dismantling my claymation christmas mentality.

When we take away the festal racket of the Advent Story, put down our eggnog, set down our sugar cookies, and peel back the pine-scented veneer of one “holy infant so tender and mild,” we are faced with a very different nativity. A nativity without hand soap or a space heater. Medicate with enough gingerbread or peppermint truffles and you may forget the ugly truth altogether. Thousands of years of expectation trudged its way “South along the flatlands of the Jordan River, and then West over the hills surrounding Jerusalem.” After tramping 80 miles a very tired, dirty, and pregnant teenage couple found themselves marginalized from society, delivering their firstborn child in some dimly lit shed. No doctor, no pain medication, no epidural. The night our King entered the world was bloody and tear-filled. Mary’s shrill cries pierced a quiet Bethlehemian night. Welcomed in with tidings of infanticide, the Prince of Peace was the newest member of a refugee family. It was not a silent night. Not in David’s town.

I think it’s a good year for throwing my classic-Claymation-nativity-mindset back on the potter’s wheel of history... a good year for allowing scripture to flavor my advent-routine. If it means taking smaller doses of holiday cheer in order to savor the mystery of Jesus' birth, then I think I’m okay with that. God forbid Santa load me up with a little more coal this year.

This. Is. Advent... 

That God gave His Son to become subjected, dejected, and rejected as a human for the sins of humanity. His heart groaned with bittersweet paradox as the Treasure of Heaven met the Tragedy of Earth. It was tenacious and resolute. It was wild and lion-like. It was simple and profound love for humanity that compelled Jesus Christ off His throne and into a manger.

In leaving all the divine laurels of Godhood in Heaven, He managed in one fell swoop to drag His Kingdom to Earth. The manger-lain, cloth-wrapped, carpenter-raised refugee began walking the streets proclaiming, “The Kingdom of God is here!”

As I think of the adversity into which Jesus Christ entered that night, I think of the little boys and girls that have come into the care of Children Of The Nations. They identify with the birth of Christ in a way that most of us will probably never know. Marginalized. Impoverished. Refugees. Targets of genocide. Subjected to every misery of the Fall. But as children adopted out of the wreckage of human depravity how much more can they identify with the Kingdom of Jesus Christ in a way few can fathom! They have experienced the full spectrum of the capacity of the human soul. On the one hand a capacity for the fear and loneliness that comes from belonging to no one, yet on the other a capacity for the most immense joy that comes from belonging both to a family and to God.

Into the depravity of mankind’s darkness God unleashed the Light of Heaven. He released His Son and therein His Kingdom. A Kingdom in which Creation belongs to Creator. A Kingdom in which the misery of the Fall has become subjected to the glory of Jesus Christ.

He spent His life reversing the Curse of sin and the misery of the Fall, and He bids you and I to join Him in entering the brokenness of humanity to declare with joy the liberating fact that “The Kingdom of God has come!” You are an agent of His Kingdom – so enter into humanity’s brokenness, help reverse the mess, and intertwine your life with those who have not yet heard of the proclamation that rang out that night in David’s Town, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy…”

Let me show you what this whole thing looks like…

Rebecca was orphaned as a baby in the country of Malawi. She remembers the day that Children Of The Nations gave her a family. Today she has graduated from High School and is looking towards College. “God has consumed my life,” she said. “And so I hope to transform Malawi. That is what God has given me to do.” The person who filmed this short video recently asked Rebecca to share her favorite Bible Verse… who knew she’d bust out an entire chapter? 

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

Marred Identity

A windstorm came through my town this week and knocked out the power for a half-second. My wi-fi was down for a few days and I almost lost my mind... I mean, what am I gonna do? Read a book? First world problems... So here's a nugget on Marred Identity... A thought on what it means to have our identity uprooted and planted so deep into Christ's, so entangled in Him, that we really begin believing what God says of us - that we are new... 
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Marred Identity. 
Perpetual and undoctored scarring left to immortalize the fact that you are broken.  A nagging, ticking, monotonous, crackling voice that won’t let you forget that you are damaged goods - splayed out, exposed, and exhibited center-stage like a circus freak. When you’re broken you’re either shown off, experimented on, or thrown out. 

It’s not that way with Jesus. He came with the cure for marred identity in hand. He is the salve. He is the remedy. He is the cure. To the orphan He is Father. To the spouseless He is Lover. To the restless He is Peace.

The day that Christ died humanity’s infirmity met its match. Death met Life and couldn’t do a thing to stop it. He called out to the sick of heart, the scarred and mutilated mess that had become us, and declared in one fell swoop: “It is finished!” The ground shook and when the dust settled the knotted mess of man’s marred identity unraveled at the foot of the Cross.

To the forgiven Jesus said, “Go in peace.” They did not think twice or tie a theological noose around their faith. They simply believed they were forgiven and went on living their lives as if it were true. Maybe it is in the simpleton that salvation is most secure, for they have heard God’s voice saying over them “My Child!” and they go on to live their lives in light of that blessed fact. No second-guessing. No double-takes at the grave to make sure it’s empty.

I assure you, He is not here, He is risen. So stop overthinking it. God has said “I have clothed you in garments of righteousness,” so go on and live in them. God has said, “You are a new creation,” so stop feeling around for scars of the fall where you will not find them.

So often, I want to be used by God to address the marred identity of others before I myself have fully chosen to believe that I am actually a new creation. It is the moment in which we have fully surrendered to our new identity in Christ that we have become mobilized to address the marred identity in others, and no sooner.