I don’t know about you but i hate being held to an impossible standard.  It happened pretty early on for me.  Actually it was 1st grade.  I know elementary school is supposed to be a very happy time but I have hardly any fine motor skills so I really struggled.  I couldnt color between the lines, couldn’t cut with my scissors, in fact most of the pictures I had to cut out were left with missing limbs.  Pretty sad I know.  I was a social animal even then, but the worst thing was penmanship.  At the English School in Bogota Colombia where I went, they wanted us to learn to write neatly.  They wanted us to put a letter in each square on a graph piece of paper when we practiced our alphabet.  Shoot! I cant do that now.  What a train wreck!  What an impossible standard.  

It was even worse at church because since I was the pastor’s kid, I lived in a human fish bowl.  I think the term “sinless perfection” was coined with pastors kids in mind.  Never mind the fact that we were far from that, the expectation to be flawless children was overwhelming.  

You know, lots of us feel the same way about church.  We feel that if we come to church all our imperfections are place on display for everyone to see.  Its an awful sensation to feel like you are naked in front of strangers.  The expectations seem overwhelming.  Fair or not, many of us feel that way about church.  

I think one of the main reasons we feel this way is because we feel that we have to be perfect to come to God.  So many people have made rules the way to find acceptance with God that the church has been transformed from being what should be the most accepting place in the world to one where people feel the most judged.    Why is that?  I think one of the main reasons is that it is really easy to make secondary things primary.  Noted scholar Arthur Barclay says – “The spirit that makes Christianity into something bound by regulations is not yet dead by any means.”As a result know church should be accepting but most of us feel that we have to live a certain way to be a part of the in crowd.    

I think is so ironic that this is the very reason that Jesus came.  To change that playing field.  Jesus said, I have come to give you life!”  That is a far cry from the world of rule keeping I feel many of us live in on a daily basis.  Make no mistake, I don’t think we need to live lives filled with sin, but we need to live free.  

So what does that mean?  We must bypass our own fears of unmet expectations and choose to have a living dynamic relationship with Jesus.  I think it means that we live in a relationship with God by praying and reading his word daily but don’t let it stay there, we must talk to him throughout the day and engage him in the minute and normal parts of our life.  In a world that is seeking to drag us away we must Hold on to Jesus!  In him we can find true peace, in him we can find someone who doesn’t hold us to an impossible standard but says come as you are.  Come the way you are because I love you.  The past is the past, you are accepted here.

Mike as a 1st grader

I dont know what it is but I love going to the beach.  It is just so relaxing and refreshing to sit and read a book all day by the ocean.  I try to switch it up from spiritual books to novels.  The book I was reading to feed my soul was “No Perfect People Allowed”  by John Burke.  I think it has some very powerful insights into creating a church that accepts people the way that they are and helps them find Christ as a result of that acceptance.  In fact it was one of the books that was catalyst to Brad and I starting Green Hills Church this year.  I hope we can be a place that people far from God can come and know him regardless of their past.  I really hope our church can be a place that people don’t feel judged but can grow in their walk with Christ.  

Back to the beach… Tabitha and I really enjoyed our time in Gulf Shores.  If you have never been there it is a must visit.  I have never seen beaches as white as they are in Alabama of all places.  Trust me I have been around some good beaches in my day and this one is only 7 hours away from Nashville.  I am enclosing some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Last night I was watching tv while I was in bed.  A preacher was on and although I rarely watch televangelists i kept watching.  I was really curious because this guy had a full set behind him that was a replica of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem.  Since I have been there I was really astonished by the detail.  Anyway, the guy rambled with some strange and kind of sketchy facts about the garden tomb and I was about to turn it off when he said something pretty profound.  He said that it was a providential that Jesus was taken off the cross and put in the tomb.  It preserved the body from being thrown on the refuse heap outside of the city and later incinerated.  As a result the body of Christ still bore the marks of the crucifixion.  Now I know of course, God could have resurrected and incinerated Christ as easily as he resurrected a dead Jesus, but I think how amazing it is that Jesus was resurrected from a sealed tomb.  Think about it.  There is no way that the swoon theory has merit when he was sealed in that tomb for 2 nights.  It isn’t like he woke up on a garbage heap and then showed himself to his disciples, he was locked in a tomb dead, wrapped up, if there was any chance he was still alive he would have bled out or died from exhaustion while inside the tomb.  As it is we know exactly where his body was, sealed away, far away from any tampering until his Glorious resurrection.  We serve an amazing God who thought about everything.  Even providing his son an iron clad story of where he was while he was dead.  I am including some pictures of the garden tomb so you can appreciate its beauty.

Ok so I am connected to an organization called Threads that publishes studies and resources for people in their 20′s and 30′s.  I had the great fortune, “right time, right place” to have a chance to write for them.  Seriously, it was straight out of the twilight zone how getting to write a couple of Bible studies worked out.  Never saw that coming.  

Well, I have finally joined the bloggosphere.  This is going to be a cool space where you get to be in my mind for a while.  I dont know if being inside my mind is a happy place or scary place but it is a place none the less.  Hopefully through this blog you and I will be better friends and better people.