FROM LEE IN TENNESSEE: Q&A... On Watching Someone Walk Away From The Lord

leeyounger:

entrahelife asked:

Hey Lee! I was looking for some advice about one of my students.  One of the girls I work with has become like a sister to me. This girl a freaking rockstar. This girl gets it. But recently she’s been goin through a tough season. She’s gotten pretty jaded and a bit of a rebellious attitude towards anything church related. I love this girl with everything in me and I see where God wants to take her and how she’s drifting away from that. I know I can’t give her more help than she’s willing to take and generally don’t offer advice without being asked but I’m a little worried about her. She’s going to public school next year for the first time and her older sister went down the same path and never found her way back. I love her like crazy and just want to be as helpful as I can. (edited for length)

..

So I Said:

Hey Sidney. Welcome to my life - and welcome to ministry. It sucks watching people fall away from the Lord, especially when you really love them and really feel that connection to them. It’s heartbreaking to watch them drink from the shallow well when the Living Water is right there for the taking.

You’re so right about so many things you said - this is a very normal season for a person to go through and no, you can’t make her choose the right path. It may be that your friend hasn’t been prepared to walk in the world, but has been sheltered from it. Sometimes parents and church people lay down rules, limitations and punishments on young folks so that they don’t go too far out there, and they’re hoping that these measures will keep them walking with the Lord, but Jesus doesn’t want something manufactured like that. Jesus wants real, loving relationships, not fake and forced play dates. Not only that, but our hearts don’t want false relationships either. We want the real thing. That’s why so many good little church kids go bananas the first time they get invited to a party - turns out they never really knew Jesus. Also, very soon, these kids are going to be grown people who can do whatever in the world they want to, no matter what anyone says, so regulations are a bad idea all around. 

If this girl is going to walk away from the Lord, you need to let her do it. I know that sounds awful and it goes against your instincts, but it’s true. Not only do you need to let her do it, but you need to let her know that you’re not stressed about that or down on her about it. If she’s headed out, you can’t stop her, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything. Buckle up, because I’m about to tell you the super-secret, ultra classified ministry special sauce…

It’s time for you to plant a ministry time bomb. What I mean is, before you watch this kid go hog wild with the Lord, take her out for dinner, buy her food, laugh about stuff and then, when the door is open, plant the bomb. Look into this girl’s eyes and tell her, “I love you. I love you so much it’s ridiculous. Nothing in this world will ever change the way I feel about you. No matter what you do or who you become, I will always love you deeply from the heart. I know you’re walking away from Jesus right now, and I want you to know that if you ever need me, you have my number. If you need me to come pick you up at a shelter in Tuscon and bring you home, I will. If you ever need someone to talk to, I’m here. I am not judging you, and I will always feel honored to play whatever role in your life I can.”

Tick, tick, tick… the bomb is planted. Now, who knows when it’ll go off? It may be in three weeks and it may be in ten years, but if you keep loving that girl and showing that non-judgmental and sincere affection, it will go off one day, and guess who she’s going to call? You. The reason that bomb will go off is that nothing in this world actually satisfies but Jesus. Whatever she tries won’t work and if she’s honest, she’s going to want what you have. That leads me to the last part of the ministry time bomb, which is that you need to just keep loving Jesus with all you’ve got. Live a life that other people want to have. Love Him and let it show. If your friend is honest, she’s going to want what you have way more than anything this world has to offer. 

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ASK ME A QUESTION

No one ever taught me what to do in this situation … the time bomb =P

J.S. Park: Question: Disagreeing With Your Accountability Partner

jspark3000 (check it out on his blog here!):

Anonymous asked:

How do you be an accountability partner to your brothers and sisters without pushing your own personal convictions on others? I’ve recently had this problem with friends pushing their convictions on me when I feel no conviction at all. I know they mean the best, but it’s getting to the points where I’m angry and upset at them and that’s where I’m feeling conviction because then I talk ill of them and I don’t want my bitterness to grow. How does someone handle a situation like this?

This is an excellent question, so let’s define what an accountability partner CAN do and can NOT do.

An accountability partner CAN —

1) Count on each other to say the hard thing, graciously.

2) Ask each other questions about how it’s been going.

3) Share without shame.

An accountability partner can NOT —

1) Judge your motives; they can only ask, and then trust.

2) Allow sin to be the focus, or the friendship will become an interrogation.

3) Coerce or guilt-trip into change, or it will only be temporary and filled with resentment.

While I’m probably missing some things, in your case they might be trying to coerce you.  So ask your friends what their motives are.  Whether their motives are actually good or bad, just tell them your feelings about their methods.  Unless you’re doing black tar heroin or punching children, let them know you appreciate their convictions, but guilt-trips/manipulation/conformity will not work.  They need to know that your walk with the Lord is your walk with the Lord, and you need encouragement, not pushiness.

A word on accountability: The big danger I’ve found with “accountability partners” is that they can become sin-inspectors and start looking for flaws at every chance, which end up filtering every action with a negative magnifying glass.  This ruins the friendship forever.  I would know because I lost friendships this way.

The thing is, accountability needs to happen with an established friendship that already began with trust. In other words, you can’t point at a fellow Christian and say, “Keep me accountable!” — because accountability grows out of a friendship first. Otherwise, calling each other out will feel like a personal attack. 

And accountability always has to be secondary to friendship.  In other words, it can’t always be about getting together to point out sin.  Even counseling and mentoring and discipleship needs some “normal-fun-people-time” or you’ll go crazy.  If you’re only getting together for introspection, you’ll begin to dread being near the person.

Please don’t hear me saying that accountability is always comfortable.  At times your feelings will be hurt because no one likes the hard truth, but “wounds from a friend can be trusted” (Proverbs 27:6). 

Of course, you’ll want to be intentional in your friendship about these things.  Be prayerful and always be compassionate when you rebuke or receive rebuke.  The cornerstone of every strong friendship is the degree to which you can feel safe to tell the truth, both about yourself and about the other person.  I preached a sermon on that here.

I’ll leave you with a quote about accountability and why ultimately the Gospel needs to be the driving force here. 

The reason I hate the kind of group described above [for accountability] is that their focus is primarily (almost exclusively, in my experience) on our sin, and not on our Savior. Because of this, these groups breed self-righteousness, guilt, and the almost irresistible temptation to pretend — to be less than honest. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in accountability groups where there has been little to no attention given to the gospel whatsoever. There’s no reminder of what Christ has done for our sin — cleansing us from its guilt and power — and the resources that are already ours by virtue of our union with him. These groups produce a “do more, try harder” moralism that robs us of the joy and freedom Jesus paid dearly to secure for us. They start with the narcissistic presupposition that Christianity is all about cleaning up and getting better — it’s all about personal improvement. But that’s not Christianity!

— Tullian Tchividjian

This is what I feel but couldn’t express in words xD At one point I was doing this or very close to, but friendship is so much more than accountability, and also so much more with - that proverbs verse =3.

J.S. Park: Question: My Friend Hates "Religion" And I Can't Take It

jspark3000:

Anonymous asked:

I have a friend who strongly hates religion. While he doesn’t try to force Atheism down my throat, he does often go on a lengthy rant about all the evils religion (especially Christianity) has brought on to the world and holds Secular Humanism and Scientism on the pedestal. I am trying very hard to be kind to him and listen to him but sometimes I can’t help but personally get offended by some of his statements. I am not sure what to do because some of the stuff he says is personally affecting me.

Please, dear friend: whatever your friend says, do NOT take it personally.

I understand it feels like he’s talking smack about your mama, but any sort of pushback from you will only prove his point. 

I’ve said this story many times, but in my old housing complex there was an awesome black gentlemen who was a guard at the security gate.  He had to work with a raging atheist, who was also a pretty cool dude.  Both of them became my friends.  When I asked Terry, the Christian black gentleman, how he handled the atheist, he said some very simple words.

Oh man, he just don’t know.

That was it.  No detailed script, no three-point plan, no evangelism cube, no apologetics.  Just the simple reasoning: He doesn’t know any better, and that’s okay.

Because at one point in my life, I didn’t know any better. 

At one point in your life, you didn’t know any better.

We all hated a weak version of Christianity that some lame college professor could dismantle in a thirty second lecture in the impressionable mind of a seventeen year old freshman. 

I was an atheist who hated God, who hated Christians, who shrugged at Jesus.

We just didn’t know.

I hope you have patience for your friend, to remember what it was like the first time you walked nervously into church expecting to be judged, not knowing why these Christians were being so nice to you, thinking the preacher was scamming everyone with the offering plate, seeing some weird stuff on Sundays like “drinking the blood” and being “baptized with the Holy Spirit,” and hearing that murmuring during prayer time. 

Try to remember.

And your friend, to some degree, is right.  It’s okay to agree with him.  Christians should absolutely apologize for things that “Christians” have done, acknowledging that it’s not supposed to be that way.  It’s okay to say that his human idea of religion has caused a lot of chaos: because people are people, and we can pervert anything. 

“Religion” has definitely caused tons of evil and quite a few atrocities.  Never mind that atheism has caused massive genocides and that Christianity is responsible for countless good deeds and the advancement of human welfare: so long as we’re being one-sided, you can defer to your friend.

But a screwed up people in no way reflects on the perfect God.  It only reflects on how much we need Him.

I don’t think your friend’s problem is with Christianity.  The simple question here is, What’s the actual obstacle that’s keeping you from a belief in God? 

Some of that will be intellectual and academic and social and philosophical, but there’s an emotional component in there too.  There is a psychological element in our faith that stems from upbringing, background, history, past events, trauma, and our own biased preferences.  To deny that is to deny our humanness. 

See: no one convinced me into or out of atheism.  It felt easier, because I wanted the mindless sex and the rampant cynicism and the permission to be selfish.  My home was also messed up and my family wasn’t exactly nurturing.  So who wants to be under the authority of God?  Even if He’s supposedly good and gracious and loving?  If life is so cruel, why not do what the heck we want?

I’m not saying every atheist is like this, but come on: it’s pretty difficult to live an actual Christian life and way easier to give in to impulse.  Even if this isn’t spoken out loud, it still describes the subconscious childish entitlement of most non-Christians.  Atheism was appealing in that way, and made sense to the M.O. of my flesh.  Any real atheist, including a former atheist like myself, will be man enough to admit it. 

So whatever reasons your friend is giving, all those social implications and “secular humanism” and wonderful statistics, are not the primary reasons.  He knows it.  He became an overnight Google Expert and supported his feelings with some cobbled facts.  He has hardly begun to approach the real God, because it’s too threatening.  Trust me on that: I was terrified to think God could be real.

If you’re going to really struggle for your friend, you’ll need to love him.  Not to convert him or make him a project or change his mind, but to love him because you love him, regardless of his response.  It’s the only way. 

Sure, brush up on your apologetics.  Yes, be aware that religion has done some evil.  But don’t take it personally when he goes for a reaction; the only thing you should take personally is that your friend needs the love of Christ, and you’re the one person who can show it like crazy in spite of everything.

Nice insight .. since I’ve never really been athiest.

J.S. Park: Question: Christians Need To Be Extroverted?

jspark3000:

Anonymous asked:

Does being a Christian mean that I need to be an extroverted person? In other words, is God ashamed of me for being a “nerd”? I listened to a lot of Mark Driscoll’s sermons and it sounds like he’s trying to guilt people from being a “nerd.” Like some how it is a sin to love my books and prefer quiet times by myself rather than going out there and mingling with other people or enjoy watching sports. Your answer will help me bring much needed peace to my heart.

To answer your first question: absolutely not.

God wants you and that’s why He made you you and not someone else.

The modern church has long been inadvertently biased against introverts (which is topic of a recent Christian book) — but since most people in general are not extroverts, that’s shutting out a lot of people.

In my own church, where we do our best to cultivate every single person, the kinds of people on “out-front” teams and “behind-the-scenes” teams come from a full range of personalities.  An introvert can be a praise leader just as much as an extrovert can be the sound technician.  I have stage fright yet I’m a preacher.  It’s almost random, as if God can work through anybody for anything.

No one should ever guilt-trip you about how God has wired you, so throw that off and move forward.  God would never ever shame you about that, because that’s never who He is and He has lovingly handcrafted you for His Kingdom.

About Mark Driscoll: I totally love his preaching.  I don’t always agree with what he says and does, but I believe he is a decent man of God. 

Since I’ve heard a lot of his preaching, I think what he means is that we shouldn’t do too much of one thing at the expense of the other, because after all, he is talking to a very hipster culture of Seattle dudes who are not very driven.  It’s sort of like how Francis Chan talks to lukewarm Christians or Matt Chandler yells at Bible-belt religious people — they have a specific audience in mind.  It’s all in context.

Mark Driscoll has also said in an interview he sometimes takes a whole day off to read books from his iPad for 12 to 15 hours straight.  His teenage daughter writes book reviews on Driscoll’s website.  The Mars Hill praise team looks like a bunch of dudes that never see the sun.  And since most of his church is composed of Reformed Calvinists: most of them probably blog from their basement. 

All that to say, if you were to sit down with Pastor Mark face to face, then 1) he is also kind of a nerd, and 2) I highly doubt he would shame you as one human being to another.  I’m not totally defending Driscoll, but I want to throw him some grace here because I really do think he has a good heart about this.

What I’ve seen happen though is that many Christians are in the danger of intellectual growth while never talking to real living breathing people, which is why Apostle Paul said, “Knowledge puffs, but love builds up.”  We are always on the brainy side of this slippery slope.  No Christian has ever been in danger of loving TOO much. 

We like to stay isolated in our religious rabbit-holes and lock ourselves up with ivory-tower-theology that only amounts to theory.

I don’t mean that you have to be friends with everyone or you have to serve at the homeless ministry or that you must go to every church event: but the Christian life will necessarily entail that you step out of your comfort zone and collide with others. 

For introverts, usually they are more comfortable with other introverts, and that’s totally okay.  Remember: in general, more people are introverted.  So at the soup kitchen or the sports game, you might move towards the people who are awkwardly standing on the side unsure of what to do: and out of that awkwardness is born a different kind of momentum.  Find them, love them, and empower one another.

You’ll also be surprised how much God will stretch you in this area AND how great you’ll do.  You might constantly think, “This is not for me; I can’t do this; So many people; Someone else can do it —” but when you actually have faith and take the opportunity, you’ll not only unleash talent you never knew, but you’ll have a great time doing it.  Don’t be afraid to step out a bit.  God loves the nerds, too.

Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it — made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand. — C.S. Lewis

Unka Glen: Pushing isn't the same thing as leading

unkaglen:

Pushing isn’t the same thing as leading. Some people wrongly sense that ministry is about pushing people. So they pick subjects that seem to always be push-able.

“You should be more committed”, for example. It’s true, no matter how committed I am, I could be more committed, and if I could, then I suppose I should, so it would seem to always be the right thing to do, to push me towards more commitment. 

When you hear: you should be giving more, you should be serving more, you should be witnessing more, you should be reading more Bible, you should be praying more… you’re actually inviting someone to do what addicts call “shoulding yourself”.  They also occasionally call it “musterbation”. As in, you must do this, you must do that. Instead of celebrating your successes, you focus on the negative things you haven’t done yet.

It’s a recipe for failure.

Pushing people in this way isn’t ministry, it’s just stating the obvious. Of course I always could be better at everything, but by failing to recognize and address the things that keep me from moving forward, you fail to be of any real help to me.

Pushing in this way isn’t leadership. Leaders blaze the trail. They train and equip. They call us to our higher selves. Leaders show us what we can do. They show us what our strengths are. Leaders don’t obsess over the imperfections of others, they see imperfections as the rocks in the road that need to be cleared away so the wheels can move forward.

J.S. Park: Question: Lonely, Hopeless, Unwanted

jspark3000:

Anonymous asked:

I need help. I feel alone, helpless, hopeless, unwanted (and that’s what hurts the most I guess). I’m away at college and it’s my freshman year and everyone I love feels so far away? I thought that I’d be able to take this ‘fast’ from people, but it’s so hard. I hate myself for not being better able to adjust, for not making friends quickly, for not being happy. I feel like I don’t even know who I am anymore. God always seems so far away, even if I do pray and read the bible. Please please help.

Hey: I’m really sorry and I know how crippling it is to be lonely.  As much as you don’t want to hear it now, please hear me say that you’re totally loved and you’re very much not alone. 

Most of us who feel lonely and unwanted get tricked by our flesh into an imprisoning cycle: we think being unwanted means we “deserve” to be unwanted, or that loneliness somehow means we are bad people.  We think of it like a permanent virus, but that is NOT true. Those emotions are very real, but they’re more like a fog that you need to keep walking through to the other side where there’s sun.

Being a freshman anywhere (school, job, church, marriage) can be a weird limbo-ish place of growing pains, so please know that it will NOT always be like this.  There’s always an “initial phase” of frustration to new journeys that take a little time, and for some it takes longer than others.  Don’t ever feel bad about your own pacing: everyone blooms differently.  No more guilt about that, all right?  Be comfortable with your own rate of growth.

You’re also at an exciting juncture where tons of opportunities are waiting for you, and if you haven’t yet, please check out the local campus ministries and some younger churches near you.  There are always student ministries that are ready to embrace you, and while no church is perfect nor a final solution to every issue, it’ll be a start to grow into a new community. 

I know how scary this is.  Making friends at a certain age has unique challenges — it’s different at 18 and 30 and 50 years old — and I know how awkward it is, but please stick with it.  Don’t let fear control your life’s direction.

Find people and seek encouragement and be vulnerable to open your heart.  It’s okay to pray for new friends and a good church; it’s good to pray for serving opportunities where your God-given talents will come in handy.  Also look for a very solid same-sex mentor, who everyone should have.  Along the way you might experience some hurts here and there, like all friends do, but friendship is so often worth the risk. 

As far away as God feels, let Him know that.  Draw near to Him and tell Him, “I feel so far.”  Like I’ve said before: honesty is where healing begins.  There’s no one who can say they have not felt that way before, and it’s okay.  God understands.  We all go through seasons, so please don’t be hard on yourself during a tough one. 

When the time comes to open your mouth in prayer and say those first few words, let everything pour out.  God is not expecting some eloquent speech, as if our prayers need to meet a standard.  He just wants you, messy and real and true.  You’ll find His grace starts to restore you piece by piece, almost without you knowing it.  Take your time; He’s patient.  He’s not yelling at you to catch up: He meets you exactly where you are.  You’ll get through this.

Best thing that happened in Canberra:Came here, realised it was kinda holey, felt massively welcomed by Tehillah, then actually felt at home in Canberra o_O” I know right? More used to Melbourne or HK. Coolest thing was I prayed for real close Christian friends in around year 11, and was encouraged by my mentor to do so. Guess how God answered my prayer? =P God is awesomely great and loving!

FROM LEE IN TENNESSEE: Q&A... Handling Personal Criticism

leeyounger:

renzoaryenthe asked:

Hey bro! I’m a student leader in our university, an officer in the student council. Well, hearing criticisms have been my struggle. Whenever I hear negatives notions about me, I melt down. I know God is on the work in this area of my life but how would I really deal with this? There are times when I feel like I’m failing God in a sense that people should be seeing Jesus Christ in my life, acting out as a role model but I don’t know, I think what they see is not Him. It hurts me :( Thanks man! :)

..

So I Said:

Brother, thanks so much for your question. 

In order to answer you, I’m going to give you some really good news and some not-so-great news. Let’s start with the not-so-great news first: You are going to be dealing with criticism for the rest of your life, period. There will always be people who don’t like your ideas, don’t like your leadership style and don’t even like your face. The more often you find yourself in a leadership role, the more you will be subject to criticism. The more you’re up in front of people, the more people are going to tell you that you suck. I’m not kidding, this will be true for the rest of your life.

Okay, here’s the really awesome news: You never have to listen to it ever again. I hereby encourage you and give you permission to completely ignore other people’s stupid opinions and criticisms about you. 

The truth is, you are the one who decides which voices you listen to in your life. You are the one who has the ability and authority to sift through the things you hear and decide what you will listen to.

You answer to God. You don’t answer to those other students. In fact, Galatians 1:10 says that if you care what other people think of you or are trying to win their approval, you can’t actually be a servant of Christ. Here’s what that means for you: You only need one smile - the smile of God over your life. You only need God’s approval and if you have that, you can tell the rest of the dang folks to take their criticism somewhere else! So the real question then becomes, how do I know I have God’s smile over my life?

Glad you asked. First of all, if you have believed in Jesus, God loves you, period. That will never change or alter in any way unto eternity. God accepts you. God is delighted with you. You make His heart dance and filled with joy! Whenever you doubt the truth of that, go running to the Scriptures and tell the Lord, “I need you to love on me! Tell me you love me!” and He will do it!

The next thing is, have a couple of really good, close friends that you really trust. These friends should be folks with a strong walk with Jesus who know you well and know how to be loving and honest. Give those close friends permission to speak the truth into your life when you need to hear it and open your life up to them in honesty and authenticity. If they bring an issue up, be willing to look at it square in the face and pray for God to help you grow. When they encourage you, believe what they say and thank the Lord for the encouragement and the way it makes you feel. If you are getting your approval from God and you have a couple of strong, solid, loving people who speak into your life when you need it, you can completely disregard the voices of critical jokers who mudsling and misbehave simply to take you down. 

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ASK ME A QUESTION

Being arrogant and stubborn, but always welcoming constructive criticism (partly because I like free speech and open source =P), I sometimes struggle with it in my heart a lot. Having Christ-like people to show you how you could do better, encourage you along the way and have fellowship with is such a great blessing! =D

J.S. Park: Question: Forgiving Your Dang Parents

jspark3000:

Two questions from two Anons:

- How do you forgive a parent? I know it’s Gods command to honor them but my mom has hurt me so much, I went a college in another state just to heal. She wants me to come home for the summer but I don’t want to. :( i know I have I forgive but it’s hard.

- My dad cheated on my mom, and I have not kept a close relationship with him since. He claims to be the dad of his gf’s 9 yr. old daughter, though DNA tests support that he’s not. And now, his gf is keeping him from fixing his relationship with me. Every time I get the courage to forgive her for what she did, she does/says something to change my mind. I want to forgive her, but I can’t.

I know that forgiving parents can be a tricky thing because of the emotional ties and long history, but besides a few extra issues to navigate, God gives you the gift of forgiveness to help you and not to endanger you.  Forgiveness does not equate to “overlook all hurts and act like it never happened.”

My dad and I still have tons of issues that we haven’t exactly resolved, but I’ve learned long ago to keep a certain distance from him because it’s about as much as I can stand.  This doesn’t make me or you less of a Christian somehow, so long as bitterness has not grown its hairy roots in us.  In fact, distance has been healthier for the relationship, and necessary.

I don’t want to tell you what to do in your respective situations, but please allow me to share some guidelines that are worth considering.

1) Forgiveness does not mean friendship.

If your ex-boyfriend or ex-husband or parents have physically abused you, you don’t ever have to go near them again.  If your parents have verbally or psychologically hurt you, you’re allowed some time for healing before you can safely pursue a close relationship again.  Forgiveness does not mean it’s suddenly all smiles, winks, nods, and let’s be buddy-buddy.  More than that, forgiveness actually acknowledges what happened, calls it a sin, and removes the knife from the wound. 

God doesn’t want the idea of forgiving someone to be either uber-romantic or a forced obligation.  It’s a spiritual gift that works FOR you so you can be free of what has happened to you.  It should never be a magnetic chain back to a bad place: it’s always a way forward.  Yes, it’s certainly for God’s glory that there’s reconciliation.  But we must balance that with your peace, joy, and growth, which glorifies Him too. 

2) Parents are just people too.

A - They are just one opinion. I know we give extra weight to what our parents say and do; we are biologically wired to respond to them more.  But in the grand scheme of things, they are not our main source of encouragement nor is everything they say always true.  There’s only one encourager, one truth.

B - Boundaries with family are okay.  Family has a way of driving you crazy.  Just as with anyone else, you can draw a line for yourself and disallow anyone from crossing.  Assuming you are not in their house anymore, it’s okay to say something like: “Hey, thanks for inviting me and don’t take it personally, but I don’t need this right now.  Let’s hit pause on that and talk later.  Please respect my time and my space.”

You don’t ever have to put yourself in a compromising situation.  If your mom or dad re-marry and the new person treats you like crap: who are they to do that?  The old adage is true: people need to earn respect.  A title means nothing and no one owes anyone anything.  Sure, forgive the hurts and don’t let it grab a foothold, but that doesn’t mean you need to force a plastic-smile and have a pow-wow every Tuesday.

Also, if you’ve left the house and if you’re more or less self-sustained, you are now building your own house with the Lord.  You can control what goes in and out. You’re allowed to say a big fat NO to your parents if they steer you off course.  Yes, we should honor them: but the Bible has a lot of things to say to both children AND parents, and if you’re caught between compromise or Christ, don’t let fear push you into compromise. 

C - They have the same hopes and hurts and history as everyone else.

Please understand that your parents act the way the do because of an entire lifetime behind them.  I remember one of my friend’s moms was extremely overbearing, but my friend was supernaturally patient with her.  When I asked my friend about his patience, he said, “When my mom was a kid, she was kidnapped during the Khmer Rouge along with her brothers.  She saw all her brothers shot in the head, one by one, right in front of her.  You don’t know what that does to a person.” 

You see: your parents have been through more than you will ever know, in a uniquely strange era, with challenges you couldn’t understand.  And if they raised you since diapers, they have sacrificed far more for you than you could bear to hear.  Have grace for them, like you would any struggling person.  I’m not absolving them of responsibility, but try to see the obstacles they are facing and the upbringing that has wired them how they are today.  You’ll be able to better maneuver around them.

3) You can find a way to help.

There comes an awkward time when many young Christians spiritually outgrow their parents, and while that doesn’t make you “better” than them or anyone else, it does mean you are in the position of helping them forward.  You can start to see their blind spots, and in a bit of a delicious twist of irony, you can serve your parents as the mature Christian.

At some point you will establish some street cred with your life.  Whether your parents believe that or not, you will have a right to call them out on some things.  You do that with respect, of course, without accusation and with all grace and understanding, but if you feel something is off about their life, you can raise the question.  Just like with any other person, they might reject you or condescend or storm off or yell at you, and that’s kind of their loss.  But there’s a chance they will be humble enough to see you are trying to help.

4) Ultimately, serve your parents like you would anyone else.

One day, time will grow short.  Maybe you can’t make up for lost time or old hurts, but you can still make peace in the end.  If anything, Jesus knows it’s better for your soul.

It’s the Christian thing to serve them, even if you feel like they don’t deserve it.  Because Jesus served us, and none of us deserved that either.  When conviction calls and the time is right, bring a peace offering like cookies or bagels and just hang out with your parents.  Ask if they need a car wash or the kitchen cleaned.  You’ll be surprised how both you and your parents feel about that. 

Please don’t be so stubborn to think that this won’t “work” somehow, as if we always need to work an angle.  Sometimes it’s best to wipe the slate clean for the day, head to your parents’ place, serve them, and hope for the best.  Not every mission trip or church service or outreach goes perfectly, and this one won’t either.  But we still serve, because Jesus served us.  Try to have that long-term endgame in mind.  Try to understand them as you would any other human being.

How I treat my parents is always an area I can work on. And mine are so loving too.

Unka Glen: You gotta get some of that GOOD lovin'

unkaglen:

Anonymous asked: How do you define romantic love? Can brotherly love described in 1 Corinthians 13 be used?

Unka Glen answered: As you know, the New Testament was written in Greek, and the Greeks had several different words for love. When they wanted to describe brotherly love, they would use the word “phileo”. Which, you’ll be interested to know, is not the Greek word used in 1 Corinthians.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

Where you read the English word “love” in these verses, the Greek word is “agape” and that’s the kind of love that comes from God. If you look at the way agape was used in other texts at the time, agape is often used to describe a love that loves no matter what. A love that loves, when it stops making sense to love. 

But you asked about romantic love, and the Greek word for romantic love is “eros”. And here’s another fun fact: the word eros does not appear in the Bible. Wild huh? All those times in the New Testament when it talks about husbands loving their wives, it’s talking about agape love. That crazy love. That love that you keep going back to God to receive and reflect to your spouse. 

So where does that leave us? Well, I’ll tell you what I think, but this is a good point to start asking God to give you a sense of how these things fit together for yourself. Romantic love, and this may be a little hard to hear, doesn’t last. Not really.

I mean, a husband and wife who love each other are always doing romantic things for each other, and that sense of being made to feel special should never leave a relationship. But that rush of excitement and drama, and the thrill of the unknown, can really only happen once in a relationship, and then things settle down into something else.

I think the Song of Solomon says enough about that thrill of romantic love, and it certainly celebrates that sense of attraction and romantic love, so in the end, we might say that romantic love isn’t really good or bad, it’s just something nice that happens. But it’s agape love that demands of us that we honor the other person and do right by them. 

Agape should be the foundation of the house. Eros is the flowers growing in the front yard. Eros is good, it’s nice, but you can’t build anything lasting off of it. 

But let’s not forget phileo. Yes, phileo is brotherly love, a family kind of love, but phileo is sometimes translated as the English word “kiss”. It is an intimate love, an affectionate love. If you have a best friend that is closer to you than your family, that’s phileo.

And I think that’s what romantic love can evolve into, if you’re lucky. You know how they say sometimes twins develop their own secret language? My wife and I can carry on a whole conversation with hand signals so subtle that others won’t even notice we’re giving them to each other. 

I love eros. Long live eros. I celebrate eros. Keep it alive, and a part of your marriage forever, but let a deeper, more satisfying phileo develop. And let God’s perfect agape be the firm foundation, let it be the air you breathe to keep going, let it be the beginning and the end of the relationship.

Slightly related - Something I must keep remembering:

“knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. - 1Cor8:1b