)

Enemies without and enemies within. We are surrounded. We come to our senses alone in the darkness, and we realize that we don't want to die! Panic surges through our veins. Our eyes dart franticly back and forth as sweat pours down our faces and our hearts beat out of our chests. I am a guilty man...will someone come and help me?

Good news men, we have a Redeemer. All of those thoughts, words, and deeds of which we are ashamed are evidence that we were enemies of God deserving his wrath. But God sent his son Jesus Christ to bear this wrath in full measure in his own body all the way to death on our behalf. We have been reconciled to God. We no longer have to fear condemnation. (i.e. you can stop wandering into the darkness for fear of being found out. We already know that you are a tragic mess.)

One day we will shed these bodies of death, and God will give us new bodies that don't wear out or work evil. And until that day comes, God enlists us, his sons, to keep watch with one another in the darkness. And so we go...moving as a unit through the night until the dawn comes. Praying for one another, shining the light of the Gospel into one another's lives, confessing our sins to one another, crying with one another, reminding one another that we won't always be like this, spurring one another on to more intense war against these enemies of ours, and celebrating victories of God in our midst...and putting out one another's dangly cigarettes and turning in our Stetsons in exchange for real, life-giving masculinity.

What John has to say about the Oklahoma thrill killers

Last month three Oklahoma teens targeted a random male jogger to murder. One of the teens explained, "We were bored and didn't have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody." Boys out for a taste of adventure.

Their explanation is terrifying because we cannot do anything to protect ourselves from similar horrors. It's one thing when we hear of a scorned spouse murdering their unfaithful partner's paramour in the heat of passion or a mafioso murdering the man who ratted out his boss, but it's quite another when a murderer's given motive is boredom. I can avoid extramarital affairs and organized crime, but I cannot prevent someone from feeling bored. As Alfred explained to Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight, "...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

But what if these teens were looking for something logical?

This murder reveals several things that these young men believe to be true about themselves and the world around them. Things like:
Human life has no inherent value or worth.
Their own lives have no inherent value or worth.

There is no eternal, omnipotent, perfect God who will one day judge the earth and set everything right.
No one loves them.
No one cares about their own pain.
No one has an explanation for their own pain.
No one needs them.
They have no purpose.
They have no future.

It is easy to believe these things when all that you see and experience lines up with them. I can only imagine the ways in which these lies have been reinforced in the lives of these young men over the years. These men are villains to be sure, deserving of the law's wrath. But they are also victims. 

The lies are not a human invention, they are peddled by an Enemy of God to a world that is desperately sick and to our own rebellious and ignorant hearts. They are designed to undo and end us. And they are effective. Apart from God's grace, we cannot even tell good from evil anymore. As John tells us in his Gospel, "The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made theough him, yet the world did not know him." 

But God, rightful King over all creation, was not content to sit back and watch what would be the epic tragedy of human history unfold. No, John tells us, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth....And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace." 

God ripped through the fabric of this world in order to rescue his people and vanquish the Enemy. And since that time, he has captained a rebel force at work in the world - an underground movement - to depose the Enemy and see the rightful King return to his throne. This King is gathering people to himself and mounting his attack against the imposter, the one who enslaves mankind in order to commit grave evil like this senseless murder.

So where is he? Has the movement failed? Has the rightful King fallen? Or fallen asleep? 

He is always at work, though often unseen. John was given a sneak preview of the coming victory, and he tells us what those united with the true King will one day experience. This is what he saw:

"I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away...I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.' 

And he who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new.'"

Sweet Lorraine

Fred Stobaugh, 96, was married to his wife Lorraine for 73 years. He met her when she served him a meal at his window as a car hop. He said that it was love at first sight. "She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen." They dated for 2 years, and then they were married. The man loved her deeply everyday thereafter. About a month after Lorraine passed, Fred was inspired to write a song for her. He said that he sat down to write, and the words just came out. The reason that we know about Fred and this song is because soon after penning this song, he saw an ad for a singer-songwriter contest and he decided to mail it in. Fred has never written a song before, and he is tone-deaf by his own admission. I think love for his wife and thankfulness for a life spent with her just spilled over and had to be shared.

Men like Fred inspire me. To hear him talk about how grateful he is for the 75 years shared with his Lorraine tells me that he is well-aware that he has been the recipient of a very good gift that he couldn't earn and did not deserve. You can't earn real love, it has to be given. And this man, flawed just like the rest of us, was blessed with the privilege of a whole lifetime of discovering more and more of the beauty and intricacies of another human being. No one else would ever get to know Lorraine like he did! They shared life's joys and heartaches. She helped him grow into a better man than he was when he first met Lorraine. She was the primary instrument in Fred's life that God used to reveal his love for Fred in real, tangible ways. There is something awe-inspiring about a 75-year adventure with another human being. Think about all that those two have experienced together! How the world has changed, how the two of them have changed, and how they have shaped one another into the people that they were becoming. Incredible.

When I listen to Fred tell his story and see the way he tears up when he hears his song for Lorraine put to music, I think, "Fred is a wise man." Oppositely, when I see highlights from last night's VMA's I am reminded how easily we men are tempted to exchange real treasure for the fool's gold of cheap thrills. Like Odysseus's crew...take heed and prepare for the sirens. They'll kill you. And they'll keep you from discovering a treasure like Fred's.

"[As Jesus modeled sacrificial love], husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it..."

"Sweet Lorraine" by Fred Stobaugh
Oh Sweet Lorraine
I wish we could do
The good times
All over again

Oh sweet Lorraine
Life only goes around
Once
But never again

Oh sweet Lorraine
I wish we could do
All the good times all over
Again

My memories will always
Linger on
Oh sweet Lorraine

The memories will
Always linger on

Watch Fred's story here.