Falling Flat On Your Face

1 Corinthians 10:12
"Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it’s useless. Cultivate God-confidence."

Often, when I need to make difficult decisions about life, I take a retreat. I go away at least for an afternoon, if not a day or two, and I just listen for God.

Most often, God speaks to me through metaphors. I am not one of those gifted with actual words which I hear from God. I have to listen with my eyes for what God is saying to me. Often, I instinctively know the answer to my difficult decision, but for whatever reason, am afraid to face up to it. Sometimes the fear is born out of the advice friends have given, because the metaphor which God gave to me spoke a different message than what my friends had to say. Fear, then, comes from the notion that God is asking me to go against what my friends have said. Other times, the fear is simply born out of the unknown, because the metaphor God has given requires me to travel off the map.

Here is one of the metaphors God gave to me one summer day while sitting on a fallen log, over a small river which runs through a small park in central Minnesota. I was facing a lot of confusion and indecision that day. I was questioning relationships and friendships. I was seeking God's guidance in what to do and say. That day, I knew the answer before I got to my place of retreat. But God, through a metaphor, spoke to me confirming this knowledge, goading me to action.

There is a squirrel with a twitchy-bushy tail that just ventured out onto a large tree which has fallen half way across the river. It continued forth upon shakier and shakier branches, finally entrusting its weight to the tiniest of twigs. These tiny twigs splayed out towards the tiny twigs of another fallen tree on the other side of the river. If the squirrel wants to cross, is will have to jump into the air, grasping for the twigs of the other tree. As its tail twitches, it eyes the other branches, looking for the place to jump. Its haunches are tensed. It is ready. One quick breath and there…it made it. For an instant, the only thing which upheld the squirrel was the breath of God.

Right now Lord, I’ve been sitting on the tiniest of twigs. They barely support me. And yet, I must cross. I know You are leading me on to something. I don’t know what, nor even where. But I know You are leading. And so I sit here trying to figure it all out, my own sense of balance, twitchy and bushy. And You are already on the other side.

"Jump." You command.

"Why?" I ask.

"Jump." Again, there You are, beckoning.

"Why?" I ask again, the consternation showing on my brow.

"Because I said so." You say.

"Some answer."

"But it’s enough." You reply.

"Do I have to?" I ask.

"If you want to be with Me." You say.

"But why can’t You just stay with me?" I plead.

"I will, but you need to move on…you need to go where I lead you."

I see Your eyes, solid, confident, filled with love and power. Your arms outstretched to me as if to say: "It’s okay. I’ll catch you. Now jump."

I take a deep breath, my muscles become taut and flex as I launch myself into the air. I wave my arms crazily as I realize that I can’t make it. And I realize then, that in You, I am being born upon the open space by Your breath. It strikes me then, that there was never really a gap. The gap was only in my mind.

I sense the openness before me.
And yet I know You’re always there.
The gap I see an illusion.
Your breath will bear me through the air.
The breath of God,
My breath of life.
The breath I breathe,
You give new life.
On the breath of God,
I take my stand.
You look to me,
With outstretched hands.
Oh breath of God,
You sing to me.
On You I stand,
In You I’m free.
Your outstretched hands, I see Your scars.
No heart-born wish upon the stars
Will carry me always, ever on,
As You carry me, oh breath of God.

What decisions do you face today? Have you sought out the voice of God regarding your decisions? Have you really taken time out to listen?

Next question: in whom are you trusting? Are you trusting solely in your own power to choose? Or are you trusting in God's power? If you only trust in your power, inevitably, there will come a time when you will fall flat on your face. And it will be painful, embarrassing, and pride-crushing.

But then again, maybe you need that. Maybe you need to have your pride crushed? I know that on many occasions, this is exactly what the doctor has ordered for me. A nice fall-on-my face to remind me of my place. A reminder that God is God, and I am not.

Paul, in his letter to the church in ancient Corinth, tells us to cultivate God-confidence. Trust in Jesus. Know that His very breath will bear you up when you trust in Him and leap from the paltry branch which strains under your weight.

As long as you trust only in yourself for your major decisions, you will occasionally fall flat on your face.

When you trust in God for your major decisions, you will always see His glory reflecting on your face.

Falling flat on your face, or having the very Glory of God reflecting upon your face? Hmmm...tough decision.

It is only by a leap of faith that you will discover flight.

Be WILD For Christ!

Shane Burton

Tongue-Bump Diversions

Colossians 1:21-23
"You yourselves are a case study of what he does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don’t walk away from a gift like that! You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted. There is no other Message—just this one. Every creature under heaven gets this same Message. I, Paul, am a messenger of this Message."

Argh. The pain. The agony. The madness of those darn little bumps that you get on your tongue. Do you know what I'm talking about? They're not canker sores. Although we often call them this. More than anything, they're just an inflamed taste-bud. What causes the inflamation? Who knows? A virus maybe? Too much sugar? A Canadian plot to win the Stanley Cup? I'm sure that someone learned who reads these musings may be able to let us in on the secret origin of tongue-bumps. If so, please email me!

All I do know, is they are maddening. Whenever I get these stupid things, they make me crazy. They are such a distraction. I'm sitting in a meeting with a fresh tongue-bump, rearing its ugly bud, and I just can't help moving my tongue around inside my mouth, dragging the bump over my teeth, feeling it go in and out of the grooves and spaces in my teeth. Occasionally, it would catch in a gap, and the peaceful flow of our meeting would be interrupted by a quiet little "Ouch" from me. I'm supposed to be focused...paying attention, for goodness' sake. Someone has put in hard work to prepare for this important meeting that I'm in so the least I can do is give them the respect of paying attention, right? All I know is that when you've got a tongue-bump, your attention span for anything beyond the bump itself is minimal. Until the bump has faded from your mind as well as your tongue, you will continue to be diverted and distracted.

I remember getting them as a kid. I would whine and complain to my parents. And they would either tell me to "quit crying or I'll get something to cry about," or they would douse my tongue in Anbesol, helping me to speak with the grace of a dog with peanut-butter in its mouth. I remember when I got just a little older, like about ten years old or so. At about this age, my parents wouldn't dignify my whining with a response. If lucky, my mom would give me about this much sympathy: "Oh sweetie, I'm sorry...now go take out the garbage." Being a mature and responsible ten year old, I decided that I needed to take matters into my own hands. This problem needed to be taken care of, and I was going to have to be the one to do so.

I went to the bathroom. I stood in front of the mirror. I leaned in really close...so close, that my breath was fogging up the mirror. I stuck out my tongue. Aha! There's the culprit, I thought to myself. Now, what to do to rid myself of this evil? I opened the closet door in our bathroom. In there, one could find everything from hem-cool (Preparation H) to eyelash curlers, from baby-aspirin to Old Spice. Some of the implements we had hiding in that closet would've been useful to Dr. Frankenstein himself. There were some scary items there. I was too afraid to ask about some of them. I rummaged through the bric-a-brac within: toothpaste? Nope, that'll make it sting worse. Hey, what about some hydrogen peroxide? It always seems to work on little cuts to clean them out. Maybe it'll help my tongue-bump?

Okay dear friends, and trust me on this one, don't ever use hydrogen peroxide on your tongue. 'Nuff said.

I kept rummaging until I heard the angels singing Hallelujah, my hand came to rest on a pair of tweezers. Now, if you're squeamish, this is where you may want to close your eyes, because I'm guessing you might have an idea of what's coming next. With tweezers in hand, I returned to the mirror. I looked myself in the eye (you ever notice you can only look at one eye at a time? Sounds like another devotional topic, eh?). There was a look of firm resolution and determination there. It was much the same look that Clint Eastwood has when he's Dirty Harry and is about to draw his guns on some unsuspecting cowboy who has double-crossed him. With the look of Dirty Harry on my face, I steeled myself for what was to come. A tumbleweed blew by. I could hear someone whistling in a minor key off in the distance. My tweezer hand was gettin' itchy. It was time. I drew. I took the tweezers and grabbed for the tongue-bump. Zing. It slipped out of the tweezers. I tried again. Slip. By this time, I'm drooling all over the place, the pain in my tongue has gone from minor irritation to "Holy root canals, Batman!" I take a deep breath, calming my frayed nerves. I focus with the precision of a Zen master, wiping away the pain and all distractions from my sub-cortex. With a hand as steady as any bomb-squad expert about to clip the red wire, I take the tweezers, grab the tongue-bump, pull...

I screamed. The kind of scream that you see in a movie when they have a camera shot from outer-space which has zoomed in on the house, and then pulls back to outer-space, indicating that the scream can be heard 'round the world. Blood gushed forth from my tongue. The pain was unfathomable. I would later know that only shark bites, kidney stones, and bullet wounds hurt worse than when you rip a tongue-bump from your being. It hurt, but the bump was gone. And with a little help from my dear friend Anbesol, a couple of Tylenol, and a few hours of time, the pain had subsided to a dull ache. By the next day, all I felt was a little tickly kind of pain around the site of the wound.

But the bump was gone. It was no longer a distraction to me. It no longer diverted my attention from the important matters at hand: like what was that girl's name sitting three desks up from me to the right?

Sometimes, we are distracted and our attention is diverted from what matters most. Tongue-bump diversions stealing our focus, erasing the thoughts which form at the tip of our mind. One minute, they seemed so very important, the next, our attention is diverted and we can only grasp at the fading protein trails, which almost had the chance to form in our brains to create a memory.

Paul writes to the Colossian church and in this passage, he reminds them of the tremendous gift we have been given through the death of Jesus. It was through the Cross and Jesus' death thereon, that we are made whole and holy, that our rebelliousness fades into the memories of yesteryear, that our very sins are forgiven. But we are too easily diverted from the true impact of this gift on our lives. Tongue-bump diversions, making the real gift of Jesus nothing more than a warm-fuzzy.

Sometimes, we must actually rip these distractions and diversions from our lives. There is no other solution. They won't just go away by themselves. They won't fade with time, or if they do, the damage to the rest of our lives will already be done. Sometimes, we must steel ourselves for some pain, take a deep breath, say a prayer, and then rip the tongue-bump diversion from our being, creating immediate pain, but in the midst of that pain, an incredible focus on the real and true things of life.

As long as we are diverted from the true impact of Jesus' gift, we will never live as radical disciples, changing this very world through the power of God's Holy Spirit. We will be, as I like to say, Diet-Coke Christians...just one calorie. We will not be the "real thing." We will be imitation disciples, looking good on the outside, but not having any real power or zing. Jesus will just give us a warm-fuzzy feeling, rather than cause us to be revolutionary agents of change in a hurting world. I believe that Satan's greatest victory is convincing us that he does not exist. But running a close second, is when he is able to distract and divert us from the real impact of the gift that Jesus gave us on the Cross. For when he does that, we become children playing at church.

Do you want to play church? Or do you want to be revolutionary, radical, sold-out, Real Thing disciples? Do you want to be cheap imitations, packing Nerf-ball blows, bouncing off with little or no effect? Or do you want to be totally sold out on Jesus, packing punches of power, changing this world by carrying a Message of even greater power to the least, the last, and the lost?

What distracts you from the real gift of Jesus, my friend? What diverts your attention from the wondrous gift which was given through the Cross? What is making Jesus nothing more than a warm-fuzzy to you?

I suggest you pray about it, my dear friend. I suggest you ask for God's help in removing this diversion from your life. I suggest also, that it may be that nothing short of actually ripping every vestige of the diversion from your being may be exactly what you'll need to do. And know this: it'll hurt. But the hurt will fade. And you can use the pain to refocus yourself on the Cross. You can use the pain to reenergize your sense of urgency in sharing the Message. You can use the pain as a reminder of how you were diverted from that to which you were called on the day Jesus found you, my dear friend.

What diverts your attention from the Cross of Jesus, and the gift which He gave through it? And how will you rid yourself of the diversion?

I'm praying for you today, my friend. I'm praying for courage to face up to the reality of your diversions. I'm praying for strength to go through with the extrication of your diversions. And I'm praying for healing for you, for when you extricate the diversion, you will be wounded. And maybe the wound will only be in your pride. But that's okay...God's healing is still available.

God loves you. Big time. And He showed that love to you through the gift of His Son's life on the Cross.

Do not be distracted and diverted from the real and true impact of that gift.

Be WILD For Christ!

Shane Burton

New Hope Rising

2 Corinthians 4:16-18
"So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without His unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever."

My uncle was a bowler. I'm talkin' like Fred Flintstone here. He had his own bowling ball, bowling ball bag, and even his own bowling shoes. He would not be caught dead in those ugly red and green bowling shoes. No, he wore nice bowling shoes with comfortable soles and arch support.

My uncle was a bowler. I was a budding scientist. In science, you test hypotheses. At the age of five, I was watching some educational program--probably Mr. Roger's Neighborhood--in which they took a bowling ball and cut it in half with a band saw. They showed us that the center of a bowling ball was filled with cork. In an episode of Tennessee Tuxedo (the smart sounding penguin who was actually stupid with the dumb sounding walrus sidekick named Chumley who was actually smart) they escaped, yet again, from the zoo to go and see Mr. Whoopee. Mr. Whoopee had all of the answers to all of the questions. And he also had a magic chalkboard which would bring images to life. Whenever Tennessee and Chumley would go and see Mr. Whoopee, they would come prepared with a question and Mr. Whoopee would go and retrieve his chalkboard from his closet and begin to sketch their answer. Mr. Whoopee had a closet like Fibber McGee's. Every time our heroes would come with a question, Mr. Whoopee's closet would empty its contents out onto the seemingly unsuspecting Mr. Whoopee. In one episode, Tennessee and Chumley needed to know about directions. And so Mr. Whoopee explained to them the intricacies of North, South, East, and West and then told them about compasses. He told them they could make a homemade compass out of a cork and a needle. If you take the needle, and drop it on the floor, it will make it magnetic. Then you poke the needle through the cork and float the cork in a small cup of water. Cool, huh? I've tried it. It works. It's not the snappiest compass in the world, but if you're patient, you'll find North.

So, in my budding scientific brain, an hypothesis was forming: cork floats, bowling balls have cork centers, soooo...bowling balls will float!

The only way to discover if your hypothesis is a fact or reality, is to test it. So we did. I found my lab assistants, my three and four year old cousins, and we hijacked my uncle's bowling ball. My cousins lived on a small sloping hill which had a pond at the bottom of it. And it wasn't the kind of a pond which had a nice sloping shoreline. This pond dropped straight down almost ten feet (as I remember it...it was probably like three feet...but hey, I was five...seemed more like an ocean to me). Are you getting the picture of what came next? The bowling ball was pretty heavy for us little squirts. But you know, with the help of the hill and a little Newtonian force known as gravity, the ball was propelled easily into the murky waters of our oversized petri-dish. Thooooommp! The water hardly even splashed, so perfectly spherical was the glossy surface of the subject of our experiment. It was glorious. We danced around like natives after a kill. We reveled in the glory of the moment!

And then we realized something. The ball was not coming back up.

Words cannot fully express the feeling in that moment. Terror hints at it. We didn't really have a grasp on profanity yet. However, we did not really know such words and so we uttered a simple, but effective, "oops."

In that moment, my cousins looked at me as if I were a dead man. They knew the wrath of their father was going to descend. And they knew that it would not be upon them. They would let me suffer the consequences on my own. After all, it was my hypothesis, right? I tried to convince them that we were all a part of a team...a glorious team...which was working towards the betterment of humanity. They didn't buy it. They simply pointed their fingers at me as if to say "He did it." And fifteen minutes later, when we still did not see the bowling ball rising to the surface, that's exactly what they did when my aunt and mother came walking down the hill to see what we were up to. "He did it." {sigh} Such greatness of thought is always under appreciated.

My cousins had already given up on my hypothesis. And I'll admit, my hope was rapidly fading. But deep in my gut, I knew that if cork floated in small amounts, that it would certainly float in larger amounts and that while pigs may never fly, bowling balls indeed would float. Seemingly, everything was falling apart. The best laid plans...well, you know...the looks on our mothers' faces said it all. We were dead. They were going to end our lives.

But there was more here than meets the eye. Because deep within the murky depths of the pond, something was occurring. The principle of buoyancy was being applied. And the downward motion of the bowling ball had finally been reversed.

Slowly, oh so slowly, the bowling ball was rising to the surface of the pond! And as we were turning to go and receive our beatings, a small flicker of movement caught my eye. It could've been a frog or a small fish which was the source of the movement. But my heart said differently. My hope was renewed. A burst of energy surged within my body. My scientific hypothesis was about to be proven correct! Ha ha ha! A maniacal laugh spewed forth from my lips. And all gathered there upon that grassy hillside turned to see that which I was seeing.

The bowling ball was slowly rising to the surface! A cheer broke forth! My cousins were even a little excited. But secretly, I'm sure they were bummed that I was going to get out of this beating.

It took a week or so, but the bowling ball made it to the surface and was retrieved by the neighbors on the other side of the pond and then returned to my uncle. He received the bowling ball with a small tear glistening in the corner of his eye and said for the first time in history, "You complete me."

I was about to abandon hope. I was about to give up on that which I knew in my heart to be true. Everything on the outside of that situation said that things were falling apart. But on the inside of the pond, where I could not see, a new hope was rising.

We are all called to a personal ministry. Mine is to build up leaders within the church...to train and equip them for the ministry of reaching out to this world with the life-giving and life-saving Message of Jesus. What's your ministry? There are so many times when I've felt things falling apart around me. I've looked at attendance and seen it shrink. I've looked at our budget and seen ourselves lacking the funds to do the ministry to which we are called. I've looked in the eyes of a person who is so burned out on life and ministry that for personal health, they've needed to leave our ministry. In these moments, I've almost abandoned hope. There have been times when giving up seemed to me a viable option. Everything on the outside seemed to be falling apart. In those moments, I was not trusting in what God was doing on the inside where I could not see.

I wasn't trusting that cork floats, and so would the bowling ball of my ministry.

Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever said to God, "What's the point? Look, it's not going to float! Why are you having me wait around here for this ministry if we both know it's going to sink? Hello? God? Are You there?"

I'm quite certain in these moments that God is smiling that I-told-you-so kind of a smile. And with that smile upon His countenance, He utters two words to us: trust Me.

Notice that He did not say "trust you." He said "trust Me."

And there's the crux of this whole matter. When we trust in ourselves, we will come up wanting. We will turn away from the pond of life, thinking that our personal ministries to which we've been called have sunk and become wrecks upon the bottom of life's pond to be explored eons hence by archaeologists who will shake their heads and say, "Tsk tsk. It's too bad."

When we trust in God, we will wait at the water's edge with joyous expectancy, knowing that God is making New Life in and through our ministry on the inside, where we cannot see.

When the prodigal bowling ball surfaced and was returned to us, a celebration ensued! We whooped and yee-hawed. We had a celebration which greatly overshadowed the gloom of those moments when we thought all hope was lost. The hard times of the sunken bowling ball were small potatoes compared to the lavish celebration which was prepared for us when the bowling ball rose to the surface.

At this moment, you may be standing at the water's edge with joyous expectancy, knowing that God's working wonders on the inside. Or you may be about to turn away, abandoning hope. My friend, hang on. Don't go. Wait. Listen to the two words which God is speaking to you at this very moment: "Trust Me. I'm doing things on the inside which you can't even begin to imagine. But they are wondrous and will bring great joy. Your ministry may not be rising as fast as you'd like it to be rising. But it's rising as fast as I'd like it to be rising. So don't turn around. Don't go. Don't give up. You know I've called you to this ministry...so why would I let it fail? Do not let yourself be deceived by human standards of success. Your trust in My grace is all the success you'll ever need. Trust Me."

Now, if you're in a ministry to which you've not been called, the bowling ball may never resurface. Deal with it and move on. Listen for God's calling. Listen for the ministry which He has prepared especially for you. That ministry will always resurface. Maybe not as quickly as you'd like. But it will.

We had another hypothesis: bowling balls float, so wouldn't bowling shoes float as well?

Bowling shoes do not float. Trust me.

Be WILD For Christ!

Shane Burton