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I think it’s safe to say that we live in a very pluralistic world, where ideas from a wide variety of cultures are shared and believed.  Who among us doesn’t know someone of a different faith or philosophical background?  But that pluralism isn’t limited to just religion or politics.  Choice is everywhere, including our toothpaste aisles!  Because there are so many options out there, sometimes it’s difficult to define our reality, and so we’ve all heard someone ask, “what is truth?”  

Of course it may not matter with toothpaste.  I suppose they may even all be the same.  But is religion?  Do all religions somehow end up at the same place?

That’s the question Ravi Zacharias takes in Jesus Among Other Gods.  Zacharias tackles some of the biggest questions facing religions (Is there a God?  Does God cause suffering?  Is God knowable?) and shows just how Christianity differs from Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Atheism.  In each chapter he discusses the Christian view and then compares it to one (or more) of the other major religions.  By showing that the religions believe very different things on these topics he argues that it is impossible for all religions to be the same.  Either God exists or he does not.  Either God sent his son Jesus or he did not.  If God exists Atheism can not be true.  If Jesus is not God, then Christianity can not be true.

Christianity is often presented as a religion based purely on faith.  But that’s not true.  There is certainly something to be said for “divine revelation” and “understanding through faith.”  Those things help Christians better understand the world.  But God didn’t leave us with only those tools.  He also gives us historical evidence and eye witness testimony. 

I don’t know about you, but I am very much concerned about the truthfulness of Christianity.  I want to know if Jesus was real, or if it is a hoax.  Frankly I have no desire to live my life believing in something that’s a sham.  And that’s what I enjoy about Zacharias’ approach.  He uses logic and reason to make the case for Christianity.  He puts together compelling arguments that answer tough questions.  And in my mind this book definitely proves that all religions are not the same. 

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At their cries, all the Israelites around them fled, shouting, “The earth is going to swallow us too!” (Numbers 16: 34)

God used a specific and unique event (in this case an earthquake) to punish the leaders of an open rebellion against him.  But because the people of Israel had lost their trust of God they believed they were in danger.  They either believed they would be punished by God, or else it was a natural phenomenon.  In reality it was God acting just as Moses had said he would. 

What repeatedly strikes me about the Bible is that almost everyone in it looks like a fool at one time or another.  There are countless stories where everyone from Moses to Paul looks like an idiot for doubting God. 

I find that fascinating. 

What other religion does that?  What other religion’s icons are put in such an embarrassing light?  Doesn’t this make the Bible all the more believable?  After all, if you’re going to invent a religion, why make yourself look bad? 

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In the last few days I’ve touched on the need to intentionally choose God.  I also discussed how we have to make that decision, even when the path isn’t safe or easy.  But there is still another aspect of being intentional: our individual needs.   These are the things I consider the “personal preferences” of faith.  In other words, we need to understand what we personally need in our relationship with God. 

Paul said, “I have become all things to all people” (1 Corinthians 21-23) but he also said we should not cause others to fail (Romans 14:21).  We may have permission to do a lot of things, but doing so isn’t always the best option!  Recognizing what causes us to fail, and then avoiding it by changing our lives is important to our long-term relationship with God.  

I haven’t been to church in about 4 weeks.  To some that may not seem like much.  But to me it’s been a huge deal.  Part of how I’m wired is to need church.  Of course it’s not the building, the free coffee, or even the messages.  What I really need is the sense of community I get from the church.  Something important happens, which I don’t fully understand, when I go to church and see others excited about God.  

For me going to church needs to be a regular part of my Christian faith.  So what is it for you?  What do you need to do that keeps you centered on God?  What do you need to avoid so that you aren’t tempted?

Answer those questions and you’ll have a better idea of how you need to live your life to remain close to God.

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Erwin McManus’s first book, The Barbarian Way, is the most important book I’ve ever read.  I know it’s considered “bad” to say this, but it has been more important to me than reading the Bible.  Without The Barbarian Way I never would have read the Bible, let alone seen the beauty of it.  McManus has a way of presenting an idea that fundamentally alters the way you view the world and God.  As I’ve often said on this site, I grew up believing God was this safe, quiet, wimpy thing.  I thought that to be a Christian you had to be a push-over.  The Barbarian Way shattered that view and showed me that being a Christian is this radical, dangerous thing.

In a similar way Chasing Daylight (formerly known as Seizing Your Divine Moment), has completely reshaped the way I “listen” for God to answer my prayers.  In the past I always thought I had to get a specific “yes” from God before I could act on anything.  Instead McManus argues that God has already given us a “yes” on a lot of things.  We have been told to spread the message of Jesus.  We’ve been told to love our enemies and care for the hurting.  We’re already supposed to help one another and support those in need.  We don’t need to wait for a “yes” when we want to do these things – we already have it.

To illustrate this point, McManus uses the story of Jonathan in 1 Samuel 14.  Jonathan was bold and aggressive when it came to pursuing God’s will.  You kind of have to be when you decide to charge an army with just two people.  But he also recognized that God’s will often takes us to dangerous places that may cost us everything we have.  Jonathan knew full well God may not save him saying, “Perhaps the LORD will act in our behalf.”  Perhaps?!  Perhaps?!  If I was about to engage in a life threatening endeavor, I’d want a bit of a stronger word than “perhaps!”

But Jonathan represents a model of action.  He worked under the assumption that God had already said “yes” and promised victory to Israel.  He wasn’t waiting for a reconfirmation of God’s word, Israel already had it.  Jonathan knew that victory was just waiting to be grasped.  When we choose to take action McManus calls this “seizing your divine moment.” 

This is such a foreign idea to me that it was hard to accept at first.  But I quickly realized just how revolutionary it was.  We need to flip our usual way of listening for God.  Instead of waiting for “go” we need to assume we have permission to act.  What we really need to listen for is God to say “no.” 

I’m not sure exactly how this idea will shape my life or R3.  But I do know it is going to fundamentally alter how I respond to people as a Christian.  In fact, even before I finished reading Chasing Daylight I knew God was asking me to seize my first divine moment by giving the book away. 

Chasing Daylight is an amazing book that really challenges us to change our lives.  I don’t usually recommend books to people – I think they should choose to read them (or not) on their own.  But this is a book that I believe everyone should read. 

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I just finished an amazing book – Chasing Daylight by Erwin McManus.  Over the course of a weekend it has radically shaped the way I view my life.  And my relationship with God.  McManus has a gift of rephrasing the world so you see it in a new way.  But more on that Friday.

Chasing Daylight discusses the times God presents us with unique moments where we are given the opportunity to act on God’s behalf.  McManus calls this “seizing your divine moments.”  As God so often works, I was given a divine moment on the plane back from LA yesterday.  I felt God asking me to give my copy of Chasing Daylight to the woman sitting next to me.  I remember thinking, “yeah right, I just spent 10 hours reading this book and taking notes.”  But that excuse didn’t last very long.  So I switched to the ever popular, “but I have plans for this book.”

That’s when it really hit me, God was presenting me with a choice.  I was placed into an opportunity no one else could fill.  I doubt this woman would ever sit next to someone reading Chasing Daylight, and certainly not on her current cross-country journey.  If she was going to get this book, it was going to have to be through me. No one else could do my job for me.

I also knew that I could never look at Chasing Daylight again if I was too afraid to give a book to a stranger.  How could I claim I wanted to seize my divine moments if I couldn’t do this simple task?  So I sucked it up, and decided to give her the book.  I tried to start a conversation about the book.  But she wouldn’t bite.  This wasn’t going to be easy.  Of course I knew all of this.  Somehow I knew all along that I was going to have to turn to her and say, “would you like this book?”

Time was running out.  I could hear God saying “go! act!”  But I was still afraid.  Afraid of giving up my book because I wanted it, and afraid of looking like an idiot in front of this woman.  As the wheels of the plane touched down I turned to her and said, “I finished this book, would you like it?”

She looked at the book, and then at me.  When our eyes met I could tell she was thinking “why do I always sit next to the weird ones?”  After a brief explanation of why I was giving her my book, she accepted and said something like, “I could really learn to hear what God wants of me.”

I have no idea if she’ll ever read the book.  Maybe she thinks I’m some idiot or a Bible-thumper.  I don’t know.  But I do know that sharing God’s love is always the right thing.  Even if it’s awkward and embarrassing.  But there’s more than that – I had to intentionally choose to act.  I was hoping God would make things easy for me, but deep down I knew I was going to have to step out boldly and just “do it.”  This was my chance to do something radical. 

Just as we have to choose to believe in God, we also have to choose to act on those beliefs.  It’s not always easy.  In fact I’d say the vast majority of times it’s difficult.  It comes with risk and often sacrifice (even if that sacrifice is just a book).  We need to be intentional in not only choosing God, but in following him.

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Why doesn’t God force us to believe in him?  We are created to need God, so why not just go one step further and be created to always believe in God?  But that’s not what God did.  Instead he’s given us this thing called free will, which lets us make our own decisions.  Don’t you find that kind of amazing?

If I were creating the universe I’d make sure everyone would know it. I’d want them to always believe in me.  I would have stamped the moon with a giant copyright logo.  But if there is one thing that’s consistent with God, it’s that he’s different!  He wanted us to have the ability to believe in him, or to not.  To love other people, or to hate them.  There must be a reason for that, right? 

And there is.  It means we have responsibility for our decisions.

Everyone who is a Christian became one because they made a conscious decision.  Becoming a Christian isn’t hereditary.  It’s not something you can catch in the airport.  It’s one made by choice.

Even before we can really get to know God, we have to make a choice to accept him.  And you can’t make a decision without, well, deciding.  This is true for every choice we make in our lives.  Do we get up with the alarm, or to sleep an extra 10 minutes?  Do we eat breakfast or skip it?  Are you nice to your co-workers or selfish?  No matter what decision we are presented we have a moment where we must choose a course of action.

At the very core of the Christian identity is intentionality: the decision to follow God (or not) in all aspects of our lives.    

With intentionality comes purpose.  Not only have we agreed to move closer to God, but now we are moving with a goal in mind.  Our lives take on added value because we aren’t being blown about by new ideas and unexpected circumstances.

Luke tells us that at one point “Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:51)  He made an intentional decision to focus the remainder of his life in concluding his ministry on Earth.  What would have happened if Jesus had allowed himself to become distracted?  What if instead of focusing on his mission, he let himself get distracted by things around him?  Would he ever have made it to the cross?

God moves with purpose, and he wants us to move with the same purpose.  We are called to go forth and make disciples of the world (Matthew 28: 19), not to simply sit around and wait for things to happen.  God has always intended for us to act intentionally.

Now if you’re like me, you find that a bit intimidating!  I’m not sure I’m exactly prepared to always live my life with God’s purposes in mind.  I’m not sure I can handle that kind of burden.  But to pretend that’s not what God wants is to hide the facts.  And in the long run the only one I’m hurting by hiding from the truth is myself. 

Realizing that I need to be intentional in following God has radically changed my interaction with him.  I look at things in my life and ask, “is this helping or hurting my relationship with God?”  If it helps my relationship I try to do more of it.  If it hurts I try to do less.  I obviously don’t succeed with either of these things all the time, but I try.  And in many ways making that choice is really what counts.  I’m not sure how much God really cares if we succeed or fail.  What I think he wants most is that we’re willing to try. 

As you read this post ask yourself those questions.  And when you get an answer act with intentionality.

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Have you heard about the man in India marrying a dog?  Sounds pretty crazy, right?  Sounds like something you’d never do, right?  That’s what I thought until Thursday morning.  (And no, I didn’t find myself asking Lassie to marry me.)  You see, that guy believes that his actions can atone for the mistakes he’s made in his life.  And what he did to those dogs was pretty bad.  So a bad sin requires a major correction, right?  

When I first read about this story I thought about it from a Hindu perspective.  I figured if you believe people are reincarnated into all manner of things (including dogs), and you did something horrific to that dog, then that doesn’t bode well for you.  As they say, Karma’s a bitch.  Ok, I don’t know if anyone says that.  But maybe the should.

That was the framework I was using until I read Bob Hyatt’s blog.  His take fundamentally shifted how I look at this (and other) problems.  Hyatt said, “We find endless creative ways to atone for our own sins.”  How true.  So many of us, myself included, are trapped into this mentality that we need to earn our way into salvation.  That somehow what we do impacts how much God loves us.  And that can drive us to do strange things. 

For this man it meant he needed to find a way to make up for his mistakes.  And because he did something radical to the dogs, he believed a radical step was needed to fix the problem.  The irony here is that in a way he’s right.  A radical step is needed to atone for sin.  It’s just that Jesus was that radical step.  He took the hit for all of us.  He died so we don’t have to. 

Nothing we can ever do will atone for a sin we make.  There are no “do overs.”  There is only grace and forgiveness. Thank God (literally!) for that.

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I was exhausted yesterday.  Actually that’s probably an understatement.  I felt a little zombie-like; but with less brains and more drool. 

For me it’s been one of “those” weeks.  You know, the kind where it seems everything is a battle.  I’ve been working on a major project and yesterday marked the last day.  It’s a project that takes months of planning and preparation.  Two days prior to the event it requires dozens of hours of work just to get things set.  And it never seems to run smoothly.   No matter what is done in the preparation something new happens that catches everyone off guard.  It’s just the nature of the job.

Every time this project comes up I dread it.  It’s unpredictable, high profile, and very complicated.  It tires me out just thinking about it!  But in a strange way it’s been one of the greatest experiences of my life because now that it’s over I can see God fulfilling the promises he makes in Isaiah 40.

At more than one point this week I thought I had reached my breaking point.  I would turn to God and say,”that’s it! I can’t do this anymore! I’ve reached my limits!”  It wasn’t an empty threat.  I really thought I couldn’t do it anymore.  I had no idea how I was going to accomplish the tasks before me.  But somehow I always found a way to take one more step forward.  No matter how far I dug down, I still could go a little further.

“Do you not know?  Have you not  heard?  The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  He will not grow tired or weary and his understanding no one can fathom.  He gives strength to the wary and increases the power of the weak.  Even youths grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40: 28-31)

I lived that out yesterday.  I was stumbling and falling.  Heck I was probably laying on the ground with a bunch of footprints on the back of my shirt!  But God gave me the strength I needed to go on.  At the moment I was most tired, at the time when I thought there was no way to prevent disaster, that’s exactly the moment I found I had the most strength to carry on.

So often I look for proof that God exists.  I want something tangible – I want a miracle.  And so often when God acts I ignore it or chalk it up to “coincidence.”  Well this is something tangible, this is something miraculous.  

People sometimes ask Christians “how is your faith so strong?” or “how can you believe in God when so much evil happens?”  To me those questions are answered (in part) by events like this.  Jesus was constantly pointing out that he was performing the very miracles people said they needed to see in order to believe.  But many of those people never admitted to themselves what they really saw.

So the next time I’m feeling exhausted I can point back to this project and say, “I know God will help me today, because he helped me back then.”  I don’t need to ask for more “proof” because I’ve already seen it.  Now I can just ask for help, and know it’s coming. 

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“”He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.” (Isaiah 40: 28)

Sometimes I think God must get tired of answering my prayers.  After all, doesn’t he get tired of listening to me whine and complain?  I know I get tired of people whining and complaining.

Fortunately, that’s not how God is!

God’s strength is infinite.  He’s never tired or bored of listening to our problems to him.  In fact, he wants us to turn our worries and concerns over to him.  When we trust God with our problems, we aren’t whining, we are stepping towards him in faith.  And that is something God always encourages.

Isaiah goes on to say, “those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.” (v. 31).  We are told that when we trust God with our problems he gives us some of his limitless strength.  That is one of the most remarkable and comforting promises I have ever heard!  It means that I can do some incredible things if I trust God.  Not because I’m relying on my own strength, but because God will make up whatever difference I need.

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I’ve been fighting a nasty cold the last few days (hence the irregular updates for R3).  As I’ve been shuffling along with my achy muscles, taking medicine, and generally being miserable, I began to think about the cross.

That may sound like a strange train of thought, but bear with me for a moment.  Sometimes I have a tendency to gloss over what Jesus did for me.  “Yeah, yeah” I want to say, “I know he died for my sins.”  But, man, that’s such an understatement!  He didn’t just die – he died in a way that is possibly the most vicious method man has invented to kill someone.  God chose to die a painful, humiliating (crucification was for criminals), and slow death.  Just so we could be saved.

That’s all pretty shocking to think about, and it makes me a little uncomfortable.  Especially because I get pretty grumpy when I’m sick.  I tend to snap, and be rude towards people who are just trying to help me.  I tell myself that I’m not a ‘people person’ when I’m sick.  As if that somehow justifies my behavior.

So each time I’ve reached for my medicine I’ve been reminded that God suffered for me (and you).  And he did it without Tylenol.  The bottom line is my suffering is nothing compared to what he went through.  I don’t have much excuse for being mean while I’m sick if I want to follow the example God set.  If God loved us so much that he sacrificed his own son, then I can at least smile at people when I’m at the store picking up more Kleenex.

I believe God can use any circumstance to teach us something.  For me I now have a better appreciation for what God did for me.  So now, instead of being sick, I find I’m also grateful.  Grateful for God’s salvation, and grateful for modern chemistry! 

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