An Encouragement to Those Still Trying to Believe

It's been awhile, so I thought I'd post a short encouragement to anyone who needs it.

I was reading John 11. Jesus has barely escaped Judea with his life when He finds out that His friend Lazarus is ill. He waits two days and then decides to go visit. The passage goes like this:

(I've put in a few flourishes to emphasize how Jesus has some of the same social awkwardness as a homeschooler. No offense, Jesus. No offense, homeschoolers.)

Jesus: "We're going back to Judea."

Disciples: "Isn't that where people were just trying to kill us?"

Jesus: "Are there not twelve hours in a day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him."

Disciples: [eye roll]

Jesus: "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him."

Disciples: "If he's fallen asleep, he'll just wake up in the morning."

Jesus: "Lazarus is dead."

Disciples: "Who taught you to have a conversation?"

Anyway, here's the cool part, which I won't butcher by paraphrasing. Jesus then says, "For your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."

1. Jesus was glad that Lazarus had died, so that his disciples could believe.

When things go wrong in my life, my first response is not naturally to believe. In fact, my first reaction is often to blame God--and also to say I told you so. You promised _____, but the opposite happened! I knew it, I never should have trusted you!

It's happened with all sorts of situations. I was believing for provision, but instead I got a speeding ticket. I was believing for freedom from sin, but instead I messed up more than ever. I was asking for healing, but I'm worse off than ever.

God, where were you?

Reading this passage, I'm wondering how many times Jesus has responded by saying, "I'm glad for your sake that I was not there, so that you may believe."

Jesus sees our defeat, and he's somehow using it to help us believe.

2. Negative Nancy

The second encouragement I take away from this is Thomas's awesome response. He turns to the disciples and says, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

Ha! Way to be honest, Thomas.

In my life, I have sometimes acted like one of the more awesome disciples. Peter, the water-walker. John, the breast-leaner (...ew?). But just as often, if not more, I've been Thomas, refusing to budge until God gives me a sign, and sometimes staying faithful with no greater expectation than to die.

Somehow God honors that. I mean, probably he'd prefer that we simply take him at his word. But I do take comfort from the fact that God doesn't kick Thomas out of his gang, that Thomas somehow makes it into God's inner circle.

How often I've thought that my unbelief exempts me from God's favor, that I will be shunned from the fellowship of believers if I don't believe with the same exuberance as everyone else. After all, what place does a doubter have among believers?

But in Thomas we see that God doesn't shun the doubter. In fact, reading this passage, I suspect that God sees the humor in the doubter's complaints.

So I want to encourage anyone who feels like I've been feeling: afraid of believing, because you've been let down before. There's hope for you. Maybe you're like Thomas, sticking around with Jesus, if only to fail with him. Maybe you're expecting defeat.

But you've decided you're not going to leave. You've decided you're going to stay with Jesus.

God has something to show you. I believe it. I believe that, for all the devastation you've experienced, this is not the final chapter of your story. God may even be glad for the odds stacked even higher against you (against him). If the story of Lazarus is any indication, God may be about to do something wonderful.

Encouraged by Steven Curtis Chapman (and others things cool Christians don’t say)

I’m just going to come out and say it. Last month I cried while listening to Steven Curtis Chapman.

It was an accident! I was searching my iTunes for a soundtrack for a drive to Denver, and I happened to see a Steven Curtis Chapman album, leftover from when I helped my mom load songs on her IPOD, and I decided to listen to a few songs for laughs, and—

There’s no escaping it. I cried. Steven Curtis Chapman reduced me to babyish tears—maybe because I listened to him when I was a baby.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Steven Curtis Chapman—or perhaps you didn’t know he was still alive and able to sing—he is a Christian songwriter whose career began in 1987, one year before I was born. The Christian music industry we know today didn’t yet exist. Chapman was a pioneer, a description easily confirmed by a glance at his stallion mullet and a quick listen to his lyrics:

Saddle up your horses, we’ve got a trail to blaze

Through the wild blue yonder of God’s amazing grace!

I don’t listen to Christian—or any other—radio. Having worked many years for a magazine that marketed to Christian bookstores, I have a distrust for the industry. I thought I was inoculated against campy Christian lyrics.

But there comes a day when you’re driving along, just trying to pick up a lamp from IKEA, and BAM!—Steven Curtis Chapman happens. His golden retriever soul might make you weep, but he’ll wipe your tears with his luxurious mullet.

Alright, I’m getting carried away.

This has been a rough [week, month, year…?], which has made me extra susceptible to surprise jolts of encouragement, especially in musical form.

Music is emotional. Feeling complacently content, we hum. We get frustrated, and the humming stops without our noticing. If I want a quick gauge of how I'm feeling, singing provides an easy reference.

A few months ago I felt like God was asking me to sing to Him. I ignored Him. Far from singing, most of my prayer times had involved me sitting on my bed with a glum expression and praying with a weary voice. I knew that if I showed how miserable I was, He would feel sorry for me and respond.

Remember being sick as a kid? There’s a certain showmanship involved. You must show that you’re sick enough to stay home from school another day, sick enough to get out of chores, sick enough to justify lounging on the couch with a drawn face. But you must also be well enough to go to a friend’s house if they invite you over, well enough to eat the pizza your mom is making, well enough to enjoy the perks of being sick.

God asking me to sing was like asking me to give up my claims to sick person perks. No more looking miserable, no more begging out of duties, no more complaining about how bad I felt. I’d been feeling bad a long time, and I'd developed some fine tricks for surviving in conservation mode. I didn't want to lose them.

When God did speak to me, I was slow to respond. It was just so ridiculous. I would have been more apt to take action if he’d given me a prescription for more introspection, more analyzing, talking with a new mentor, reading a book about despair, reading a whole stack of books on despair. I could have read the heck out of those books!

But singing was stupidly easy. And it was the only thing I felt God might be leading me to do.

I started singing in my living room when my roommates were away. Haltingly, with pitiful, uncertain tones, I made up aimless songs with lyrics like, “I believe you’ve been really good to me,” and, “I think I still love you, God.”

It’s been awkward, but also really good. I’ve begun to thaw. I sing made-up songs to God, and it cheers me up almost against my will. The singing reminds me what it felt like to love God, what it felt like to be grateful. It’s almost like I could feel that way again.

I’ll admit, it’s hard to say that God is good, to smile, to tell people how lucky I am to be a son of God. The pain I feel is precious to me—so precious that I am loathe to let it go. I’m quick to add disclaimers to my praise. “He’s good but I’ve been let down before.” I prefer the position of a judge, evaluating a spread of feelings and experiences to decide whether God is in fact good.

In the Psalms, David continually writes phrases like, “I will open my mouth” and “I will not hide your goodness within me.” He is quick to openly declare God's goodness. I want to be like that. I want to acknowledge the good that has been done to me. There’s so much of it!

I’m not suggesting we ignore our deep pains. The Bible is clear that those who mourn are blessed, while those who laugh now will soon mourn. But the blessing Jesus spoke to those who mourn is a promise of coming comfort. For me, singing has preceded the comfort of the Lord. I sang of God’s goodness before I felt it, and somehow that opened the door for me to receive.

It’s not natural. Children of a skeptical generation, we tend to turn up our noses at exuberant adoration. It’s hard to stomach Steven Curtis Chapman’s optimism, his cheerful assertion that “God will finish what He started/No thread will be left unwoven… We’ll stand as the ones completed/By the miracle of His love.” But it’s hard to retain a callous attitude when I remember that these lyrics were written by a man whose daughter was tragically killed not too long ago, accidentally run over by a family member in his own driveway. And somehow he’s still able to sing. That’s something I can’t easily belittle.

I don’t know what God is asking of you, what key He will use to lead you out of mourning. But I want to encourage you to give in to His strange tactics. I want to encourage you to praise before you feel thankful, to stretch yourself for a sure and coming joy.

God has helped me worship Him, even when I felt I couldn't. God has been good to me.

To IMs and All Friends Scattered (a love letter)

Note #1: This blog has to do with a big change in my life, namely, that today is our last day as IM staff members for me and seventeen of my friends. If this is the first you’re hearing about it, I invite you to call or email for a more in-depth conversation.

Note #2: If you’re uncomfortable with heartfelt, non-ironic admissions of love, sometimes incorporating cheesy LOTR references, you are free not to read this blog. You are also free to read my entry on cynicism.

My dear IM’s (and all friends scattered),

The end of this season of our lives and the start of a new one has prompted me to write a letter to you.

I am not mourning to see the fundraising portion of the IM program end, nor am I lamenting the insecurities and turmoil that change has brought. What I will miss, however—what no words will console—is the joy of working alongside you day by day. I don’t know what to do with the thought that, no matter how many of us stay, we are still in some way a company dispersed.

It’s the same feeling I get when Lucy has to leave her adventures with Aslan and go home. It’s Frodo’s fearful realization that the Fellowship must disband, though they have only just begun their journey.

The Fellowship of the Ring is my favorite book of the trilogy, and I think it’s because this ragtag group of friends is still together, facing dangers that, although real, are not quite so weighty or dark as those to come. The tunnels of Moria are not as bleak as those in Shelob’s lair. Frodo still feels the thrill of a new adventure, the companionship of men stronger and wiser than he.

Much like Frodo, I prefer the scent of good tilled earth and the taste of ale to the weight of a sword in my hand. How easy it would be to stay at Rivendell, or even the slightly-eerie Lothlorien. These havens along the road offer a solace that may be the greatest danger to the fulfillment of our quest.

How easy it would be to blame EHC for the shifting that is happening among our little group right now. Yet, this is not the first time I have had to let a friend go, not the first time I have watched as one I loved set sail on a new adventure, while I remained ashore.

Did college not end? Have I somehow kept within arm’s reach every single friend I’ve made through the years?

No, I have seen many go. And most were not stolen by an enemy, but sent by a Friend, just as I have often been sent.

For those of us who are believers, we must live with a suitcase always at the ready. We live as if on a military base, and though we make our requests known, we recognize that we can be called away at a moment not of our choosing.

Working with missionaries, whose positions are often transient, has shown a spotlight on some of my biggest fears. Fears of loneliness and isolation. The fear of being left.

A year ago, already processing through this, I wrote a song. Here’s some of what it said:

There’s a man with eyes of fire

And I am not His equal

There’s a storm in your desire

I could never stand up to

And of all love’s hard confessions

Here’s the one I was loathe to make

Even when I give all

I cannot be all to you

Would that I could hold an umbrella

That could guard you from the storm

Manufacture fiercest weaponry

Keep you safe in every war

But I recognize

That look in your eyes

When you must give yourself away

So I lay down my arms

And speed you on your way

Every season I grow more certain that distance and separation is a consequence of the fall, one we as humans were not built to endure. I see in Revelation 21 that God, too, is longing for a day when He can say, “Behold the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

I love that this is the climax to our story—a reuniting. Not just worship, although there will be worship. Not just holiness, although we will wear robes of white. But God’s greatest dream is to dwell with us. After all that’s happened, after every war and every sorrow, He’s saying, “I just want to be with you.”

It would be a lie to pretend that there’s no reason to mourn, that the end of a season doesn’t hurt. To hold back tears is to deny ourselves an opportunity to join with God’s longing. The longing to destroy death, which is separation. The longing to be together.

God has shown us the way forward, and it is in the cross. If we lose our lives for His sake, we will ultimately find them. He Himself has testified that there are some things which neither moth nor rust can destroy, and I think that applies as much collectively as individually. What we do together, inasmuch as we do it unto God, even though we are weak, God will keep.

And He knows our need for true friendship. In my experience, He is more in the habit of joining than separating. He loves to lure us into the disarming joy of communion, a sudden unlocking of doors we weren’t anticipating. That has happened over and over again from the days I was young. I am blessed with the best of friends.

So this is a note to all the friends God has given me through the years, and especially to the IMs. You have been a shoulder to cry on, an arm to lean on, a voice that comforts, and eyes that understand. You have been prayer that doesn't give up. There is nothing like those moments when I think that I'm alone, and then I turn my head and find that you're with me. Together we have tasted God's kindness.

The road is long and arduous. Every day will be another death, so that we may experience His resurrection. To follow God is to deny ourselves. And then—blink—and it’s over. Chasing Him means a narrow path. Along the way we will often link arms, but only One will hold our hand. There’s a level of intimacy that only One can attain.

So further up and further in, friends. May all our streams lead to the same ocean. Fearlessly, let us follow in the seasons of His wild will.

One-Eyed Prophet

One-Eyed Prophet

This is a continuation of the past two weeks’ posts on cynicism, which you can read here and here, but not here.

“I met a man who’s looking for perfection

Said he’s never met a girl who’s good enough

His eyes are getting old, like they’d love to love again

Such a lonely man.”

-Jon Foreman, “A Mirror is Harder to Hold”

We’ve established that cynicism has some flaws, but is there any alternative?

Like a guy who’s afraid of his ex-girlfriend, I jump into the arms of her opposite. “Why hello there, sentimentality!”

If pessimism fails me, then the answer must be optimism.

Flannery—God rest her blessed soul—addresses this issue in her (Insightful! Life-changing!) essay, “The Church and the Fiction Writer”:

We lost our innocence in the Fall, and our return to it is through the Redemption, which was brought about by Christ’s death and by our slow participation in it. Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence.

If I indulge in sentimentality, I skip death and thus never find resurrection. Cynicism mocks the disease, while sentiment covers it with a Band-Aid, a kiss on the head, and an “all better.” Neither offers a cure.

So what now? Like the college grad I am, I’m tempted to say we need a “richer understanding,” a compromise—in other words, “Can’t we just mix the two and call it even?”

A good slap to the face from GK Chesterton stops me from being such a pansy.

“What we need is not the cold acceptance of this world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent.” He then asks if there is someone who can “hate [the world] enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?... Is he enough of a Pagan to die for the world and enough of a Christian to die to it?”

Love and hate the world? This is a greater demand than I expected!

So often, I can only uphold love by blinding myself to the truth. Here I am doing my darndest to love, when I’m suddenly confronted by an obstacle in the form of a rude or selfish or arrogant person, someone I just can’t handle right now. Instead of asking God to grow my love, to make it better than it is, I avoid the situation altogether by one of two detours.

I can choose cynicism, putting up defenses against this unlovable person, shutting the door so quietly that they will never realized they’re outside. Or I can choose sentimentality, pretending they “aren’t so bad” and glossing over their more distasteful qualities—a path that ultimately leads back to cynicism because I’m really not so good at pretending.

At the foundation, cynicism and sentimentality are both malfunctioning love, a sign that my love is a lot weaker than I thought.

A parable that has consistently encouraged me in the past months is that of the wheat and the tares. Basically, a farmer plants seeds in his field, only to find later that weeds are growing up among the harvest. His servants’ response is similar to my own: “Should we get rid of the weeds?” They’ve seen the problem, and now they have a diagnosis.

The farmer’s answer is unexpected, at least to me: “No, lest as we gather up the tares, the wheat be pulled up with it.”

This is true wisdom. I consider myself perceptive to notice the weeds among the wheat, not knowing that as I reach to eradicate evil I am also uprooting good along with it. When I turn my eye against the ills of this world, I always end up destroying more than I intend. I’m a bumbling surgeon, unable to remove a tumor without cutting the heart.

Earlier this year I finished writing a song called “One-Eyed Prophet.” Like so many things I’ve written, I didn’t realize when I wrote it how much I would need it later. It tells the story of a prophet who is “always honest but never tells the truth.” Here’s the last stanza:

You’ll admit that you don’t know a cure

But you sure love playing doctor

You love the part where we take off our shirts

And uncover all our sores

Oh, what a great relief to see we’re all the same

But lately I’ve been wondering why

There’s no healing in your house

This song was inspired by a cynic I observed, but in the end I found it is actually about me. I’m the one-eyed prophet. I’m the one who is able to see the problem but lacks a cure.

The very end of the song offers a plea: “Your justice and mercy never kissed, so turn your good eye to the things you’ve missed.”

Each of us is constantly vacillating between two goods, justice and mercy. Only one man has ever held both equally, not in a dirty brown hue of compromise, but each in full strength.

Jesus is startlingly blunt about the wickedness man perpetrates. But then he turns around and lavishes love on those wicked people. He sees the most clearly, and He loves best. His love is not accomplished by a smearing of the facts. No, it’s stronger than that. He looks us in the face, and He loves.

His mercy and truth meet; His righteousness and peace kiss.

Somehow, I must do the same.

I’ve been a cynic, a man who’s so afraid of getting hurt that he locks himself in his own house. Now it’s time to try something different, something that requires more bravery than I possess, and more love. I go out as a lamb among wolves, and sometimes as a wolf myself. I think I may have only one eye, but I’m training it to look at God.

A Note on Sinning for Friends (Part Three)

There’s hope!

I’m going to rely heavily on the Bible to speak for itself here, since I’m still so much in the process of figuring this out myself.

John 13:34 says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Remember back in part one, where I said that in his counterfeits, Satan always mimics God’s calling? That means there’s an original design for our lives. We see it here in John. We are called by Jesus to love one another as He loved us.

How did He love us? Well, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

So God has called us to lay down our lives for one another in friendship. He has called us to wash each other’s feet, to share our plenty with those in lack.

What do we do with these verses in light of our previous discussion? There seems to be a contradiction of sorts. Our purity is insufficient, yet God calls us to wash each other’s feet. Our sacrifices are ineffective, but God wants us to die for one another.

It seems like He wants us to have a love that isn’t even possible for us.

…Which is probably exactly right, now that I think about it. No wonder I keep encountering locked doors, places where my love can’t enter.

It reminds me of 1 Corinthians 13, the oft-quoted wedding chapter. Clean off some of the residue from

overuse, and there’s some brilliant stuff here. The beginning is all about our weakness, how all of our efforts amount to nothing. We can give our bodies to be burned, but if we don’t have love, it doesn’t count. Many of the problems in my relationships can be traced back to that idea. I’m trying so hard, but there’s something missing.

In Psalm 103, David writes, “God knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field, but the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him.”

Some days my love seems to flourish, and I grow excited and puffed up. But then a slight wind jostles me, and I find myself acting selfish or abrupt, with no memory of the strong love I boasted in.

God knows my frame. I’m the one who keeps forgetting. He’s not surprised by the frailty of my love. After all, He sees the past simultaneously with the future, and in those times when I am basking in the glory of my own strength, He is already forgiving the great failures which loom ahead. Like Graham Cooke says, “He’s not disillusioned about us. He never had any illusions in the first place.”

I’m the one with the illusions, so practiced—manicured, even—for the convincing of myself and others.

But we know what comes of that. Maybe you’ve been the recipient of my weak love. Maybe you know better than I the great blind spots I ignore.

All I’m trying to say is: there is a love that is stronger than ours. And we are called to love with Him, to consider others before ourselves, to lay down our lives for our friends. It’s a shift in heart posture that will manifest itself increasingly in our actions (or so I hope). I think the primary difference may be that the love discussed in Parts 1 and 2 is primarily self-focused—“look at how good I am becoming! look how good I am at loving”—whereas the other, real love is always focused on the other and foremost on God—“look how great His love is!”

I want to do this impossible thing, to become inhabited by Someone who is too big for my space, to love well. I want to let go of the compulsion to make myself appear grand. I want to draw attention to God’s love.

A Note on Sinning for Friends (Part Two)

If you are beginning to suspect that you have a tendency to sin for friends, I’d like to say a little more on what I’ve found on the subject. Here is a list of three signs that you may have the same problem I have. The list is a little haphazard, but it’s what I have so far.

1. Fear. In our more honest moments, we are aware of the sad truth that we do not make good saviors. But we try very hard. I have one friend who in high school periodically fell into the same snare. In her times of compromise, I felt as if I’d been lax in my self-appointed role as protector. If only I had paid better attention, I could have caught the sin in its gestation and kept her from it. This mentality caused me to redouble my efforts, thinking that if I only watched her more closely, I could rescue her from every temptation. I studied her with paranoia. I began to think of her as both friend and patient, and I interpreted the slightest cough as a sign of underlying cancer. Even in seasons of grace, I would sometimes hound her for information, discreetly interrogating until I was certain she was indeed doing as well as she seemed. All the while, I yielded ground in my own life to a debilitating fear. People were prone to sin, and in all my watchfulness I could not stop them, and I could not stop myself.

2. Jealousy. When we consider ourselves saviors, we develop a natural wariness of rival saviors. I cannot overstate the destructiveness of this mentality. I take a friend’s burdens upon myself, and suddenly I am the hero. Look what a great friend I am! But my folly is revealed when I hear about another person who has spoken an encouraging word—to my friend. Put under the lens of truth, this kind of jealousy is revealed as hideous. It’s that gross sinking feeling when I hear that he has been inspired by someone else. It’s the fear I feel when she seems to be recovering, and her need for me steadily decreases. I find myself acting like the would-be mother in the story of Solomon, so desperate to be a caretaker that I ask the baby to be cut in half. When charity becomes entangled with my search for significance, my so-called compassion quickly turns grotesque.

3. Lack of trust in God. Towers of Babel come in many forms, but they’re all the same in the way their builders try to reach Heaven by their own mettle. In the times I’ve fixated on saving someone by my own strength, I reveal an age-old pride. The first two items in this list both stem from this lack of trust in God’s sovereignty. First, fear naturally arises when I think that God will not be enough for the people in my life. If He is not caring for them, then I must fill the role. Second, jealousy stirs when I see that God can be to my friends what I can never be: the perfect intercessor. Just like Cain, I see one whose sacrifice is better than mine, and my flesh despises Him for it. The only way out is repentance: repenting for making myself more than I am and making God less than He is.

So that’s all fairly honest, maybe more honest than I should be in a blog. But I don’t see a way of approaching truth without bringing things to light, so there it is. Let me know if this at all strikes home.

Check back next Sunday for the conclusion, in which the thoughts are less disheartening!

A Note on Sinning for Friends (Part One)

I’m beginning to realize that I have a problem. I sin for friends.

It’s an old sin, one which wormed its way into me at a young age. I am only now beginning to finger it out from the nearly untraceable burrows its made.

Throughout high school, most of my closest friends endured a season of intense difficulty, during which they sometimes despaired of their walks with God (an experience I seemingly evaded—until college). From my perspective, their individual teeterings between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were out of control, and I worried that the demons they faced would overcome them.

So I stepped in.

I prayed, I encouraged, I conversed. I sometimes begged. When a friend fell into sin, I leapt upon them as if to smother fire, I gave myself as if throwing my body into a pit. They needed a savior, someone who would join them in their pain and walk with them—even carry them—to safety.

Which, in some ways, sounds very heroic. Until you realize it’s a little bit creepy.

We’ve all known a junior high boy (or, God help us, been one) whose zeal for a young lady made him cross the line from starry-eyed loverboy to thirteen-year-old stalker. He doesn’t yet know what he can and can’t be for a girl, and he becomes grossly possessive. Somehow, his successful first kiss convinces him he’ll make a good husband.

Well, my friendships have often looked something like this. I notice that a piece of advice somehow lands, and I suddenly believe I have wisdom to give. I notice a family member is having a rough day, and I’m convinced I can provide the answer if I try hard enough. I mull. I worry. Worry is the weapon I have learned to wield, and it has pierced its object just enough times to make me cling to it all the harder.

In short, I don’t yet know what I can and can’t be for someone. I become heavy with burdens that don’t belong to me. I become a kleptomaniac, snatching up others’ difficulties and loading them in deep pockets.

This verse from Galatians 6 says it better than I can: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”

Throughout my life, when a friend has been caught in a transgression, I have often attempted to restore him. But I have not been very good at keeping watch over myself, and I have often been tempted. The temptation I face is one I now recognize as being common to many: the temptation to become savior.

Each of us is designed by God for a specific purpose, and our enemy always forms his blueprints from whatever stolen schematics he manages to obtain. In this way, our great callings become entangled with our great temptations, and we are left to sort out which is which by God’s help.

Tune in Friday for Part Two, in which I reveal some ugly parts of myself.