We All Wanna Be Loved

So it has been a week since a very defining moment (conversation) in my life. A week later I am stronger, better, freer (is that a word) than I have been in a long time. At the same time, I can feel my heart reach out for people like never before. Reach out does not even describe what I feel, HURT, is a better word.  This redefined me has caused some confusion for people. But the fact of the matter is that God is doing something amazing and I can not allow anything to get in the way of what He is doing. I have been praying for God to allow me to love people the way he does, and to break my heart for the things that break His heart. I received 2 revelations of that today that are opposite ends of the spectrum. First, if you dare to pray this prayer, you will be stretched. I am a sarcastic person. Sometimes when I see people my first instinct is to say something funny. This prayer will remove a lot of jokes out of your life. OKAY so for the ones I love who do not know I love them:

1.  A very successful person. This person would never think that they where not loved. The love I feel for this person is a love that goes out to them in their place of lack. There is not much lack, but the things this person lacks are not material. I want the best for this person and want this person to achieve all God has for their life. I have been consumed with a love for this person that they feel real love and real relationship. My love will extend to them through prayer.
2. Otis “Artist” Crum. Otis has to be in his 50’s or 60’s. I fell in love with Otis today when he walked up to me outside a church in Jacksonville. Otis had a JC hat on that covered his head full of dreams. Otis told me he “made the music”. Otis believes he is going on tour next month with Michael Jackson AND Stevie Wonder. Otis has a lear jet for sale for $800,000.00 but was asking me for $.87. I fell in love with Otis. I do not know what will happen to him but I do know God created him and has a plan for his life. I prayed for Otis on the way home tonight. I don’t know if my interaction with Otis the Artist will impact his life, but I know Otis impacted mine. He is equally as important to God as person number 1. God cares about people and could care less about position. 

I could tell you about the other people God gave me a glimpse of today, but I wont. We all really want to be loved. So often we do all we can to polish who we are so that others will love us. We think if we like what this person likes, or sound like that person, or do this thing, we can earn the love of others. Love is a gift. In it purest form it is given freely without obligation or condition. Love is a moment by moment decision to commit. Love is far from a feeling, it is often a burden, and usually is not very convenient. Love will make you do things that will stretch who you are. Love will cause you to feel for people you normally would never even notice. Love is so important to God that he said we are to “Love our neighbors as ourselves.” And as we all know, in America today, it is EASY to love yourself. I am so happy that my view of the world is changing. I have always been a “relationship guy” but God is moving me even farther in this direction. I care about my relationships. They mean the world to me. Relationships, when done properly, can be the best part of your life. So this week tell someone you love them…even if it hurts, and if it does hurt, it is probably really love. 

the practical application of the lesson goes a lil’ something like this…

1. that is the longest title i have ever had.so this past week i have really felt like i have taken a crash course on life, relationships, and how your supposed to do and not do some things.  I am living a great life. I mean really. I have had some rough things go down over the past few months, but I am on a different level of living right now. Life is fun. Im discovering things again. Creativity is coming back….its a good time to be alive. So in all this talk of maximizing life and embracing  relationship and all the stuff that I have been talking about this week, I had a moment today. I was at a birthday party and i started to talk to a friend. I have never had a deep conversation with this person, just the normal stuff you say in passing. But today we ended up at a table with 5 and 6 year olds running all around us and we started to talk. My friend is the grandfather of the birthday boy. He has lived an amazing life. He has so many experiences and wisdom and stories. So he started to tell me. As I am sitting there listening to him it dawned on me…this can make your life richer. Push in. Embrace it. Don’t just talk about depth and all the stuff you have been talking about, maximize this moment and dig in. So I started. I was asking questions, pushing farther in, and I learned some great things.Life is full of nuggets. People want a great life, but they want it to happen rapidly and in giant strokes. The truth is, greatness like anything else, usually develops slow, is built little by little, and is a process. The funny thing is you may work on a great life for 10 years and then on day realize…my life is great while all the people around you are like, this guy got her over night…not knowing you have invested years! So I feel I got 2 great nuggets out of this conversation, not to mention the more important process of becoming better friends with someone:

1.  My friend was about to go into major surgery and he asked god that if God would spare his life through the surgery he would devote his life to loving kids until his time came to go to heaven. 
2. “I don’t really talk about my life very much. I would rather just let people see who I am , not have them hear me tell them who I am.” YIKES! How deep is that. My friend has done some really cool things in life. He has seen success. but his humility was amazing! 

Wisdom comes in unique packages. You may not find it in 3 piece suits or leadership books. Wisdom my come from people you see everyday and don’t know their stories or you have not taken the time to learn about. I learned a lot today, and it was awesome. I look forward to the next chance I will have to learn even more.   

Your Perfect Disaster Is Killing You

I had a great day yesterday. I got to hang with some friends, my kids had their first day of school with no incidents and I had a normal dinner @ home with my family, AWESOME! On top of all this, I had a GREAT conversation through out the day with some people including my super hot wife about how perfection is killing us. 

Here is the problem. “Christian  culture”, if there even is such a thing it should be torn apart but that is another post, is killing people with false expectations of perfect living. People are walking around carrying wounds, issues, burdens, scares, hurts, desires, sins, etc and are afraid to allow healing to happen. This epidemic does not go just for people in the congregation. Pastors, leaders, helpers, everyone. We set this bar for expectation then when we fail to reach that mysterious and unattainable goal, we hide our faults, we beat ourselves up, we think we are the only ones who screw crap up. This pressure is built around the pretense that we are all living these wonderful lives with nothing wrong. Then when no one is around, we are living in a hell we have created or are battling and trying to hide it. We look at leaders and think they don’t deal with anything, or the crap that we deal with, because they are leaders. we look at peers and think, they have this, that, the other, they must not go through this crap I am going through. We look at those who are attempting to attain our “status” (more bull) and we think they must be dealing with something worse than we are. We slip deeper and deeper into the hole. well guess what…TODAY is your day of emancipation. NO ONE IS PERFECT.

Even the people we put on a “higher level” are screwed up. People have issues. EVERYONE does. I was reading today Billy Graham is in the hospital. He is a great man of God, he has crap in his life too. He has to because the day he does not, is the day he is perfect, which then qualifies him for deity and disqualifies him from humanity. God created us to be humans. He created us knowing we would have faults. He created us to need him. If we are fault free, we have no need for a divine being or force to rule our life.

The frustration we feel is the pressure to live up to the goodness that others are pretending to be achieving. Once we understand this, we will not be as let down when they fail…and they will fail. Failure does not mean the end of the road.

That is problem number 2 with our fake culture. Because everyone is living behind a mask we expect everyone else to meet our masked levels of “goodness”. We can not accept people when they do not meet our expectations and help them to get better. Rather than pushing into their lives and helping them create a culture of success and winning we push them away and reinforce that they are not good enough to be in our little club of fake goodness.

WHAT ARE WE DOING? we need to be helping people. we need to be teaching people that their failure is the foundation for their success. We need to alert people that God’s plan for them is not thrown out the window because they said a committed a sin. God’s plan is bigger than our weak attempts at manipulating people with fake living. God’s plan is a plan of love. God’s plan is a plan of mercy and grace. God did not create you to live under the pressure of man, but to rule over the earth!

Today is a day to be free. Today is a day to find someone who really loves you and will put up with your mistakes. Today is a day to help someone else get better. Do not waste today. Today is the beginning. Choose today to stop matching your life against other people. Start looking to Christ as your benchmark. Understand you are going to fail. Accept Gods mercy and grace over your life and embrace his love for you. His love reaches farther than your sin can take you. Do not settle for an average life. Keep pushing to be a better person, a better friend, a better follower of Christ.

It starts with you. Choose today to pull yourself out of the rat race. If people are not going to love the “real” you, then you will never have a “real” relationship with them. Finally, understand that this does not write you a free pass to sin. There are consequences to sin. But you do have a free pass to live a free life in Christ! Go be better today!