Below is a piece I wrote for Lynchburg Living magazine. Thought it needed a re-work and some new readers. Here it is:

One Saturday in early summer, I took my family on a day-trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains. No real plans, entirely spontaneous; just laugh, play, be together and hopefully put my mind in neutral. We packed a lunch that morning and piled in the van and drove west on 221 towards Bedford. The day changed everything for me… I mean everything.

I should confess some things. There’s a tendency I succumb to that many mistake as heroic, but it’s a flaw anyway you play it: I am a Work Junkie. And right then all my internal gauges were screaming out this forewarning: Stop! End the big rush to get to the next ministry challenge. I had grown tired of the cell phone, texts, emails and deadlines that lurked behind warmed over promises, “I’ll be there in a minute, kids.” Most of me knew I was missing a bigger point; that I had the Work Junkie trapped inside and he always wanted to take over the show. But maybe, I thought, higher ground can sift through my humanity and get to deeper roots. So I headed for the hills to put the Junkie back in his place and let God’s Spirit speak to me antidotally.

We drove with the windows down to let Virginia come in. Livestock and compost are pungent and the smell wafts through like a state fair. Willow trees and corn bristle the farmlands from Forest to Cifax and then on to Bedford. It’s an earthy and scruffy Virginia; its well-worn boots hung in the barn. The contours of this terrain get to me though, possess me and conjure up boyhood naivety. I guess there’s a Lassie episode in all of us and suddenly I’m envisioning the good collie and me helping Pa save the family farm a thousand times on this drive.

Anyway, my children—all under 9 years old—point and speak about the gritty world outside. My wife and I fall silent. Nothing harsh is between us. She must have realized I sought a voice stronger than our own, so she just let me escape into the wind gust and topography. I did seek a voice, but it wasn’t Dr. Phil or the Appalachian Guru Ninja (“Hey, Grasshopper! How’s the rat race workin’ for ya?”). No, a wiser, more primitive voice was needed, the Holy Spirit.

Our pursuit brought us to a mountain creek right off the Parkway, a natural water-park cut with wading pools and mini falls. No overpriced t-shirts or two hour lines at this park, just a lot of time to get lost in the organic. We descended the creek little by little at first, jumping rocks to keep dry, but gain confidence and pace as we continue down. Soon, we just got wet. I caught myself having fun and forgetting about deadlines and being somebody else’s “hero.”

But suddenly, the Junkie tried to take over. “Who can I call or text right now? How can I get productive?” I think my wife spotted him first, because she gave me that look. The kids shouted, “Look at this! Look at me!” I faked delight and said, “Yea, yea, that’s great. Let’s keep moving.” The look, again. Fading, I would soon slip into work mode—like a wannabe family man—and miss the splendor of right now. But my wife is a genius and she did what any crafty woman might do.

“Here, take our picture,” she said and handed me the camera. The hand-off startled me. “I don’t want to carry this,” I thought. “I can’t get to my phone if it rings.”

The look changed. Now it said, “Please remove the scowl and take a picture of your children and their mother posing on a rock, and try to enjoy it.” My wife told the kids to smile while Daddy took a picture. I framed the shot—mother and children with arms around shoulders and making funny faces. Snap. The shot digitized gradually, so I waited for the preview in the tiny LCD screen. I lingered and hoped it was good, scrapbookable perhaps. The shot finally crystallized, and as it did, a voice came to me, something like this.

“You’ll never get this moment back again,” the voice said. “You’ll always have work that you presume takes precedent, but you’re wrong.” I knew where this was going, so I braced for impact. “These children,” the voice pounded, “they’ll grow up and you’ll grow old. And then you’ll wish yourself right back here in this cold, Virginia creek again, to splash and climb and be together.”

The outcomes seemed unavoidable to me: relish these moments or regret it. “What’s it going to be?”

I drew the cell phone from my pocket. It signaled a new text message loitered inside.
“What’s it going to be?”

The scene of me in the water and rocks, holding a camera in one hand, a phone in the other and my family ready for a second take, was Biblical.

“What’s it going to be?”

The action was swift. I flipped the phone, killed the power and sunk it in my pocket for good. The Junkie fled and I took pictures the rest of the day. My mountain creek intervention was really only a beginning. I guess that’s how it works; a moment of clarity is ordained and puts life back in the right drawers, but it can always get mixed up again if you’re not careful. That’s why I have to always get to higher ground and seek wiser voices.

Brentwood Tribe,
I never know how a particular message is going to hit people. Sometimes I just go out there and say to the Holy Spirit, “I’m not sure about this one, but do that thing you do.” Anyway, I guess I was blindsided by the response this Sunday. Better yet, I was inwardly floored.

Our communal application (drop your 3 x 5 baggage card in the basket) was like a campfire gone wild and then all-consuming. Honestly, I thought just a few individuals would actually take the time to pray through and scribble down their hardships and helplessness. Wrong. Not only did so many write it out, but hundreds actually got up and walked across the room to lay it down. Seriously, an entire room full of church-goers arose from their cushions and proclaimed their helplessness to Christ and their church community. That is the Gospel; that is what transforms a generation.

So this morning, I came to the office well-caffeinated and rested, but haplessly naive. The plan was simple: Read through and pray for some of the 3 x 5’s from yesterday. Should be easy, I thought. Wrong again. Ink and lead sentences walked me down paths of dread and fathomless pain. These confessions and laments became so dark I had to catch my breath and wonder if I should continue on–alcoholism, leukemia, loveless marriages, failed relationships, mental breakdowns, entrenched addictions, suicidal impulses, parental wounds and rejection, etc. And deeper and darker the words got etched. For a moment, I imagined this must be a crude glimpse into how God watches over us. He sees much more than we do, and certainly none of it can be scribed on an index card. And yet, my heart wrenched the way I thought His might every moment we struggle with the sin and pain of this broken world. No wonder He had to send Jesus.

Now, I realize that our church has a mission more torrential than my frail mind can possibly think up on its own. Here it is: We are in this town, and planted on this globe for a brilliant historical moment. That statement is not rhetoric, but reality. We are to be forgiven and healed by Christ’s Gospel and then empowered by the Spirit to exhale that Gospel into every moment we’re given.

Keep on keeping it real, Brentwood. God’s Spirit is about to rock our world.

Onward,
Jon

A valuable tension seems to nurture the best relationships in life. It is like a chess match where checkmate is a win for both sides. Sometimes I forget about this and then my wife makes a move, puts me in checkmate and all I can do is say nice one, I needed that.

Not long ago, I convinced my wife that we absolutely needed a camcorder. So I scrapped up enough cash and bought one. I felt big-time, like a certified suburbanite—Spielberg with a minivan. Then I persuaded her that we absolutely needed to accessorize it with a trendy bag and some adapters; we would be gold-key certified then. She was reluctant; then agreed, but only because this jewel was promised to be with the family to secure memories for decades to come, childbirth to wedding speeches. The way I pitched it was that someday in our autumn years, we would settle in our living room, watch old tapes and relive days gone by. Sounds convincing, but it was only a charade, a Clark Griswold notion.

I was bored within six months and absolutely needed something else high-tech. Meantime, the camera got tossed in a closet while memories were being made, but not captured. Every life-nugget I let go—children’s first steps, zany birthday party sound bites—stirred something inside my wife and it was not blonde and lovable like her. The gap between her expectations and my delivery was a canyon, and our son’s kindergarten recital would expose it.

The recital teemed with overanxious relatives; their cameras flashed, clicked and chimed like the Oscars. Just before my arrival, I unearthed our camcorder and prayed the battery was charged in the last six months. My wife turned to me, clutched the camera and made me promise I’d get this one. I promised. Then my son’s moment came. He carried his props to the stage and took his mark to begin. I set up to shoot. Flip went the power switch, but nothing. Dead. He was brilliant, of course, but another great memory was left undocumented.

Afterwards, we walked out to leave and my wife asked, “So, did you get it?”

I looked at her casually and answered, “No, sorry the battery was dead.”

She lingered, but then years of video neglect surfaced. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say, sorry, the battery was dead?”

A thousand virtual stones pummeled me. I was wounded and tempted to say what do you expect, at least I have a job and am not in prison. But the deadbeat felon deflection never wins the day for any man; he comes across whiny. Out came, “What do you want me to say? I tried to record it, but it wouldn’t work.” So I sounded whiny anyway.

She performed her version of the silent treatment the entire ride home; she sprays her words with whipped cream as she talks to the kids—wasn’t your brother so amazing up there—but speaks to me like a 4-1-1 operator—yes, that’s correct, Ashtabula, Ohio, sir. Come on, this is ridiculous, I thought; I’ll get the next one right. And yet, she must have known there’d be an excuse why I failed again. I guess a point comes when results are best revealed by actions and not intensions. Either way, I was busted. The camcorder was not about the family; it was just the childish whim of a grown up—I want that, so I’ll get it.

That night, when the drama softened, she opened up and said she just wanted me to care, to not take tender moments for granted and to be open with my motives when I was selling an idea. My assurance came modestly. At first, I felt like a deadbeat felon, but then came around to gratitude. I said things like you’re right and I’m sorry. We were both tired, so I reached for the lamp so we could fall asleep resolved.

“Oh yeah, by the way,” she whispered through the dark. “You’ll be glad to know. I thought something like this might happen, so I asked another mom at the recital to record it for us. She’s putting it on DVD.”

Checkmate.

-

My one and only daughter is 9-years-old and she has filled my soul with an incomprehensible joy.  Of course, I absolutely love my sons, but the father-daughter connection is and should be distinctive.  Here’s some stuff I’ve gathered so far about raising a little girl to someday become a wise, confident and Christ-centered woman.

1) A father cannot and should not be like a mother.  Let me explain.  I think a father sometimes gets intimidated by the natural closeness his daughter longs for with her mother and therefore he resist to pursue her deeply.  He simply defaults to let the daughter-thing be for the “women-folk.”  This is a catastrophic mistake for a father.   Absolutely, he should encourage the mother-daughter relationship in all its special wonder, because mom is the natural template for what a woman, wife and mother looks like.  But, he should not back away from his daughter just because he is not wired the same.  Instead, he must own what unique bond he will have with her that is different, but not superior, to her mother.

And what is that bond?  Simply put, character and confidence.  A father will teach his little girl how to live, think and feel the way God does.  And also, he will instill a humble confidence in her that she is beloved and beautiful to God, the world and her father.  His words and actions, especially in her childhood and teenage years, will deepen the waters in her emotional and spiritual well.

2) A father shows his daughter how a man should treat her.  If a father wants his daughter to respect herself and expect other men, especially a potential husband, to do likewise, then he has to set the bar by his own example.  She will first study the way he loves and respects her mother.  How does he care for and romance mom, or not?  Does dad talk to mom like she’s cherished in the family, or is she demeaned and/or ignored? Also, a daughter will take her cues from how he acts towards her personally.  When a father chases after his daughter’s heart, mind and attention honorably, then she tests future boyfriends and potential husbands through her father’s character grid and not infatuation or insecurity.

3) A daughter will seek two critical things from her father throughout her lifetime.  Yes, a girl will become a woman, meet and marry a man and leave her father’s household.  She will take another man’s name and mutually submit to his vision and leadership over her former patriarch. She will eventually hear her husband’s voice over her father’s voice, and she must do so in order for a new family to successfully emerge.  And yet, she will forever seek these two elements from her father, even when the man is dead and gone.  What? His wisdom and his love.  Even when she is a grandmother, she will tell stories about the truth and proverbs imparted by her father—“My father used to say to me…” What’s more strange is that even absentee and jerky dad’s sometimes get memorialized by their adult daughters, because she longs to remember him with grace and redemption.  She will also replay the few or thousand times her father expresses his fondness and affection for her.  Some advice: Somehow, show your daughter everyday that you love her, think she’s beautiful, and so does God.

There are countless more things to unpack, but these are the ones I’ve started to wrestle with.  Add some others to the comments below, if you’re compelled, but before you do that here’s a freebie: Watch this Tim McGraw video.  Note: watch alone or you might have to explain the man-tears.

What an incredible start to the “Run For Their Lives” race movement.  Nearly three-times more people than expected and an unexplainable energy.  Thanks to everyone who came out to run and volunteer.

Hopefully this video inspires you to run next year and bring someone with you.

www.runfortheirlives.net

“Change is the only constant.” True as an axiom, but that doesn’t mean we like it or want it to mess with us.

There are countless reasons not to allow change in areas we must, but fear of failure is at the top of the list. We are petrified the whole machine that is our life—stability, personality, comfort, etc.—will implode and we’ll be discouraged beyond repair. Why? Because we couldn’t make the change work, or, worse, the change just outright failed. For example, you decided to stop drinking or over-eating or being a lazy spouse, but two-weeks later you were back at it again. And your fall made the two-week rise a more devastating collapse—if I just hadn’t started to climb, I’d never have crashed so hard.

And yet, what if we took the fear of failure out of the equation? What if failure was just part of the success? What if two-steps forward just meant one-step back for a while? And then you moved those two-steps again.

Seems to me that sums up the reality of a Christ-follower, which is why we need so much grace and so much guidance from God’s Spirit. The moment we stop failing is the moment we don’t need a Savior. Note: That’s the deal with Jesus Christ; we need him to save us.

The Apostle Paul writes: “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more…” (Romans 5:20). In other words, our failure or sin causes us to realize the necessity for a greater change agent. Settle down. This mantra does not invite failure and sin to attract grace. On the contrary, Paul completes the thought in chapter 6, “…What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”

What then? Failure and grace just creates a tension we all have to live and thrive in. It’s the tension of moving forward with Christ, but also failing backwards with him, which brings lasting change.

Get busy failing. Get busy changing. And stop being afraid.

A child’s character is forged everyday in every situation. And guess who makes the most indentions? Right on, us parents. They watch how we process and act on our emotions when things do or don’t go our way; they study how we handle moments that require integrity over compromise. Actions get witnessed, words are heard and then it’s all filed away in their Googolplex hard-drive of a memory. It’s not long until those scenes drip down into their hearts and become normal human behavior for them. Scary, I know, because we are teaching them right and wrong whether we want to or not.

I’ve listed some practices and habits I try to live by, so the right character is formed and cemented in my children’s hearts while they observe mom and dad. There are countless more, but here’s three:

1) Tell the truth all the time to everyone. Seems like a no brainer, but a white lie to avoid a ticket is still a lie and it’s being documented in the backseat. Yes, your kids are listening to you and Officer Roscoe discuss why he pulled you over. And they’ll tell him if you can’t seem to recall.

2) Say you’re sorry and admit when you’re wrong. Tough one, for sure, because the kids find out sooner rather than later that you’re not perfect. But, let’s be honest, they will find out someday. Back to Officer Roscoe for a second. Getting a speeding ticket is a great opportunity to admit you were careless and had to experience consequences for your actions. Also, what’s more important, is to apologize to your kids directly when you’ve personally wronged them. Your “sorry” helps heal the wound you’ve caused, but also teaches them that being wrong is part of life and making things right is the freest way to move forward.

3) Don’t fight with your spouse in front of your kids. Teach them how adults should argue and it’s not a “Vegas Bout” in the kitchen among innocent bystanders. Sure, they need to know that it’s not always roses with mom and dad, but there are better methods than ringside seats. Besides, visible tension between the parents tips the entire house out of balance, so spare them the drama and take it to the bedroom. Afterwards, if necessary, let them know that everything is okay between mom and dad. Then explain how working out disagreements the right way is a healthy part of life.

So yesterday was a kicker for us all. It was startling to roll through a parable most of us have heard since childhood and have it drop us to our knees. If you were not at Brentwood Sunday then download Run P3 and/or read the book The Prodigal God by Tim Keller. You will begin to understand and apply Christianity with new clarity and discover your perspective in the Parable of the Lost Son.

Here’s a quick recap. All of us seek to be happy, fulfilled and connect with God (or our idea of god) on two dead-end pathways:

1) Self-discovery Pathway: The “younger brother” took this one in Jesus’ story. Like him, we leave God’s way to try and discover right and wrong, good and bad on our own. Essentially, we want to receive God’s vitality, but not His guidance or leadership in our life. As Keller suggest, we want the “father’s stuff,” but not the “father’s heart.” Going this direction alienates us from God volitionally and leads to self-destruction and despair. And yet, even in our lost state, God runs after us with compassion and forgiveness.

2) Moral Conformity Pathway: Jesus shows the “elder brother” took this path in his story. This brother lived on his father’s estate and obeyed him, but did so with “joyless, fear-based compliance.” In the “elder brother’s” actions we are shown a person who conforms to moral and religious “goodness,” but only to try and control God, not to actually know and reflect His heart. If we walk in the this brother’s steps then we feel like God owes us certain things in life, because of our “goodness.” And, we become angry with God when we can’t control Him. This path alienates us from God because of pride in our so-called “goodness” and the bitterness it generates. But still, God comes to us, like the father in the story, and pleads for us to see His heart and join the party He’s throwing.

Both pathways are wrong and sin-driven, and yet God loves and seeks us on either one.

To my surprise, yesterday I met and prayed with more “elder brothers” than “younger brothers”; must be the reality of living in Lynchburg and not NYC. With that, I could see myself relating to both pathways at different points in my life.

So I think the entire morning became another jarring reminder of why we all need Jesus Christ to rescue us from either “brother” that lives inside our hearts. We can’t be our own Savior.

So let’s be a church that walks the better pathway, the one Jesus Christ clears for us. Let’s obey the Father because we love and know Him. Let’s receive His reward, but also go out of our way to give it to everyone we encounter.

I subscribe to Seth Godin’s blog and glean a lot from his books on culture and industry. I included his post today, because I believe it has wide-range application, especially in relationships at home, work, community, etc. He writes:

“Any sufficiently overheated industry will eventually resemble high school. High school is filled with insecurity, social climbing, backbiting, false friends, faux achievements, high drama and not much content. Much of this insecurity comes from a market that doesn’t make good judgments, that doesn’t understand how to reliably choose between alternatives. So it turns into a popularity contest.”

“As Tom Hanks reportedly said, ‘Hollywood is like high school, but with money.’”

“Or the fashion magazine industry, which is high school but with more makeup.”

“Add to that the Internet, which is like high school but with a modem.”

“Or Twitter, which is high school but only 140 characters at a time.”

“As in high school, the winners are the ones who don’t take it too seriously and understand what they’re trying to accomplish. Get stuck in the never ending drama (worrying about what irrelevant people think) and you’ll never get anything done. The only thing worse than coming in second place in the race for student council president is… winning.”

I wanted to add my own “high-school” comparison to Godin’s list: Marriage can be like high school, but with kids. Honestly, I have to resist the tendency to regress to high school drama on a regular basis. High school was fun for me, but I have to remember this isn’t high school, it is life, marriage and, I’ll include, faith.
Thought you might be able to relate and hopefully course correct if your marriage or faith is stuck in high school right now.

Active and healthy intimacy is critical in your marriage. With that, a lame sex-life is not God’s design for our spouse, so He’s given each of us the privilege to make it great for one another. That is, if we seek greatness. First, I’ll admit, this subject lends itself to a prism of highly charged emotions, from joy to dread and hope to despair, maybe even a little embarrassment, but indifference can’t be our default.

The reality is I meet with more couples who struggle in this area than are thriving and it slowly suffocates their marriage. So get uncomfortable if you must and press on.

What’s the big deal about healthy intimacy? Why can’t we just coast? Let’s start from the beginning. Read Genesis 1 and 2. Recap: God created man (Adam) and gave him two key ingredients for whole life : 1) A relationship with the Creator, and 2) a job to care for His Creation. So everything seems kosher, except God declares things incomplete for Adam, “No suitable helper was found…, etc.” God crafts Eve out of Adam’s essence and presides over the first marriage ceremony. By the end of chapter 2, God has proclaimed sexual intimacy as the ultimate act and symbol of their closeness with Himself and each other. “And they will be come ‘one flesh.’” That’s right, a husband and wife’s sexual pursuit and fulfillment towards their spouse symbolizes the overall climate of their spiritual and emotional connectivity. Disclaimer: This doesn’t mean they’re always going to the stratosphere sexually, but it does mean they seek to regularly please each other in this critical area.

Genesis depicts Adam and Eve as “naked.” Yes, literally they had no clothes on, but also they had no emotional walls or spiritual secrets that held them back from God’s intent upon their relationship. Overall, to make “one flesh” a major priority will clear the path to lay our true hearts bare and without secrets.

But, then the world gets crazy in Genesis 3 and sin takes over everything, which includes sexual greatness among husbands and wives. And today, our marriages fight the ghost of past promiscuity, divorce, pornography, former abuse and everyday family dysfunctions. All these sins and more build walls, false expectations and major let downs for both spouses. And, the marriage suffocates and often dies a slow death over time.

If you want to move forward in “oneness” in your marriage and/or heal from past sexual wounds and mistakes, here are some great resources:

1) Sheet Music by Kevin Leman Amazon.com
2) Sex Begins in the Kitchen by Kevin Leman Amazon.com
3) Intended for Pleasure by Dr. Ed Wheat Amazon.com
4) Intimate Issues: 21 Questions Christian Women Ask About Sex by Linda Dillow & Lorraine Pintas Amazon.com