New Website

i have a new website. enjoy.

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.