We Burned The Church

When we were young my friends and I thought the Church was perfect.
Our eyes were wonder-filled with few expectations.
Sunday was for playing and Jesus was our superhero.
We didn’t realize that the Church would fail us in time.
Or at least we were too young to believe it.  

When we grew up a little my friends and I thought we were perfect.
Our eyes were wild with unrealistic expectations.
Sunday was for sleeping, and we loved Jesus, but not His Church.
We didn’t realize that we would fail the Church in time.
Or at least we were too young to care.

When we grew up a little my friends and I got fed up with the Church.
Our eyes were painfully shut with failed expectations.
Sunday was a joke and Jesus was unimpressive.
We didn’t realize that Jesus still loved the Church even if we didn’t.
At least Jesus was jealous for us.

When we grew up a little we realized that no one and no church is perfect.
Our eyes were dazed and we started to question our expectations.
Sunday was for fools, but we were fools and Jesus still loved us.
We didn’t realize that we were the Church whether we liked it or not.
At least Jesus picked up our broken pieces.

When we grew up a little we fell in love with an imperfect Bride called “Church.”
Our eyes were filled with wonder again but with fewer expectations.
Sunday was special, but it wasn’t about Sunday anymore. It was about Jesus.
We didn’t realize that the Church looks more beautiful the longer you love Her.
At least He uses broken pieces to build His Church, and loves us anyway.

“Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. ”

— Revelation 19:7

jesus > sex

Tomorrow I’m getting married. And, like a typical dude, I’ve got something on my mind: SEX. I’m not denying it. But perhaps, atypically, I am not as wrapped up into thoughts of having sex so much as I am completely bewildered with thoughts of why, as American Christians, we are so obsessed with sex, and why we are steeping teenagers in a sex-Gospel like ticking sex-time-bombs.

Maybe you and I heard the same sex-gospel growing up: “SEX IS AWESOME, FANTASTIC, MIND-BLOWING, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH… BUT you can’t have it till you’re married...” Somewhere between the over-glorification of sex and the under-glorification of Christ we walked away thinking that married sex was better than knowing Jesus. And more than once I've whimpered to Him, Jesus, just don’t come back before I get to have sex, pretty please. The Sex-Gospel was the "good news" of guilt-free sex. And, comparatively, that's really just OKAY news... 

But the message I never heard was that knowing Jesus today is better than having sex. It’s better than sex with your girlfriend. It’s better than sex with a stranger. It’s even better than hot, steamy, monogamous sex with your spouse - And you don’t need to wait until you’re married to experience the deepest satisfaction that life can afford because you can experience the ocean of satisfaction that is closeness with Christ right-flipping-now! 

Not to degrade the fact that it is a life-long struggle to exclusively enthrone Christ at the center of our hearts, because it absolutely is; but the truth is that you and I can experience the most ravishing and uncompromising dimensions of “satisfaction” without ever having sex. Jesus said the way was narrow, not impossible. He promised "find" if we resolve to "seek." Our souls were not made for sex and sex alone they were made to find and experience closeness with God the Father.  The sex-side-dish is a measly morsel compared to our main course in Christ.

But if Jesus is not all satisfying then God forbid you ever live in anything smaller than a mansion. God forbid you ever experience hunger. God forbid you drive a beater. And God forbid you remain single for another minute. If Christ is not all satisfying then by all means, have lots of sex and have it now!

To say to a teenager that "sex in a monogamous marriage is the best thing ever" is to tie a proverbial carrot-on-a-stick to his back and have him run around, maddening himself with the lust that comes from staring at it. Until one day, when the carrot has become an idol, he rips off the stick and devours it. And that’s all. The carrot is not savored nor is he thankful for it, and instead he begins an often-vain search for something better than the carrot.

Neither has threatening people with AIDS or herpes resulting from loose orgies stopped anyone from having pre-marital sex; it will simply make them wear a condom. I’ve never met a virgin who on their wedding day said, “I only made it here because STDs scared me.” But give them something truly satisfying... give them Jesus... and the search for satisfaction rolls over and dies. 

To give this generation the gift of closeness with Christ is to give them a satisfaction that will never fail them, a satisfaction that lasts longer than a night of fooling around, a satisfaction that cries out to the deep of their heart and delights the senses of their soul with whispers of the Most High.

So I’m a virgin. And I haven’t missed out on anything. Because somewhere in the last twenty-four years my soul began relishing itself deeply in the deep of God’s heart. Tasting and seeing that He is good. And while it threatens and beats it’s chest, neither sex inside or outside of marriage can compete with the satisfaction I have found in Christ.

From the guy whose successor experienced every fleeting pleasure end-to-end and came back empty :

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is FULLNESS OF JOY; at your right hand are PLEASURES FOREVERMORE.
- Psalm 16:11

stalking god.

a response to: sexy “christianity”

A few weeks ago the corpse of sexy “christianity” was exhumed from its digital grave. What was little more than a dormant diary-entry reawakened and some of my most profuse heart-leakage started seeping into the cracks of facebook. And while its meanderings seem to have struck a nerve, I have a dirty secret to admit:
 

I am book-reading-and-blogging boy.

I wrote sexy “christianity” plaid-clad with a side of skinny jeans and coffee in a local java shop. My tactless and messy pen strokes were an attempt at confessing my own martyr-complex, pharisaic tendencies, and shallow faith with resolve to move back to the epicenter of a simple overflowing love for my Murdered Savior.

It takes one to know one in a culture where one of the most ostentatious and perhaps trendy things a Christian can do is write a blog about spirituality. Often we share our messiness with the world hoping to feel a little less messy. But really, we end up smearing our mess into a mess that’s more nice-looking but no less messy. The blogosphere is an inch deep and a mile wide.

But then, life’s not about a blog… or a style… The depth of your deep-V is not a measuring unit for the depth of your spirituality. Torn up shoes can’t prove how far you’ve walked with Jesus. And a longer beard doesn’t particularly make you more Christ-like (sorry, white-Russian-bearded-baby-faced Jesus!).

You can look like you know God… you can know all about God… but that has no bearing on whether or not you actually know Him. 

When you know all about someone but don’t actually know them, that just makes you a stalker.

GOD DOESN'T NEED STALKERS, HE WANTS FOLLOWERS... 

Temptation lurks in the murky and shallow waters of trending Christianity. It would demand every Christian forget Christ but continue looking as if they knew Him. This is what the temptation of early trending Christian culture demanded of Ananias and Sapphira. When selling land for the Jesus’ sake became the trend, the couple sought to be trendy. They sold their land with hearts bent on looking the part and hoping to receive Peter’s praise. That heart condition cost them absolutely everything.
 

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven… I will declare to them, ‘Depart from me, I never knew you...’” (Matthew 7:21-23)

Whether you truly know God is between you and Him, but my resolve is to peel back the spiritual-looking behavior (regardless of whether it’s dressed in suits, sackcloth, or skinny jeans) and take a look behind the curtain, into the mechanism of my faith. My intention is not to take any one flavor of Christianity to the woodshed… My intention is to make war. To raid whitewashed tombs by releasing clarion calls to the Church – that each one of us would check our own hearts with a sense of ruthlessness towards any corrupted motives we may find there. Join me, I dare you to.

For Ananias and his wife there was this pervasive thing called “self” that weaseled its slimy little way into something beautiful and made it sickening to the heart of God. God will be the judge of acts that are truly righteous and acts that just look righteous. Man looks at the outward appearance, God looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7)… That said, the Consuming Fire that is our God has an incredibly direct way of burning through the dross of our showy spirituality and dragging our true intentions kicking and screaming to the surface.
 

“If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” (1 Cor. 13:3)

“Quit your worship charades. I can’t stand your trivial religious games:
 Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings - meetings, meetings, meetings - I can’t stand one more! Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them! You’ve worn me out! I’m sick of your religion, religion, religion, while you go right on sinning. When you put on your next prayer performance, I’ll be looking the other way. No matter how long or loud or often you pray, I’ll not be listening...” (Isaiah 1:13-15 MSG)

 

...HE DOESN’T WANT A SHOW. HE WANTS OUR HEARTS. 

Want to be a radical Christian? Don’t look to trending Christian culture as a manual. You can’t pin radical Christianity like your favorite recipe or DIY. Look to Jesus Christ – the Author and Perfecter of your faith (Heb. 12:2).

Only the revelation of the glory of the Risen King Jesus will do if being consumed with passion is the end we seek. Only un-tinted, soul-altering, paradigm-shifting, idol-breaking, slit-side and nail-pierced-hands-feeling experience with Jesus will do. And to the one who has truly placed his hands in Christ’s side, and to the one who has truly put his fingers in the holes of Christ’s hands belongs a revelation that will not fail Him… yet it will destroy him, stripping him of all he owns. For that one, the one to whom Christ has revealed Himself, the only response that person will manage to muster is “here am I, send me!” For the one who has met Jesus face-to-face, worldly pleasures will be forsaken at the drop of a hat for the pleasure of Christ’s presence.

You can have works and not know God… But when you DO know Him – what a seriously blessed thought – works will inevitably, naturally, organically, flood out of you. A friend of mine recently put it this way: “When it comes to following Christ, good things are good only in so much as they are oriented by what is best, that is, a love for God.”

Hearts that are consumed by an encounter with the Risen Jesus Christ are hearts that will inevitably find their mission irreversibly intertwined with that of God’s. What breaks Him will break you. He breaks for bare feet and dirty water. He breaks for Africa and Skid Row. He breaks for impoverished coffee farmers and sweatshop laborers.

So in the midst of our social-justice-driven generation let the church bells resound with the thud of the question: “where’s your heart?” Wear your TOMS, drink your coffee fair-trade, and blog on your MacBook pro… but wear, drink, and blog because you’ve had an undeniable encounter with the grace of King Jesus. Not because you want people to think you did. Or because you want to think you did.

Take all that you are and offer it to all that He is. Steadily, faithfully, lavishly. With dogged resolve in valleys and green pastures. The life of radical abandon is one that has walked so steadily so long with Jesus that on a dime it would do anything Jesus asks. To ask the veteran Jesus follower to sell, give, or lose all is to ask little, for He has the supreme treasure of Christ. If he loses anything he has lost nothing.

God doesn’t want cookie-cutter lovers with no heart and soul. He wants you. Every piece of you - every flaw. So run to him. Take your cultural relevance with you, because you’ll need it… God will you use in any condition. All you have to do is run. – Jayson Schmidt