R3: radical, revolutionary, different

Sometimes I get so worked up about the right theology I forget about being real and honest with God. I forget about having a relationship with him. It’s in these moments where I spend all my time looking for the right words, instead of just talking to God.

So why do I do this?

I don’t think it’s because I’m trying to impress someone. The times I feel the most pressure to be “theologically correct” are usually when I’m praying. No one can hear those thoughts. But I worry that God may be upset, or more accurately, disappointed.

I worry that God may be ignoring me because I don’t know the magic words to get his attention. Sadly this is so far from who God is. God isn’t looking for magic words; he’s looking for a relationship.

Fundamentally faith is about putting things into action, not about what you know. Having sound theology is important - the more you know about someone, the stronger that relationship. But if you’re waiting until you have perfect theology, or you get your thoughts exactly right before turning to God, you’re hoping in something that will never happen.

Sometimes we just have to trust that God knows what we mean. And believe that he wants to be a part of our lives. We have to give up the idea of having control over God’s actions, and trust that we can just talk to him.

God inspires our dreams.  But that doesn’t mean everything will work out without effort.  Sometimes things don’t go according to plan, and we need to be flexible. 

R3 has a regular feature called “what i’m reading”.  It’s a way to share the things that are influencing me and my journey with God.  Not everything I read makes it into this spot - just the things that make me think about how I should live out a life of faith. 

Wide Awake falls into this category. 

As a result, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about dreams.  Not the kind where you fall asleep, but the kinds that make you live “wide awake”. 

Erwin McManus is a brilliant speaker, and a gifted thinker.  But where he truly excels is giving you a framework to understand yourself, the world, and God.  And somehow he does this in two word phrases. 

The Barbarian Way (which is technically three words) showed me that God wasn’t a wimp, and even better, he doesn’t want us to be wimps!  A Barbarian wouldn’t shy away from helping someone just because it was difficult - he (or she) would charge right in and do it.  Because that’s what Barbarians do.  Now, whenever I am afraid of taking action, I think about being a Barbarian.  And it encourages me to act.

Chasing Daylight was just as influential.  If being a Barbarian was about going to places others wouldn’t, Chasing Daylight was about seizing a moment in time when no one else could.  It made me realize that some opportunities only come once, and if we don’t act, no one will.

Soul Cravings showed me just how much we need relationships and our dreams.  It isn’t that we just want these things in our lives; it’s that we crave them.

Wide Awake is no exception to this rule.  But instead of receiving the benefits for myself, it’s shaping the way I see other people.  It’s given me a framework to help other people live out their dreams. 

Each of those phrases has a deep meaning for me.  They allow me to sum up hundreds of pages of thoughts and examples, and boil it down into something that prods action.  I might not be able to think of a 10 point argument as to why I should act, but I can remember a phrase.

They also serve as a reminder of how God works.

For instance, my dream is to help people develop a relationship with God.  I want people to connect the dots of their faith, with the lines of their lives.  By writing R3 I am able to live out that dream.  But without The Barbarian Way to help me become a Christian, and without Chasing Daylight to prompt me to start this site, I never would have been in position to be asked to review Wide Awake.

Funny how acting in faith works out like that.

Focus.

That is not a word I often use to describe myself. By my nature I’m easily distracted. Not because I can’t pay attention when I want to – but because so many things fascinate me it’s hard to concentrate on just one thing.

As a kid I never had a hard time thinking of something I wanted to be when I grew up. There were so many exciting possibilities. Would I be an astronaut? How about a comic book artist? A writer? The next Indiana Jones?

As an adult it’s still hard for me to focus on just one goal. There are still so many things I want to do with my life that sometimes I feel paralyzed - not by fear, but by excitement. I am excited about all the amazing possibilities that lay before me.

In Wide Awake, Erwin McManus suggests that the most difficult decisions in life aren’t between good and evil - but between two equally good choices.

I think this is true.

After all, how do we make a decision between becoming an astronaut and a doctor? Or a football star instead of a baseball player? Or the most important question of all: hot dogs or hamburgers?

Life is filled with endlessly good choices competing for our attention. That’s why it’s fundamentally important to know what we won’t negotiate. We need to know what things we won’t surrender no matter what the situation. And dare I say, no matter the cost?

This applies just as much to our faith as it does to our lives.

It’s hard to know how to interpret rock bands (good), or long hair (meh), or the prosperity gospel (bad) if you don’t know what your nonnegotiables are. If we don’t know what defines God, then we get upset over something as simple as the music you play in church.

When everything has equal importance you can’t separate preferences from necessities. And so we attack people who have a different set of preferences – even when they agree with us on the necessities.

Of course there’s something deeper here too. We can’t live “wide awake” if we don’t know our core convictions. We can’t live out our dreams if we don’t know when to say “no” and when to say “yes.”

Ravi Zacharias tells a story about Henry Martyn. 

Martyn was not an attractive man.  (Or at least that’s what history records.)  Because of his embarrassment by the way he looked, he preferred to stay away from people.  He lived his life on the edges of relationships.  That is, until a young woman was able to see beyond his appearance,  and fell in love with him. 

Naturally he fell in love with her.

His other love was God.  So sitting in church one day, Martyn heard about India and the desperate need to bring God to the people of that country.  Suddenly Martyn knew what his dream was.  He knew that to live wide awake, he had to move to India. 

And so he went to the woman he loved and asked her to join him. 

She refused. 

Devestated Martyn began to question his calling to Africa.  Was this really the dream God had for him?  Was he even hearing it correctly?  How could he choose between India and the woman he loved?

As he wrestled with his choice he realized it wasn’t a choice between a woman and India – but between this special woman and God.

Henry Martyn knew what was nonnegotiable in his life.  He knew that nothing was more important than God.  As hard as it must have been, he left England and moved to India.  And died there at the age of 31. 

Martyn risked everything, and sacrificed so much, because he knew the things he couldn’t compromise.  His decision cost him the woman he loved, produced tremendous physical suffering, and in the end took his life.  But because he knew his priorities, he lived his life with both focus and purpose.  He lived wide awake.

So what are your nonnegotiables?  What will you never compromise?

If you’ve been reading R3 for any length of time knows that I’m a huge fan of Erwin McManus.  So when I was approached by his publicist about reading an advance copy of his latest book, I was thrilled.  But I have to admit, I was a little apprehensive.  What if I didn’t like the book?  What if I had to say a bunch of bad things about it?  What if I had to come up with a third question that started with the phrase ‘what if’?!

That concern only grew as I had a hard time figuring out what to say about this book.  So much of it seemed familiar: the influence of The Barbarian Way, Chasing Daylight, and Soul Cravings is obvious.  But I’ve already read those books.  I already get that way of thinking.  I’m already on board. 

There’s no question Erwin’s writings have had a profound impact on my life.  The Barbarian Way helped bring me into a relationship with God.  While Chasing Daylight forced me to be bold, and was a  major reason this site was launched.   But when I read Wide Awake nothing immediately jumped out at me.

“Sure it was good.  But it wasn’t brilliant.” I told myself.  “What am I getting out of it?”

But that view changed when I was, of all places, at the gym.  I have no idea what caused the light bulb to go on.  Maybe it was sheer exhaustion.  Or maybe I just was looking for an excuse to stop exercising.  But in one moment everything crystallized.

Wide Awake isn’t so much about me and my dreams, but about other people and their dreams.

As I mentioned, I already get Erwin McManus.  And for the last few years I’ve been doing much of what he talks about in Wide Awake.  But what I hadn’t been doing is helping other people live out their dreams.  I had no framework for even recognizing that people were searching for their dreams.

Wide Awake changes that.

It gives me a way to relate and communicate with people about their dreams. 

At it’s core Wide Awake is about identifying the dreams God has for us, and then learning to live a life that makes those dreams a reality.  Considering most of us probably can’t even identify a dream we want to live, that’s no small task.

Since that moment at the gym, I see just how many people are sleep walking through their lives (myself included).  When I hear people talk about their unfulfilling jobs I no longer think in terms of job satisfaction, pay raises or a career change.  What I realize people are saying is that they long to live a different life.  They want to wake up, but they don’t know how.  And so they feel trapped.

When I hear that story of loneliness, I no longer have to say, “gee, I’m sorry to hear that,” because I have nothing else to offer.  Now I can offer them some hope.  I can talk about the potential in their lives, and the dreams that God has created them to live.

No matter how spiritual we are, it’s funny how we still take a consumerist attitude toward God.  I wanted Wide Awake to benefit me.  I wanted a blueprint of how to live the life of my dreams.  What I got was a road map of how to help other’s achieve their’s.

And you know what?

That’s letting me live out my dreams.

Abraham was 75 years old when God showed up and said, leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1)

Think about that for a second.  75.  Most of us are hoping to be long retired by then.  And here God was taking a man and changing the course of human history.  Apparently the excuse “I’m too old” or “I’m too tired” or even “Haven’t I worked hard enough already?” doesn’t hold much weight with God. 

It’s hard to trust God.  Partly because we don’t believe that the promises he makes us are going to happen.  “God’s a busy guy, he’s probably just distracted” we tell ourselves.

And so we do it our way.

We take matters into our own hands instead of waiting for what God has promised.  At least this is what happened to a guy named Abraham.  The Bible tells us Abraham and his wife couldn’t have children.  In fact they were actually too old to have children by the time God got around to making his promises. (Genesis 12:4)

I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem like a promising start to me.

On top of that, it took 25 years for God to fulfill his promise.  But Abraham didn’t know it was going to take that long.  So after waiting about 10 years he got impatient.  (10 years is more than generous, right?)  And decided it would be a good idea to sleep with his servant.  A perfectly acceptable thing to do in that time.  But it wasn’t what God wanted him to do.

We want to do things our way, because at least we can see what we’re doing.  We figure where there’s movement there’s progress.  But that’s not really the case is it?  Sometimes all that movement means we’re just stuck on the treadmill and can’t get off.

So often forcing the issue with God makes things worse.  I’m sure Abraham thought it was a good idea to sleep with his servant.  This way at least he had some kind of heir.  Heck, his wife was the one who suggested it.  But this just isn’t the way we were designed to live.

And so there were consequences.

Interestingly the first person to be affected by this decision was his wife - who became jealous.  The second to be affected were the child and mother.  The third: Israel itself, because Ishmael and his sons “lived in hostility toward all their brothers.”  (Genesis 25:18)For those of you scoring at home, that’s pretty much the hat trick for bad decisions. 

Why is it that we try to force God’s hand?  We convince ourselves that we know better.  And we plow on ahead, even when, deep down, we know better. 

Sometimes we just have to take him at his word, and wait.

Which brings us back to the beginning: it’s hard to trust God.  Not just because we don’t trust God; because even when we trust him, waiting is so difficult for us.  Fortunately for us, God always follows through in his promises, just like he did for Abraham.

I was watching TV last night when a commercial for Goodwill came on.  The man on the commercial told me that I should act responsibly when donating to charity.  “Okay”, I thought, “I’m on board with that.”  But then he went on to talk about other charities.  “Did you know” the man said, “most of your donated goods don’t benefit the local community?”

This struck me as an odd thing to say.

Goodwill didn’t run a commercial saying, “we focus on the local, let us help!”  Or “Goodwill, serving the local community with 84% of our proceeds” or some such thing.  Instead they focused on tearing down other charities.

We all need to believe we’re relevant to the future.  We all need to believe we have a purpose.  And I suspect Goodwill is feeling threatened by other charities.  So they did what seemed natural - strike back by tearing down the competition.

Why is it that we see ourselves in competition with others instead of cooperation?  

When you’re living your life for God there’s a more important purpose than your current task.  And that purpose is making sure we’re living in a “Kingdom way.”  A way that reflects who Jesus is.  Sometimes this means that no matter how essential you may have been to a service, a process, or a job, there may come a time where we need to let that go.  That’s true of Goodwill, and it’s true of our lives.

Our hope comes from God, not from the task we’re working on.  When we confuse the two we end up doing more damage to the causes we’re trying to serve.  We allow ourselves to confuse formality with faith, worship with religion, and belief with dogma.

And in the end we end up in competition, instead of cooperation.

When you think about miracles what comes to mind?

Something big?  Something spectacular?  You know, burning bushes, parting seas, a winning season out of the Pittsburgh Pirates?  But miracles aren’t always big.  Sometimes they are small.  Sometimes just being able to get out of bed to go to work is a miracle.

The same thing can be said about how quickly miracles occur.  So often we think that if our prayers aren’t answered immediately, they will never be answered.  But that’s not the case.  As CS Lewis once said, a slow miracle was no less a miracle than a fast one.

Sometimes we complain about a lack of miracles in our lives.  But maybe that’s not the real issue.  Maybe the real issue is that we don’t always recognize the miracles we do experience.

Peter’s world had just come crashing down around him.  The man he thought was God had just been arrested.  The man he thought was going to free Israel from the oppressive Roman rule had given up without a fight.  Now this same man was being beaten and disgraced.  And because things weren’t bad enough, Peter had just denied even knowing him.

All of this came only hours after swearing that he would be willing to die for Jesus.  Now Peter had to confront the fact that he had failed.  Spectacularly.  The thing is, Jesus had even told Peter all of this would happen.  But Peter was too proud to listen.  He was too sure of himself.

Up to this point Peter had a history of acting boldly.  Perhaps even impulsively.  He had never run away from God before.  So this was new territory. 

It must have been lonely.

I don’t think it’s a surprise that after all this Peter “broke down and wept.” (Mark 14:72)

If this is where the story ended it would be pretty depressing.  But fortunately this is just the beginning.

All too often we live with the belief that if we fail, even a little bit, God will become angry with us.  That somehow making a mistake is the worst thing we could do.  And therefore we don’t try at all. 

But this is clearly not the case.

Peter failed spectacularly.  His mistake is recorded in the Bible, which means people will read about it for thousands of years.  Talk about embarrassing!  And yet God used him to do amazing things. 

That’s one of the most remarkable things about God - no matter what we’ve done, he gives us another chance.  He says, “don’t worry about the mistakes in the past, trust in the promises I make for your future.  And act on them now.”

I guess that really takes all of my excuses away for not acting.  If God can use Peter after denying God, then I think he can use me too.