Stuff Christians Like...

So anyone who follows me on facebook knows that I am a fan of Jon Acuff’s blog “Stuff Christians Like”. I tend to “share” quite a few of his posts per month and “like” a few others here and there. But what you might not know is that I discovered his blog through buying his book by the same title. Much like the webpage, “Stuff Christians Like” the book is a collection of short essays written in a such witty and often sarcastic way that you can’t help but find yourself laughing at his very true statements on how we Christians act! What’s great about this book too is that you can split up the reading quite easily…maybe reading only a few essays per day. In fact that’s what I did. I actually started reading this book back in January and have slowly been reading a few essays here and there during my lunch breaks at work. Yesterday I finally finished and I gotta say if it weren’t for the fact that his essays continue on the blog, I would have been sad the book was over!


There are plenty of hilarious things he points out in this books. Things like the fact that Christians tend to use the word “just” for commas while praying (for example “Lord we just pray that you would just hear our prayers tonight”), or how also when praying we tend to say the name of God over and over again as if God might have forgotten who we were talking to (Example, “Lord Jesus, we just pray father God, that Lord you would…”). He talks about we “feel slightly disappointed when someone accepts our fake offer of generosity” and how we tend to tell “testimonies that are exciting right up to the moment you became a Christian”. And then finishes up with more serious topics like “confessing sin” and how “trying harder” doesn’t get you into heaven.

I highly recommend this book (and Jon Acuff’s blog http://www.jonacuff.com/stuffchristianslike/) to anyone!

And So it begins....Lent 2011...

  So it seems my calculations were a bit off as to when “Lent” actually begins.  I don’t know why but I always assumed that it “officially” started the day after Ash Wednesday…not on Ash Wednesday….and it appears I was wrong…oops!  Anyway one thing I’ve been thinking about since we did the 30 hour famine a few weekends ago, is that “sacrifice without meditation is just starvation”…basically the idea that we can “give things up” for God or a cause, but if we are not also using that time to seek God/that cause, all we are really doing is depriving ourselves. With that in mind I decided that this Lenten season I not only  am going to fast from something (this year it’s soda), but that I am also going to be more intentional about seeking God.

  It’s no secret….okay so maybe it is….that lately I’ve been struggling a lot with what I believe.  Not that I don’t believe in God (cause I do), but I am just not sure that all the things we say about him and how we are to follow him are  so “right and wrong” or “black and white”.  I think it’s a combination of things that have brought me to this place.  Hearing people debate to the death that God is for America/Republicans/conservatives/etc  and thus must be against other nations/Democrats/liberal/etc (as if the bible doesn’t say god so loved the “world”)….struggling with forgiveness and love towards certain family members (all the while being told that it’s a “sin” not to forgive and that if I don’t do it I can’t be forgiven by God thus making any attempt to know God futile)…traveling into the city each week to tutor and then feeling horrible for getting in my car and driving back to the comforts of the suburbs all the while leaving behind kids who are stuck in their situation because of someone elses choice….talking about community and wondering how it comes about and what it even looks like in this day and age, while at the same time struggling to trust people….feeling like I can’t raise these questions or ideas without people debating me into  believing what they believe or thinking that I am less of a Christan (or worse not a Christian at all) for struggling with these thoughts.....or even reading books by people who have the same questions/thoughts/ideas and feeling like maybe it's okay to explore them.

  So what I’ve decided to do is spend the next 40 days…or is it 46/45 days…truly meditating on these things and figuring out…or at least beginning to figure out (because let’s be honest this is more like a lifelong project)… what exactly it is I believe and why I believe it.  Honestly some parts of this journey are personal…so much so that I have decided not to share it all on here…however there’s a large chuck that I am sure I will be sharing so I invite you to come along with me on this journey…and spend lent not just “starving” but truly growing!

Evolving in Monkeytown: How a girl who knew all the answers learned to ask the questions...

 I decided to change the name of my blog today…mostly because I realize that although I’m still working on the whole weight loss/being healthy thing….this journey I am on is about so much more….and well lately I’ve been writing more about that “more” than about weight loss…so a change seemed only appropriate.   

  With that being said….it’s time to share about my latest read.  Today I finished the book “Evolving in Monkeytown” by Rachel Held Evans (check out her blog at http://rachelheldevans.com/blog).  In the book she shares her own journey of faith….or rather how she moved from a religious certainty, through doubt, to faith.  Here’ a girl who grew up in a conservative Christian family, in the middle of the Dayton Tennessee (home of the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial featuring science (evolution) vs. religion (Christianity)), with a father who taught at a Christian college.  She basically grew up in church….ingrained at a young age with the Christian doctrine and prepared to defend it at all costs….and it wasn’t until she was a junior in college (a christian college at that) when she started having serious doubts about what she believed and why.  She shares stories about her life, her friends, her religious experiences…all of which have had an impact on her questions, her doubts, her fears.  But it's her openness and authenticity that makes this such an easy read, while at the same time providing the reader with the freedom to be real with their own thoughts, questions, and doubts that her stories evokes.

  What I love about this book though (in comparison to the last book I read which also happened to be about faith and doubt) is how she differentiates between doubting God and doubting our understanding of who God is.  She shares…”doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubting God and doubting what we believe about God.  The former has the potential to destroy faith; the later has the power to enrich and refine it”.  Never once in this book does she seem to give up all faith…rather her journey is more about moving beyond the right and wrong, black and white religion to a real relationship with a God who she will never be able to fully figure out.  I love that!

   I don’t have all the answers when it comes to my faith.  I’ve spent most of my life living under a religion of rules …trying to earn God’s love by saying and doing all the right things.  Then about a year ago I attended church and experienced God in a way I never had before.  I felt love for the first time that wasn’t based on what I did.  I’ve never been able to put that experience into words that really give it justice…but that one service changed my life….in that service I met God.  Since then I’ve been trying to live out my faith in as much honest as possible…but it’s hard.  Most days I feel like I am toeing the line between wanting to be real with God and wanting to save face as a “Christian”, books like this rekindle that part of me that’s willing to risk it all to truly know God…and give me comfort that I don’t have to have it all figured out  cause I know the one who does!

O Me of Little Faith..True Confessions of a Spiritual Weakling...

  There are a lot of things that you can do in 24 hours…sleep, attend church, run errands, sit at a coffee shop,  visit family, go out to dinner…oh yeah and read a book!  Don’t believe me?  Well that’s exactly what I’ve done in the past 24 hours!  Last night I started the book “O me of little faith” by Jason Boyett and this afternoon I finished it (after church and errands, while sitting at a coffee shop, and before visiting and dinner...hee hee).  Basically it was a really easy read…but brought me a mixture of comfort and conflict all at the same time.

  The book is about doubt…but not just any doubt….doubt in our faith.  Right from the beginning the author acknowledges that he’s not a pastor, theologian, or even a bible scholar….just a man trying to walk out his faith to the best of his ability in the midst of his doubts.  I think that’s important fact to remember when reading this book as at times I found myself having internal debates with the author in my mind over his current belief system.  None the less I love the fact that he writes about the very thing I think so many of us struggle with but nobody talks about.  I tend to be more of a pessimist than an optimist.  I tend to be more skeptical then open minded.  I tend to fear the worst than expect the best.  At times that makes me feel like the worst Christian in the world.  That’s why I think I enjoyed this book so much…why it was so relatable for me…so easy for me to read.  Hearing his story and struggle makes me feel not so alone. Add in fact throughout the book he doesn’t just talk about himself, but also connects his struggle with a story in the bible about Moses, David, Elijah, John, Peter, etc….and I start to feel like I’m not in such bad company. 

  However no matter how much he addresses his doubts, the author also weaves in the fact that although we have doubts it does not mean we have no faith.   In fact one of my favorite chapters in this book was “Faith with a King Fu Grip” during which he talks about putting action behind your faith even in the midst of doubt.  He compares it to when Thomas doubts Jesus resurrection and so Jesus appears to him and say “Touch and Feel” and when in the Old Testament Moses doubts the people will listen to him and God instructions him to throw his staff on the ground and it becomes a snake…The point being, faith and doubt aren’t two extremes on either end of the spectrum, but rather two sides of the same coin.  In fact it’s often times our doubts that lead us into deeper faith…which I can attest to considering it’s my constant need to ask “why?” that has brought me thus far in my relationship to God.

  Ultimately I enjoyed the book…but I’m not sure that it’s for everyone (something the author also acknowledges right from the beginning).  But if you’re like me and sometimes your faith isn’t has strong as you wish it were….maybe you too can find some comfort in the midst of these pages. 

The Cross and the Switchblade....

  I love to read, but as I have mentioned before, I am pretty picky about what things I pick up.  Not only do I stay away from fiction, romance, and the other genres, but I also tend to bypass those “hot sellers” that “everyone” is reading (mind you I have read some, but they are not usually my top choice).  So when I found myself browsing the shelves at work last week to pick up a new book to read, imagine my surprise when I was constantly being drawn back to David Wilkerson’s book “The Cross and the Switchblade”.  This is a Christian classic….one of those books that everyone has either read or heard about…and if they haven’t read or heard about the book then they at least know about Teen Challenge (which is the ministry that David Wilkerson started and what they book is about).  Yet of all the millions of choices out there, this is the book I walked away with….and amazingly, once again, it’s a book I couldn’t have read at a better time.

  I’m not going to go into detail about the book, because as I’ve mentioned most people have read it or heard about it, but I will say the one thing that really stood out to me in every chapter of this book is how God can truly change people.  If I were honest, there are times when I wonder if people can ever really change…or if even if they do change for a bit, if those changes can last forever.  I look at my own life and lives of people I love and I see example after example of “momentary” changes, but to believe in lasting change is hard for me.  Then I think about Paul’s life and how God changed him instantly on the road to Damascus…and I think about how different the disciples became after Jesus called them (and even more so after the day of Pentecost)…and I know it’s possible….but I wonder what about today…in this century….in my life and lives of those I love…where is this kind of change now?

  These are just some of the thoughts going through my head this week as I began reading this book. Yet as I read about how God called David out of his comfortable life to NYC, how He “saved” Nicky Cruz, and even how these former drug addicts and gang members were delivered….my faith lifted a bit.  You can’t deny the power of God when you see it…or even when you read about it.  God can do the impossible…even the improbable….even when we don’t expect it or believe it (I love the honestly David has in this book when he shares his doubts about certain people “really” changing…and how God amazes even him by doing just that in their lives)!  I think it’s easy sometimes to look around the world we live and wonder where God is….wonder if he’s even moving…but then I read stories like this and I am reminded that God is constantly at work and he’s in the business of changing lives!  And its funny how a little reminder like that helps you to start seeing the “changes” God’s making all around you!  I needed to read a book like this, in this moment, to remind me to keep the faith….to open my eyes….to keep hope alive!  So maybe there’s a reason why a classic is called a “classic”!

Under the overpass: A journey of faith on the streets of america...

Lately I have been feeling a little disconnected with life.  Not that I don’t enjoy my life…but it’s just…at times I feel like… there’s got to be more.  Then I read books like the one I finished yesturday morning by mike Yankoski called “Under the Overpass” and I start wondering…is this really the life I was created to live?!?!  To work to spend my days selling books?!?!  What else might God be calling me to?!?!

  “Under the Overpass” is about two young college students who turn in their life of comfort for 5 months to live on the streets of five different cities across America.  All they take with them are two guitars (to help with panhandling), two $3 dollar sleeping bags, and a backpack each to carry their bibles, journals and an extra pair of clothes.  Though their journey is about their experience living on the street and finding out if their faith truly is what they say it is…I found this book to be filled with many challenges for the “average Christian” sitting at home.

  For one…time and time again in this book there are stories of people walking up to these two “homeless” men and saying they will pray for them but not providing for their obvious needs (like food or shelter).  There’s a story about these church folks sitting at a restaurant talking about the bible but very obviously avoiding the smelly, hungry “homeless” guys sitting just on the other side of the room.  And then there is another story about our two "homeless" friends being kicked off church property by the minister of homeless outreach because there was “important people coming” to the church that day! Stories like this make me angry…they make me wonder what’s wrong with people…and they also convict me, because although I would like to think that put in the same position I would reach out…I can’t always say I would.

  Now don’t get me wrong…there are also some really great stories in this book of Christians stepping up to the plate and offering a meal, companionship, and really going above and beyond to acknowledge both the men and their needs (I’m thinking in particular of one church who not only accepted them into their service but bought them groceries and donated enough money to get them to their next destination)!  And although these stories are much fewer, they also challenge me too.  In fact, they make me want to “be the kind of Christian I say I am”!

  What I liked most about this book though is how it challenged me to truly surrender my life to God.  To not just say I follow Christ but to truly allow that to infiltrate every part of my being.  God’s given me lots of “crazy” ideas over the years.  Ideas that other people have shot down or look down upon as too far out of the box…and because of that I’ve closed the doors on those ideas too.  This book reminded me to trust in God and not the opinion or others…to trust in his ways even when they aren’t the ways of the world…and to recognize that he truly is my “All in All”.  If anything, after reading “Under the Overpass”, I feel the call to trust God more completely and to follow him…..even into the depths!