The pastor paced the floor screaming out to God. “What did I do wrong? All I ever wanted to do was serve you!”

I had just had breakfast with the chairman of his elder board who had asked me, “Where did we go south on this? All we ever wanted to do was see people come to Christ.”

Church fights, family tensions, embattled ministries, friends at odds—the most discouraging and damaging dynamic in Christianity.

I’ve been around churches and working with church leaders for decades, and I’m convinced that the number one reason church leaders fight isn’t doctrine or philosophy of ministry. Our problem is that in the furious blur of personal and corporate ministry, we begin to neglect our relationships.

I know, it happened to me fifteen years ago.

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Since our son-in-law David went down with a terrible and debilitating disease a month ago, a lot of Judy and mine’s life has been dedicated to “Zach duty.”

Zachary is our grandson—David and Celia’s fat-cheeked bundle of smiles whose energy stretches my almost 60-year-old body to its limits. He’s a robust, squirmy adventurer who chafes at every limitation.

But the one attribute that’s on my mind during this season we Christians commemorate the birth of Jesus is Zach’s dependence.

Without someone to love him and care for him, he’s totally helpless. He can’t feed himself, clean himself or protect himself. He doesn’t even know how to go to sleep on his own.

Watching Zach during this season helps me appreciate the humility of our Lord Jesus.

It was love for me—love for you—that moved the Creator of heaven and earth to be born on this little marble of a planet. It was mercy that moved Him to show up in a baby’s soft skin, totally helpless, totally dependent.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory o the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

Brace Yourself!

As a follower of Christ, I’m preparing myself for the Christmas Season, but not in the way you might think.

I’m bracing myself against the cascade of guilt and shame flowing from the so-called evangelical community every December.

There will be the usual degrading offering of “you’re spending too much money on this or that,” with a self-righteous sprinkling of “we buy a cheap tree,” one-upped by “we don’t buy a tree at all,” but trumped by the “we only talk and think about Jesus on Christmas” crowd.

Modern-day Pharisees throughout the church will boast of their “just right” limit on individual gifts, as they look for a verse to spew at anyone spending even a dollar more than their “sanctified” amount.

So, I’m supposed to feel guilty about decorating our home to celebrate the Lord’s birth and buying presents for the people I love?

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I’ve been teaching Psalm 138:8 for over three decades and telling the story of how that wonderful sentence, “The Lord will accomplish what concerns me,” became our life verse. It was a dramatic moment in 1978 when a young Lieutenant Ed Underwood thought he was saying goodbye to his bride and his little family.

We thought I was marching to war from Ansbach, Germany and leaving them behind to take care of themselves as the fury of the Soviet Empire rained down on them.

We didn’t go to war, but that was the night Psalm 138:8 became our life verse.

Every time I preach that sermon, people ask me to help them find their life verse. My answer is always the same, “You don’t find your life verse; your life verse finds you.”

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“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

Really?

Then why did one of the most successful and spiritual men I have ever known repeat these words every time he tripped, dropped an item, or bumped into something when he was in his seventies—“My dad always told me I was a klutz”?

And why have Judy and I found it impossible to reprogram the thinking of some of the most attractive and accomplished women who explain the logic of their low self esteem with sentences like these—“My father said that my sister got all the beauty and brains in our family” or “My husband constantly tells me that he wishes I would be as in shape, as articulate, as fashionable, or as sexy as his friends’ wives”?

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Innocent Trust

Our first worship service was just about to begin when I noticed someone running toward my usual “preacher front-row seat.”

My sweet seven-year old granddaughter, Mary with her long brown curls and bright blue eyes ran into my arms in all of her Sunday morning best, hugged my neck and said, “Good morning, Papa!”

It wasn’t “grown-up” behavior. It was wonderfully childlike.

An adult would never do what she did. Grown-ups don’t think and act that way. Grown-up thoughts would have considered the crowd, wondered what they thought, calculated that this might be an embarrassment to them and a distraction to others and decide not to run to someone they love, hug their neck, and tell them good morning. No matter how much a grown-up might love that person, they would never express it with such innocent exuberance.

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I’m fascinated by God’s timing; always have been. A friend of mine use to say that it’s His signature on events. He sure signed off on the last two days of my life to teach me an important lesson.

Last Sunday our study of Mark brought us to chapter 9:30-37, a fascinating conversation between Jesus and His disciples concerning greatness. As they passed through Galilee, Jesus taught them again concerning His impending death and resurrection. This time He added the discouraging news that all of this will happen because someone will betray Him. They didn’t understand; it was just too much for them, and they were afraid to ask Him to explain further.

What they did understand were the prophecies that someday Messiah would rule and reign over His Kingdom on earth. Still clinging to their insistence that Jesus should be that Messiah—the ruling and reigning one, rather than the Messiah He was telling them He was—the One who would first suffer, die, and then rise from the dead, they did what everyone does when they are around someone they think has power and status: They postured for position in His Kingdom. They were about to learn Jesus’ definition of greatness—His radical, counterculture, counter-flesh, measure of greatness in His Kingdom: If you follow Jesus, He will ask you to serve everyone—especially the weak.

It’s an upside-down measure of greatness for most people. It’s not the number of people who serve you that matters to Jesus; it’s the number of people you serve.

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A young husband and father with a passion for Christ hung his head as he admitted to me that he just couldn’t lead his family. He wanted to stay at Church of the Open Door. Our unique grace-based culture encouraged the type of truth telling that redeems, releasing Christians to their strengths. He loved it; it was what he was always longed for, and his walk with Christ was thriving.

I Can’t

But it was messy, and his wife wasn’t one for messiness. She had grown up in a button-down, dress-up-for-Jesus church where you put on your very best we-have-it-together-so-don’t-worry-about-us mask every Sunday. When the probing and penetrating grace of God began to expose their stuff, she bolted.

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Sleepless in LA

I’m really good at going to sleep. What I’m not good at is staying asleep.

Like you, I have a lot of responsibility, love a lot of people, but have very little control over any of the circumstances of my life concerning those responsibilities and those people I love. Really, when I think about it, I have zero control.

Nevertheless, I live my daylight hours as if I really did have some control. I make leadership decisions after weighing options, form careful sentences to put in sermons, articles, and books, and try to do as much as I can to make the world a better place for the people I love.

And then, I fall into bed exhausted but satisfied with all my illusions of control.

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