The Golden Standard

A lot of times, I used to feel I wasn't good enough. I felt this way primarily because I'm still single and always have been. I don't mean single as in that I've never been married, but single as in I've never even gone on a second date. Essentially, I feel that if I were better in some way, I could get a woman to actually be interested in me. I feel I'm missing some quality that everyone else has or that I have some negative attribute that I'm not aware of that no one else seems to have. It may sound ridiculous and, in my head, it is, which is also why I'm very frustrated with the situation.

I've always kept myself to a very high standard. No report card was good enough if it had an A-, no performance at a game was good enough unless I made no mistakes, and no test was good enough if I missed a question. Did I say very high? I meant impossible. Now that I'm no longer in school, I don't feel the pressure of a high GPA and now that I don't play competitive sports, I don't feel the pressure of having to be a good player (which I never really was). What I do feel pressure to be is everything a woman wants.

There are two problems with this. The first is that I can't be everything a woman wants because women look for different things in a guy. Almost every woman likes a sense of humor, but what they find funny is incredibly different. Some women like exciting men of action, even if rash, and some like men who have a calming influence. Some want a tough guy who doesn't show emotions much and some want a man who will be open with his feelings. Then there are all the different interests. Some women like gardening, others like cars, sports, cooking, hiking, animals, art, knitting, and almost anything else you can think of. I'm not interested in all those things. To set myself up as someone who will be everything to a woman places an impossible burden on myself and, far more dangerously, makes me more important than I should be, in both my own eyes and, should I come even remotely close to succeeding, in the eyes of the woman I end up with as well.

I should not be my wife's source of happiness. I intend to do all I can to lead her to the best of my ability and to make her as happy as I can, but even at my best, I fall far short of Christ. It's going to take God's strength and wisdom for me to lead her as I should, for that leadership will be putting her needs and our children's needs above my own, not once, but consistently, time after time after time. Even then, the greatest good I can do for them is to lead them to the Father and have them see Him as the source of all good things and depend on Him. As happy as I can make her, I can't heal all the brokenness in her heart or fill all her needs for love. I can't even love her unconditionally, for I would always need her love in return.

It is a stunning blow to my pride that I am, of myself, able to accomplish only failure, however well-intentioned I may be. And yet it is wonderfully calming to know that I won't have to face the challenges of marriage by myself.

The second problem is that I have become guilty of the thing I had wanted my wife to be guilty of: seeking her happiness in a relationship rather than with God. I want to experience the rapturous joy of being in love with a woman more than I've wanted to draw closer to God. There are times I've wanted a certain friendship or even my reputation of being someone who is trusted and considered wise more than I want God. It's no wonder I'm frustrated; I'm seeking gold where there is only tin. It may be shiny, but it is worthless compared to God. Moreover, I have been killing myself to get this tin when the gold is being freely offered.

How, then, do I begin to desire the gold? Simply saying that I need to put God first is much like telling a homeless man he should live in a house. It's true, of course, but not helpful because you haven't told him how to get a house.

It's long been axiomatic that a man and woman can't be best friends without romantic interest popping up in at least one of them. The closer they become, the more likely it is to happen. I can't imagine that God would design us to be like that with each other and not have it work the same with Him. When I spend time in the Bible, pray, and sing praises, I want God more.

But this goes beyond simply making God my best friend as well as my King. It goes to seeing others and myself as He sees us. I have tried to make myself perfect and think it is good that I continue to make myself better, working on my weaknesses and enhancing my strengths and developing new competencies, but I am, at my core, flawed. I am weak, selfish, prideful, judgmental, and feel I need others' approval. And all of us are like that. We have all sought each other or our own desires above God. We are all equal in that and have no right to reject each other. But God knows we are flawed and He loves us anyway. We don't have to earn His approval, we CAN'T earn His approval.

I know in my head how silly it is to desire the approval of others more than God's. This is a heart issue. When I seek others' approval, especially so strongly, I'm really revealing that I'm valuing them more than God.

It's not something that I expect to snap out of instantly and I might struggle with it all my life, but the approval that I've been working so hard for and worried so much about being denied has been waiting for me all this time from the Father. He has seen my flaws and declared me perfect, He has seen my heart and declared me pure, He has looked into my mind and declared me worthy - all because of what Jesus has done for me. No friend, no wife, no child, and not even I can know myself like He knows me and none of them can love me like He does and (this next one is perhaps the most pertinent) none of them can love without asking for anything or any standard in return.

Goodbye, Regret!

For a long time, I really disliked my life. My parents separated when I was seven or eight, finally got divorced when I was fourteen, and we were often neglected on visitation with our father. He fought hard with our mother over child support, alimony, and a settlement, and she gave in time and again in an effort to gain us more rights on visitation, which he then consistently ignored. The end result is that we were poor, deeply in debt, and the stress the divorce put our mother through has led to a string of medical conditions, severe enough that she is disabled from working. Our financial situation meant I couldn't go to the college of my choice and had to settle for a different one.

It was there that I met a friend who got me the job out here that has allowed me to get my mother nearly debt-free, support her when she became disabled, and pursue my dream of writing. I could not understand as I was going through all of this what God's purpose for it was. Now that I am here, I can see that His purpose, at least in part, seems to have been to bring me to this point.

It is not easy to stop wondering what would have happened if only... Maybe I'd be a multi-millionaire by now, maybe I'd be married and have two kids, maybe I'd have fallen into sin and messed up my life pretty badly. I might have even been killed in a car crash or something. The point is that I wouldn't be here and that here is where I am supposed to be. As I slowly realize this in my heart and not merely my head, my frustrations with how my life has gone have started to melt away, taking with them the anger I've harbored over the years.

As usual, my point is not simply to relay what is happening in my life. It's to encourage everyone who has had situations that have happened to them that they don't understand to realize that God has a plan. It may be leading to something years into the future that you couldn't possibly guess at, but there is a plan, and it is good. Realizing this won't end all the pain you might be going through and it might not be enough to even make you smile, but a true realization of this can bring peace to your hearts.

And so I am bidding goodbye to all those regrets, slowly but surely, that have come from things that have happened to me, rather than that have been done by me. For the latter, I continue to regret some of the things I've done, not so much for the consequences as for that I was weak and stupid at the time I did them. I have realized, of course, that I can't take them back and have only a limited ability to rectify them, and so it is only sensible to attempt to learn what lesson there is to be found in making them. I don't believe in most cases that the lesson has been worth making the mistake, particularly when talking about sin, which in my case is usually saying things in anger I shouldn't, because it would have been better to have been strong enough to have not committed the sin than to have committed it and learned a lesson.

But I believe also that there is a difference between wishing you hadn't done something and not forgiving yourself for it. It is good to wish I had not done wrong; if I were to give that up, it would be in my mind a validation of wrongdoing. It is good to forgive myself, too, because I have already been forgiven by the One whose opinion actually matters.

And by knowing that nothing I have done has taken me out of God's will for my life and that all that has happened to me from the outside has brought me where I am meant to be, I can rest knowing that my God is greater than my stupidity (which can be pretty awesome at times), greater than my selfishness (which can be even more awesome), greater than all that life has thrown my way, and greater than anything I will ever endure.

There may be things in our lives right now that are happening to us as the result of our bad decisions. There may be tragedies and trials we don't deserve. We are outside the perfect will of God because we have all fallen short. But we are also all within His permissible will; nothing that has ever happened to you has befallen you without God allowing it. I used to be furious with God for that, because He allowed bad things to happen. Now, that same thought brings peace, because I know that if God allowed it, He will give me strength to endure it and bring me toward a better future with Him.

The Little Things in Life

I struggle with depression. I have since I was about 16. It comes and goes and can last anywhere from two days to three weeks. I've never had someone able to snap me out of it before, despite people's best efforts at talking to me, sometimes for over an hour and trying their hardest to sympathize. It has always been simply a matter of time before I start coming out of it.

That's changed recently. I have a close friend who has found half of the secret to getting me out of these bouts (the other half being burying myself in the Bible and prayer): simply doing something nice and unexpected for me. The first time was toward the end of March. She and another friend just got some toys and candy at the dollar store and left them by my car with a card that had an encouraging Bible passage hand-written in it. The second time was just last night, when I had gone on a long walk only to find the road that I thought would have a sidewalk for miles became a small one-lane-each-way-with-no-shoulder-in-the-middle-of-a-forest road. I called her to ask if she'd look up another way for me to return home and, once she found where I was, she insisted on coming to pick me up.

Two small gestures, nothing earth-shattering about either one, nothing expensive or over-the-top - but they made a world of difference to me. This morning, I had the opportunity to do something small for her to thank her and it seemed to make her day. I've seen a few postings on facebook from guys who tell everyone what kind of meal their wives made them and then each claim that they have the best wife on the planet.

The point in all this is not to relate a couple anecdotes; it is to serve as a reminder that grand sweeping gestures are not the only way to have a dramatic effect on someone. It is the small things in life, particularly the unexpected blessings, that really matter to people.

As I think about this, there seem to be two keys that separate the moments that warm my heart from the moments that simply make me say, "Thank you." The first is that the special moments are unexpected. When you get a birthday present from someone really close to you, it's always nice and appreciated, but not entirely unexpected. You know that person was thinking about you for that specific reason and, while you like that they thought of you, it was an expected time to do so. When my friend thought of me, it was totally out of the blue and made me realize someone cared about me on days other than my birthday and Christmas.

The second key is that these moments are tailored to the other person. Sometimes, this means going out of your way to get them a little something they want, something they have mentioned they like, or something you think they'd like based on what you know of them. If the person you want to bless is a science nerd, get them some small science toy. If they like sports, a little Nerf football works. If they have a certain need, going above and beyond what they ask to meet it works wonders. Or it could be as simple as a compliment directed very specifically at them, naming something they've done and extolling it and offering some encouragement.

I believe that God can heal our hearts without using other people. He's God, He can do as He pleases. But I do think that He most often wants to use us to help each other, to reach out and love one another as He has loved us. While we were not even aware that we needed Him, He was dying for us. In our deepest need, He went above and beyond anything we could ever have deserved. He tailors His response to our prayers to our individual hearts and He knows our hearts better than we do.

I would encourage you all to find someone today who needs to have their mood brightened, and do something to brighten it. If everyone around you seems content, try to make one of their days. It is not the little moments that keep us going between the big moments; it is the little moments that can make the biggest differences.

The Necessity of Justice

Most people, Christian and non-Christian alike, are at least passingly familiar with the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal...it's a list of do's and don'ts that most people have broken at least a few of in their lives. You may not have murdered or committed adultery, but have you shoplifted? Have you coveted what someone else has? Have you ever told a lie?

There are a number of other laws in the Old Testament, regarding everything from what to eat and what to wear to using fair measurements in trade to how to purify yourself to go into the temple. Many people think of these rules as onerous tasks that must be observed in order to get to Heaven. There is a measure of truth to that, and that measure is that we could get to Heaven if we followed every last rule all of the time without fail.

Here's the problem, though. We can't. We have already failed. We will continue to fail. Most of us, myself included, have failed today.

In the Old Testament, a priest could go into the Holy of Holies only at a certain time, and he had to be purified in a certain way, too. If he failed in this preparation or went in at the wrong time or with the wrong heart, he was killed instantly because the holiness of God will not allow anything unholy in His presence. The other priests had to tie a rope around one of this priest's legs and the priest had to move constantly to jingle little bells and let those outside the Holy of Holies know he was still alive. The point is that one mistake, just one, was a death sentence.

Where, then, does that leave us? Right where God wants us, fully dependent on Him.

When Jesus died for us and offered us His blood as atonement for our sins, He was NOT removing the law or invalidating it. He was fulfilling the death sentence on us all that the law demanded. In modern legal terminology, this would be called "double jeopardy." You can't be tried twice for the same crime. If your sentence has already been carried out, it cannot be carried out again. Jesus offered himself to take your punishment. You can accept it and be freed from your sentence, or you can accept your sentence.

Why is justice so important in this? Why couldn't God have just wiped out the law? Why did Jesus have to offer himself up for us?

God is holy and pure. He is so powerful that to come into His presence requires that we be pure. In the early days of the space program, they were worried about diseases that might be contracted out in space and so the astronauts were quarantined upon their return to earth. They had to be pure in terms of harmful diseases before they could rejoin the world. We can't taint God with our sin, but He does demand that we be spotless before we can join Him.

Thus, there are two ways into His presence. The first is through obeying all the law, choosing Him 100% of the time in all things in our life. But if we did that, we'd have no need for God. We would be self-sufficient. There would be no need to have a relationship with Him, but the problem is that the relationship is the greatest thing He offers us.

The other way is through accepting what Christ did for us. It opens the door to a relationship with God and makes us fully dependent on Him, like a child is dependent on his or her parents.

Without justice, there would be no need for either Christ or for a relationship with God. If there are no laws, or if there are laws but no punishment for breaking them, then there is anarchy. There is no safety or security for anyone, no way to have any sort of society. If you could do whatever you wanted with impunity, you would not need God because you would get to heaven anyway, but you would miss out on the best part of life. Because a relationship with God is the greatest thing we can have, and because God is holy, His justice bids us to draw closer to Him. It is for our benefit that there is justice, not for our harm.

Justice and mercy are then two sides of the same coin: opposite in one respect, but strikingly similar in another. Yes, God's laws carry punishment with them for violating them, but that punishment has been carried out on Jesus if we just accept it. It is God's justice that makes it necessary to have a relationship with Him, and it is His mercy that allows us to.

Mirrored Questions

I had a hope disappointed this weekend. It was something I thought it reasonably likely I would get, and most signs were positive. Because I had wanted it, in one form or another, for a long time, having such a promising opportunity fall through hurt, all the more so because it was unexpected.

For a brief while that day, I began questioning God. I started doubting His love for me and wondering why He created me only to give me pain. I have grown much in my trust in Him, but this trust was also called into question. God felt so far from me.

Then this morning, I had a revelation. When we begin questioning God, we should really be calling ourselves into question. When we question God's love for us, we are saying, "If you loved me, you would give me what I want." In reality, what we mean is, "I will only love you if you give me what I want." That's not love at all. When I questioned whether He loved me, what I meant was that I didn't value Him or the love He had shown me as much as what I was after. I wanted Him to earn my love when He had already earned more than I could ever fathom repaying and was worthy of my praise simply for who He is.

When we question whether God wants what is best for us, what we really mean is that our selfish desires mean more to us than His will. I have begun to trust God in the last six months more than I have since I was a little boy. I have begun to see His plan for my life and have looked back in awe at how my life seems to have been orchestrated to bring me to exactly where I am now. And yet, with one disappointment, all of this trust was called into question. Why? Because His will for my life was taking a backseat to my desire for this. Doing His will is to be my purpose on this planet, not getting what I want. What I wanted was not a bad thing, but when considered more important than God's will, it becomes an idol. I was telling God that I would trust Him with my life, but not when it comes to this one thing, that in this one thing I know better than He does what is best for me.

In Job 38-41, God rebukes Job for having questioned Him. He reminds Job of His infinite power, of His mighty works, of His great wisdom, and that He is eternal. In other words, He reminds Job of who He is: God, infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, and holy. He has the power to do what He pleases in our lives, and yet gives us free choice that we might choose to love Him. Part of this love, as with any relationship, involves trust. If God is infinitely powerful, wise, and loving, what sense does it make for me to question that His will for my life is better than my will?

When we wonder where He is, we should wonder where we have gone. Imagine that you are going to New York City. If you look at a map and find that you are further from there than you were an hour ago, do you question where the city moved to? No, you wonder how you got so lost and then you figure out how to turn around and head back. You know that the city hasn't moved.

Why, then, do we keep imagining that God has moved further from us? He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is the one who will never leave us or forsake us. If we are far from Him, we are the ones who have moved.

I am still human and the pain of disappointment is still in me, as is the desire I yet have. By God's strength and grace, however, I will cease to question His goodness in denying me what I want, trust in His will for my life in all things, and turn back to Him. My questions may not have revealed when or if I ever have this desire granted, but they have revealed to me part of my heart, and may I always remember that I should be questioning myself when I am questioning God.