Last weekend I got to do an event with an awesome organization called R.U.S.H Ministries. What Marc Pritchett and his team are doing for students just blew me away. During the event, I met George Dennehy. George was born with bilateral upper limb deficieny in Romania. He mentioned from stage that in his home country, being born without arms or hands is considered a curse. His family put him in an orphanage.

An American family adopted him and over the years he’s learned to share his story via music. (You should follow him on twitter! His account is @ThatArmlessGuy)

After sharing his story, he played the song “How he loves” and it was amazing. I took a few short video clips of the song.  It’s hard to capture the moment with these, but hopefully you’ll see a little bit of what I saw when George sang about the depth of God’s love for us.

George Part 1

George Part 2

George Part 3

Last week I was at the Orange Conference. It was an amazingly fun experience and I spent most of the week making this face:

I don’t know what I was saying at that moment, probably “Yay Jesus!” or “Look at me, I’m wearing a sports coat! (Why do we call them sports coats by the way? Those are the absolutely worst thing to do sports in. If your friend runs half marathons in sports coats, your friend is an idiot. I digress.)

After the conference was over, I was hanging out with two other speakers in the volunteer room. A group of volunteers came up to me and asked if I would participate in a prayer circle. They said it was a tradition and that we all needed to hold hands. The other two speakers I was hanging out with immediately abandoned me to the awkwardness of what was surely going to follow and stopped talking to me as if I was invisible.

…

Read More

Whenever I see Jesus Jukes like this, there are only three words I think in my head. They are the same three words you’ve had in your head for six solid months if you have kids who have seen the movie Frozen. I believe you know them. They go something like this, let it go.

As I’ve written about before, one Easter I got into a bit of a yelling match with a guy in a visor at an Easter egg hunt. The whole thing was exactly how Jesus imagined us honoring that day.

We were at my in-laws country club, which always makes me feel a little weird. We’re certainly rich in a global way, but I kind of think that they can all tell that I’m just a visitor. I feel like the real members can smell middle class on me. (Which kind of smells like sun ripened raspberry and feet by the way.)

So after I pointed to where a golden egg was hidden to my then 5 year old daughter, he yelled at me for cheating. I told him that his white visor made him look like a financial planner who was wearing his “casual uniform.” Whole thing got very out of hand. (I didn’t say that, but I thought it later when we were driving home, which is where most of my comebacks occur.)

This year, we spent Easter in Chapel Hill at my parents church. Standing there waiting for the egg hunt to start I had a flashback to that rugby scrum one from a few years ago. I might always remember that moment at Easter, but there’s a more important one I won’t forget. One I’ve written about before.

…

Read More

Yesterday, right before the start of an Easter egg hunt at church, one of my kids muttered, “This is going to be World War 3.”

I instantly wanted to earmuff Jesus, hopeful that maybe he missed that comment. I’m pretty positive my child, who I won’t name in this story because then I’d have to give her a dollar for the rights, heard me say that first. Or at the bare minimum I gave her the impression at some point that Easter egg hunts were a competition to be won. That the Acuffs go hard or go home when it comes to Easter eggs.

Just the way Jesus intended Easter to be.

…

Read More

Recently I tweeted:

“Spring, the time of year I want to punch Adam in the face because I’m pretty sure allergies are a product of the fall.”

I tweeted that because I am on lock down right now thanks to pollen. I can’t go outside or I look like I am crying from reading a really amazing poem about a pony. And there’s no way there were allergies in the Garden of Eden. I bet when God kicked out Adam and Eve he handed them a box of Claritin on the way. (Only one box though because even then, you could only get 15 at a time.)

I had a hard time capturing why I hated pollen so much, please don’t tell me about it’s importance for bees and flowers right now, until my friend sent me the image below. I don’t know who made it. If it’s you, let me know and I will give you credit. But this captures exactly why pollen is so deadly.

Question:
Am I the only one sneezing right now, or do you have seasonal allergies too?

A few days ago, a friend texted me. Apparently a Christian band had been publicly ripping on him and he needed some advice.

Now at the bare minimum, that’s not the best use of time for a Christian band, what with all the spreading the joy of Christ they’ve got on their plate.

But the time management problem wasn’t the biggest issue. For me, the real challenge was the band’s twitter profile. You’d think, that given their penchant for not liking people, they’d at least have a twitter bio that reflected that. Alas, that wasn’t the case at all, as each line spoke to their hope to love people and share grace with them. Bigger than even that though, was that the band reminded me of me and my ability to be a hypocrite online. What they had actually said about my friend didn’t really seem that harmful. (I’ve said far worse.) But I think the whole thing stirred up something I’ve been wrestling with in my own life during the six years of this blog, online hypocrisy.

That might surprise you a little bit, that the way a Christian acts online doesn’t line up with how they describe themselves online, but it shouldn’t.

We now have one of the greatest opportunities to be hypocrites in the history of mankind. Think about the scale of our hypocrisy these days. Thirty years ago, your dad interacted with maybe 200 people in a given month. He knew people at work, in his family, his town and in his church. If he wanted to be a jerk to large groups of complete strangers, it was pretty difficult. I guess he could have printed up a newsletter or called a radio show but even then, that would take a lot of effort.

Now though, in the time you and I occupy, it’s so much easier.

We can proclaim Christ with our (digital) lips and then deny him with our (digital) lifestyle faster than any other previous generation and to more people than our parents would have ever dreamed! (Head nod to Brennan Manning and DC Talk’s What if I stumble.)

If this concerns you at all, it should. The damage we Christians can do with the Internet is unbelievable.

I’d love to think this blog post will radically change the world, but I am making my own images these days and they are just horrible. (A sunset has nothing to do with this post. Just ridiculous.)

Not everyone who reads this will give up their hypocritical ways.

So, if you want to be a hypocrite online, at least do these three things:

…

Read More

I recently did a video with Relevant magazine. It’s a quick set of four things everyone needs to review in their lives. (I think the one I’ve had the most reaction to is the last one and it’s a question my dad asked me when I was growing up.)

It’s only 2:32 long but covers everything from social media to relationships.

Enjoy!