god

I think every Christian has a “Doesn’t Count List” (DCL), a collection of small things we do that might not be completely in God’s will for our life, but they’re so tiny they don’t really matter. If you say you don’t have a DCL, apparently lying is one of the items on yours because that’s just what you did.

Here are some things I recently realized were on my Doesn’t Count List:

Speeding
God is completely cool with this. I know we’re supposed to honor the authority we’re placed under, but God is like the state troopers on this one when it comes to driving faster than the legal limit, “Under 5 you’re fine, Over 5 you’re mine.”

Using the internet at work for personal reasons
Come on, I’m reading www.biblegateway.com and listening to podcasts of sermons. Surely God’s OK with me using time that my company pays me for that? I mean people take smoke breaks all day and I don’t smoke so I’m owed a few minutes of Internet break time here and there. I know that no matter what we do, we’re supposed to do it for the glory of God, which means working hard at work, but let’s be honest, that verse was written before Youtube, and that site has everything.

Doing things you wouldn’t recommend that other Christians do
I caught myself in this one last weekend. A friend sent me a link to a lil’ Wayne remix of Jason Mraz’ song “I’m yours” and it was awesome. I listened to it four or five times to make sure it was clean and then was about to tweet it from my twitter account when I thought, “Is that Christian of me to share that link? I mean it’s lil Wayne. I better not, I don’t want to recommend that other Christians listen to that.” But me? I’m apparently impervious to all sorts of less than holy forms of media. Me? I can handle that. (The second problem in that scenario is that by editing what I tweet but still listening to that song, I create a “twitter Jon” and a “real Jon.” I’m not sure if other Christian bloggers struggle with the temptation to “holy up” how they present themselves online but that is some whackness I need to get under control.)

Hook ups
If you thought I was going to talk about making out, you should be ashamed of yourself. I’m talking about the hook ups friends and family members can get us at stores. For instance, a few weeks ago when I decided to buy a mac laptop, they had a deal where if you were a college kid you could get a free iPod touch with the purchase and a free printer. I seriously considered finding a neighborhood kid to go in with me so that I could get the deal. And although I didn’t take advantage of that discount which honestly did not really apply to me, I’ve done that a number of times in the past.

Those are all pretty silly I guess. You could easily read my Doesn’t Count List and think, “Everybody does that. We can’t be perfect, what’s the big deal?” And you’d be right, we can’t be perfect, but what I’ve found in my own life is that the DCL is never satisfied with staying small and insignificant. It’s a hungry little list. It always wants more of your life. It always wants you to add new things to it. To grow and stretch until it’s a mile long.

When I was in college, I got into an unhealthy dating relationship. We were mutually bad for each other and our combined brokenness only managed to amplify the hurt we were able to cause. When my girlfriend got into techno music, so did I. When my girlfriend started going to raves, so did I. When my girlfriend started doing ecstasy, so did I. How?

I put it on my Doesn’t Count List.

After having years of practice adding “small things” to it and justifying why some things don’t count in God’s eyes, it was surprisingly easy to rationalize ecstasy. As I’ve written about before, in my head I told myself, “Cocaine is a real drug because you have to snort it. Heroin is a real drug because you have to shoot it. Pot is a real drug because you have to smoke it. Ecstasy is just a pill, like aspirin. I’ve swallowed pills before, that’s not a dangerous drug. That’s just a pill.”

As stupid as that sounds, when you’re living in stupid land, stupid decisions and stupid logic make a surprising amount of sense. So I started doing ecstasy. But that wasn’t enough for the DCL. So eventually I smoked some pot. And finally, in one of the scariest nights of my life, I did some acid. I kept adding to my “Doesn’t Count List” until it choked out all the good and made my life not count.

As gross as that all was, the bigger issue might be what keeping a DCL reveals I believe about God. Apparently, in my heart, God is still up in heaven keeping a massive list of things that count and things that don’t count. He’s Santa Claus and I’m a kid trying to hide the pieces of a broken vase under my bed in the hope that they don’t count. Christ’s death must not have been enough, because in my mind, there are still two lists going.

Let’s lose the lists. It all counts. If we could have been saved by a list, God wouldn’t have sent His son, He would have just given us more paper and pens so we could keep better lists. It has to count or Christ’s life doesn’t count. The grace, the mercy, the deep, beating heartbeat of hope from Christ beats loudly because it does count. The gap between me and God was wide and dark. But it was crossed.

Not by me.

Not by my goodness.

Not by lists.

But by Christ.

Because it counts.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. I don’t think I’m the only one holding a list in my hand sometimes. How about you? Have you ever had a Doesn’t Count List? What’s on it?

My wife and I spent Thanksgiving in Pensacola, Florida a few years ago. Since our kids go to bed awesomely early, 6:30 eastern, we were stuck in the hotel by ourselves at 5:30 central time every night. There are few things as depressing as sitting on a bed for five straight hours in a Sleep Inn hotel room. In addition to suck your soul out fluorescent lights, the room had kind of this potpourri of bad smells. It was part smoke, part cat, part old Hardee’s hamburger and a smidge of feet.

It was admittedly a good time to catch up on conversation with my wife, but after a few straight days of staring at each other, we were both a little stir crazy. One night I walked down to the BP gas station that was beside the hotel.

Behind the counter at the gas station was a sad woman in her mid thirties. She looked tired, like maybe life was hard for her a decade too soon. Like maybe she didn’t get to be a kid long enough and all that adulthood was starting to catch up on her.

On the outside of her hand was a small greenish gray tattoo of an X. I was curious about what it meant, so I asked her the significance. Here is her response:

“Oh that? That doesn’t mean anything. My mom gave me that one night when she was drunk.”

That was a kind of weird answer, so I asked her how old she was when it happened. She scrunched up her face for a second in concentration and then said, “I think I was 13.”

When I was 13, I was really concerned about my clothes. I was worried that my mom would buy me a Knights of the Round Table shirt instead of Polo. Or that I would have Reeboks instead of Nikes. These were the kinds of things I focused on, because at that age, kids would tease you for the smallest thing.

But what about showing up to school one Monday with a jagged, bloody green x tattooed on your hand? What was that experience like? How would kids react to that? Didn’t it hurt when her mom gave her that? She was drunk, writing on her daughter with a shaky hand and a hot needle.

I thought about that the rest of the trip and was considering writing about the marks that our parents give us. They’re not all as obvious as that and many are actually positive, but I realized that was a narrow way to look at it, because it’s not just parents that give us marks. It’s coworkers and spouses and friends and strangers. And when we don’t know they’re there, sometimes they actually stick.

Someone once asked me to review a memo at work that included some disparaging remarks about my writing ability. There on page 4 was a giant circle with a big red line through it that said “Fluff” and a sentence that promised a coworker was going to eliminate my fluff writing. The person that handed me the memo didn’t realize it was about me. They wanted me to focus on a completely different section of the document but my eye caught some criticism about the company’s writer, and since I was the only writer there, I couldn’t help but read what was written.

As I walked back to my desk, I was crushed. I felt like my complete lack of value had not only been noticed but captured in a memo. In the quietness of my head though, I felt like God popped in and said, “Hey, that memo doesn’t get to define who you are. I do. And I say you are my son.” I was blown away and instead of spiraling into despair and shame over that memo, I went back to my desk and wrote what was probably the best thing I’ve ever written for that company.

I wish that single event was enough to forever shake off the bad marks I’ve got on me, but it isn’t. I still doubt. I still believe the lies of the marks. I still, like lots of other Christians, forget who I am. I still give other people’s words too much power. I don’t have it all figured out. Instead, more than anything, life feels like it’s been a long series of believing that I am not who other people define me to be, I am a son of God. I am God’s work of art. And the more I have been open to believing that, the more He’s shown me it’s true.

The thing I realized, is that an experience can’t change that. My relation to God is not a mark. It is not a big tattoo or a little sticker, it is who I am. I can not completely cover that up or blot it out with failure. The prodigal son tries, he completely messes up his life. But more importantly, he shows how sometimes, the worst marks are the ones we give ourselves. “I’m a bad husband. I’m a terrible employee. I’m ugly.”

These are the words we sometimes hear from ourselves and they are the kind of words the prodigal son tries to say to his father. (I have written about this story so many times it’s getting a bit ridiculous but I love the lessons it has for us.) When the prodigal son rehearses his homecoming speech, he decides to conclude it with, “make me like one of your hired men.” That was the last thing he was going to say. But when he speaks to his father, that is the one thing he is not allowed to speak. The rest of his speech comes off without a hitch. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

These words are delivered without incident, but he doesn’t ever get to say “make me like one of your hired men.” Why is that?

Why are those eight words left out? You can certainly read that as just accidental, that regardless of the words, the father was going to cut him off before he finished speaking. And maybe that’s right. But when I read that, I read a father stopping a son from saying something the father would never do. The father would never make him like one of his hired men. He would never give the son a new mark of slavery. He would never call him employee, instead of son. So he doesn’t even let those words out. He stops him because no new mark would be given that day. The old truth, the one at the core of the son, still holds true.

Despite the pigpen and the prostitutes, the dirt and the deception, the father doesn’t see a hired man.

He sees a son.

He sees his child.

And that changes everything.

I got fired once, well twice if you count the “carnival incident” but you really shouldn’t count that one.

I was writing for an advertising agency. I didn’t understand what it was they wanted me to do and I had a bad attitude about that. So a few times a week, my bosses would pull me into a break room and explain the job to me. Then I’d go write something that was different than what they asked me to write. Then they’d pull me back into the break room. This cycle of instructions given, instructions poorly followed continued for a few weeks until finally I didn’t get pulled into the break room. I got pulled into a conference room.

There, the president fired me and told me something like, “I don’t think you’re supposed to be a writer. Have you ever thought about being a salesman instead?” And it was the right decision on their part. They had given me a series of tasks, explained them over and over again and I had blown it. I didn’t get what they needed me to do and when I didn’t enough times, they didn’t need me anymore.

Sometimes I worry that God might treat me the same way. Maybe He won’t out and out fire me as a Christian, but I fear that He must be getting tired of explaining the same things over and over to me again.

There are a handful of things that I think God is trying to tell me and I just can’t seem to understand them nearly as quickly as I think I should. Things that if I were a better Christian I would be able to figure out or see clearly.

Have you ever felt that way?

Continue Reading after the jump

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I met Michael Jordan one summer while he was golfing at a country club in Pinehurst, North Carolina. My uncle and his family lived on the golf course and I was spending a few weeks there before I started the eighth grade.

When word spread that Jordan and a gang of other important people were in the clubhouse that morning we all went down to get a closer look. This was before Jordan became human. Before the gambling and the baseball experiment and the tabloid fodder. Jordan was a god at the time and I had a Nike swoosh mark shaved into the back of my head to prove it. I told everyone in Pinehurst that summer that I had my haircut that way as a tribute to a friend in Boston that had been shot and killed for a pair of Air Jordans.

I’m not sure why I lied like that. None of that was true. Maybe I’m like Samson, razors bring out the worst in me, but Michael Jordan didn’t know any of that. Neither did Dean Smith the legendary coach of UNC or Dr. J, who were both with Jordan that day.

They all signed the back of my shirt with a big marker. Later that afternoon, with the autographed shirt safely tucked in a drawer, I went back down to the clubhouse. It had been 3 or 4 hours and I wanted to see if I could get Jordan’s autograph on a piece of paper I could frame.

The party had already finished golfing and all the fans had gone home. I saw Jordan walking to his car in the parking lot. I ran out after him as fast as my little seventh grade legs would carry me and said, “Excuse me Mr. Jordan, can I please have your autograph?”

He stopped in his tracks and turned, a golf bag resting high on shoulders that towered over me. With a look that froze opponents on basketball courts across the planet he said, “Didn’t I already sign you kid?”

Life is Limited
In the real world, in parking lots in Pinehurst, North Carolina, life is limited. Your hero turns to you and tells you that he’s not going to give you another autograph. Your hero tells you he remembers you and that you’re not getting a second signature, the only thing you want that day. That stupid summer, with a lopsided swoosh mark growing in the back of your head and a mouth full of lies.

Sometimes I think God is like that. Bothered by me, tired of my requests for His time, even if it’s just 3 seconds for Him to sign off on some prayer I’m saying or need I’m sure I can’t live without.

He’s on His way somewhere important after a round of golf with Moses and Elijah or Elisha whichever one plays. I’m chasing Him down in the parking lot. He turns with His big God golf clubs and He looks down at me. And He says in that massive voice of His “Didn’t I already forgive you kid?”

Forgiveness is the thing I ask for the most. In my head maybe I know that God’s forgiveness is eternal and inexhaustible but in my heart I feel like He’s going to run out of it. That He’s got a limited supply. And I’m burning them up, one by one, sin by sin.

The Day After the Party
I’ve read the story about the prodigal son more than anything else in the Bible. If you’ve messed up life like I have it’s a pretty good read. I think when you get arrested they should read that to you right after the Miranda rights. I think that’d be a nice way to take a little sting out of going to jail.

Part of the reason I’ve read that story so many times though is that I think there’s something missing. I feel like there’s some verse or passage that I must have skipped that makes the whole thing make sense. It seems too good to be true. The prodigal son takes his inheritance, blows it on fast living, ends up in a pig pen and then gets a party thrown for him when he returns home. I’ve always wondered what the day after the party was like:

The first rays of sunshine crept across the floor and landed on a pile of party favors being swept up by a servant. A welcome home banner was being taken down and across the house the sounds of morning reverberated.

In his old bedroom, the prodigal son rolls over and opens his eyes. He’d dreamt it so often, dreamt of this place so often, he didn’t believe it was real. Those nights in the dark, curled under a bush or beside the barn when his money was gone and his hope with it, he’d wondered if he’d ever know safety again. He sat up, surprised to find himself there, laughing at the memories of the night before. The feast, the party, the ridiculousness of it all. His family who celebrated his return as if his absence had increased their love for him, amplified it. None of it made any sense. There was a knock on the door. He had a door again, that was something he had missed.

The head of a servant peered in:

“Sir, your father is waiting for you in the kitchen.” This servant didn’t go to seminary either and didn’t seem that concerned that in Biblical times “kitchen” was definitely the wrong word to use in that context.

With a yawn and a scratch of his head the prodigal son got up. He put on his clothes and made his way to the kitchen. There, at a small table, sat his father.

“Sit down son.” He said, motioning to a chair across from him.

“Thank you for the party father. I never expected that and …”

“Son, we need to go over the list.” His father said, interrupting him.

“The list?”

“Yes” he replied, touching a large pile of blank paper with his hand. “We need to make a list of all the money you spent, all the mistakes you made and all the people you hurt. Then we need to figure out how you start repaying your debt.” The father said.

“I had a plan father. I had a plan when I was walking home but when I saw you running I didn’t think I’d need it. At the party I forget what my plan was.” The son said, with a voice of shame and sorrow that had taken but a brief hiatus during the previous night’s celebration.

“Well, you’ve got the rest of your life for it to come back to you.” The father said taking out a pen and writing “family inheritance” at the top of the list.

For most of my life this is how I would have written the second part of that story, the directors cut if you will, an alternative ending that was too harsh for the version they released in the Bible.
The father’s anxious sprint toward the lost son doesn’t make any sense. That’s not how life works. People pay for their mistakes. They don’t get a party for them. When you return home from wasting your inheritance on the world your father says “Didn’t I already bless you kid?” End of story.

Forgiveness
I don’t understand forgiveness and it’s always depressing to me when I read a book that tells me that’s the first step of the Christian walk, believing that God forgives you. If I can’t get past that first step than the rest of it, all the rest of it remains completely closed to me.

It’s not that I think I don’t need forgiveness. I just don’t understand how it’s possible. If I can’t earn it, than it’s out of my control and I’m powerless.

I remember the first time I ever knew how outrageous and insane real forgiveness was. I had gotten myself into some serious trouble at work. The kind of trouble that’s so big and ugly it makes you ashamed that there are people in your life close enough to you to get some of the trouble spilled on them. I wanted to push everyone away, to expel people from the planetary system that was me and just go float somewhere and die.

I called my wife on the phone and told her as much.

“I’m sorry you met me.” I said through angry, frightened tears. I was desperate for her to go, to pull away from me so I could inflict pain on only one person. The person I felt deserved it the most. Me.

“I love you!” She yelled through the p
hone.

“How can you say that? That doesn’t make any sense.” I responded.

“You don’t get to decide who I love. I love you. That’s my decision. You can’t take that away from me. I love you. I choose to love you.” She repeated words like these over and over again. She attacked me with love that day. And forgiveness I didn’t deserve. Forgiveness I couldn’t earn or make sense of.

I was overwhelmed that day. And I think that was such a thin sliver of what God’s forgiveness is like, how big and nonsensical His love is. I heard a minister once say that His forgiveness, God’s grace, is given wastefully. He pours it out on us in such abundance that it’s almost wasteful.

The Tenth Party
I have to confess that some days I still think there’s a list God will ask me to work through the day after He throws me that welcome home party. I have a hard time understanding how something can be true and illogical at the same time. And so much of God is that way.
But some days, when I least expect it, in ways I can’t control, I believe a different story about God’s forgiveness.

The first rays of sunshine creep across a dusty road and grate against the eyelids of the prodigal son trying to sleep uncomfortably on a bed of gravel. His teeth felt dirty, his mouth and hands stained with the red of cheap wine. A long scratch ran across his cheek, a shoe was angled beneath his head for a pillow. “How many times did this make?” he thought from the part inside him that still remembered returning home. He was doing so well, things were so happy but his never agains always seemed to fail him in the end. How long would he be gone this time?

Miles away, an concerned father stood by the front window of his house as a servant approached with a message.

“Sir, I checked his bedroom and the barn. His things are missing. He’s left again.”

“I know.” The father said with sad eyes.

And then with slow steps he walked to a large closet and motioned to the servant.

“Help me with this Welcome Home banner.” He said pulling one from a pile of a thousand.

“Today could be the day my child returns.”

(This was originally something I wrote for the prodigal Jon site.)

When I’m nervous and meet new people, I tend to read them my resume.

Not literally, I don’t carry it around with me, but I usually find a way to rattle off interesting tidbits about myself.

I did this recently at the Orange Conference. When I went to the blogger lounge I felt kind of insecure and didn’t know what to do. Everyone had their laptop and business cards all over the tables and I had neither. I immediately thought, “Oh yeah, bloggers are supposed to carry laptops not Moleskine notebooks. I’m so dumb.” After a few minutes of standing there like someone that’s eating alone and has forgotten to bring the “don’t feel pity for me I’m reading a book” book, I walked to the Land of a Thousand Hills coffee stand.

I asked if my friend was working at the stand that day and the guys behind the counter said no and then kind of said in a kind way, “And you are?”

I immediately started blabbering about how I had a blog and I once told thousands of people about their coffee and it’s read in all these countries and I’m a special person and look at all my accomplishments, me, me, me, resume, resume, resume. Even as the words were coming out of my mouth I wanted to grab them back, but I couldn’t.

And I find myself doing this more lately as I struggle with the impatience of wanting to be an author and a speaker. The Stuff Christians Like book will come out in March 2010 and I’m speaking at a bunch of conferences this fall so I completely get the foolishness of this thought but it’s still there. It’s a completely dumb thought to have but usually in life it’s not the wise thoughts we have that do the most damage. It’s the dumb ones.

When I pray, when me and God wrestle, there’s a part of me that keeps saying, “How come I only get to spend such a fraction of my day on Stuff Christians Like? How come I feel like I’m bursting with ideas and I’m only getting to write about them an hour a day? How come I’m not a super fantastical mister important Christian writer person right this second God?”

In the midst of those questions, in the midst of being wildly impatient and selfish and arrogant and a million other words that mean “whack,” I feel like God reminded me of a simple question,

“Why do you keep refusing the gift of the desert road?”

That’s kind of a weird question, but it comes out of some verses I’ve written about before. In Exodus 13: 17-18, as the Israelites are leaving Egypt, the Bible says:

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle.

I love the simplicity of that. God knew that if the Israelites took the short way, if they took what probably seemed like the logical route, they’d face a war they weren’t ready for and would probably willingly return to slavery. So out of love, out a deep, big love for His people, he took them on the desert road.

As an Israelite, having spent decades doing hardcore physical labor and leading the kind of manual labor lifestyle that puts the P90X exercise program to shame, you’d have to be thinking, “What? I’m armed for battle! The desert road? Seriously? Look at this sword, I’ve got skillz! Let’s take the short way and give the Philistines two tickets to the gun show. Hey, I just compared my biceps to a weapon that is still centuries away from being invented, that’s odd.”

OK, maybe they wouldn’t have thought that last sentence, but I promise that they probably felt a little confused at why they were on the desert road and maybe at some point in your own life, you’ve felt that way too. Maybe you’ve felt ready for something and for some reason instead found yourself taking the long way around.

I don’t know what your “thing” is.

Maybe you want to fall in love and get married.

Maybe you’re at a job that doesn’t use your God-given talents and you feel desperate to get out.

Maybe you want to start a ministry.

Maybe you don’t know what your thing is, but you know it’s not what you’re doing right now.

Maybe you want to have kids.

Maybe you want to head out to the mission field overseas.

Your thing, your dream or goal or vision could be a million different things, and when it doesn’t happen, when it takes longer than we want, it’s so easy to get frustrated. To get disappointed, to think that the time delay is because maybe you’re not doing something right. Maybe God is mad at you. Maybe if you were a better Christian things would be happening faster and you wouldn’t be on a desert road.

But what if that’s not right?

What if God loves you too much to send you to war? What if He loves you too much to throw you into situations you’re not ready for?

What if that desert road is a gift?

I still struggle with the desert road concept. I’m not “done” with that idea. But my hope for you and my hope for me is that the next time I find myself on one I’ll pause long enough to ask God this simple question:

“I’m on a desert road, what war are you protecting me from right now because you love me so much?”

I went ahead and figured out how powerful God is.

Considering that this is probably a question philosophers and theologians have struggled with for thousands of years, that’s pretty nice of me. Who knew one day a random blogger would figure it out and share it for free. What can I say? I’m a giver.

So here it is:

God is slightly less powerful than Mutton Hollow Chevy.

That’s it. That’s the answer. If you have some other things you need to go do or other blogs you want to read you can probably skip out right now, having been exposed to that little gem of knowledge. But if you’ve never heard of Mutton Hollow Chevy, who is slightly more powerful than God, allow me to explain.

When I started stuffchristianslike.net, I had to go with a .net address because someone already had .com. A small church themed online gift shop had that web address. They sold puzzles of Jesus and what not. I felt like .net was not nearly as cool as .com but oh well, that was what I had available.

Apparently they went out of business or sold their domain to someone else though because now, if you type the .com version of this site, you will be taken to Mutton Hollow Chevy, a small car dealer that specializes in 1955-1957 Chevy parts. I’m not sure why they registered a Stuff Christians Like URL. I guess the hope is that if you searched for wry Christian satire but instead found a Chevy dealer you might stay at their site and buy a 1957 Billet Hood Latch Support Bracket instead. (You know the one I’m talking about, it’s all Billet Hood Latches these days boys.)

I’d like to say that when I found out that, once again, someone from Mutton Hollow had scooped me, my first thought was “aw shucks!” But that would be a lie.

My first thought was more like this:

“I am so dumb! How could I let that happen? I am screwed. If I was smarter and more web savvy that wouldn’t have happened. That kind of nonsense would never happen to a real blogger. When my book comes out, people who don’t know this is a .net are going to accidentally type .com and never find me and I’ll never sell any books and never get a second book deal and will waste this opportunity that God has given me. It’s all over. It is all so freakin’ over.”

I know that probably sounds dumb, but it’s true. I felt sick to my stomach and kind of panicky and really ashamed of myself. And I’ve felt that way before about other things, but do you know what I don’t ever do? I don’t ever take thoughts like that to their natural conclusion. I don’t ever spend time reflecting on what that thought says about me and what it says about God.

This time I did.

And do you know what I found? If that thought is true. If Mutton Hollow Chevy has somehow sunk the Stuff Christians Like ship by reserving the .com version of this web address, if they’ve effectively limited the size of this ministry, if they’ve dashed the opportunity to reach people for the Lord, than Mutton Hollow Chevy is slightly more powerful than God.

Don’t get me wrong, He’s big and mighty and “Almost All Powerful.” He set Stuff Christians Like in motion, but in a late game changing move, Mutton Hollow Chevy showed up and limited even Him. He had plans that were pretty amazing, but unfortunately they involved me getting the .com address and since I don’t have that, God is limited too. The dreams He had just got a pair of Mutton Hollow-sized handcuffs put on them.

That’s ridiculous and I hope right now you are laughing both at the shallowness of my faith and my dedication to repeating the phrase “Mutton Hollow” which is delightful to say I don’t care who you are. But I promise you’ve done the same thing before in your own life.

At some point, you’ve had a fear you thought was more powerful than God.

You lost your job and worried that unemployment was more powerful than God.

You lost a boyfriend and worried that being alone was more powerful than God.

You got in credit debt and worried that Visa was more powerful than God.

Your dream did not turn out the right way and you thought the circumstances were more powerful than God.

It’s so easy to do this, but today, as new worries crop up, I’m trying to do things I little differently. With each new fear, I’m trying to stop long enough and ask myself a simple question:
“Is this more powerful than God?”

Is Mutton Hollow Chevy more powerful than God?

Is a possible layoff at work more powerful than God?

Is __________ more powerful than God?

So far, every answer has come back with a resounding no. I still worry. I’ll still walk through the hollow of the shadow of death from time to time, but with that question and a God that loves to answer it, I think I’m going to be alright.

And Mutton Hollow, please know that when you’re ready to give me that .com I, much like the band Journey, will be waiting right here for you with open arms.

How would you write this question today about your own life?

Finish this sentence:

Is _________ more powerful than God?

The only time I’ve ever been recognized was not as weird as I thought it would be. I guess in my head I envisioned my family and I would be walking in the mall and some stranger would exclaim, “Jon Acuff? The Jon Acuff? Wow, it is you!” Then I would blush and maybe shield my kids behind me with my arm because this person’s adoration would be so intense. They’d say, “Oh, please, say something that is both sarcastic and insightful at the same time. You’re so wise and adequately heighted.” I’d correct them on the use of the word “heighted” which is actually not a word, and then I’d say two or three off-the-cuff sentences that would change their life and then maybe sign their arm or a Bible if it were available. Seems like a pretty reasonable expectation, right?

It didn’t happen like that. A guy just walked up to me at church and introduced himself. We talked for a few minutes about Stuff Christians Like. The whole thing was over before I knew it and was pretty uneventful. Which is probably exactly how God wanted it.

I tend to get ego drunk pretty quickly. When people compliment me, outwardly I do the Christian courtesy of immediately rejecting the kind words. Inwardly though, I’m often drinking in their kindness and doing a little “look how awesome I am” dance. I’m patting myself on the back with both arms and both legs at the same time, which is difficult but not impossible since I’ve taken yoga twice. (Which may or may not be “of the devil”–jury’s still out on that one.)

Knowing that about myself, knowing I’m prone to massive “me parades,” I am constantly wrestling with God over the unexpected growth of Stuff Christians Like. There’s a circle of famous Christians right now: big pastors, authors who have written amazing books, speakers who stalk conference stages like cougars. And I wanted to be inside it. I wanted to become a famous Christian.

One night while jogging, I confessed that to God. As ugly and as shallow as this sounds, I said to Him, “God, I want my story to give me fame. I want fame. I want to be famous.”

In a split second, I felt like God laughed. Not at me, but with me, which is something I feel like He regularly does. In my heart, I heard:

“Ha! You want fame? The creator of the universe knows your name. The Alpha and Omega knows who you are and what you care about. That’s as famous as you’re ever going to be. Whose acknowledgment of you is going to stand up next to mine?”

At that point, I started laughing too, because He was right. I’m already famous. God knew me in the womb. He knows how many hairs are on my head. He’s my absolutely biggest fan and I’m famous in His eyes. So are you. He’s got a blog about you that is simply astounding. He follows you on Twitter and started a fan group dedicated to you on Facebook. He can’t stop talking about you and pouring out love on you.

Is whatever you’re doing right now in life going to make you famous? Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But ultimately it doesn’t matter. As Christians, we’ve already peaked. We can stop worrying about trying to become famous Christians. That’s done.

We are all famous.