Day: March 11, 2013

Yelling “Lukewarm” Doesn’t Help Anyone — Especially The Lukewarm

Christians: So many of us are lukewarm, but it doesn’t help to yell “lukewarm.”

If you yell at someone long enough, it somehow feels like you will jolt them into purpose like a wind-up action figure and they’ll embrace the fiery Christian life of the Bible they never read.

We say a lot of hard things like, “If Jesus really is he who says he is, shouldn’t we be completely sold out for Jesus? Are you in or out? Are you committed or not?” Then a long pause, which always means, “This is the convicting phrase you have to tweet.”

Christians: The goal of our faith-journey is NOT to avoid being lukewarm. That’s just standing on anti-ground.

Often I end up feeling like I’m clawing for the threshold of some invisible spiritual success and that God is a parole officer and I’m bleeding towards victory, lest a terrible fate awaits me in the darkness of failure.

But these kinds of lists and proclamations — “Ten Signs You’re Missing It, How To Know You’re A Spiritual Infant, The Quick Sure Road To Hell” — seem an awful lot like pointing at all my flabby places hoping I’ll go to the gym.

I already know what’s wrong with my gym-life and my emotional-life and my spiritual-life, and knowing this doesn’t really motivate me. Does it work for you?

Continue reading “Yelling “Lukewarm” Doesn’t Help Anyone — Especially The Lukewarm” →

Quote: Imagine Jesus


I imagine Jesus going to the blind, beggars, lepers, sick, demon-possessed, and little children: and I bet he fit right in. Maybe no one could tell it was Jesus from afar, because they expected someone cleaner. I wonder if Jesus bent down on one knee to the girl with the cleft lip, touched her face, and called her beautiful. I wonder if he prayed for her right on the spot, hugged her, pulled back her hair and told her to smile. I wish I could’ve seen her light up, throw off all insecurity, and do something worthy with her life. That’s what Jesus is about. I want to be about that too.


— originally posted here on my Tumblr