Where Was God When…? Blog Tour

When’s the last time someone didn’t meet the expectations you had for them? Like 5 minutes ago, right? We expect to get our burger in the drive-thru without ketchup just like we ordered it. Three blocks later our expectation of burger goodness is shattered by no ketchup. We want our money back…or a chance to explain to the dude that made the mistake just how big a moron he is. And then there’s the really big expectation with big disappointments. Sometimes the blown expectations of others wreck our reality and our big expectations explode right along with theirs. It’s those kind of expectations that are loaded with emotional pain and trauma.

In a new book called Where Was God When…? Ric Garland tells his story of shattered expectations:

“When I was in college, I loved spending time with people, and especially dating girls. I never got serious with any of them—what guy does when he’s young? One day my mother wanted me to meet this girl. Right, I thought, I’m going to meet a girl that my mom wants to introduce me to. It was New Year’s Eve and I was home. We went to the church and she introduced me. Well, I hate to admit it but, uh…she was pretty. She was smart, witty, challenging, engaging, and we just hit it right off. I fell in love with Karen, and my life changed, with this amazing girl becoming a big part of it.

Our relationship went up and down. We got close and then she backed away. We got close and she backed away. I was still in college, and she was teaching at a Christian school. When she decided she was going to go to Japan and teach some missionary kids for a couple of years, I thought it was great, but once she was gone, my heart broke. I had to tell her the truth. So, I wrote her a letter and told her I loved her. Right at that time she came up with some physical problems that complicated some things emotionally and spiritually, and she had to come home.

At the same time, I was a missionary and was attending a missions conference an hour and half from home. After it was over, my dad and a friend met me in the back. My dad took me down to an office and told me that Karen had put a noose around her neck, kicked a chair out from underneath herself, and hung herself that morning.

Have you ever had that knot in your stomach that you couldn’t get rid of? Did you ever feel the pain so hard that you couldn’t explain it to anybody? I felt that. I felt that rejection.

I remember for weeks afterward driving down the road and literally seeing her hanging from a noose, calling out my name.

Where was God? I was supposed to marry her. I loved her. Why did God let that happen?”

Ric’s expectations of love and marriage were obliterated. He felt like God had let him down. From Ric’s perspective God had dropped the ball. God “allowed” someone to slip through a cosmic crack in our imperfect world. How could a perfect God allow that to happen? Where was God, exactly?

God was there the whole time. His love for Karen and Ric never wavered. It was rock solid. Still is. So why doesn’t God in all of His perfection make our life perfect, too? We want God to intervene and make our lives into what we think is a perfect reality. Our expectation is that we want God in all of His perfection and flawless character to adopt our flawed view of what perfect is. We want God to craft and control the circumstances of the world into our design of how we think things should be.

God isn’t going to make changes that aren’t in line with His character. The Perfect Being doesn’t need to exchange perfection for imperfection. And for us to think that He’s going to change the results of things to what we want would be asking Him to do something imperfect.

Okay, so God’s nature and character never change. But we humans, on the other hand, tend to react to the pain in life with inconsistent spiritual and emotional responses. We set our expectations of other people in a concrete mix of “must” and “should” and react with disbelief because the world we live in is made up of “maybe” and “I’m not sure.”  In other words, life isn’t neat and clean all the time. It’s pretty unpredictable and messy. When we demand things must go a certain way and they don’t, we set ourselves up for disappointment, anxiety and anger.

People are going to disappoint us because they’re imperfect. To expect perfect or near perfect responses from imperfect humans isn’t realistic. We tend to forget that, though. That means that disappointment, anxiety and anger aren’t going to go away soon. The good news is, we can have a lot less emotional pain by changing how we think (Romans 12:1-2; Philippians 4:1-8).

It’s really helped me to reflect on the true, right, lovely and pure things in situations that are less than perfect. How do you think you would deal with a death like Karen’s?

Cadillacs and Church Planting Movements

The first mission trip I remember going on was with my parents when they went to Mexico when I was three.  The only things I remembered from that trip is that I let one of my new Mexican friends play with my six-shooter cap gun and that I really liked sitting on the backseat armrest to see of out my dad’s ’61 Sedan DeVille.

Some things have changed since then.  The ’61 Cadillac has been replaced by an Airbus A330 22, worn out buses, and bora boras.  Handwritten letters and land line phone calls have given way to email, texting, and surfing the Interwebs via BGAN.  Some things haven’t changed since I was taken on my first mission trip…like being involved in a church planting movement, medical clinic, construction, orphan care, pastor training and cultural tourism.  This trip, thirty people from six different churches in the United States and Germany spent six days on the ground getting an incredible amount of things accomplished.

Our church partners with Helping Hands in Uganda primarily to be involved with a church planting movement but also because they are doing some great work with orphans.  Grace Calvary Christian Ministries is an indigenous church planting movement that is aggressive and is looking to plant churches where there isn’t an evangelical presence. Plans are to plant at least six churches on the banks of Lake Victoria where there’s no churches. Our team helped support that this time with survey work in some of the newer churches and I met with 21 pastors to get information for some marriage enrichment material they’ve requested. I thought their request for marriage material in a culture that still embraces polygamy was interesting.

We attended a baptismal service for 61 people.  You may say, “baptism, schmab-tism” but it was really incredible.  The people getting baptized were from multiple churches, mostly adult and they had all started their relationship with Christ within the last 30 days.  There was even one guy that told us that God had spoke to him while the baptismal procession was going by and told him that he “needed what they have.”  Oh yeah, and there hadn’t been a big evangelistic push or crusade.  This was the Church doing what the Church was designed to do.  You don’t see that happening in the average American or European church.

Just had a thought.  Maybe Satan deceptively nurtures the inherent materialism in humans in order to get us to buy into the false belief that if we have stuff that faith is unnecessary.  Most Ugandans don’t have that problem. They’re poor as dirt.  They live without air conditioning, raise their own food, drink their beer from a common pot through reed straws and still have unsanitary water and sewage conditions.  When you don’t have much you tend to be more open to spiritual things.

The “mother” church of the church planting movement, Busia Calvary Church, is responsible for starting an influential orphan ministry in Busia.  Their philosophy is that they can help more kids by providing a free school for the orphans to attend.  They provide over 600 kids uniforms and shoes, a meal (usually porridge and the side of the day like beans, rice, or greens) and a government recognized education. When a team comes in, a medical clinic for the kids is led by Dr. Brenda Kowalske.  The cool part of partnering with a smaller organization is that you have access to the child you sponsor.  The picture on the right is of me and our family’s sponsored child Irene.  One of the most eye opening things was when Dr. Richard Kowalske was going to get construction supplies and brought 11 drug addicted street kids back with him.  His offer: If they get off drugs they’ll get two meals for 30 days, new clothes, and a place to sleep on the condition that they attend class every day.  I did the intake on all of the kids since the headmaster was in training with his teachers and I was the only one free to do it.  Four of the kids (average age of nine) were straight up stoned on inhalants when they got there.  Five of the other kids weren’t high but they used.  One 16 year old boy was just orphaned and homeless.  I cried the next morning when 9 of the 11 boys were back.  I don’t have a rep for crying about stuff like that.  Just sayin…

The construction part of the team got a lot done by prepping and pouring a floor for the wash room in the kitchen at the school. They also poured concrete pillars for the Busia Calvary Church building that had been destroyed by an unusually strong thunderstorm. I have to give credit where credit’s due…a group of 7th grade Ugandan boys made sure that we always had concrete ready. They mixed it by hand on the ground for two days straight.  They are strong and hard working young men.  It proved to me that a lot of American 7th grade boys (and men) are soft.

The lessons I learned on this trip:

• You should be able to get along with anyone at some level. Thirty people worked like a well oiled machine on this trip. “Accept each other just like you have been accepted in Christ Jesus” (Romans 15:7).
• Each church should do foreign missions in a way that matches the culture of their church. Not every church is wired to do 10/40 missions.  Not every church is designed to do construction. Every church should equip its members in how to share their faith story.
• Find a missions organization that’s smaller and more personal. It doesn’t sound as cool when someone asks “So who do you partner with in missions?” but the personal connection factor is huge.

Tell me some of your stories. How your church does mission work?

Looking for contentment

If we’re searching for something we can find justification or even validation for it most anywhere.  I did that searching for contentment this week.  It’s always been one of those things that’s been elusive.  I wasn’t raised with much materially, so I’ve always thought I was trying to compensate somehow. I still don’t have much.  Sometimes I secretly wish a close friend or relative would win a PowerBall or MegaMillion and throw me a bone or two.  After all, it’s illegal for a Bapticostal to gamble, right?

So I’m preparing a talk for this weekend and the topic I was given was “the family as the primary disciple-maker.”  No problem.  Deuteronomy 6 was a good starting point.  Plenty of material there.  After a little study, I just seemed like I needed to go to the Ten Commandments.

I became transfixed and distracted from my subject matter.

I read the Decalogue and reread it.  I had already read it like a thousand times.  I even had most of them memorized.  (You may be able to quote them all without a lot of mental gymnastics, but I’m not you, OK?)

For the first time I saw the Ten Commandments as a statement of how to be content as a human being.  Adam and Eve weren’t content.  We haven’t been content since then.  In God’s infinite wisdom he knew we needed something to show us how to live as the human beings we were created to be.  The radical minimum standard of human behavior included, even if inferred, our need to have a character that includes contentment.

Be content with a Creator God alone.
Be content that I can’t successfully craft Him in my image or any other image.
Be content with a God that is indescribable instead of throwing His name around loosely.
Be content with completely unplugging and spending time with the Creator one day each week.
Be content with my parents and I’ll actually live longer.
Be content and I won’t get angry enough or careless enough to kill someone.
Be content with my wife.  Discontentment here just causes a lot of pain and misery for a lot of people.
Be content with your BlackBerry Pearl and PowerBook G4.  Contentment keeps me from getting arrested.
Be content to keep my mouth shut.  Let other people make themselves look stupid with gossip, lies, and slander.
Be content with my house that doesn’t have a media room.  I’ve got HDTV and a PS3. A servant or two might be nice…sorry.

It was a good study for me.  It wouldn’t get an “A” from my hermenutics professor but he’s probably already content.

I’m still working on it.  I’m content with being a created being, but I’m getting an iPhone 3Gs when my contract rolls over in November.  Just sayin’…

We salute you, Mr. Semi-Permanent Food Baby Guy

Today, we salute you Mr. Semi-Permanent Food Baby Guy…keeper of the double standard.  You want your wife to look like Halle Berry but it’s okay if you look like Larry the Cable Guy.  You wonder why your wife lost her girlish figure but you can’t figure out why you just ate your fourth Krispy Kreme.  While your wife is at least thinking about losing weight, you’re at the “All You Can Eat Buffet” telling the cashier, “I’ll take two of those, please.” That’s right, Mr. Double Standard, go ahead and get your semi-permanent food baby on.

Let’s think about this real men of genius…

Guys, how about we take a long, side-view look in the mirror?  We complain to the each other that we’ve lost a step playing softball, but it’s hard to admit that we don’t exactly look like we can pull off the cover of Men’s Health.

Let’s be completely honest.  We put too much emphasis on the physical part of being married.  It’s what guys do.  It’s time for a reality check.  Very few of us look like we did in our honeymoon pictures.  It’s sad, but we want our wives to still look like they did back in the day…before three kids, two C-sections, and hardly any time to slow down and eat a balanced meal.  Sure, my wife doesn’t look like she did in our honeymoon pictures, but neither do I.  I weighed a buck twenty-nine when we got married.  Let’s just say I weigh more than that now….

So before we get all stupid, how about us guys doing something about the semi-permanent food baby we have strapped to our waist?  Start walking.  Join a gym.  Eat less and eat healthier.  Just say no when the “hot light” is on.  How about being a leader instead of a whiner.  Man up.  Who knows what will happen when you start losing those pounds?

So, how about it?  What are you willing to commit to do to look better right now, in writing, for the entire Internet to see?  Well….?

Marriage stats that will blow your mind

One of the most interesting sites on the Internet there is to survey the popular view of American culture is at SoulPancake.com.  I

follow the site on  Twitter as well as Rainn Wilson, one of the site’s editors and Dwight on “the Office.”  It’s not a mainstream Christian site, so if you visit it and start asking me why I frequent the site I won’t respond to you.  It’s designed for dialogue, not for Christian devotion.  Anyway…

SoulPancake.com asked the question, “WHEN DID MARRIAGE BECOME AN OUTDATED CONCEPT?”  I personally thought it was a great question to ask.  I’m pretty interested in the whole marriage thing anyway.  So I put my two cents in.  I did so with the help of a really great document that’s chuck full of great statistics.  One of the stats that absolutely blew me away was how cohabitation has become a norm in American culture.

Major props go out to The Association of Marriage & Family Ministries.  They twittered the doc so I’m guessing they wanted to make it public.  I have an email into them asking permission in order to be ethical and all.  I’m taking the liberty of posting it for your viewing pleasure/displeasure.  You can download it here.