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Broadcast Yourself. That’s what YouTube will tell you. With Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Instagr.am and other social mediums not worth honorable mention, we can broadcast ourselves more than any other generation in history. Whether you’re excited about your favorite sports team, a great new book you read, getting married, or a word from God, you have a plethora of venues to choose from to share your life with your world.
But what’s after that? We await our worlds response. A few “likes” on Facebook would be nice. If you comment on it, that’s extra credit. A retweet? I’ll keep my tweets to 120 characters to leave room for you RT as much as you want, darling. Only the legit get retweeted. What about an @mention? Mmmm… Confidence booster? Sure. It’s nice to know someone’s thinking of you, but what about when Debbie Downer just rains on your parade?
You’ve all dealt with Debbie before. You tell Debbie about an awesome book you read. Debbie proceeds to tell you she already read it. So now, you have nothing valuable to share with Deb concerning your new book because for her, it’s just deja vu. You call Debbie to tell her how awesome the message was on Sunday. She thinks that’s the time to go into her archives of sermons she’s heard to tell you… “yeah, I heard that from my pastor like a year ago.”
I’ll be honest. I’ve been Debbie. I’ve been a part of conversations where someone was so excited about something God was doing in their life… And because I had heard it before, or been exposed to it before, it was simply deja Vu for me. It was a “here we go again” moment for me. It simply went in one ear and out the other. And I’m inclined to believe that this is a subconscious struggle for most. We live our lives with the notion that because we’ve seen it or heard it before, we automatically can check it off the list of things we need to hear. If life went up or down based off what we had heard or seen, we could achieve perfection especially today because there’s more information virally than ever before. Just because you heard it already, doesn’t equate to you actually applying what you heard.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have got to break out of this mindset that give ourselves permission to dismiss messages that God has put right under our noses. They may seem deja vu. They may make you feel like you’re so accustomed to them that you predict their outcomes and you leave no room for surprises. As we all continue to broadcast our lives with one another, read and listen with a soft heart. God used a donkey to get His message across once. You think he couldn’t use a something someone else said 10 years ago in a book? Don’t miss out on something special caught up in who said “it” first.
People are courteous to each other two times a year with two questions. At Christmas: What are you doing for Christmas? And during March Madness: How’s your bracket doing? I love it! We are smack dab in the middle of March Madness. Complete strangers acting like family at sports bars. The emotion. The brackets. The tweets. The cheating refs. The fights. The game-winners. The fans. But the one thing that March Madness almost never has that some would consider the largest determining factor in who wins a basketball game is: home court advantage. Nobody plays at the crib.
I was reading Mark 6 the other night and it covers Jesus coming to his hometown, coming to the crib. And as the story begins it says in the MSG that “He made a real hit, impressing everyone. “We had no idea he was this good!” they said. “How did he get so wise all of a sudden, get such ability?” I read this in the midst of March Madness and thought, “Yeah, my guy Jesus has got home court advantage on this one. He’s killin’ it!” [Sometimes I read about Jesus and I root for him as the story goes on. I'm a fan.] Anyways, the story takes a turn in verse 3: But in the next breath they were cutting him down: “He’s just a carpenter—Mary’s boy. We’ve known him since he was a kid… Who does he think he is?” They tripped over what little they knew about him and fell, sprawling. And they never got any further.
What a change. They went from thinking he was the man to thinking he was a nobody in ONE verse. The story goes on to tell us how Jesus felt about coming to hometown, and the Bible tells us he could only heal a few a sick people because of their lack of faith. You mean to tell me the Son of God, the Alpha, the Omega, the Savior of the world, the walking on the water, food multiplying, dead man-raising Jesus Christ could only heal a couple dudes with home court advantage?!
Not just at your house, not just where you grew up, but where you’re THE MOST COMFORTABLE, where you FEEL at home… be careful. When you’ve got home court, your comfort level can get so high that you actually become cynical about people in your own camp. How do you feel when other people get stuff, promotions, and opportunities you want? Or better yet, how do you feel when other people who always get stuff, promotions, and opportunities get more stuff, another promotion, and more opportunities? How do you feel when it seems like the rich get richer? God could be promoting somebody right under your nose, and you happen to find weaknesses and reasons why they shouldn’t be given the opportunity they have. Maybe you stack up reasons in the back of your head why YOU deserve their position. Be careful what you THINK about. One of the sins we get away with the most is what we think about.
I caution you friends. Cynicism is contagious within your own life. If you’re cynical about other people, you’ll end being cynical about God. You’ll say the right things at first, but in your comfort, you will have gotten so used to God being God that you’ll fail to stay amazed by him. Be careful, for I would hate for us to be the people who only see a couple of dudes changed.
P.s. How’s your bracket doing?
What’s your routine? I’ve got mine down pat. We’ve got Christianity nailed down to a science. Here it is: Pray. Read your Bible. Go to church. Tithe. Give to missions. Get in a small group or community equivalent. Go on a missions trip at least twice in your lifetime. Feed the hungry when given the opportunity. Volunteer at a homeless shelter to boost the resume of things you tell people you do in your free time. Attend a leadership conference. Go to a worship night once a year. Do all of that… and you’re good. For real. As sarcastic as this is read, I’m serious. If you find yourself doing all of the above, I really do applaud you. My next paragraph doesn’t have some revolutionary idea that negates the things above that the Bible has asked us to do. My next paragraph simply made me look at my routine a little differently.
I was doing my routine one night as I was sitting at a Young Adults group in Dallas. The Pastor was praying over us at the end and he may not even remember saying this, but it changed my life. He said, “I pray that you wouldn’t just be young adults in Dallas who simply try to love God, and love people, but that you would be young adults who leave this place… and wage war with the devil.” I sat in my chair thought, “WAGE WAR?” You mean like you want me to start the fight? Ya. Like I need to stand before God and let him know that I punched the devil first. I examined my life that night and realize that I only ever RESPOND to the attacks of the enemy. I never start them. My routine is full of things that keep me at an arms length of this enemy. And honestly, if I was him, I would want every Christian to follow their routine.
It’s almost like we want to keep peace with the devil. Like I don’t want him SUPER mad at me, but mad at me just enough to be a part of the overall group attack that I get for being a Christ-follower. I don’t know how you feel, but for me, the routine keeps me safe. It’s as if I know there’s more, but it’s like we’re playing games with God. Is there anything in your life that you’ve been meaning to do, but never actually do it. That’s the game we play. We teeter totter with this spiritual decisions, and we spend years dreaming big. But I challenge you with a question today, “Are You Serious?” Are you serious about this Christianity thing? Do you REALLY want His kingdom to come? If you do, I think you’re gonna have to swing first to make an impact. Stop playing games.
We hear altar calls where we invite people to lay down their lives for Jesus, but I wonder how many of us have been living in our routine for years, and perhaps, God could be asking us to pause our routine to start a fight. Are you serious?
I remember growing up wanting to impress girls so much. Whether it was clothes, basketball, or charisma, I was addicted to getting attention from the opposite sex. It was so bad that when my friends and I would go swimming, I’d be in the bathroom doing push ups right before I unveiled the gun show for the ladies. The guns only lasted about 10 minutes unfortunately.
I wonder how many of us feel this in church. When we first connected with Jesus, the message was, “Come. Just as you are.” Now that we’ve spent some significant amount of time with Jesus, we feel the message is constantly, “Get it together.” Nobody can see you mad. Nobody can see you frustrated. Nobody can see you discontent. Nobody can see you cry. So when you do or feel all of the above, you pull it together as fast as you can. Why?
I think the Bible has put an extraordinary amount of pressure on us to be more than we are. In fact, if we’re honest, we wish some verses were never written. Jesus came to give us life and life to the fullest. Wouldn’t it be nice if it said, he came to give us half of a good life. Because if we’re honest, some of us are there. We walk around with the notion that Christians should walk around FULL of life. So instead of actually feeling complete, we manufacture our lives to LOOK full to make the scriptures look better.
If we are honest, really honest, we miss “Come just as you are.” Pulling it together every Sunday gets old. Pulling it together everyday when you’re in ministry is worse. You know it’s bad when you’ve rehearsed responses to, “How are you doing?”.
Here’s the wrap up. If you just go with what you’ve been told looks good, if you push through your trash to “just do it”, you won’t just continually pull it together for people, you’ll pull it together for God too. Out of sheer habit, you’ll pray like you’ve got it together. Don’t. I’d love to tell you to come just as you are, everywhere. But you wouldn’t. You’ve got great reasons not to. But don’t do the same thing with your God.