Unveiled...a Good Friday story

Imagine this, you decide to go to the movies with your friends, your special someone, or with a group of people you know. The movie is titled “Unveiled” and is described as being the most intense, raw, and real movie ever released. The ads tout that you will never be the same after seeing this movie. You are so excited for it as you grab your favorite seat in the theater.

After the previews conclude, the main feature begins. At first it seems to be sporadic and senseless, yet intriguing. Then embarrassing and raw, yet strangely familiar. You begin to realize that this is dealing with real life issues, boldly depicting shameful struggles and desires. It begins to show the character’s struggle with temptation and giving into sin, the justification and rationalizations that he uses are sickenly familiar, like they pulled them right out of your head. You all of a sudden feel small and want to disappear, but remind yourself that this is just a movie.

That’s when it hits you like a ton of bricks. This is YOUR story! This movie has “unveiled” your secret sins, your private struggles, the darkest corners of your soul for all to see! A spot light suddenly shines into the middle of the theater and points directly at you. Your friends, family and even your girlfriend all look at you with disgust. “You pervert!” “You are so disgusting!” “How can you call me your friend if that’s the way you feel about me?” and they all begin to leave one by one. You feel disgusted with yourself, ashamed and desperately alone.

Yet the movie keeps rolling. Suddenly a new voice enters the scene. A kind compassionate voice. You can’t seem to figure out where it is coming from or what it is saying. Is it in the movie? Or is it someone in the back of the room? Or is it in my head? Yet it is a real voice! You can’t quiet make out what it is saying above the chaos of your life in the movie, so you strain to hear it. You begin to make it out. “I love you!” What! “I love you!” Did you just say that you love me? Me the one that this movie is describing just how disgusting I am?

All of a sudden the screen goes blank. You hear a heart beating. You hear labored breath. A quiet whispered prayer says “yet not my will but yours be done.” Rapidly the screen begins to flash scenes before your eyes. Scenes of a trial, of a beating, of a crown of thorns. Everyone as real as if you were there. You can feel the intensity of the story increasing with every scene.

A large crowd. “Crucify Him!” A man carrying a cross. He falls. Another helps Him. A mocking crowd. A hill that looks like a scull. A hammer and nails. As the hammer strikes you can almost feel the pain of this new character. The cross is lifted and you see Him hanging before you. He begins to speak “it is finished!” and He dies!

The screen fades to black, and you are all alone. You just now realize that you are weeping uncontrollably.  At first you think it is because of how embarrassed you were that your sins were shown to all, but then you realize you aren’t weeping for yourself. You are weeping for Him. Something about the look in His eyes have captured your heart. What did He say before those scenes started? After all my sins were shown openly? That’s when it hit you…He said “I love you!”

At that moment it is as if the whole theater is filled with an awesome light, a bright white light. The kind that is warm and full, feels like it goes right through you. You try to protect your eyes but nothing can keep you from the light. You just sit there enjoying the feeling, the awe and wonder at what is going on. It may have lasted a moment, or hours, your not quiet sure. That’s when you see Him there beside you!

“Wait, you died! I saw it happen!” you say. He replies, “Yes! I did that for you!” “For me?” He begins to explain to you that your awful sins have separated you from God, you were dead in your sins, but He loved you so much He gave Himself for you. “I know every sin you have every committed, every evil thought and imagination and I still love you,” He says. “I showed you this so you would know how much I truly love you and give you life!”

You fall on your knees before Him, humbled by His great love for you. He tells you of His plans for you, your future and a promised home forever. All you need to do is love Him. “How can I refuse this great love?” you ask yourself. “Yes! I love you!”

Truly you will never be the same!

“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins… We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:10, 19 ESV)

Life is Hard…the Gospel is Sweet!

What is the hardest thing you have ever faced? When was life the hardest for you? It is in that times we often look around and see everyone else’s “perfect life” and wonder “Why me God?” We go through life thinking that it is supposed to be happy and joyful all the time. Happiness becomes and obsession with us. “I just want to be happy,” is a mantra I hear all the time. However, when I ask, “What is happiness?” there is a struggle to define it.

Happiness is elusive and distant. When Happiness becomes our end goal, we are let down and find ourselves more depressed then when we started. Why? Because Happiness is the wrong ideal. It is superficial and fleeting. It is often deeply rooted in selfish desires and pride. “I am happy when I am in control, when I get what I want and when I do what I want.” This is not what we were made for.

Please don’t feel like you are alone in this struggle. Even the Psalmist Asaph struggled with this. In Psalm 73 he describes how he had lost focused by looking at the unbelievers in his life who “had it all.” They were “happy” and “successful.” They were “rich” and “healthy.” Then he looked at his own life and all he did without as he pursued God. He is driven to the point in saying “is following God worth it if I miss out on being happy in this life?”

Yet when he enters the sanctuary, he is reminded of eternal truth. Happiness in this life if futile and fleeting. Without Christ, it leads to death and an eternity of suffering. When he gets the proper perspective he begins to rejoice again in the grace of God, because his future is secure.

Life can be, will be and is hard. Yet those who place their trust in Jesus, who choose to follow Christ with their whole heart, have a hope that is bigger then the pain of this world. Knowing that God loved us so much to enter our world, our pain and our struggle. That Jesus took our sins upon His shoulders on the cross and paid our debt. That He rose again the third day, conquering sin and death, so we could be reconciled to the Father. Then He gave us His righteousness and the gift of the ever present Holy Spirit. He also gave us the promise of a future hope of being with Him forever in Eternity. It is because of this sweet sweet Gospel, that we can have confidence when life is hard.

The Apostle Paul put it this way. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us”

(Romans 8:18 ESV).  When we fix our eyes on Jesus, when knowing Him becomes our focus and not happiness, we begin to see life as it is meant to be seen. We will see that God uses our struggles, our pains and our trials to shape us to be more like Him. That He is always working. And on top of that, He gives us seasons of happiness too.

Dancing Vapors

Sitting here at one of my favorite places pondering life and the lesson I will be teaching this Wednesday over a delicious cup of coffee, I am caught off guard at the illustration before my very eyes. If you share my affection for coffee, certainly you enjoy just holding the cup in two hands, smelling the aroma and seeing the steam rise off the top. The vapor dances off the top of the cup joyfully stretching to the sky. It carries the aroma of potential, energy and tastiness. Yet it dissipates into the air as fast as it has arrived. So yummy, so quick.

The book of James in the New Testament of the Bible, tells us that life is even as a vapor that appears for a short time and vanishes away (James 4:14). Such a true statement, yet one we like to push off as long as we can, ignoring it and denying it as if life is a certainty.

As I get older I begin to recognize how short life really is. I am thankful that as a youth pastor I have not had to encounter or perform a funeral of a teenager from my group. I have only done three funerals and they were all family. In just a few weeks I will be doing a memorial service for my great aunt Helen who has recently past. It is a surreal occasion when you see a lifeless body before it has been prepared by the funeral home. I stopped by to pray with my second cousins after their mom passed, her body was there just as she left it laying on the bed. There laid an empty shell, an abandoned tent that used to be the home of my great aunt. It's eyrie and seemingly unnatural, and yet it is very much natural.

As an adult the brevity of life becomes easier for me, but trying to get teenagers to understand this can be a difficult thing at times. After all, many of them have never dealt with a loss close to them, which is the way we like it and feel it should be, right? For me, I was exposed to death at the age of fourteen. At a small Christian junior high I went to, a very dear friend of mine, Sarah, began having headaches. They were tremendously painful and she would miss days of school because of them. Her parents finally decided to get the doctors involved and they found a tumor was the cause.

The anticipation of the test results was brutal, but when the results came back our worst fears became reality. The tumor was cancerous and it was tucked away in a part of her brain that was inoperable. They tried to treat it aggressively, but her thirteen year old body couldn't take it any longer. Within what seemed like a few days, she was gone.

To walk into school with a class of only 8 students, now 7, and see that empty chair everyday was so difficult. The questions of why, the blaming God, the fears were constantly bombarding my mind. Yet a new perspective of life remained. It is brief. It is fragile. It needs to be cherished while we have it.

Sarah was a beautiful girl who loved Jesus with all her heart. Upon her death, her pastor revealed her tithing records which showed that she had given abundantly to the church. She was said to have slipped into eternity with praises to Jesus flowing from her lips. She, in her young 13 years impacted me so much. Her story actually has a lot to do with why I am here today. In my mind, Sarah was a foundational influence in all of my ministry. Her death brought me a new reality and a new passion for Jesus.

  Life is beautiful, full of potential and excitement, but it is brief and fragile. What are you doing with your life? Do you realize how short it really is? As a parent, do you treasure the moments you have with your children? Do you realize that before you know it they will be adults? Prepare them to own their faith, to value life and to love Jesus above all else.

Are you a student? Do you have sense for how fast your life will fly by? Live for Jesus now! There is no better life then surrendering to Jesus. He says to you "I have come to give you the fullest life imaginable, a purpose to get up everyday, meaning in face of trials, hope that is tangible and peace that will carry you through anything." The Bible states that today is the day of salvation because you aren't guaranteed to see tomorrow. Trust Jesus, Follow Jesus, Learn about Jesus, tell others about Jesus. You will never regret it and you will have eternity to celebrate it!

When we follow Jesus, our life, though it may be short, can be a dancing vapor, full of potential and joy that appears for a short time but leaves a tremendous impact.

The Goodness and Kindness of God

            "But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

(Titus 3:4-7 ESV)

It is unexpected and unforeseen. Sometimes it can catch you off guard and surprise you. It is not predictable and it never disappoints. The goodness and loving kindness of our Savior is overwhelming! Have you experienced it?

It is so easy to get caught up in the monotony of the mundane and ordinary life. We go through the motions everyday. We hit snooze until we have to get out of bed, shower, eat and start our day. Sometimes it feels like we are robots doing the same thing everyday and we miss out on amazing things God has in store for us! But it doesn’t have to be that way!

When we start our day looking at the goodness and kindness of our God and realize that everything we do can reflect Him, it gives us purpose and hope for each day. When we surrender our lives to Him and become a Christ follower, we are given the Holy Spirit (which we are studying about this weekend) and stand in newness of life before God.

It is as a child of God that He delights to give us good things and do great things through us! I have been so excited to see what God is doing through our students lately! They are overwhelming with their courageous faith and desire to please Jesus! I love hearing someone describe them as “Jesus freaks who aren’t afraid to live out their faith, because of them I know I can live out my faith too!”

Sometimes it is seen just through being friendly and building relationships with other teens. Others it is inviting a friend to come to youth group to hear the Gospel! One young gal decided last week at Dare2Share that she wants to follow Christ and surrendered her life to Him. Last week a young man talked with me and chose to follow Christ after youth group! God is so good! God is so kind! It is overwhelming what God is doing and I am so excited to see what He continues to do!

I want to close with a challenge to just do the small things and see how the goodness and kindness of God shows up in a powerful way, by sharing a quote from “Kisses from Katie:”

“The truth is, I am not really very brave; I am not really very strong; and I am not doing anything spectacular. I am simply doing what God has called me to do as a person who follows Him. He said to feed His sheep and He said to care for “the least of these,” so that’s what I’m doing, with the help of a lot of people who make it possible and in the
company of those who make my life worth living.”