Walking With God: A Dramedy

[MICHAEL and GOD enter.  They are walking together....sort of.  MICHAEL is in front.]

MICHAEL: “Hey, God.  Where are we going?  It sure is taking a long time.”

GOD: “I’ll show you when it’s time.  You’re not ready yet.”

MICHAEL: [Flash of inspiration] “Oh!  I know!  We’re headed to a place where I’m going to be really important and where people will all want to hear what I have to say and where I’ll never have to worry about money again!”

GOD: “Slow down a little.  You’re getting ahead of Me.  That’s not quite what I had in mind.”

MICHAEL: “But God, You’re the one who made me.  You gave me a passion for teaching and for writing.  Why did You give me those things if You weren’t going to let me use them?”

GOD: “You’re using them now, aren’t you?”

MICHAEL: “Well….yes, but I thought I would get to use them, well, you know….bigger.”

GOD: “Possibly, but you’ve got to show me how you handle small things before I will trust you with bigger things.”

MICHAEL: [Flash of inspiration] “Oh!  I know!  I’ll write a book!  That’s big!”  [Runs off to write book.]

GOD: “Hold on, what makes you think I want you to write a book?  ….Michael?  ….Michael?”

MICHAEL: [Returns, panting.] “Here….here…here it is God!  A book!  I wrote a book for You!”

GOD: “That’s nice of you to go to all that trouble, but I didn’t ask you to write a book for Me.  I think you wrote it for you.”

MICHAEL: “So, You’re not going to use it?”

GOD: “I might, but it will probably work better if you quit holding it so tightly.  If you really wrote it for Me, why don’t you let Me have it?”

MICHAEL: “Awww, okay.  I guess You can have it…..Hey!  I just thought of something else big that I can do for You!”

GOD: “Michael…”

MICHAEL: “This will be even bigger than the book!  Wow!  I can’t wait to get started!”

GOD: “Michael…”

MICHAEL: “Huh?  Oh, yeah, God, what do You need?  I’m a little busy planning this next project.”

GOD: “You’re getting ahead of Me again.  I love it that you have all these great ideas, but you need to slow down and walk at my pace for awhile.”

MICHAEL: [Deflated] “But, God…I just don’t feel like anything is happening!  Why can’t we go faster?”

GOD: “It may not seem like anything is happening, but there’s a lot of work to be done before you are ready to do the big things.  You could say I’m doing some interior decorating in your heart.  It’s a mess in there!”

MICHAEL: “Really?  What’s wrong with it?”

GOD: “Too much stuff, first of all.  There’s a lot of junk in here I never approved.  You should have talked to Me before you had it delivered.”

MICHAEL: “Sorry.  I kinda knew You would say, “no,” so I didn’t ask.”

GOD: “Well, after I get all that cleaned out, then I’ve got to reorganize what’s left so that it’s all in the right order.”

MICHAEL: “How long is that going to take?”

GOD: “It would go a lot faster if you would stop running off to do things I didn’t ask you to do.  The more time you spend with Me, the faster I’ll be able to get this place fixed up.”

MICHAEL: [Sighs.] “Alright.  I’ll wait, but this patience thing is hard….Uh….Hmmm….Oh! Hey!  Have You done anything with that book yet?”

GOD: “I thought we agreed you were going to let go of it.”

MICHAEL: “Yeah, but I thought You would have done something with it by now.  Want me to go show it around?” [Starts to leave with book.]

GOD: “Michael…”

[Characters exit.]

Stand and Deliver

Jaime Escalante, a Physics and Mathematics teacher from Bolivia, emigrated to the United States in 1964.  Although he spoke no English at the time, he enrolled at the Pasedena City College in California and studied until he earned a degree in Electronics.  The degree allowed him to get a day job and continue his studies until he earned a second degree in Mathematics.

American teaching credentials in hand, Escalante applied for a job at Garfield High School in East L.A. in 1976.  Garfield was a hotspot of drugs, gangs and daily violence.  The faculty of the school had given up on trying to help the kids rise above their situation and had very little confidence that they would ever amount to much.  Escalante thought differently.

He informed the faculty that he intended to help prepare the kids for the rigorous Advanced Placement (AP) exam for calculus, an exam that would help them earn college credit.  The faculty thought he was nuts.  When they realized he was serious, they thought he was dangerous.  What would it do to these kids to give them the expectation that they might do something with their lives?  Many faculty argued that Escalante was setting them up for a huge fall.

But Escalante persevered.  As the department chair, he hand-picked teachers and set up feeder classes for underclassmen who would be in his calculus class in years to come.  He organized tutoring sessions and set up summer school classes at East Los Angeles College.  He worked day and night with the kids all year to prepare them for the test.  At one point, an assistant principle threatened to have him fired for coming in too early and keeping the students too late.

Over the next few years, he had modest success with a handful of students taking the tests.  But in 1982, the program reached critical mass when 18 of 18 students passed and even surpassed most of the other kids taking the test around the nation.  So low were everyone’s expectations of the students that even the Educational Testing Service, which administered the test, thought the students had cheated.  In their minds, there was no possible way that some inner-city kids from gang neighborhoods could possibly have learned the material.  They invalidated the test scores and made the students retake the test.  When the students passed it again, it was impossible to deny them their victory.

By 1991, when Escalante left the school, 570 students were taking AP exams in math and other subjects.  AP programs continue strongly today at Garfield with almost 700 tests taken on seventeen different subjects.  One man’s stubborn resistance to low expectations changed the self-image of an entire school.

Escalante was a world-class teacher – not because he was smarter than any other but because he believed in the kids when no one else did.  He looked beyond the self-fulfilling, limiting beliefs surrounding the students and saw their true potential.  He knew that people often live up to or down to your expectations of them, so why not hold high expectations of them and see what they are capable of doing.

Escalante would say that his students had “ganas,” a desire that must emerge from within.  True, but that desire is so often kindled by the confident expectation of a leader.

You Get What You Expect

My wife and I had a parent-teacher meeting with my oldest son’s math teacher this week, and I had my eyes opened. When we arrived for our appointment, our son came with us to get some assignments that he had to make up. The teacher was upset with him for making her pull out assignments he should have turned in on time in the first place, and I’m okay with that. He needs to learn to be accountable.

However, the way that she talked to him revealed to us as parents that she thinks very little of our son. For the three or four minutes it took her to get the papers he needed, she scolded him about causing her extra work and pointed out how much of her time he was wasting. Asking him about one of the assignments, she said, “Did you lose that one already?”

The question implies that she sees him as the kind of person who loses things. The tone of voice was disdain (in our opinion), and we were taken a bit off guard. Both of us (mom and dad) thought to ourselves at that moment, “If she will talk to him like that while we are sitting here, how does she talk to him when we are not around?:”

We began to see why our son was struggling so much with this class.  He is doing well in his other six classes, but he’s brought home terrible progress reports in Math.  Each night he has Math homework, he agonizes over it for up to two hours in just this one subject.  He doesn’t get the concepts.  He’s not sure of himself.  He worries over his teacher’s expectations.  When we encourage him to ask her for help and resources, he procrastinates or makes excuses.

Now I know why.  I firmly believe that people live up to or down to our expectations of them.  It’s an observable phenomenon called the “Pygmalion Effect” (more on that in another post), and it’s been documented in the classroom and in other environments.  We communicate our opinion of the people around us through sometimes very subtle signals in our body language, facial expressions, eye contact, tone of voice, amount and type of feedback, time we spend with them and a variety of other factors.

And through these subtle signals, the people can tell what we think of them.  Sometimes they understand it on a conscious level, and sometimes it’s at a subconscious level, but they get it.  And while a few will have the gumption to prove us wrong if we have a low opinion, most will not.  The typical response is that these people will fit into the mold we create for them.  If we have a high opinion, they will prove us prophets; and if we have a low opinion, they will prove us prophets again.  It’s called a self-fulfilling prophesy.

We get what we expect, because we create the conditions that lead the other person to act in ways that match our expectations.  And even more sinister and distorting, we practice a thing called “Selective Perception,” in which only the information that agrees with our expectations is allowed into our minds.  If a person for whom we hold a low opinion does something phenomenally well, we discount it and make up excuses for why it couldn’t possibly have been them who really did it.

Anyone in a leadership position has a responsibility to give everyone under his or her authority a fair shake.  That means that the leader has to create a positive environment where people can do their best.  It’s extremely hard not to tip your hand when you have a low opinion of someone, so I don’t recommend that approach.  Instead of trying to act like you have a high opinion of them, get one.  Stop focusing on their faults, and start looking for their strengths.  Everyone has them.  God doesn’t create garbage.  Look hard to find what you can appreciate and admire about the person, and you will find that your positive expectations will increase.

About to Pass By

I found something scary in my Bible recently. The first time I noticed it was in Mark 6:48 in the story about Jesus walking on water.

He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them…

What? Jesus saw them struggling, walked all the way out to them and then had intentions of passing them by? Really? But then, I remembered that I had seen this somewhere before….when Jesus was walking with the two men on the road to Emmaus.

As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther. (Luke 24:28 )

Then, I got curious, and I began looking up other references to Jesus passing by (or intending to pass by) someone in need. I found that Jesus passed by his first two disciples:

The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” (John 1:35-36)

…passed by poor Blind Bartimaeus…

Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (that is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging. (Mark 10:46)

…passed by two other blind men…

As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out… (Matthew 9:27-34)

…passed by the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years…

As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. (Luke 8:42-43)

Just think about it! To be so close to Jesus, to be so close to His truth and His touch and His healing power, and to almost miss it! But we only know these stories, because these people didn’t miss Jesus. How many hundreds or thousands of others who were in need did Jesus pass by? He certainly didn’t heal everyone in Israel or let everyone participate in miracles (like when Peter walked on water).

So why did Jesus do for these what he didn’t do for the rest? If you study each example, I think you’ll find at least one of two common denominators - faith and persistence.

Peter got to walk on water, because he was impulsive enough to ask and because he flat out believed that Jesus could do anything He wanted to do. Jesus revealed Himself to the men on the road to Emmaus because they “urged him strongly” to stay with them. Andrew and the other of John’s disciples got to be Jesus’ first disciples, because they were willing to run after Him and spend time with Him.

Blind Bartimaeus, and the other blind men and the woman with the issue of blood all had to call after Him or chase Him down. They had to believe that He could do something about their infirmity, and then they had to act on that belief. Their faith is implied by their action and their persistence.

If you believe that God is good, you have to believe that Jesus never passed anyone by because He didn’t want to help them. He passed them by as a test to see who they really thought He was and is. If they truly believed that He was God, there’s no way they would allow Him to pass without grabbing hold of Him and pleading for Him to do a miracle.

I said that this was scary, because I wonder how many times Jesus has been near to me when I had a need but failed to call out to Him. How many times would a little persistence or a little more faith have made the difference?

I think I’m often too polite with God. I pray, and nothing happens, so I let it go. But in light of these Scriptures, I now think I’ve often settled too soon. God will forgive our rudeness if we grab hold of Him and won’t let Him go until He blesses us. (Genesis 32:26) He wants to see the depth of our need and the depth of our faith that He can meet it.

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

God’s Greatest Evangelism Tool

It’s so simple, it’s often overlooked. The family is God’s greatest evangelism tool.

You don’t have to travel to a foreign land to evangelize. If you’re a parent, you’ve got the most important evangelism mission right in front of you. It’s your children. They are more important than any other ministry you could be involved in. Whatever else you do in life pales in comparison to your responsibility to give your kids a firm foundation for their faith.

Children whose parents are authentic followers of Christ grow up to be authentic followers of Christ. By authentic, I mean, you’ve got to walk your talk. You can’t be a “Second-Chair Christian.” You can’t keep Jesus in a closet that you open up on Sundays. Your faith has to permeate your daily life every day. If you just play “Christian,” you’ll do more damage to your kids than if you had no faith at all.

The lesson from the parable of the talents applies here. Our children are not ours. God has entrusted them to us for a time. We are simply stewards of these precious lives. When our Master returns, will He find that we have been faithful with the trust He placed in us? Will we be able to tell Him that we have invested in their spiritual growth and reaped an increase? Or will our children be lost to Him, because we claimed to be what we are not? …or because we invested in other ministries that seemed so important in the moment?

If every Christian parent made raising godly children his or her number one priority, the Kingdom would advance, and the gates of Hell could not resist it.

Happy Mothers’ Day, moms! Yours is a strategic and essential ministry in God’s plan.

Dedicated to the mom that blesses our children every day.  I love you, Moni!

Tap Your Wells

Ira Yates knew ranching. He didn’t know diddly about running a grocery store. So when Thomas Hickox offered to trade his ranch for the dry-goods store in Rankin, TX, Yates jumped at the chance to get back to what he knew.

He had been warned against the deal. “That land’s not worth the taxes,” they told him. “A crow wouldn’t even fly over it,” they said. But it was 16,640 acres of land that Yates could call his own. Never mind the constant boundary disputes and the “greasy” well water. She weren’t pretty, and she was a bit high-maintenance, but she was his.

For almost a decade, Yates struggled to make ends meet ranching his land, but the expenses were just too fat for his income to reach around. Droughts and the Great Depression stole every penny of profit he could get his hands on. He was just about ready to concede defeat. Looked like all the naysayers had been right.

But then he heard a rumor. West Texas was sitting on an oil reserve, they said.

Excited by the possibility, Yates tried to talk oil companies into drilling on his land, but no one thought there was any oil west of the Pecos River. For two years, he continued to ask big oil to come drill, but they were all too busy with established wells to pay him any attention. Then, in 1926, Yates convinced Transcontinental Oil and Ohio Oil to put up some test rigs on his land.

They had to drill four wells before they found anything, but on October 28th of that same year, Yates became an instant millionaire! For decades afterward, his ranch was the largest petroleum reserve in the United States, producing at its zenith an incredible 9,009 barrels of oil a day!

How many of us are sitting on untapped potential? How many of us have unused resources, talents, gifts and abilities? What are we saving them for? We give God glory by using everything He gave us, and our greatest potential for drawing others to Christ is in doing what God uniquely designed each of us to do.

If you haven’t discovered what that is yet, it’s time to start digging some wells. Maybe the first few things you try won’t pan out, but keep digging. Maybe everyone around you will tell you that you don’t really have anything to offer, but don’t believe them. You have abundance! It’s hidden inside, and you’ve got to search it out.

And if you’re stuck “ranching” today even though you know that’s not God’s ultimate purpose for you, remember to be faithful with small things. Even this work is part of God’s plan. Remember that Moses tended sheep for forty years, and Paul made tents. How you respond to these tests shows the quality of your heart. When you’ve passed the tests, God will show you your oilfield.

P.S. Don’t let anyone else drink your milkshake. ;0)

Who’s Guarding Your Gates?

In it’s prime, the Great Wall of China was 6,400 km (4,000 mi) long, extending from Shanhaiguan to Lop Nur. In many places, it is still up to 7 to 10 meters high (25 to 35 ft), 7.5 meters thick (25 ft) at the base and 4.5 meters thick (15 ft) at the top. It is made largely of stone slabs, bricks and lime on the inner and outer facings with packed dirt in between.

It was built during the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644) in order to hold out the raiding Manchurian and Mongolian tribes. Earlier walls had proved ineffective in the north, so the Ming’s conceded the desert areas of Inner Mongolia and brought the new Great Wall closer to the capital city of Beijing (known then as Shuntian).

It was an expensive undertaking. Many lives were lost building the Great Wall. Some estimates reach over one million deaths of the slaves and prisoners of war that were forced to work on it. Most of their bodies were buried inside the wall for expediency, and the Wall became known as “the longest cemetery in the world.”

And then there was the cost to defend it. Every 180 to 275 meters (200-300 yards), there was a guard tower. Even today, there are still over 10,000 watchtowers and beacon towers left standing. It took hundreds of thousands of soldiers to man these towers and defend the gates, and many had to be located in very remote areas, where travel in and out was difficult and dangerous.

It was the pride of the Ming Dynasty, and rightly so, but for all the cost and all the effort and all the lives lost to the construction and defense of the Wall, it only took one man to make it irrelevant.

Wu SanGui was a border general in 1644 A.D. He was charged with defending the Shanhaiguan garrison at the Great Wall from the impending attack of the Manchurians and the Mongolians to the north. But because he was angry with the emperor, Wu invited 80,000 invading forces through the gate.

The Emperor’s forces were taken entirely by surprise and had to flee to Beijing with the Manchurians and Mongolians in hot pursuit. Eight days later, enemy forces arrived uncontested and claimed the capital city. Thus began the Qing Dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China.

Walls are important, but if you can’t trust your gatekeeper, they won’t be much protection.

We build our spiritual walls through daily spiritual disciplines, like Bible study, prayer, Scripture memorization, journaling and other good habits. A lot of time and effort goes into building these walls as protection against the Enemy, whose main goal is to breach our walls and get into our minds and hearts. But all that good work can be nullified if we don’t protect our gates (our eyes and our ears).

Through our gates come both good things and bad, and it’s the gatekeeper’s job to decide what to let through and what to keep out. Unfortunately for us, we have two gatekeepers, and one of them is not loyal to our spiritual agenda. There is a constant battle between your flesh gatekeeper and your spirit gatekeeper, and it occurs daily right inside your gates. The one who wins each battle decides which images and information to let past your gates into your mind and heart.

Paul describes this battle in his letter to the Galatians:

For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. (Galatians 5:17)

And he tells us how the battle is won for the spirit gatekeeper in his letter to the Romans:

Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. (Romans 8:5)

What he’s saying is that we can never stop building our spiritual walls. Every day, we need to be living in accordance with the Spirit, and that is done by daily spiritual disciplines. We can’t build our walls up and then take a break. As soon as we stop working on them, they start to deteriorate. And the weaker our walls, the weaker our spirit gatekeeper. The weaker our spirit gatekeeper, the easier it is for our sinful nature (our flesh gatekeeper) to overcome our good intentions.

If you are struggling to keep your gates closed to the junk the Enemy is sending through, and you are desperate for a victory today, remember that God will always come to aid your weak spirit. Isaiah tells us that:

He will be a spirit of justice to him who sits in judgment, a source of strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate. (Isaiah 28:6)

Pray for strength, and God will help you get those gates closed.

* For more articles about spiritual gates, check out these links:

• GIGO
• Guard Your Gates!
• Unlocking the Gates

The Jigsaw Body

The Body of Christ is a giant jumble of all kinds of different people. Black people, white people, yellow people, tan people…. fat people, skinny people, funny people, serious people, musical people, logical people, poor people, rich people… And then there are the many different traditions and styles of worship and ways of teaching and ways of expressing our gifts. Is there any doubt that God loves variety?

But besides the fact that we all call Jesus Christ Lord and Savior, there is at least one other thing that we all have in common: we all have struggles. No Christian, no matter how super-spiritual, is ever completely free from struggles. We can’t graduate from the school of hard knocks. They keep coming all throughout our lives. Even Saint Paul had his thorn in the flesh.

Why wouldn’t God give us a free pass? Wouldn’t that be a better marketing plan for Christianity - a life free of pain and worry? I think there are three good reasons God leaves us with our struggles.

1. They keep us in communication with Him. While we are struggling, we pray more and with more intensity. If it weren’t for our difficult times, God might never hear from some of us!
2. They are a greenhouse for spiritual growth. When we submit these difficult areas to God, we learn spiritual lessons inaccessible to us in easier circumstances.
3. They connect us to each other. When we have needs, we reach out to others for help. Some of us wait until the need is acute before we swallow our pride and admit that we can’t do it alone, and that might be the whole point of why God allows our suffering to continue so long.

The Body of Christ is really like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

Each of us has jagged parts and incomplete parts. All of us have places in which we need to receive from others and places where we can give where others are in need. None of us is perfect, and that’s by design. God has a purpose for our imperfection. Perfect people, by contrast, would have smooth edges.

They wouldn’t need anyone else, and they would have no compelling reason to give of themselves to their brothers and sisters in Christ (since none of us would have any needs, either). Everyone would live lives of quiet, self-sufficiency. There would be nothing to force them to reach out to their neighbor or to the Church.

Over time, the Church would stop looking like an interdependent Body. Rather than being jointed, we would just be jumbled - overlapping but not connecting.

Our jagged insufficiency forces us into community with one another. Our struggles, our needs are God’s way of forcing us to reach out and to receive. They bond the Body.

We should give God praise for every struggle and every inadequacy we have. They are exquisitely precise in their fit with someone God has brought or will bring into our lives.

And finally, we should be careful not to limit these connections to existing members of the Body. God has a plan to draw more and more to Him. He wants those that He brings to us to have some place to connect with us, and our struggles and our pains and our inadequacies serve that purpose.

Putting our “perfect” sides out for the world to see creates pressure for us to live a lie. When our jagged raggedness is revealed, we are seen for the hypocrites that we are. Smooth edges don’t draw people to the Body; they repel. They make lost people think that they have to clean up their lives before becoming a Christian. If we want to win the world to Christ, we’ve got to stop polishing our edges.

Does Purity Matter?

Excellent video!  Wish I had seen something like this when I was a kid.

Search Engine Terms Used to Find My Blogs

I find it interesting each day to check the search engine terms people use to find my blog.  Some of them are really random, and I’m afraid that they are terribly disappointed when they get to my blog and find something spiritual.  (It reminds me of the time someone smashed out the windows in my car and stole my dry cleaning (size XXL) and three cases of sermon tapes.  Made me laugh despite the cost of the new windows.)

Assuming that these people left disappointed the first time, I’m going to post my responses to their searches just in case they come back.  I hope these are helpful.

• Young male models boys, Africa male models, Adolescent male model, Thailand male model, Male models wanted, Pics of male model in kolkata – 76 hits searching for all types of male models, and only one that I’m qualified for….
• Good built male model – I’m free in July.
• “same same” thai t-shirt – Night Bazaar, Chiang Mai – any night
• Wawee coffee gay – I swear, I thought it was straight (this is not the first time this has happened to me, but that’s a story for another post.)
• A twisted tail a thousand eyes trapped forever – EPA! EPA!…Spider pig, Spider pig…
• My son pretends to be sick – Try the old thermometer in the rear trick, and see if that helps.
• obstacles marilyn monroe face – Nose is a little large
• how do you build a rat wall for a garage – you want to keep them?
• i want to stick my tube snake in your… - I’m flattered, but I’m very married (and I really thought Wawee was straight)
• how do i make a scale model of kruger national monument – with mashed potatoes (like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters)
• massage stories river kwai – pervert!
• forced stripped video – Why do people think I would have this stuff?
• how to get a video camera past metal detectors – Carry a machete to divert their attention.
• how to remove curses on wife – Make a rule that you have to put a dollar in a jar each time you say one.
• how can i protect my home from rats – get rid of all the food
• mean names that aren’t swear words – Beatrice, Esmeralda, Gayle (for a man), Female, Gwennog, Beaufort, Blaze, Oleo, Bubba, Uterus, Prinze…
• pick up women on walking street – Never carry more than one at a time.
• why did god make birds – So that we could communicate with people who cut us off in traffic
• why do we curse – Volume
• help my wife is a packrat – They say three moves are as good as a fire.
• contents under pressure in checked luggage – Sounds interesting; tell me how it turns out.
• rats im house – Impressive! Next they’ll have a Facebook account.
• can the blood of jesus cover our property – I don’t think so, but I promise that none of your furniture is going to hell.
• i kept fantasizing about my wife with other men – See below
• share your wife – Maybe you should get with the guy who made the previous search.
• why married men masturbate - Laziness
• lower your expectations for men – Probably best
• words to curse an enemy – “I forgive you.” “I’m sorry.” “How can I help you?” – “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you.” (Proverbs 25:22)

Y’all come on back now, y’hear!