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The Gospel According to Training Montages

You know it. I know it. Let's just say it together: training montages are awesome! Whether it's Rocky learning how to box Apollo Creed, Mr. T or Ivan Drago, Batman becoming Batman, or Kevin Bacon teaching that redneck guy how to dance in Footloose, training montages of all kinds continue to be essential building blocks for making a great movie. My two favorite montages are in the original Karate Kid. After Mr. Miyagi teaches Daniel the basics of Karate, Daniel goes out and starts to train on his own. If you haven't seen it, watch it: training montage. Then of course there is the classic, unbeatable fighting montage set to the perfect montage song "You're the Best Around". In this outstanding stroke of cinematic brilliance, we see Daniel winning all his preliminary matches in the All-Valley Karate Championships until he finally gets to his biggest nemesis: the classic 80's bad guy/bully, Johnny. Then the movie finally culminates into the greatest/lamest fight scene of all time. I say lamest because if you really pay attention to the fighting that's taking place, it's horrible. They clearly didn't want to spend a lot of money teaching these actors actual Karate so they just kind of fumble around trying to get a punch in, and it's just not great. However, I can't seem to stop watching and absolutely loving that perfect, powerful moment when Daniel raises his arms, lifts up that one leg and amongst the cries of "Finish Him!"  and "You can do it, Daniel," the referee says fight and BAM! Come on, watch it! Click on that link and WATCH IT!!!
So awesome, right? It's so powerful and inspiring because Daniel had a huge problem: Johnny and his karate buddies were beating him down over and over again, Mr. Miyagi stepped in, bought him some time, and Daniel used that time to train and learn how to deal with his problems rather than run from them, and then he gets to kick Johnny in the face. It's perfect. And unlike a lot of perfectly resolved movie endings, this one is actually pretty realistic. Daniel didn't become a karate expert and save the world from a million bad guys he fought off single-handedly. He was getting picked on, he learned karate from a helpful Asian handyman who lived in his apartment complex and entered a city tournament and won. It's simple and completely possible. The truth is, if you add a training montage to most problems in our lives, we can overcome them. Overweight? A training montage will fix that. Need to learn to dance for that big date you have with the girl you're secretly in love with? Training montage. Need to overthrow an evil dictator who has taken over your country? Training montage, boom! The only problem with this is that in real life we don't get to gloss over all the actual training stuff while an upbeat, inspirational song keeps the action moving. We have to wake up early, go to the gym, work out all the time, eat better and after a few months or years, we get healthy and lose all the extra weight. Training takes a lot of work and time and it isn't nearly as fun and entertaining as a perfectly crafted training montage. It's frustrating.
Here's the weird thing: there are no training montages in the Bible. Over and over again, the people of God are faced with challenges and rather than teaching them how to fight their own battles, God usually just takes care of it. Perfect example: Joshua 3-6, the Israelites crossing the Jordan River and the battle of Jericho. These are two huge problems that would typically need a training montage to be solved. The Israelites need to get their entire congregation across the overflowing Jordan River, hundreds of thousands of people crossing a raging river is a huge undertaking that would typically result in some loss of lives and lost or ruined supplies. God could have given them a list of items and tools to gather so they could build a temporary dam which would allow them to cross without any problem. It would have taken a while. It would have been hard work. They would have learned a valuable skill and grown together as a community. It would have been an awesome training montage. Instead, God just parted the waters and told them to cross -no montage.
Then they get to Jericho, this massive city with immense walls that seem completely impenetrable. Here would be an awesome moment for God to bring down a hardcore, no nonsense, Angelic military commander named Michael to teach the Israelites how to build siege-works, catapults, huge ladders and maybe even give them some super secret exploding powder to use to blow up the walls. It would be an extremely epic montage with some strong war drum music playing. Then Michael would mysteriously leave or something and just before the Israelites began their initial charge against the city, there could be this epic silence while the wind sweeps across the field in front of them and then Joshua could step forward, raise his sword while his immense muscles glisten in the early morning light and let out an intense war cry, "For MICHAEL!!!!" And then everybody would yell and charge and take the city. It would have been AWESOME!! Instead, God just had them march around for a week and then pulled the walls down Himself. They do get to yell at the end, but it would be the worst montage ever. 

Financial debt is a huge problem in our society worldwide. It cripples a lot of families and even entire nations. Imagine, however, if some mysteriously wealthy individual went on TV and announced that he has contacted every credit agency in the world and asked them to send all their unpaid loans, collection accounts, etc. directly to him from now on and he will take care of it, effectively erasing all financial debts across the entire world forever.
So here's the weirdest thing. Humanity owes a massive debt to God. Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death and humanity had been drawing on an empty account for thousands of years accruing a massive debt of death owed to God -the kind of debt that no Dave Ramsey debt-snowball system could ever erase. We owed big-time and we needed to pay up. Instead of collecting on this massive debt as He had done before with the great flood, He sent His son, Jesus, to Earth as a human so that His death could act as a one-time lump sum payment on the incredibly massive debt accrued over all of existence past, present and future.
God is continually fixing our problems. He doesn't always just fix the problems we couldn't solve without him either. He wants to fix everything, but we keep trying to do it ourselves. Rather than marching around the walls of Jericho and waiting for God to do what He promised, we keep drawing our sword, breaking ranks and charging at the walls ourselves, hacking away until our sword breaks and then we find a new one and keep hacking. We seem to prefer the montage. God is offering to free us from the slavery of sin, but we keep trying to modify our own behavior. God is offering us true joy and prosperity (by which I mean contentment in whatever stage we are in, not continual financial and physical prosperity, Heb. 13:5!!!), but we keep tying our joy to the things of this world.

You know it. I know it. Let's just say it together: we need to surrender everything and become completely, 100% dependent on God. Give up trying to DO and just BE. Romans 12:2 (paraphrase)
"DO NOT conform. BE transformed." Stop trying to DO the work of transformation and just BE transformed.
We aren't the artist. We're the canvas.

You Can't Tame a Tiger

Road trips used to be really cool and romantic (as in adventurous not Nicholas Sparks). I remember when I was 22 and drove from Orlando to Dallas. It was one of my favorite trips. My Toyota Corolla was somehow able to hold 90% of my possessions and I was driving out to a new life. I took my time, stopped and dipped my feet in the Mississippi river, slept in a scary motel in Baton Rouge, ate at as many Waffle Houses as I could find, and listened to the entire audiobook of Kerouac's On the Road read by Matt Dillon (amazing, btw). It was cathartic and pleasant all at the same time.
Things are different now.
My family and I just got back from my father-in-law's wedding in a quaint, quiet little mountain town in Western Arkansas called Eureka Springs. While on this delightful road trip, my wife and I learned a lot, like we should never take road trips with our kids, or the longer you try to make a 1 year old sit during a wedding, the more piercing her screams become, and always, always keep a bowl of mac and cheese in your bag especially when taking your 3 year old daughter to a reception where there will only be formal hors d'ouvres. The worst part by far was sleeping in the same room as our two daughters. It was impossible. On the last night, we just gave up and let them both sleep in our bed. My oldest daughter put her head on my back and her feet on my wife's butt like we were a hammock while our youngest just kicked and screamed all night. It was the worst. The final thing I have to say about it is the same thing I said the last time I flew Spirit Airlines: NEVER AGAIN.
Something else I learned on this trip is that when I go out of town for an event with my wife's family, I become all-time babysitter. This part wasn't so bad because it meant we got to go out and see the town. The first afternoon we went to a cool cave and walked around. It was kinda fun and the girls sort of liked it. The next afternoon, however, was amazing. We went to this place called Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge and saw over 100 tigers, lions, jaguars, panthers, and mountain lions. There were also some bears, a coyote, a monkey, and some sort of weird ant eater thing that I didn't really care about. Kate and Harper (my daughters) both loved it and I couldn't get enough of it. There's just something amazing about seeing so many powerful, apex predators right in front of you. The craziest thing about it is that most of these animals were former pets. People had these lions, tigers and bears (don't say it!) in their homes, or in cages outside their homes. It's crazy. Even in their cages, these things are crazy dangerous. Our guide told us a story about three of the tigers on the property that sort of blew my hair back. They used to be kept in Branson at a place called Predator World. The place was cool, but management wasn't exactly up-to-date on the proper procedures for taking care of giant, killer predators. It seems pretty obvious to me, but maybe they hadn't seen enough you tube videos of tigers attacking people to know not to go into a tiger cage when tigers are in it. So this 16 year old employee goes into the tigers' environment to do a little cleaning and somehow or another, he slips and falls down. Apparently this was the exact opportunity the killer beasts were waiting for because all three tigers literally pounced on him and began to do what tigers do to weak, vulnerable creatures that are dumb enough to come within 50 meters of them. Try to imagine lying on the ground and seeing three tigers running towards you, mouths open, growling and ready to consume you. You're helpless; completely, utterly helpless and absolutely unable to do anything at all to stop these perfectly constructed killing machines from doing whatever they want to you. However, many people seem to think that through behavioral conditioning, training and whatever else that they can guarantee that these wild animals are tame and perfectly harmless, like this guy in the karate outfit: bear attacks woman. The truth is that these animals are killers: it's what they do and no amount of training or discipline can stop that. And that fact got me thinking about this:
"Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." 1 Peter 5:8
That 16 year old genius who fell in the tiger cage survived. I don't know how, but he did. And I can guarantee you that he will never again enter a tiger cage while tigers are in it. A lot of people have to hit rock bottom before they realize the destructive nature of their sins. We don't choose to learn the hard way, but we grow too addicted to whatever it is to just let go on our own: we have to be forced out. We try to deal with it on our own for a long time. We try to modify our own behavior and discipline ourselves out of the sin, but it just grows and grows until it's like we have a fully grown tiger living in our house just roaming the rooms and hallways waiting to attack us. We keep telling ourselves we have the tiger tamed and completely under control, but it's a tiger; we don't control it, it controls us. It's the same with patterns of sin in our lives. We think we have things under control, but until we truly turn away from those behaviors, and let God take it out of your life, that tiger will keep prowling around your house until the day you slip and fall and he pounces. You can't get that tiger our of your house. You can't just open the door and hope he leaves. You have to get help. Repent and go after God; and eventually, not immediately, you'll be free. 
That kid survived, but he's paralyzed from the neck down and has some pretty intense facial scars. When we hit bottom with our sin, we don't often get to go back to the way things were. Don't wait to hit bottom. Let God do what you can't and do it now.
You can't. God Can.
 

The Unfinished Field of Dreams

All the best movies about sports are about baseball.
For some mysterious reason football, basketball, soccer, hockey, golf or whatever sport you love can not consistently inspire great films. Sure they are some out there: Hoosiers, The Big Green, Tin Cup, The Mighty Ducks 1, 2 and 3.
Since football seems to be the main sport people in America care about, football probably comes in second: Rudy, The Little Giants, Remember the Titans, and Brian's Song are all excellent films.
But I ask you, do they compare to the consistent quality and inspirational power of movies like Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, For Love of the Game, Eight Men Out, The Natural, Major League, The Sandlot, A League of Their Own, The Rookie, Fever Pitch, Rookie of the Year, Angels in the Outfield, or Moneyball?
I'm sure you could pick out one or two of those that suck, but any cinephile will agree that baseball is the most inspirational sport when it comes to film. Why? I'm honestly not too sure; you'll have to ask Kevin Costner, but that's not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about catalysts. Change agents. Heavy moments. You see, all films, all good stories have them; baseball movies especially. These are those moments where you realize the way things have been need to change and they need to change right now. It's the voice that says "If you build it, he will come." Or it's a beautiful woman that won't have you unless you straighten up. Or it's hitting rock bottom and realizing the only job you can get is coaching girls baseball. I could go on and on, but in every good film, novel, or bedtime story there is a "but one day" moment. And it's my opinion that one of the major differences between real life, or my life at least, and that of the characters in stories is that most of my "if you build it he will come" moments have been ignored. If I was in that corn field, picking corn, going about my day and all of a sudden I heard Kevin Costner speak to me from heaven, I would turn my iPod up and pretend nothing happened. Maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit. Maybe I would listen. Maybe I would plow under my corn and start building. But using every moment of my life as evidence, there is no way I would have finished that field. There is no way I would have waited for whatever to happen. There is no way I would have finished it. In fact, I think that's probably true for most people. Stories about normal people doing normal things that most of us do aren't interesting. Stories about men and women doing extraordinary things that none of us have ever done or will ever do but all wish we could do; those are interesting. Even stories based on true stories are always altered or improved because the true, true story always disappoints.
Let's look at me.
I was a soccer player. I loved it more than any other thing on God's great planet. You put me on a field with a ball at my feet and a goal in my sight and a few other guys in my way, and I would do anything to get that ball in that goal and when I did, even now as I write about it I can taste the immense joy that filled my body once it slides past the goalie and bounces off the net. Or that beautiful rush I got when I relieved another player of the ball, made that perfect pass, slide the ball between someone's legs, fouled someone and got away with it, or just made a fool out of the guy trying to defend me. And there was nothing more frustrating than a red card, or a ref not seeing a foul, missing an off sides call, watching the ball slide between my own legs, missing a pass, or the mother of all mistakes: an own goal. For all it's frustration and pure joy combined I loved it. For me, there wasn't anything on earth like that game. And luckily for me, I was good at it. From five years old through college I played the game and I loved the game. It was my life. I could write and write about the many great moments of my soccer career: the wins, the losses, the hat-tricks, the injuries, the recoveries, and my many nemeses (Kyle Hopkins being the biggest), but I want to talk to you today about the last second in the last game on the last field I ever played on. Because that was the moment where I looked back and saw all of the catalytic moments of my life and realized that I had heard the voices, but never finished building the field.
It ended with a loss. It ended suddenly. It ended with me on my knees crying, crying as if someone had just stolen all I had worked for and burned it in front of me. It ended before I was ready.
Let me back up. I played college soccer at Southeastern University from 2000-2004. I started my first year and by my second, I was made captain. It was a stupid coaching decision to put me as captain, but it was done. That year was my best year. I made all conference and I was put on the all tournament team at the regional tournament. Junior year, we had a new coach and I wasn't captain anymore, but I was on track to outdo my previous season. Then I tore my meniscus and was out for the rest of the season. That summer I trained harder than I had ever trained my entire life. I had never wanted anything more than to go all the way to the national tournament that year. I wanted All-American. I wanted 20 goals. I wanted records broken. I wanted interest from pro teams.
I got none of that. 4 games in I had lost my starting spot and sat the bench most of that season. In the last game of my life on a breezy, chilly day at Clearwater College, with my parents and girlfriend watching, I played about 5 minutes. I contributed nothing to that game nor to most of that season. I received no awards, no honorable mentions and no interest from anyone. So when that whistle blew, I landed on my knees and cried. Even as I write about this, I can think of nothing else but the feel of the grass on my knees, the breeze on my neck, the cold on my cheeks as the frigid wind blew my tears away, and that gut-wrenching feeling that it was over. From age 5-21 my life was about soccer, and there on that field, on that day, when that whistle blew, for that brief moment, I had no idea what my life was supposed be about. I was kneeling on a metaphorical half-finished baseball field with Kevin Costner's voice sarcastically calling from the heavens, "Nice work, idiot."
Sad story right? Well, there's a reason for it. Even though soccer was all I wanted, I never treated it that way. When I said that summer before my senior year was the hardest I'd ever trained in my life, what I should have said was it was the only summer I actually trained. I never gave it my everything. I never pushed myself to be the best. I never dedicated my time, my body or my mind to the sport. There were many times when I heard Costner's voice in the field in the form of coaches saying, "He's got great potential, but he needs to improve _____." Or my mom pushing me to run in the off seasons. Or watching my friends, like Derek Britt or Thomas Whited, train and train and train and constantly get better. I had so many catalytic moments where things could have gone the other way where I had the opportunity to get better and give 100%, but I didn't do it. And I believe sitting on that bench that year was God showing me the rewards for such behavior.
After that lesson, I found a new God-given passion in teaching young people and it has consumed my life to this day. But really that passion is a passion to please God. I fail constantly in that area, but it's still all I want. And on that last day, I want to fall on my knees and for tears to stream down and for Him to lift me up and say (probably in Kevin Costner's voice) "Well done, my good and faithful servant. Come and share in my happiness."
So I ask you now,
What are you doing with your life? What are you passionate about?
Whatever it is, God has placed catalytic moments in your life to spur you on that path and push you to do more and be better. Don't ignore them. Take them. But ultimately know this. If your greatest passions are placed on things of this world, there will come a day, maybe tomorrow or 65 years from now, where it will be taken from you and there will be nothing you can do about it. I could have tried to steal that ref's whistle or maybe tackled him to the ground when I saw him reaching for it, but inevitably that game would have ended no matter what I did.
Within all of us, believer or non, there is a seed. For many that seed stays a seed for their whole lives. For others, something happens that brings us in to faith in God and that seed gets planted. And if we trust in His work and His plan for our lives, it will grow and grow and grow and bear fruit and ultimately break free of our bodies and dominate our whole lives and change the lives of many others. And when our lives are over, we leave the body behind and move into our true purpose in a land free of disappointment, failure or sadness.  Put your trust in He who planted the seed and be passionate and diligent about laying your self down for His sake and when it's all said and done no story or movie in the world will have been as inspiring or interesting as the life you led and are going to lead with Him as your catalyst.
Amen. 

Zach Time Out

Lately I've been watching more Saved by the Bell than usual. If you are currently googling "saved by the bell," I'm shocked and dismayed by your cultural unawareness, but also excited by what you would pull up from a google image search.
Like this:
 The cast of the greatest TV Show about High School ever.

And here ^ we have a screenshot from my favorite episode where the 

writers made the bold choice of having Jesse (girl in front) experience a drug 

addiction, and by drug I mean caffeine pills, and by addiction I mean she 

took a few too many and got a little wired for an hour or two. Bold.

Anyways, I've been watching it a lot and one of my favorite parts of the show was Zach timeout. Zach, the blonde guy, was the main character and each show, at least in the early seasons, would start out with him breaking the fourth wall and talking to us, the audience, about whatever scenario we were going to be watching unfold this week. And occasionally, he would stop the action in the middle of the show by holding his hands in a T and saying "Time Out!" At this point, he would step away from the action and engage us again. He would analyze whatever was going on and figure out exactly how to deal with whatever odd situation he was dealing with at the time, then he would say "Time In" and the action would continue. 

I have always wanted that power. There was a duck tails episode that had a similar premise where the ducks could stop time and of course there were like five Twilight Zones about it, an X-Files episode, and then Adam Sandler lived it out in the movie, Click. It's an awesome power, a power that I've never longed for as badly as I did last night. 

Last night I tweeted (@thenickrob) that I was going to sleep before 9 and that's exactly what I did. I turned on an episode of King of the Hill and fell asleep on the couch. Why the couch? Two reasons:

1. The netflix on our Wii isn't working so I have to watch it on my phone when I'm in my bedroom.

2. There was a bunch of laundry on the bed that I didn't have the energy to move let alone fold and put away.

I should also note that I was alone in the house. Rachel was in Houston and the babies were at their grandmother's house so I was able to make such silly, bachelor-like decisions. 

So I fell asleep on the couch.

Around 11:15pm I was awoken by the sound of the doorbell and my dog, Amie, barking her little canine brains out.  After checking the time, I decided that 11:15pm was too late a time to be ringing my door bell and expecting me to answer. So I just kept laying on the couch. After about 45 seconds, the bell rang again. The way my house is laid out has the living room right next to a large window facing the front porch, but the shades were drawn so I couldn't see anything. And the front door faces the wall of the living room so I couldn't see anybody at the door either. So after the second ring, I started to get a little nervous. However, I remembered that back in our old house in Tyler, TX, the doorbell would randomly ring in the middle of the night and it turned out to be a faulty wire that was causing it, so I thought maybe that was the case here. Also, usually when someone rings a bell and no one answers they will maybe try knocking or calling out "Hello." That is, if they really want someone to come to the door. 

Then it rang again. Now I was freaked out. I didn't hear any voices. I didn't see any shadows moving. But I was starting to hear the sound of someone walking in the grass outside. Then after about a minute of petrifying, paralyzing fear I began to think maybe it was over. 

It wasn't.

All of a sudden, I heard some scuffling around on the front porch and then the sound of the window screen being pulled up. Then the window started to open and a person put their head through the window.

With my heart pounding like a drum-line, sweat pouring down my face, and every protective instinct in my body exploding all at once I jumped up and yelled the only word that came to my mind
YO!!!

Upon hearing my barbaric yawp, the villain pulled his head back out of the window and quickly closed the window and replaced the screen. 

I called 911 for the first time and in a frightened stutter told them what happened and they told me a police officer was coming. I quickly turned on all the lights in the house, locked the window and stood terrified, not sure what to do next fearing they might regroup and return. After about 8 minutes of this I decided to man-up and go stand outside on the porch and wait for the cops. As I waited on the porch beginning to calm down and regaining some of my senses, I started to replay the events of the last 15 minutes in my head. Should I have jacked this guy in the head with something hard and sharp? Should I have got my gun? Should I have let him in and then tried to share the gospel with him? It was at this point that I started to think about Saved by the Bell.  

If there was ever a good time for a Zach timeout, it was then. If only I had the powers of Zach Morris, I would have made a T with my hands, shouted out "Time Out!" and taken a moment to analyze the situation. I would have gone outside and seen exactly what I was dealing with here. How many are there? Do they have weapons? Is it someone I know pulling a prank on me? After all the stuff I've done to people, I guess I would have deserved it. Then I could have done something awesome like pick them up and arrange them into a kissing position, or if it was just one person, I could have poked him in the eyes, tied his hands behind his back and stuck a large pointy stick up his ... uh ... mouth. 

Then I could have just said "Time In" and everything would have been fine the studio audience would have laughed giving me a great laugh track to use for later. 

The fear would have been gone and I would have been in control. 

Now that the dust has settled and I've had a chance to really think about things, I feel like a hypocrite. I've spent a lot of time teaching students the power of Joshua 1:9

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. 

Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord 

 your God will be with you wherever you go.

When I was face to face with a situation not nearly as frightening as the many situations Joshua faced, I cringed with fear and became paralyzed, unable to move, think or say anything more than Yo. The fact that bothers me most, was I didn't even go to God during any of it. It didn't even enter into my mind. Despite the fact that I know that God is with me wherever I go, that he was outside that window, that he was on that couch with me, that he was there the whole time, I didn't once acknowledge His presence.  

I'm such a fool. 

I've spoken to Him since and apologized, but I still feel foolish. 

I wanted a Zach timeout, but all I needed to do was claim the power of Joshua 1:9, acknowledge the sovereignty and love of God, and things would have been different. Through this situation, God has revealed some sickness in my heart that I need to deal with. I need to spend some time praying for courage and trust because when the going got tough, I relied on my own power and strength instead of tapping into the great and awesome power promised by the Holy Spirit.

If you are a fellow believer, would you take a minute after reading this and go to God on me and my family's behalf. Pray for a blanket of safety around our home and for an infusion of courage and wisdom from the Holy Spirit that I might remember God's sovereignty and love for me when fear begins to grip my heart.    

Thank you. 

A Boring Love Story

Since I started writing here, my parents have been 

pestering me about "sharing too much." 

So today I'm going to write about my parents.

Yesterday, our family went to the Village Church at the Dallas campus and it turns out this weekend was one of their baptism weekends.

*Quick theology note* I am very much in favor of full-immersion baptism. 

There was a baptism at HPPC yesterday morning that was done by sprinkling 

and when I compare the two, full-immersion seems to more 

deeply and intimately symbolize the meaning of baptism.

During the baptisms at The Village, each of the soon to be baptized would share their testimony and then a friend of theirs, typically someone who was a key player in their salvation, would baptize them. As I sat and watched this great display of God's grace and glory, and listened to so many stories of how they grew up in a Christian home with a life filled with Godly influences and consistently attending and being involved in their church, I couldn't help but think about my parents.

My parents grew up around the corner from each other, but their childhood's couldn't have been more different. In order to save myself an angry text from my mom, let me just give you the very short version: my grandparents on my mom's side adopted three boys from a very abusive situation with their birth parents. My mom was a little miracle in that my grandmother had multiple miscarriages until God finally blessed them with little Debra Diane Griner.

My dad started life as the baby in the family with two older brothers. He remained the baby of the family for about 7 years when his younger brother was born. And from what I can piece together from the many stories he told to my sisters and I as children, the Robinson family lived a somewhat normal, typical family life there in Sanford Florida.

My parents families attended the same church for a while and became good friends. My parents however, to hear my mom tell it, did not get along. All the years they knew each other as children, my mom found my dad annoying and obnoxious (which if my childhood is any resemblance to my fathers, he most certainly was annoying and obnoxious). My mom had a lot of family troubles and as a result, she went through a fairly rebellious stage of life as a teenager. My father, however, fell in love with Jesus at a very young age and was very involved in the Church and his own mission to bring to Christ everyone around him.

I like to think that if Jesus himself had come down and shown my teenage mom a snapshot of what her life would look like when she was 30 something, being married to that annoying super-Christian kid, Dennis with three kids, living in Hawaii, she would have laughed in His face and turned her bell-bottomed booty around and walked away.
So when God finally did put them together, it got a little weird.

(mom and dad, i'm sorry if some of the details are wrong, 

but i'm gonna take a little artistic license here)

 

After my mom's little rebellious stage had sort of come to a close, God began to press on her about my dad and she began to see him in a new light. It wasn't like she needed to get to know him because she knew him his whole life and knew every little thing there was to know about him and he knew the same about her. So after Dennis had pursued her for a while, she gave in and went on some dates with him. Things were going well, but Debbie was having trouble really committing and confessing her feelings. So one day they were parked in Dennis' car just sort of "talking" (that's their version, but i don't know if buy it. i've sat in cars with girls "talking" before too) and God started to press on Debbie. She knew she needed to tell Dennis how she felt, but she really didn't want to. So, she did what any normal person would do in this situation and started pacing outside around the car. She was pacing and mumbling and occasionally shouting things as if she was hoping to get out of this by scaring Dennis away, but it didn't work. God must have been pressing on the parking brake. Finally, after a sufficiently crazy outburst, Debbie gave in and yelled out "I LOVE YOU!!!"  Somehow, I'm not entirely sure why after such a display, Dennis reciprocated her feelings and their new lives together began.

As I mentioned earlier, while hearing the stories of how these soon to be baptized men and women came to finally accept God's pursuit of them and surrender their lives to Him, I couldn't help but think of my parents' story; because it's my story too. Just like my parents grew up with each other, I grew up with God. I grew up with God like He lived next door my whole life. I knew all about Him and of course He knew all about me, but I didn't really want much more than to just know Him and occasionally ask Him for something as one might borrow a cup of sugar from a neighbor. As much as I thought I was avoiding true intimacy with God during my childhood and teenage years, God was filling my mind with knowledge of Him, surrounding me with excellent examples of Godly men and women, and consistently exposing me to the work of His Holy Spirit. So when God finally pressed on me to surrender myself to Him in such a way that was irresistible, I paced around the metaphorical car while He sat inside watching me until I finally gave in and shouted out "I LOVE YOU!!!" The best part about this story is that once God claimed me, I already knew Him. I had spent my whole life learning about Him and I was already surrounded with great Godly examples and, without even knowing it, was already on the trajectory toward the work He had planned for me.

I remember being young and foolish and wishing I had one of those cool testimonies like being pulled out of drug or sexual addiction or being a murderer on death row or something equally crazy. Those are exciting stories, but I wouldn't trade my boring love story for any other story out there. I'm blessed with a life long relationship with the God of the universe, and I pray the same story for my children and their children and their children until the day of the Lord comes and we can all kneel together at the feet of the Almighty and lavish Him with gratitude for the amazing grace He poured out on us.
Amen.8

A Rebel with Some Purpose

I'm a pretty rebellious guy. Some of my earliest childhood memories are eating mushrooms my mother told me not to eat, leaving the house early in the morning without telling my parents, peeing in the fake plants at church and generally terrorizing my sisters. These were all, of course, things I had been told multiple times not to do, but that almost seemed to urge me to do them even more. I have a very rebellious nature. What am I rebelling against and why? I'm not sure. Most people who have such a rebellious nature had it beat into them from growing up in abusive or neglectful homes where following the rules meant doing things like

"Put that cigarette out on your arm." 

or 

"Gimme that baseball bat so I can teach your mother a lesson!"

or 

"If you tell anyone what were doing, I'll kill you." 

Me? I never experienced anything close to that. I had two amazing parents who never laid an abusive finger on me. I never lived in the ghetto nor did I ever want for anything. I was always well taken care of, loved and abundantly blessed. But still I rebel. It wasn't beaten into me. I was, it seems, for some reason, born this way. 
You're probably thinking that disobediently eating mushrooms and public urination are hardly examples of a very rebellious child.
Well, I've got more. And to share them all with you would take up more time, space and energy than I'm willing to part with right now. So you're gonna have to settle for some highlights.

In junior high, I used to put thumb tacks on people's chairs.

After watching the movie Hackers with Angelina Jolie, my friends and I decided we were hackers. So we, mostly me, partook in some light computer vandalism at every chance we got. We used to go in to our English teacher's computer when she left the room and viciously delete everything we could. Every time I'd go to the computer section of any store, I'd do whatever I could to totally jack up whatever they had on display. 

One time I even got on my Science teacher's computer and changed the grades of everyone in the class to A's and B's. It was surprisingly easy.

I used to cheat in high school. All the time. I basically cheated my way through all of Chemistry, Algebra II, Business Law (ironic, yes?), and every other class I hated.

One time for a Biology test, I made a tape of myself reading all of my notes and review sheets. And that morning I wore a jacket during the test with the walkman in my inside jacket pocket with the earbuds running up my sleeve so when it looked to the teacher like I was just resting my head on my hand, I was actually listening to the answers. 

I smoked cigarettes.

I snuck out in the middle of the night.

I skipped school. I skipped a lot of classes.

I could tell you a lot more, but I think this proves my point. I was a rebellious idiot. Some of that rebellion was born out of laziness, i.e. it was easier and more fun to cheat than it was to study. But most of it was born out of some innate desire to go against the natural order of things. 

Somehow, during all of this rebellion, I not only regularly attended church and youth group, but I was a born-again believer. I spent regular time in the scriptures and in prayer. I played in the youth worship band. I participated in and sometimes led Bible studies. 

How did I do this? 

How was I able to live such a rebellious life while constantly being exposed to and experiencing the regenerative work and power of the Holy Spirit? 

I think I can answer that. 

Despite the fact that I was living a double, sometimes triple life, God was working on me. He had a plan for me. During those formative years He built into me a wealth of Bible knowledge and understanding, great Godly examples in my parents and some of my friends, a discerning ear to hear the voice and prompting of the Holy Spirit (though I mostly ignored Him or went the opposite way), and a critically thinking mind. He was also touring me around His amazing creation by bringing me to live in and visit places like Hawaii, Philippines, Italy, Germany, Spain, England (and basically all of Western Europe), Poland, Romania, Hong Kong, Guam, the Azores and more. He let me see the ruins of ancient Rome and Florence. I became infatuated with the amazingly intricate details of European cathedrals and old churches. I've seen and secretly touched many of the great artistic masterpieces in Europe. I have a very healthy fear of Gypsies (okay God probably didn't want that one, but they're CRAZY). I've felt the heat of lava flows, cowered during tornadoes, leaned into the winds of hurricanes, watched the earth literally ripple like waves during an earthquake, swam in flood waters, witnessed bright red lightning flash over a pitch black sky at 1 in the afternoon. I've seen the lingering aftermath of the battle of Pearl Harbor. I've walked through the somber streets of the Dachau concentration camp and seen the incinerators and the gas chambers. I've known men who have fought and killed the enemies of America. I've been in Hitler's mountain hideaway (Eagle's Nest). I've looked out over the unending peaks of the Alps. I've swam with hundreds of species of tropical fish surrounding me. I've built sand castles with black and green sands. I've kissed girls on three different continents. 

I'm enormously blessed. God brought me to all of those places. God gave me all of those experiences. God did all that. And I think I know why. 

I'm now a cultured, experienced, young at heart, rebellious man with a heart and passion for God and His people. 

I'm called by God to serve in His church by teaching, building relationships with, and loving His young people -His children. And I think God has a better plan for His church and a better purpose for His people than what we are currently doing. I think God has a part for me to play in the rejuvenation and revival of His church. I think God has built in me such a unique wealth of experience and a desire to break the chains placed on me so that I might serve some greater purpose for His kingdom. 

This may sound arrogant, but I think if all of us are honest, we can look at our lives, our experiences, our strengths, our weaknesses, and begin to see some idea of what God might have in store for us. God tends to use crooked sticks to make straight lines and He's the one who bends us and molds us into just the right amount of crooked that will bring Him just the right amount of glory when He does great things through us. 

Amen.