It doesn't begin where you think (Revolution of Jesus, Part 2)

"Look how the whole world has gone after Him!"

The Pharisees fumed in their fear while the people flocked after Jesus, thirsty for a sign. They wanted to be fed. They wanted to be healed. They wanted to be free. 

And here was Jesus, doing the impossible. Raising the dead. Clearing the temple. Saying these preposterous things that made people want to hope. 

Revolution. 

But then. 

A sacred night. A quiet upper room. These friends who thought they knew their Jesus, who thought they were ready to follow Him into death. 

That night it really began. That night Jesus started the revolution that would one day catch fire across the world. 

He knelt at the feet of His friends. His followers. These beloved yet frail and faltering feet. And one by one, He washed them. Touched them in the place of greatest outward shame. Held the mess of them, the flesh stinking with the filth and grime and weariness of earth. 

One by one. Purposefully cleansing. Looking into their eyes. I see you.

And then Peter, the one who had confessed his teacher as Lord, the one who knew he was serving his Messiah. Peter, whose heart burned with righteous fire, who above all things wanted to do. To act.

"You shall never wash my feet." 

Did he say this because he knew it was very God about to do this thing? Did he say this from deep humility? Or was it something else?

"Unless I wash you, you have no part of Me."

Jesus knew that place of deepest pride, the place so hard to reach because it looks like humility. The place that says, I will gladly serve, but I will never be served. I will give all, but I will never receive. 

We focus, rightly, of course, on the selfless act of Jesus in the most humble act of service. We hear His words, "Do as I have done for you." 

Maybe this is where revolution begins. 

But maybe, for some of us, it begins in Peter's place. It begins when someone kneels before us and enters our mess, takes our grime in their hands and says, "Let me help. Let me love you."

Aren't we Jesus-followers often so good at giving? So intent on serving? But can we receive? Can we be served in return?

"Wash one another's feet," He said. "Unless I wash you, you have no part of Me."

You, Peter, so ready to go, to do, to lead the way for Me, you will not know the way until you sit here and lift up your mess. Until know your need to be touched, served, cleansed, and until you allow others in, You will have no part of Me.

This revolution began not with going, conquering, demanding, taking, but with sitting, kneeling, serving and being served. 

This Jesus, he knelt and served. But only a few moments later, He opened His own soul, full of agony, fear, and despair, to His dearest friends. "Pray with Me," he begged them. He invited them into His struggle. He asked them to serve Him. He allowed Himself to need. Even when they kept falling asleep, He kept asking. Be with Me.

I would rather wash a thousand feet and keep my own twisted toes safely tucked inside my shoes. But  when I sit and let someone kneel before me, touching me in a place of great need, I feel my soul open. I see my shame and my sorrow. I am exposed. But here is where hope and grace can enter in. Here, at the place of giving and receiving, is where revolution begins.

What this spring should really be about (Revolution of Jesus, Part 1)

These days I cringe when I open my front door. I’m waiting for that icy blast of

wind that has kept us captive inside for far too many months. Is it just me, or has this winter has seemed harsher, colder, and longer than most?

I’m ready for summer. And for windless days. But for now there is the sunshine flooding the window with light. There are the fuzzy buds blowing around on the branches outside, and there is this green grass poking up stubbornly through the snow that keeps falling on it.

Spring is a patient but demanding master. It always comes. Life keeps springing up out of the dead things.  Each year the world undergoes a mini-mutiny as it throws off winter’s grip and claims the sunshine.

As Easter approaches, I’m contemplating this life of Jesus, particularly in His final days before His death. And to my surprise, one word keeps coming to my mind.

Revolution.

It’s easy to see why the Jewish leaders were afraid of revolution. Jesus was a common man who became a great leader and teacher. He stirred the crowds with His humility, compassion, and fearless stand against the religious oppressors. He came to a people downcast, captive, and trodden upon.

And on top of that, He healed diseases. He opened blind eyes and deaf ears. He fed thousands. He raised the dead. He met the people at their most basic needs, needs long overlooked by their spiritual and political rulers.

He gave people hope.

And hope makes a people bold. It awakens them, like a world thawing into spring. It stirs them to act.

While the Romans and the Jewish leaders controlled them with rules and force of law, Jesus saw them. Heard them.

When He stood before that tomb of his friend and wept with sorrow, He was one of them. When He called the dead man out and restored him to his sisters, He was God.

Here was God come down into the captivity of His people, walking in it and even grieving it with them—and showing them a way out.

And suddenly life was stirring in the hearts of these people long used to facing death. And they began to think their days could be about more than survival.

The religious rulers were happy with what they had. They loved what they had. They were perfectly comfortable in their captivity. “If we let Him go on like this,” they said, “everyone will believe in Him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation” (John 11:48). The religious leaders were furious because they were afraid.

They were right to fear a revolution. They were wrong to think that they could silence it. For although no one yet understood what it was, Jesus was about to instigate an uprising. This revolt would have nothing to do with overthrowing a government or political system. It would have everything to do with overthrowing the heart.

And when the human heart is overthrown, death only opens the door to life.

Jesus awakened people by loving them. He showed that real revolution begins not by demanding our rights but by letting go of them for the sake of others. He led the way not in taking up arms, but in laying down His life.

After all, the only way to get to spring is to go through winter. And the only way to find out who we really are is to lay down everything we thought we were. Our true life will come from our dead things, just as revolution comes when we allow hope into our deepest need.

During these next few weeks I hope to explore this revolution of Jesus. And I hope it will catch fire in my own heart.

How to be radiant

She lived in a dark place. She knew Jesus, loved Him, walked with Him every day, but inside there

was this place of fear. This empty place, a place she didn't truly believe could ever be filled.

In that deep empty place, she was alone.

And so she raged against all the things that couldn't fill that place. Things she cherished but things that were not enough. Nothing was ever enough.

And of course those things failed her. People messed up. Those who loved her most disappointed her the most profoundly.

Everything failed her. Everything.

She longed for more of Jesus. She began to cling to the word, to eat, drink, and breathe the word, maybe more from desperation than from actual belief that it would help.

But there's this thing we discover when the word suddenly becomes our only lifeline.

It saves us.

Because Jesus, He really IS the Word, and when we breathe it in, we breathe in Him. And the word really IS power, and life, and light, and bread, and water, and it really saves us.

Why don't we believe this?

She went to the word and just started living there. And one day, in the midst of one of the greatest conflicts she had ever known, she thought, What if I just responded out of His love--right now, right in the mess? What if His love came out of me NOW instead of afterward, after I screw it all up, when I am looking back with regret?

And she opened her heart, and the most amazing thing happened. Love came into the empty place, and it filled her completely. And Jesus whispered, I can even do this. I can be enough for you in this place you thought would never find enough. 

Her heart was softened and it stayed soft. And the darkness around her did not get better. It got worse. But in that darkness she was this blazing light shining this Love that had changed her heart. I saw it, and I've never seen anyone so transformed. So filled.

Radiant.



That's what happens when we live in His word. Really abide. The word fills us up and floods out of us and we become what Jesus wanted for us all along. We become love.

He said that people would know by our love that we follow Him. But the thing is, we are all so full of fear and failure that we can't love like He did. And so the world sees just a bunch of messed up, prideful, fearful, angry folks who say they know the way but don't truly walk it.

Who would want to follow that?

His way is the way of the cross, and He bore that cross because He knew a Love great enough to overcome it.

The cross is nothing without the Love.

And we are nothing without the Love that is His word, that is Jesus Himself.

I have tried so hard to be His. But I wonder if I'm just a clanging cymbal. I wonder if I am carrying a cross, trying to be like Him, but doing it all on my own. Doing it without the Love that overcomes all the crosses.

What if we really believed that Jesus is the Word, and what if we filled ourselves up with that Word until there is no room for anything else, and all that flows from us is Him?

That's what we all want, but do we want it enough to let go of everything?

What if you jumped?

"The people who walked in darkness
Have seen a great light;

Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,
Upon them a light has shined" (Is. 9:2).

What gets me is that He knew all along how dark things would get. This Author who sits above time, who knows the end from the beginning, when He dreamed us up, He saw it. All the suffering that would follow the choice to give us freedom to choose Him. I wonder if it all unfolded in His mind like a movie script, the whole huge holy mess that is the story of us.

And yet He did it anyway. Breathed the breath of Himself into story and song, unleashed all the howling beauty and passion and sorrow and laughter and suffering and all of it--ALL of it--He knew.

This overwhelms. And it could easily lead one to anger and despair. Why? Why would He allow it? This hurts too much! we cry. We didn't ask for this. And maybe He seems cruel. Distant. Unjust. Certainly we do not understand.

But there is another way to see this story. It begins with an Author so full of love that He cannot keep it to Himself--He MUST love. He breathes this world into story and fills it with the people of His love, and He gives us freedom because after all, what is love without freedom to choose it? And yes the darkness descends and we, muddled and confused and choosing the wrong way, we lose the way and stumble along, and really to us none of this seems worth it. And so we climb to places we think are safe.

But climbing onto comfort cheats us of our true story.

The One who is very Love itself knows it is all worth it. He yearns over us, He whispers our names in the darkness, and when we lean out, when we grope for Him blindly, He comes. Love steps down and walks straight into our suffering, walks straight into the death we all must die, because Love is worth it.

We don't believe Him. We are filled with fear. We hold back and rage at our sufferings because we don't believe His love is worth the sacrifice.

But all great love stories are built on sacrifice, aren't they? And when we give up who we think we are, then we discover who He meant us to be all along.

Beloved.

I know it sounds all wrong. It sounds crazy and silly, and even if we say we believe it, very few of us are really living in the freedom that is Love. We would rather cling to our comfort in the darkness.

What if we really believe that His love is worth this story? What if we begin to trust an Author who knows the pain of living is nothing compared to the Love that rescues us in our dying? He knew what this story would cost us. What it would cost Him. Nothing less than everything. But what if we choose to enter in--to come out of the shadowlands and truly live this story?

The darkness is still dark. Unknown. And it costs us everything. But there is this light shining away in the distance, and there is a hand reaching for us in the dark, and I'm starting to see that taking that hand, jumping all the way into the darkness, there is a Love story waiting, a story I never dreamed could really be true.

I have seen it.

(To be continued)

A letter to my children: better than jellybeans

Dear Kids,

I know it doesn’t seem fair. The colorful plastic eggs and the baskets wrapped in shiny cellophane do look attractive. Those jellybeans certainly are delicious. And who wouldn’t want a giant chocolate bunny?

Believe me, I understand the longing for pretty. For new. For shiny and sugary.

It’s been that way from the start. Our eyes want what is nice to look at. Our flesh craves something better, something more.

The hype sounds so good. You want this. You need this. If you just get this—this ONE THING—you will be satisfied.

We tell ourselves we deserve it.

And so we take. We clutch and cling and stuff ourselves silly on all the things we want. We indulge.

But once fed, that beast is never satisfied. It will keep whispering, just one more thing. And in the end we are just tired from all that trying to get stuff. We are left with empty plastic shells and sick bellies and a question:

So what?

What was it all for?

The truth is, kids, you cannot hype your way to a better story for your life. No one ever found freedom by filling themselves up with stuff.

But there is something else.

All that hyped-up emptiness leads us to face the indisputable, tragic fact:

We hurt.

We are wounded souls. The Easter Bunny can’t fix that.

And we can’t fix it either. We tried, remember? So we sink down into that hurt and we live there. We blame. We blame ourselves, we blame others, we blame circumstances. We blame God.

The trouble is, we can’t blame our way to a better story, either.

Between the hype and the hurt is this thin path. It’s rugged and rocky and often hard to see. But it is the way out.

This is the path of hope. And hope is messy and gray; it is light and darkness mingled together. Hope is scary because it leads us into open places where anything could happen.

This is where Jesus lives. It’s the path He came to make for us, and it leads through hard places. It leads through death.

It doesn’t seem like walking through death would really be the answer, does it? It’s easier just to live in the hurt place or keep chasing the hype.

But every good story contains a death. Death is the only way to new life. And every good character must die to himself if his story is to find any meaning.

I know you don't want to believe me, kids, that dying is the secret to living, and I can’t tell you that the hype and the hurt won’t always be trying to pull you away. But Jesus came to show us how hope pushes through the middle. And when you really have hope that meaning will come through death, it sets you free.

That’s what Lent is really about. We pass through winter into spring. All the seeds that died and were buried start to push through the dark earth and breathe. And if you just filled up on eggs and bunnies, you would miss this story, this amazing drama you are a part of.

His death gave you life so your story can have meaning. And the little deaths you die each day, they can free you, if you will let them.

I’d fill you up with all the jellybeans in the world if it meant your lives would be meaningful and whole. But try as I will to stop it, I know the hurt is coming. And when it does, I don’t want you to sink down among the empty shells of a hyped-out life. I want you to know the path of hope. And I want to walk it with you.

* Thanks to Storyline speaker Mike Foster for the inspiration for this post.

A see-through story

First it was the IF:Gathering asking me, "If God is real, then what?" What could we dream, do, live? What could be possible in our lives? Then a few weeks later the Storyline Conference with "What kind of story are you really living?" Who are you, and what do you really want?

Doesn't it just seem like the story in our hearts doesn't match the one where bills must be paid and jobs worked and children and homes cared for? Doesn't it seem like the story writes us rather than the other way around?

I don't know yet exactly how to match up the story in my heart with the real story I am living. Lately I've been given a lot to think about. I hope to share it here, hash it out with you, figure out what our stories mean.

Today is the beginning of Lent. I never used to do Lent. Didn't even know what it was, really. But over the last couple of years Lent has become very important to me, and this year even more so.

Lent is a deliberate thing. It's a slowing and a stilling, an act of setting oneself apart in some way in order to see Jesus. To enter again into His story, thereby finding ourselves.

One Storyline speaker said, "Make your story translucent so others can see themselves through it."

Isn't that what Jesus did, wading into our muck and entering into the mess with us, living a see-through life that pointed directly to God?

We keep trudging along with our eyes to the ground, just trying to survive and keep our stories going forward. We forget that our stories are not our own. We forget that Jesus, He IS the story, and He's made us a part of it, and when we live His story with Him, it fills with meaning. And the more transparent our stories are, the more they invite others to tell their stories too.

Your story matters. Do you know what it is? What will the world miss if you don't tell it? During this season of Lent, why not enter into His story more fully and deeply? Who knows, in living His story, you might just find your own.

How to leave the safe place

I was five or six when I got my first bike. I wanted to ride it so badly. I can still remember looking longingly at the brand new shiny paint, the awesome banana seat, and the rainbow streamers hanging from the handlebars. In my mind I could see my hair flying, legs pumping as I raced into the freedom

of fast.

But I could also see myself falling. I looked at the pavement and thought about how much it would hurt when I crashed into it. I longed for the freedom yet feared the failures I knew I would face in getting there. And like many things in my life, the fear of getting hurt kept me from going for what I really wanted.

I played it safe. I begged for the training wheels that would keep me upright and let me have the fun without the fear. I probably would have ridden it that way forever. But it wasn’t the same, and I knew it. In my heart I wanted more.

My family wanted more for me too. And they wouldn’t give up trying to get me there, even when I fought against it. Ultimately I learned to ride a bike because my parents wouldn’t let me stay in the easy place. They took the training wheels off and they stood around me as I took off, and then they ran next to me when my wobbly wheels took me terrified down the street. They cheered. They worked harder than I did. And when I fell, they ran and picked me up and hugged me. And put me right back on the bike.

I learned to ride a bike, as I learned so many other things, because they believed in me more than I believed in myself. The people who loved me cheered me on. But more than that, they pushed me beyond my safe place.

Now I am sitting on a college campus in San Diego at a conference that a few months ago I had never even heard of. I am here because of friends and loved ones who believe in me more than I believe in myself. They are pushing me beyond the safe place.

My writing life has faltered just like my early attempts to ride a bike. I’ve stopped and started so many times. I have had a few wobbly successes, and I’ve tasted the joy that comes from chasing a calling and a gift. But my eyes are often on the pavement, and as a result I often end up there. And so I go back to the training wheels, to the safe, comfortable place that doesn’t challenge me too much.

It doesn’t inspire me too much, either. And I doubt that it inspires anyone else.

I still don’t know exactly what caused my friends to decide that I needed to do this. But they did. I am amazed and overwhelmed that they went to such lengths to get me here. I’ll never forget the complete shock of opening that Christmas envelope and reading the words, “You’re going to the Storyline Conference!”

Knowing that my friends love me enough to dream this up, to scrape together the money to put me on a plane and send me to San Diego, makes me feel . . . believed in. It’s like being on a bike, surrounded by a community who says, “We love you and we know you can do it!” And now that I am here, I’m starting to believe them a little bit. With them running next to me, hands extended as I wobble along, I feel like maybe I want to try to go beyond safe. To plunge into the freedom of flying, knowing they will be there to pick me up when I fall.

So many of you are part of this journey. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for reading this blog and sticking with all my inconsistencies and hesitations. Thank you for encouraging me. I feel overwhelmed with the blessing of such love and support. And I feel a responsibility too, in a good way. I think—no, I know—that God is calling me to write. I am not sure yet what or why or how. But you all have helped to confirm this calling.

I hope it will start here, with this blog. I hope God will just take it and use it somehow. Mostly I just want to plunge in and follow Him. I hope you will keep encouraging me, and I hope you will hold me accountable. I don’t want to just add to the noise. I want my words to do for you what you have done for me. I want to help hold you up and cheer you on as you wobble along on your own journey. After all, you have a calling too.

I hope I can be a part of it. Let’s go beyond the safe place and jump into this story all the way.

What God wears

My friend has a tattooed wedding ring.

I always thought that was bold and wonderful. A ring can be removed. A tattoo is permanent. You can't get rid of it without leaving a scar.

A tattooed wedding ring makes a statement. I'm in this for keeps.

What we wear gives us identity, belonging. I'm with him. I'm on that team. I support this cause. You can tell so much about people by the way they dress. Maybe that's why it is so important to us. Our adornments shape our identity.

I never thought much about what God wears. A quick word study reveals that He is clothed in power, majesty, and honor, girded with strength, robed in righteousness.

But God has a tattoo, too. In fact, He has lots of them.

"See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands;
Your walls are continually before Me" (Is 49:16).


That word, inscribed, it means "to cut in, to engrave."

He cuts our name into His hand. I'm in this for keeps, He says.

This statement of God comes in answer to the cry, "The Lord has forgotten me!"

He says, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you" (Is. 49:15).

I love to imagine the strong, beautiful hands of God, covered with the names of His children.

He wears us. We are a part of His identity. And He will not forget.