Religion.

In his book, On Writing, Stephen King opens with a section he calls his C.V. It is filled with short anecdotes about his life and how he grew up and what led him to be a writer. At one point he mentions that he believes in God but has "no use for organized religion.” I highlighted this line in the book because I kind of wonder what he means by it – what anyone means when they say that. The internet will tell you that organized religion by definition is, "religion in which belief systems and rituals are systematically arranged and formally established." But if you believe in God on some level, well then I would imagine you might want to talk about that sometime. And if you talk about that and have any really good thing to say about it, other people might want to join in. And when you have a group of more than about 20 people coming together to talk about anything, well then you have to kind of, well, organize it. What’s this going to look like? Is it a meeting? Who gets to talk at the meeting? There has to be a beginning, a middle, and an end to this gathering so what will each contain? Are there rules for the meeting? Any organization has rules. So there have to be rules for membership. Well then all of a sudden it looks like you’re organized - you've got rituals arranged and established. So you're gathering to talk about God and there are rules for doing so.

So if that’s what they mean, if that’s what people have no use for, then maybe what they really dislike are the rules. Maybe you just don’t like the rules and rituals put in place by these groups of people that gather to talk about God. But one thing you might want to consider is that, if you find yourself fleeing from all “organized religion” perhaps you're fleeing because you don’t want anyone telling you what you can and can’t do. Maybe you want to be God and you believe, instead, in yourself. You can tell yourself what to do – you don’t have to go to an organized meeting where they might press on you - on your ideas about what's right - or tell you that you’re wrong about this or that. In speaking about a critic of Christianity, G.K. Chesterton said, “The restraints of Christians saddened him simply because he was more hedonist than a healthy man should be.” Perhaps you are that man and the restraints sadden you - they press on you just a little too much. E. Paul Hovey said, "Men do not reject the Bible because it contradicts itself, but because it contradicts them."

Christianity will always press on you and me because we are not God and we will be constantly sanctified - shaped, molded, growing - in some way until Heaven. I wrongly believed that becoming a Christian meant you were done - like it was this one time moment and from then on you were ready for Heaven and everything was easy and there was no sin and no struggle, only perfection. Like maybe we just went to church because we wanted to glory in our perfection in Jesus. But the truth is I wasn’t perfect – I was a mess (and still am! Ask my husband!) And I didn’t know how to wrestle with my sin. I didn’t know about sanctification at all. I didn’t know that the whole of the Christian life is more of a two steps forward, one step back kind of deal. Belief in the gospel is an everyday need, not a one time prayer. I missed that in Sunday School. I think they left that part out. 

So, if I grew up in church and didn't understand it, then I wonder about people who didn't grow up in church. When people say they don't like organized religion I wonder what gospel they've heard in their life that has made them flee. Because if the gospel is good news (and it is!), then it shouldn’t make you flee, it should make you cling to it, white knuckle death grip on those crutches carrying you through til glory. And if it’s not, then why not? What have you missed?

A lot of people have too many doubts to trust a god other than themselves. They'll tell you, "I just feel a lot of doubt about _____." Well, welcome to the club. We all feel doubts sometimes. I listened to a sermon on the plane ride home last month and he said it’s okay to have doubts, but instead of sitting in them, you must doubt your doubts and ask Jesus for clarity. It’s okay to have doubts. It’s okay to not get it. Jesus’s disciples walked with him in the flesh for three whole years every single day and still didn’t get it. It's what you do with your doubts that matters. Criticize them. Turn them over in your hand and ask why they're there. Dig down to the roots of your doubts and find out what it is you really believe. Don't just trust your doubts because then you end up believing in them over believing in Jesus.

Growing up in Christian circles and working in a church for several years and also just being a Christian myself, I find that a lot of times we have doubts because we think we can control God with our behavior and then one day it just doesn't work anymore. We follow Jesus and think it’s all great because everything is going just how we planned, and then one day it’s not and we’re left blindsided because we thought we were in control of this bargain. We start to doubt because the god we trusted didn't trust our plan. Whoa, whoa, whoa, Jesus. Who do you think you are? Didn’t you see how I tithed my whole life? Didn’t you see how I helped that homeless guy back there? Didn’t you see me when I went to church every week? Didn't you see how I always obeyed my parents? Hello? Didn’t you see my perfect family? Things were going great for us according to my plan, so what gives?

I believed for years that I could control God with my behavior. In 2011 I wrote, 

“For YEARS and years I have been pleading with God. Begging and pleading with him for peace and comfort and all the freedom he offers. All the things he says he’s going to offer and give to those who love him. I do love him. I have loved him and tried to follow him, sought after him, tried to point kids toward him, given my money and time to him, prayed my guts out to him, read about him, tried to know him and understand him, listened for him, tried to listen to him, had discussions about him, cried out to him. AND YET, I feel I’ve been drowning in sadness and unmet desires and broken dreams.”

I believed that if I did all this then God would owe me - that somehow I could put God in my debt. Why the unmet dreams if I've done all this work for you, God? If that’s not bargaining with the Lord, I don’t know what is. But the thing is, God doesn’t do bargains. He doesn’t take negotiations. There’s nothing you have that he doesn’t already own. What could you possibly give him? He made it. Out of nothing. The breath in your lungs. The ability to read these words. These are things of God. 

So I realized it’s not about actions and behaviors and bargaining chips. It’s about Jesus. It's about every person, circumstance, trial, or victory leading you to more of Jesus. I just wrote about this in one of my last posts. It’s not about your story or what you want or what you think or feel. It's not about the rules you follow or don't follow. It’s about Jesus and your choice is if you’re going to join in on the epic adventure he has written for you or pull back against it.

I was journaling on that same plane ride and I wrote,

I hope you know at the end of the day it’s really just you and Jesus. He’ll bring people into your life and you’ll invite people in along the way. Some won’t always stay. Some for a season, others a lifetime. But at the end of it all it’s just about you and Jesus. 

What you believe about him, what you say about him, what you think about him, these are the things that are going to matter at the end of it all. It will shape your decisions, your thoughts, your actions, the leanings of your heart. What you think about Jesus will be the only thing that matters when you die. So you can pass on "organized religion" and that’s fine. But what are you going to do with Jesus?

Stephen King's book about the craft of writing was really pretty good. I think he wanted me to get more out of it about writing than about his one sentence worth of thoughts on religion, but for some reason that's where my heart was stuck. So he doesn’t believe in religious rules but neither does Jesus, so that’s pretty good news for all of us – for him, for the doubters among us, for me, for you. Oh, there’s value in the gathering of believers, yes. But forget the rules. Jesus just wants you, not your good behavior. He's after your heart.

More.

A few years ago I decided that if there was anything worth being an expert in, it was the Bible. Obviously there are plenty of other things you can be an expert in, but I had this fresh desire to know more about God in a way I hadn't previously. So I started listening to more sermons and podcasts, reading books and blogs, following different pastors and trying to glean as much knowledge as I could from people who are smarter than me - who knew more than me, especially in this area. I just knew that after very blatantly running away from God and finding no satisfaction in that, I finally wanted to listen and lean in to what he wanted for me. 

Through all of this study, I came to a place where I felt like maybe I was too comfortable. I don't believe we should purposefully make life difficult - it's hard enough on its own sometimes - but what I mean is that I felt like I wasn't really putting myself out there. I wasn't being stretched. I wasn't at a point where I really relied on God every day because every day was pretty easy. I had my friends, family, community, church, job – everything was in order and I had a neat little circle drawn around my comfort zone. Still, in the deep part of my heart, I wanted to know if God had anything else for me so I started to pray that he would show me where to go next. I wish I had my journals here to show you but I wrote, “God, I think maybe I’m a little too comfortable. Break me out of this rut. Help me see where you would have me go.” A couple of lines later, I wrote, “I know that’s a dangerous thing to pray… .”Dangerous in the sense that when you open yourself up to God and ask him to do something, you better buckle up. I've been around long enough to know that he doesn't let those prayers sit idle. 

When I moved to Hawaii last summer, I wasn't shy about how hard it was for me. I wrote about being in a new city and feeling out of place. I shared on Instagram about how life was so unfamiliar and I constantly felt like a lost moron. I've was pretty candid about how moving across the country was no walk in the park. But one day, as I stood at the sink washing dishes in my new house in Hawaii so far away from my friends, family, community, church, and job, I remembered that journal entry from a few of years ago. It was one of those illuminating moments where things suddenly come into focus. I was 4,000 miles away from all that I knew for 33 years, and my heart wanted to complain about being homesick. I wanted to cry out to God, “Whhhhyyyyy!” but in that moment, standing at my kitchen sink, I knew the answer. I'm standing there asking, "Why?" and God's like, "Um... remember how you asked for this?"

I prayed for this exact thing three years ago! I asked God to make me uncomfortable - to break me out of a rut - and guess what! My days were suddenly filled to the brim with uncomfortable. Moving was like a dropkick to the outside edges of my comfort zone. It's particularly funny because I used to tell people before Aaron was ever in my life, "I'm never moving (from Nebraska). The only way I would move is if I had a husband and his job took us somewhere else." I have to believe that God really busted a gut over that one when it happened because one of the reasons I moved here to Hawaii is because I married a man who already had a job here. LOL, God. I see you. 

But when I wrote that prayer out three years ago, do you know what part of me thought that it would mean moving to Hawaii? Approximately zero percent. It wasn’t even a thought in the far reaches of my mind. I didn’t even really know Aaron at that point. When I wrote, “God, make me uncomfortable,” I thought maybe he would ask me to volunteer somewhere, give a little more money to a charity, branch out in my friend group a little bit, or go to a Bible study - certainly not pack up my entire former life and move to the middle of the ocean! 

The thing about God is that he always desires to give us more. I was reading in Ephesians 1 and that part of the Bible reads a bit like a paper you start writing at 11:00 when it’s due at midnight. You’re trying to meet the minimum length requirement and it starts to sound a bit like, “I personally believe that the awesome, great, wonderful God who is magnificent and amazing, created us to be unbelievably…” throwing in as many adjectives as you can to maximize your sentences. We've all done it. But that’s how Ephesians reads - as if Paul couldn't possibly use enough adjectives to describe God and what he has for us.

“…blessed us with EVERY spiritual blessing…” (v.3)
“…according to the KIND intention…” (v.5)
“…according to the riches of his grace which he LAVISHED on us…” (v.7)

God desires to give MORE, not less. The devil would have us believe God is withholding, that he wants to take from us, but any amount of time in the Bible would show you that’s not true. God works in abundance – not scarcity. I could choose to believe that I’m out here in the ocean and have lost a lot – connections, familiarity, friends, etc. But instead I choose to believe that God has me out here to give me more – more of himself, more grace, more kindness, growing my compassion and empathy and understanding of where joy truly comes from. God made me uncomfortable in a way that I never saw coming - he answered that prayer - and I believe he is using it to give me more than I could ever have imagined. So even in homesickness, I know that he is using it to make me grow. God is pushing me to new things here, just like he can do for you in whatever circumstance you find yourself in. He will reveal more of himself to anyone who asks.

I have several situations in my life right now that I’m praying about consistently – specific friends that I want to see draw near to God, situations I want God to heal, places I want to see him move (I say see him move because he is always moving, even when we can’t see it) – and I know that he will. It might not be in my timing or in the way I would want him to, but I know he’ll answer.  His abundance will overflow into those situations, just like he’s doing here in my circumstances now. Like I said, the fact that I'm married to a total dreamboat and living in Hawaii is proof positive that he hears us and answers our prayers. 

So, what are you praying about right now? How do you hope God will answer? Write it down. My favorite thing is to write down prayers and watch for the ways he answers them in the coming weeks, months, and years. Some of mine have yet to be answered. Some of them have been answered in big, beautiful ways.

Newsflash: I'm still no Bible expert in any sense of the word, but I am consistently learning about who God is and what he has for me. And I know that leaning in to what he desires for you may not be easy - in fact it might be completely uncomfortable - but there is joy to be found in it. Your only shot at real joy is to seek him. Wholly believe that he is not withholding anything from you and keep your eyes open for the ways he is giving you MORE each day.

"...I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."
John 10:10

Faithless.

I was scrolling on Twitter the other day and saw this little excerpt someone tweeted from a book or study by Scott Sauls and it struck me in such a way that I felt compelled to take a screenshot.

So often we're taught that our number one goal is to be like Jesus. WWJD, remember? (Aaron and I were talking about those bracelets the other day. We want to bring them back and start wearing them around. Anyway, that's not the point.) Even if you don't believe in Jesus as God, you probably know about him as a nice guy. So what does it mean to be like Jesus? Why do we say that? Do we even know what we mean when we say that? Can we start healing people of their illnesses? Raising them from the dead? Raising ourselves from the dead?!

I think when people say that we should try to be like Jesus, they're talking about his kindness, gentleness, patience. His calm, steady hand. His willingness to sit with the people who were a little weird or a little quiet or a little hard to get along with. His ability to comfort and love with reckless abandon. They're talking about the way he spoke life over everyone he encountered. Okay, sign me up. That’s the kind of person I want to be – the kind of friend, the kind of spouse, the kind of coworker, the kind of parent - the kind that listens and loves and looks like Jesus. But the only way we can do that, the only way we have a shot, is if we’re sticking close to Jesus. Like Scott's tweet alluded to, I think we focus a little too much on being like Jesus and not enough time being with him. We like to think we know who he is because we read the Bible one time or we hear it once a week on Sundays, or because YouVersion sends us a notification of a Bible verse every morning, but do you really spend time with him to get to know him better? Do you spend time with Jesus so that you can show people what he’s like or do you settle for knowing a couple stories from the felt board in elementary Sunday school and recalling the one verse you have memorized?

Several years ago now, I was at a real low point in my life. I felt dead, spiritually and emotionally. And as much as I prayed about it and asked God to heal it, rescue me out of it and change it all, I wasn’t spending any time with him. You can ask for things from the Lord, but if you’re not opening his Word to see what he has to say about it, well then do you really want an answer? So one day I just decided to start over. To start at the beginning in Genesis. To stop thinking I already knew it all and begin again at the start of the story.

I took out my Bible and started reading. Growing up in church, I had heard this story probably nine hundred times, but did I really know it? I started at, “In the beginning… “ and tried to get a fresh word from the Lord. And do you know that it says if you seek him, you will find him? I was finally seeking. And it was in the seeking that he met me. And as I spent more and more time with him I was finally able to break free from some of those strongholds that sin had on my life.

It’s like when Peter walked on water. Jesus called him out of the boat, “Look at me, Peter. Look at me. Eyes on me.” And he walked out. He was walking on water. But the minute he started looking away, eyes down, on himself, he started to sink. Eyes off Jesus and you’ll start to slip. That’s just the way it always goes sooner or later. So where’s your focus? Who are you looking to? Are your eyes up on Jesus or down on your circumstances, your sin, your mess?

In a sermon one time, Judah Smith talked about how when you’re trying to quit a sin – when you’re trying to get out from under the weight of a persistent sin in your life – you need to focus more on being with Jesus rather than quitting the sin. When you focus more on spending time with Jesus, that sin is going to start to look a lot less appealing. That temptation will have a lot less hold on your life when you start to look at Jesus instead of that sin and how you can't overcome it, because to be honest, you can't. Not on your own. So, eyes up, friend. Look at Jesus. Spend more time with Jesus. Read his words. Trust his promises. See what happens.

I just finished a Bible study from Hannah Brencher. It’s a really great 15 session study and I encourage you to click here and get a copy sent to your inbox. But in one of the later sessions she’s talking about Satan and his desire to seek, kill and destroy you. Yes, you. That is his one desire for your life. Damage and destroy. Drive you to despair and loneliness and isolation. Drown you in your fears and anxieties until you’re feeling completely alone. And I’m paraphrasing here, but she writes, “Satan does not care about anything except rendering you faithless.” He doesn’t care about ANYTHING except making sure that you do not trust Jesus and he’ll use any means to do it. Whether he has to keep your eyes glued to the past and how things "should have been" or if he has to remind you of all the things you don't have, he does not care about you as long as he has rendered you faithless. As long as you’re telling God he just doesn’t understand your circumstances. As long as you’re believing lies instead of truth – trusting your own heart instead of trusting the heart of God. That’s all the devil really cares about - leaving you in a pit of faithlessness. 

I think that’s one of the biggest problems we have in the world today – faithlessness. Our faith is too small or nonexistent. We like Jesus but we just don't trust him with everything. We’re looking down at the water and wondering why we’re sinking, or knowing why and not caring – not believing that walking on water is even possible. We’re trying to tell people what Jesus is like without spending any time getting to know him ourselves, simply relying on stories we heard one time. We’re forgetting our purpose and living for our own happiness, our own wishes and hopes and comforts. We know about Jesus but we don’t know him.

Are you faithless today? Have you given up on God in one area or another or maybe altogether? Have you written him off and let the devil win this one? Have you succumbed to unbelief and instead listened to the lie that God cannot fix this relationship, this financial situation, this dream, this desire? Are you believing the lie that God is holding out on you, does not want good for you, does not see you or care? Have you been left faithless because of hard circumstances?

Can I challenge you today to look up? Look up. Your Father is waiting. He delights in you. Sees you. Loves you. Wants more for you than a life of despair and isolation and circling back to the same sins on repeat. And regardless of how many times you look down at that water lapping at your ankles, he stands steady, asking you to look up.

If you're longing to see change in your life, start by spending more time with Jesus. Abide in him. Pray against faithlessness and see how He moves. He will shove the devil aside and he will not ask. It’s not up for debate. He will demand on your behalf. He will invade for your benefit, for your good. Eyes on him, daughter. Eyes up on him, son. He speaks in promises. He can be trusted. The Bible is full to the brim with verses that say,

“He will…”
“I will…”
“The Lord will…”

Not, “He might,” “If he gets around to it,” “If something better doesn’t come along,” “Unless he gets busy or distracted or sidetracked.”

No. HE WILL comfort.
                      Encourage.
                      Strengthen.
                      Provide.
                      Protect.
                      Help.
                      Draw near.
                      Hold your hand.
                      Be with you always.

I know these promises to be true. I've seen them in my life and in the lives of others. God is not fickle, flaky, feeble or easily swayed. He promises. And comes through. For you. For me. For us. In his time. Don’t let the devil win here. Don’t let him leave you faithless. Luke 18:8 asks, “However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

Will he? Will he find it in you? When he comes back again or when he calls you home, will he find you faithful? In your marriage. In your parenting. In your job. At school. In your neighborhood. In your dealings with friends and relatives and strangers. In how you speak. In how you act. In what you believe. 

Sometimes I'll feel led to write something and I won't even really have to think about it - the words just kind of pour out of my heart because of what God is teaching me. Today's post is like that. I felt really compelled to write about it but the past few days I have been hesitant to post because I'm not really feeling it. Like, let me tell you what, I need this message for my own heart today. So rather than thinking that maybe God can't use it because I'm not feeling 100% faithful, I'm just going to post it anyway and see what he can do in my life and yours. 

I watched Beth Moore teach on Monday about living a life that is open to what God has for us, and she reminded me to pray for an open mind that has a desire to read and trust the scriptures. I think that's what I need today, so maybe that's all you need today too. A prayer for openness. A prayer for faithfulness. A prayer for eyes up only on him, for a heart that desires to spend time with him instead of just assuming you already know what he's like. Spend time with him. Get to know him so you can truthfully show others who he is.

Let it be so, Jesus. Let it be so.
________

I love it when there's a song that really speaks to what I'm feeling and this song has been that for me lately. Take a listen if this has resonated with you at all. 

Bold.

Aaron and I watched the movie Blood Diamond not too long ago. It’s fairly old now – like ten years old – so I’m late to the party on caring about this, or knowing about this, but I’m usually about five years behind the curve on most things - like puberty and marriage and knowing the proper pronunciation of pho. Anyway, this movie is about diamonds being mined in Sierra Leone and smuggled into Liberia to be sold. It takes place in 1999, when rebels were trying to take over the country. They were ravaging villages and kidnapping children and forcibly using them as soldiers and diamond miners. I can’t recap the entire story for you here, but bring tissues if you plan to watch. As the story progressed, I looked at the diamond ring on my finger and suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. I had no idea this was even an issue. I mean, I vaguely remember advertising a while ago where people were really quick to say their diamonds were “conflict-free” but I never really knew what that meant. I didn’t even know to ask about that when Aaron and I went ring shopping.

The first thing I did the next morning was call the place where we bought my engagement and wedding ring. I told Aaron after the movie was over that I was going to call and he said, “What if they can’t assure you that it is?” and I said, “Well, then we’ll sell it.” I wasn’t going to wear a child’s blood-soaked work on my finger. I understand that this was just a movie and not necessarily portraying facts with 100% accuracy, but even still, the whole thing was heartbreaking. The movie finished and I laid on the couch thinking, “The world is a terrible place.”

Every day there’s something new to warrant our sadness and outrage. But what are we supposed to do in all of these crises? How do we help in this midst of all the terror and tragedy in the world? Donate twenty dollars and hope to feel better? Write about it on social media? Share an article? Create a hashtag and pat ourselves on the back? Offer thoughts and prayers and move on two seconds later to our own problems? And, we do have our own problems. We're addicted to drugs and I'm not just talking about our smartphones. We're lost in a connected world, lonely and competing and not measuring up. We're drowning out the noise with all manner of prescriptions and vices. Our students are taking guns and killing their classmates for attention because they figure they can't get our attention any other way. 

I watched a documentary recently about Cyntoia Brown. At 16, she was convicted of first degree murder for killing a man she thought was going to rape or kill her and there’s much more the story, including the fact that this man picked her up as a prostitute and her “boyfriend” is the one who sent her out to go make him some money. Gross. But in one of the interviews she said these boys she was with – these guys who she let take advantage of her and harm her –  she said they were all just seeking affirmation. They all wanted someone to tell them they were worth something. They all had wounded pride and they were building themselves back up through money, girls, sex, and power. They wanted approval. And dang it, isn’t that what we’re all seeking though possibly through different means? We're all just crying for attention. Validation. Affirmation. Tell me I'm important!

So dear Jesus, what do we do? What do we do that would be helpful in this chaos? What do we do that would matter? And the only answer that comes to me immediately is, “Share the gospel.” Share the gospel. Okay, yeah, but what else? Nothing else. I’m not even doing that. I could be doing that much, but I’m not. So that’s the only thing to do. That’s the most important thing we can be doing right now in the midst of all the fighting and pain. Share the gospel. Be the gospel. To our neighbors and friends. To our siblings. In our own homes - to our spouses and children. Especially to our children, who will go out in their schools and either spread darkness or light. Since there’s power in the name of Jesus, then just say it, speak it, bring it to the most ordinary places you go every single day. I don’t want to get so caught up in my life that I forget that I'm here to bring the gospel. "Your kingdom come, your will be done," if that's our prayer then we have to be the ones to bring the kingdom near. 

For those who know the gospel, for those who understand that there is a Savior we all desperately need, the only reason we wouldn’t share it is because we don’t think it’s true – we don’t think it’s what people really need or want. Or we do, but we’re too scared that they’ll think we’re dumb and we don’t want to be dumb – we want to be cool! We want to be liked. We want followers and retweets and shares. I know I’m guilty. I’m guilty of thinking, “How do I say this in a way that Christians will understand and non-Christians won’t hate it?’ which is just another way to say, “How do I make Jesus cool enough for everyone?” But I can’t. I can’t do it. He doesn’t need help being cool. He just needs you to speak his name. His word is living and active and he can do what you can’t. Only he can change hearts. Only he can change minds. Only he can calm war-torn nations and ravaged cities and shredded hearts. He’s the only one who can make a real difference in any of it. He can take that twenty dollars you donated and change lives. He can take that hashtag and make it impact the entire country. He can take your start-up and let it influence the world’s most powerful leaders if he wanted to. He just wants to use you to do it, start it, write it, say it, bring his name into the conversation. 

I read an 1873 sermon on the Beatitudes by Charles Spurgeon and he said, “The sight of a vast concourse of people ought always to move us to pity, for it represents a mass of ignorance, sorrow, sin, and necessity, far too great for us to estimate.” Essentially that any crowded room should bring us great sorrow and urgency because within that room are souls, hungry and lost – souls searching and waiting for an answer to their hurt. They don’t look like it on the outside, and they certainly wouldn’t say it, but the gnawing in their hearts is real if they’d only admit as much.

In a sermon a couple of years ago, Matt Chandler said that people who have been Christians for a long time can start to walk around with this attitude of, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jesus." And it helped me realize that I lived a lot of my twenties where I said, through my thoughts and actions, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jesus," and waved him off like he was just a side item at the cafeteria of my life – something I could throw in the backseat and let him ride along as long as he was quiet. He could stay because I was going to need him at the gates of Heaven someday, but other than that he was an afterthought. He was second to anything I was doing. I mean, not always, but especially when it came to dating. I adamantly would not allow him in that corner of my life because I felt like he already failed me there. Because of the lies I believed in that arena, I’ve been shamefully timid, but not anymore. I yanked Jesus out of the back and put him behind the wheel. Now I want to embolden people to share the gospel and speak the name of Jesus. I want people to come out of the darkness and live with hope and faith and I’m a little afraid to suddenly step up and say all of this because I know I pretended it wasn’t the answer - that maybe it was just the answer for me and not necessarily other people. But it’s the only answer to everything going on in the world right now. It’s the only answer.

I called the store where we bought my engagement ring. The woman I talked to assured me that because of the Kimberley Process, implemented in 2002, they were confident that the diamonds they sold were conflict-free. I breathed out a little, knowing this bit of information, although at the end of the movie, they note that even with the Kimberley Process, conflict diamonds still enter the diamond trade. But a lot of bad stuff happens, regardless of the rules and regulations in place to stop it, so we just have to do our best to make sure we’re not participating. There will always be sin. There will always be terrible things happening in the world. And that’s why the gospel is so important. Only it can step into the darkest places. It can change the darkest heart. It can stop sin and sadness and hatred and violence in its tracks.  Only it can give the validation and affirmation we're all so desperately seeking. And maybe people will say, "That's nice for you, but Jesus isn't for me. Keep that to yourself." Well, I'll be bold here and just tell you, you're wrong. Jesus is for everyone, and if you don't think so, then you haven't understood him correctly. If you think, "Well, I just don't believe that," that doesn't make it any less true. Pray for the faith to believe.

I just finished a Beth Moore study, but I read a lot of her tweets and follow her on Instagram, so I don’t know where I read this, but somewhere, plain and simple, she wrote, “May Jesus be obvious.” The cry of her life is, “May Jesus be obvious.” Amen. Can that be the banner over our lives? Since that’s what the world needs more than anything, can we just stand up and boldly live it? Stop living halfway. Stop rationalizing sin and start getting honest. Can we share the gospel? Can we contribute our little piece to this larger story by just living and being the very picture of love in the midst of seemingly insurmountable hurt? Look for lonely people. Show love. Share the gospel. And make Jesus obvious.

For the record, I don’t think the world is a terrible place. It’s a terribly broken place, but there’s a lot of Light too. And we need more people bold enough to speak up about it. 

“Therefore having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech…”
2 Corinthians 3:12