Mick's Minute

When I was fifteen years old I had a dream. I had a job and a little bit of money, and my dream was to figure out a way to convert that money into my first car.

And not just any car, mind you. My dream was to buy a used silver 1988 two-door hatch-back 4-cylinder Dodge Daytona. That very car had been sitting for a few months on the dusty back lot of the used car lot in the town where we lived, and I thought that it was just about the coolest thing on four wheels. I had shown it to my friends, I had shown it to my parents, and even though nobody else seemed all that impressed, I was hooked.

Long story short, one day during track practice I had gone running in the direction of the car lot to check on my dream car... and it was gone.

That was pretty tough, until I walked out into the parking lot of the school after track practice and there was my mom sitting there in that car!

(And Might I say, God bless that woman.)

The day that I, with the help of my long-suffering parents, was able to buy that car was one of the great moments of my young life. I loved that car, and drove it for years.

But as I look back I realize that that car really wasn't all that great. Even when it was brand new it was just another gutless hatchback, and it was far from new by the time it ended up on that used car lot.

The truth is that the memories of that car stick with me not because of what that car was, but because of what that car was to me.

In reality, my first car was a used, gutless, uncomfortable, 4-cylinder hatchback that had been sitting on a dusty back car lot for months because nobody else wanted it. But for me, none of that mattered. For me, it was exactly what I wanted—dents, scratches, and all.

I take you on that walk down memory lane because I want to offer you some encouragement.

In the used car lot of life, most of us don't really feel like a show room quality product. Maybe because of our dents and scratches, maybe because we're pretty sure we were never that great to begin with, or maybe just because nobody ever seems to take a second look at you.

But here's the thing that changes everything; Some things in life stick with you not because of what they are, but because of what they are to you.

And for God, you are one of those things. You may not look like much to you, but to Him, you are exactly what He wants—dents, scratches, and all.

The Bible says that God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son, so that whoever believes in Him will have real life with Him forever.

That includes you, dude.

There was a time when it would take centuries for a culture to undergo any kind of significant change. But that has changed. Now major change can happen in months, or even days. Because of that, we live in a very exciting time. It could be the case that today is the day that somebody somewhere cures cancer, finds a way to drastically reduce poverty in the world, or invents a cheap flying car. That’s exciting stuff.

But in the midst of all that excitement, the rapid pace of change in our lives has also created a lot of instability. Many of our jobs could disappear overnight. Many of our values seem to have gone the way of the dinosaurs. Many of our relationships are falling apart because we don’t know how to talk to each other anymore or even what we would talk about.

In the midst of the constant changes around us, we often don’t know how to keep up. And that is kind of scary.

But If you’re feeling strung out and out of touch, I’ve got good news for you. You don’t have to keep up.

Contrary to popular opinion, life is not best lived on the cutting edge of the latest trend. You can try to live life out there, and maybe you do, but sooner or later you will discover that you are exhausted and empty, and that the foundations of your life are always crumbling underneath you.

As for me, I love change. I think its fascinating and exciting. But I have found my peace and my joy and my hope in a life that is built around something that never changes.

My God is eternal, and always the same. His book, the Bible, is thousands of years old, and it doesn’t change either.

Now I admit that I miss out on a few trends every once in I while. But I’m ok with that. I’ve spent some time chasing after latest and greatest thing in search of happiness, and I was always more empty at the end than I was at the beginning.

I have discovered that the more I chase after this God and the life that He has for me, the more I am full. And its good.

How about you?

Weird confession time. I have a lot of stuff in my garage. My problem is that every time I'm about to throw something away I hear the voice of my father screaming out from my childhood and saying, "now somebody could get some use out of that."

And while I admit that it is a great feeling to wade into my garage, step over that old piece of lawn furniture, and grab hold of exactly the thing that I happen to need at the time—usually, that voice turns out not to be right.

Usually, I'm just a guy with a meaningless collection of worn out roller blade wheels sitting on a shelf somewhere beside a meaningless collection of orphaned nuts and bolts sitting beside a meaningless collection of something else.

Apparently, the gap between the things that a person might get some use out of and the things that a person actually gets some use out of is wide. Like Grand Canyon wide.

But regardless, I think that lots of us are tempted to keep piles of things that we don't really care about just in case we might need them some day.

Maybe you have a garage that looks like mine, or maybe you have an old pile of shoes in your closet, or an old car sitting out behind your house somewhere. The idea that drives all of those realities is exactly the same.

That stuff is not important enough to do anything with, but you hate to get rid of it entirely just in case you ever need it.

And when it comes to rusty bolts and old shoes, I think that’s probably OK. But there are some things in life that should never under any circumstances be put on that shelf. And one of those things is our connection with God.

If we're being honest, for many of us our connection with God is kind of like those roller blade wheels in my garage. It is something that we picked up along the way somewhere, and now we're just kind of stuck with it. On the one hand, we're pretty sure that it could come in handy sometime, so we hate to throw it away. But on the other hand, we don't really care about it. So it just sits there on a shelf with a bunch of other stuff that we sort of value but don't actually care about—taking up space in our lives.

But when it comes to our connection with God, that doesn't really work. And we know that, because people have tried it before, and God has responded.

In the book of Revelation chapter 3, Jesus is speaking from Heaven to this church in a middle of nowhere town called Laodacia, and this is what He says to them.

“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

Jesus is saying to these people, “Hey, you put me on the shelf, man. And its not working.”

As it turns out, handing your life to Jesus is a great plan. But its a terrible back-up plan. Jesus does not play second fiddle to anybody, and He is most certainly not content to sit on a shelf in some dusty back corner of our hearts.

So today, if you are in search of some wood from an old piano, you should check out my garage. But if you are in search of real life that matters and changes things and changes you, its time to take Jesus off the shelf.

Starting off a new year is always an interesting kind of experience for me. The promise of a new year is really wrapped up in that word—new. New days, new beginnings, new opportunities, those are the kinds of things that a new year seems to promise. But as the new year begins to take shape, most of the time we come to realize that the word that is most likely to characterize the new year is not new. The word that is most likley to characterize our new year is same—as in, pretty much the same as last year.

Same people, same stuff, same bills. And most importantly, same you.

And for me, as I settle in to the new year, that same-ness can be a little bit of a let-down sometimes. There is always a part of me that starts off every new year thinking that this is the year that I conquer all my problems and maybe even get a flying car while I'm at it. But it never takes very long to figure out that that is probably not how this year is going to go.

While I strongly encourage you to use the new year as an excuse to eject some bad things from your life, remember also that there are a few things about every year of your life that will always be the same. And surprisingly, if you are looking for some real transformation in the new year you might might be most likely to find it by focusing on a few of those things that will never change.

Here are two examples.

First, God Knows You. Always has, always will.

Second, You Are Kind of Awesome. Even if you don't believe it, its still true.

Psalm 139 demonstrates how those two facts come together in the Bible. It starts by saying,

1 You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

It goes on from there, and I suggest you look it up and read it.

Here is how these things that will always be the same can change your life;

The first unchanging fact is that God Knows You, perfectly and completely. One of the things that means is that you always have an audience, including for those parts of your life that you aren't too proud of. That should be a challenge for all of us. It also means that You Are Never Alone—that in all of those days and all of those times when you may feel like you have nothing and nobody, you actually do have something and somebody. You have God. And He has always been there for you, and will always be there for you. And the fact that His presence in your life will always be the same is a great reason to change our lives by putting our hope and our trust in Him instead of in the kinds of stuff we chose to trust in last year.

The second unchanging fact is that you are awesome. That is what the Bible means when it says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Now don't get me wrong, I suspect that you've got plenty of dents and scratches on your life and in your soul. We all do. If we were all used cars on a lot somewhere, that would be a pretty rough looking place. You might think that you are much better or much worse than other people, but the fact is that you are a sinner. Plain and simple. But still, we are kind of awesome. Still we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and still we are such a big deal to God that He sent Jesus to come into this world to rescue us. And no matter what happens, that is not going to change. So maybe, just maybe, if you want your New Year to be truly new, then the key is to get very honest about the things that will always be the same and then intentionally shape your life around those truths.

Trust God because He is always there for you, and be awesome because that is what He built you to be. If you get that, then you new year is going to be new indeed. Even without the flying car.

Once again we find ourselves on the cusp of a brand new year. We have drawn an imaginary line in the solar system, we have all traveled one complete loop around the sun together, and now we cross that line again and start our next loop.

It’s interesting to me that, in the cosmic sense, a year just means our planet has traveled in a great big circle. In the personal sense, that’s the last thing most of us want to do in a year. For the most part, we all want our lives to be moving forward. We want to be healthier than we were a year ago. We want to be wealthier than we were a year ago. We want to be smarter than we were a year ago.

It kind of feels like failure if we look back and see that we are starting this year in the same place we started the last one.

A wise man once told me that in 10 years of life a person can either learn 10 years of life lessons or they can learn one year of life lessons 10 times over.

Genius! Right?

In my life, I think I've spent years on both of those different tracks. I've had years of growth and learning in which I've been able to walk into the new year as a person who was farther ahead in life. I've also had years of stumbling and bumbling and repeating past mistakes and then straggled into the new year as a person who was at best starting over at the same place I started the year before.

I can’t speak for you, but I know which one of those experiences I like better.

For me, life is a thing that should be lived in forward progress, even if the stuff of life around us is going nowhere, or even backwards.

The trick is figuring out how to live that life. How do we keep growing forward instead of just circling around the same old stuff?

I do not pretend to be wise enough to invent the answer to that question, but I do think that I’ve discovered an important part of it.

Possibly my favorite few sentences in the whole Bible are found in the Book of Romans, Chapter 12. They answer this question of how to live life directionally by saying:

“Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be TRANSFORMED by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—His good, perfect, and pleasing will.”

I believe that in those words we find the answer of how to live our lives in a forward direction, even if the whole world is just going in circles.

The answer is to live lives of radical sacrifice. Not one more day wasted on just doing things the normal way. And that external change happens when we—moment by moment and day by day—fight the battle for our own minds by seeking out the truth of God and choosing to believe it.

If you want to make certain that you start off your next trip around the sun in a very different place than you are starting off this one, choose radical new life by giving yourself completely to God inside and out, and then live accordingly. And when you mess it up and find yourself falling into old habits, choose radical new life again right from there knowing that God loves you, and He is never going to let you go.

Awesome!

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We are all very different people who like to give and receive different kinds of gifts. But though you may be giving and receiving everything from sledge hammers to soup bowls this Christmas, I’ve noticed that there is one thing all our varied gifts tend to share in common—the condition of the gift.

Your gift might be anything from a paintball gun to a pasta maker, but the thing that most of us share in common is that we like our gifts to be new, and we like them to work.

And that makes perfect sense to me. My guess is that if your Christmas gift is used and broken, you probably won't be super happy about that.

And while it’s a pretty straight-forward fact that most of us like our Christmas gifts to be new and we like our Christmas gifts to work, it’s also very interesting to me because, though we are all very much like each other in that regard, we are very different than Jesus.

You may recall that Christmas is Jesus’ birthday. That’s what it is. And like us, Jesus likes to get things. In one sense, that is the reason why He came to earth at all. But, unlike most of us, instead of new and working, the kind of presents that Jesus wants most are always used and broken.

Every time.

As it turns out, that strange little fact is some of the best news in the history of the world.

The thing that Jesus wants for His birthday (and every other day) is us. He came into the world to rescue people.

But we all have this problem, which is that none of us are new and fresh out of the package. If we are being honest, we are not the most desirable gift on the shelf. We are just us. That means that we are used, and we are broken. And even though we can dress up our packaging a little bit from time to time to try to hide how used and broken we are, there isn’t really anything we can do to fix ourselves. No matter how hard we try, we can’t make ourselves new again.

So, we often start to worry because, to the extent that we think about Jesus at all, we think that He surely must want us to get all cleaned up and fixed up before we come to Him because nobody wants something that is used and broken.

But we can never seem to get our selves cleaned up and fixed up. So instead, so often, we just give up.

But here comes that beautiful fact about Jesus.

When it comes to the gifts that He wants, Jesus is not like us. He knows that we are all used and broken, but He came for us anyway. What Jesus wants for Christmas is the exact same thing that He wants every single other day of the year. What He wants is you. And not a fake version of you in which you pretend to be something you're not. Just you. Just as you are.

You may not know it, but God sent Jesus to Earth on His birthday to give you a gift. And what you got from God for Christmas was hope.

Because of Christmas, you can give yourself to Jesus as an unworthy gift, used and broken. And Jesus is going to accept you and love you right where you're at. Then He's going to make you new.

It’s Christmas time, world. Accept the gift.

Awesome!

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Birthdays are a funny thing because they are moments that simultaneously connect us with the past, the present, and the future.

Follow me here: on somebody's birthday, we celebrate the past tense fact that they were born and the present tense fact that they are where they are in their life. But we also look forward to a future tense hope by wishing them a great upcoming year of life.

I'm thinking particularly about that today because Christmas Day is drawing nearer by the day. And though we sometimes forget it, Christmas—at its core—is the celebration of somebody's birthday.

Even though nobody really knows the exact day that Jesus was born, December 25th is the date that we celebrate the fact that one very real evening slightly over 2,000 years ago, Jesus was born as a baby to two scared young parents whose lives were in such a state of craziness that the only place they could find for Jesus to be born was a barn in a town where they didn't even live.

And even more so than with other birthdays, there is a lot of history to be celebrated on Jesus' birthday. It is no small thing that God sent His only Son into the world to save us.

But this week, I've been reminded that there is more than just the past wrapped up in the birthday of Jesus.

There is history, but there are also present and future implications that should bring us hope and guide every moment of our lives.

With that in mind, let’s take a glimpse at something that might just blow your mind a little bit.

So about 700 past tense years before the birth of Jesus as a baby boy in a barn, God was talking to His Son Jesus in Heaven about the future, and He let a prophet named Isaiah listen in on that conversation so that we could know about it in the present. True story.

This is a part of that conversation from the Book of Isaiah in the Bible:

(Kudos to my daughter Aurora for bringing these words to my attention.)

“I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness;
    I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you
    to be a covenant for the people
    and a light for the Gentiles,
 to open eyes that are blind,
    to free captives from prison
    and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.

 “I am the Lord; that is my name!
    I will not yield my glory to another
    or my praise to idols.
 See, the former things have taken place,
    and new things I declare;
before they spring into being
    I announce them to you.”

~Isaiah 42:6-9

Did you catch that? Seven hundred years before God sent Jesus into the world, He told Him that in His future he would be a guiding light for people just like us in our present. That He would open the eyes of the blind, and bring radical freedom to the world.

This Christmas season, we all need to remember the past tense facts of Jesus' birthday. But let’s also remember that we can walk in freedom right here in the present today because of Jesus. And He has a future planned for us that would put a smile on the saddest faces if only we could see it.

Trust Jesus today with the past, the present, and the future.

Now available in paperback and ebook! Audio book coming soon!

Awesome!

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I love quirky, one-of-a-kind type things.

If something out there is both hard to find and hard to explain, then chances are, I want it.

To that end, I own my very own African spear, my very own piece of the Berlin Wall, and a bunch of other things that might not be worth a nickel to anybody else, but mean a lot to me. But as much as I might treasure each of those little finds, the best deal I ever got was on something that means more to me than my whole life but didn’t cost me a dime.

Like most of the things I love, it’s a little hard to explain, so we'll start with that.

Before I was ever born, God knew that I wasn’t going to be a good person. In fact, he knew that I was going to be so rotten that the only fair punishment for me was going to be to kill me and send me to Hell. Not fun, but true.

But God is very different than me, and maybe very different than you. Even though He knew all that, God loved us before we ever even existed. So He did this crazy, hard-to-explain thing.

He offered you and me and everybody a whole new story.

Rather than just completing my story of being a failed human being by letting me die and go to Hell, God sent His one and only Son from Heaven to die in my place for my sins. And He did it for free because there is no way I could ever pay Him back.

It’s like God gave me a little card to keep in my wallet that, on one side, is the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card, and on the other side, is a ticket to a whole new life.

It’s hard to explain, this gift of God. In many ways I feel like a still don't understand it.

But you may remember, hard to explain is only one of my two attributes for the perfect find. The other is that it be hard to find.

And this is where this particular deal takes a very strange turn.

For the last 2,000 years since Jesus came and died for our sins, this news has been called the gospel by the church. It’s been told in more places in the world than probably any other story.

And yet, still to this day—even though it is available to everybody—this gospel is hard to find.

One of the reasons for that is because if the gospel actually were a little card for us to keep in our wallets, it would be the most counterfeited card in history. The world would be ten feet deep in cards of the exact same size and color that tell a different story.

One counterfeit would tell us that the way out of jail is to be as nice as you can in all of the ways you can, and a really good liar in all the ways that you can't. Another would tell us that the real ticket to a new life is a low-interest credit card and a new relationship. Our lives are all full of counterfeit stories that are easy to explain and easy to find.

But as for me, I like one-of-a-kind, non-counterfeit things. True things. Even when they are hard to explain. Even when they are hard to find. So, personally, I am delighted that I have this gospel. This truth that Jesus came to set me free and give me new life with Him forever.

He gave His life for mine, and I accepted the deal.

I don't know what counterfeit cards you're carrying today, but I hope you lay them down and choose this one instead.

Awesome!

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I’ve been thinking about why I do the things that I do.

We all do the things that we do—you've probably noticed that—but the big question for me is WHY?

As I ask that question of myself, I want to tell you about two of the things that stand out as guiding principles in my life.

First off, when I look around at the world, I don’t like what I see.

Now don't get me wrong. Everybody loves baby animals, and there are lots of cool things happening in the world. But there is a lot of other stuff out there that I DO NOT LIKE.

I don’t like pain. I don’t like death, and I see a lot of both of those things. I look around and I see hurt people hurting people. Then I see that cycle repeating itself over and over and over. It’s such a common part of our daily lives that we don’t even notice it.

I look around at the world locally, nationally, and internationally, and so much of what I see, I do not like.

And that dissatisfaction with the way of things is a driving force in my life.

But it’s not the only one. If all I had going for me was a supreme dislike for the way of things, then my life would be full of hopelessness and anger. And some days I feel a lot of those things. But there is this other guiding principle of my life that is bigger than the things I do not like to see in the world and the hopelessness and anger that sometimes follows.

In spite of how messed up the world is and our lives are, I believe that there is real cause for hope and revolution in this world.

Specifically, I believe that God is real, and that His ultimate response to our sinful mess was to respond in radical love. Such radical love that He sent His only Son Jesus to come into this mess and rescue us. I believe that Jesus literally came to this earth and died to pay the price for my sins and for everyone else’s. And I believe He came back to life a few days later because He is bigger even than death and because we need to know that.

The fact that Jesus is Jesus means that things do not have to be the way that they are. People don’t have to spend their lives trapped by the things that have happened to them, trapped by the way those things have changed them, and trapping other people by the things they they do and say to them. Rather than being trapped and being trappers, we can be free! And we can be instruments of freedom in the world.

On this subject, the Book of 1 Corinthians, Chapter 5 in the Bible says:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

I don't like the way many things are in the world today. But because of Jesus there is hope.

Those two guiding principles explain why I do a lot of the things that I do. In the midst of the messiness of life, I believe that everybody needs a Savior and that Jesus is Him. And I want everybody to get the chance to meet Him.

But the more important question for you today is: why do you do what you do?

Why are you happy about the things you are happy about and angry about the things you are angry about? Why do you care about the things that you care about and not care about the things you don't care about? There are reasons why, and those reasons are shaping your whole life.

If you think about that, and you like who you are and your reasons for being that, live them boldly and honestly.

But if you take a look at who you are and why, and you realize that you don’t really like either of those, then please know that there is another hope for a whole new life for you that is built on a totally different why.

Jesus is out there. He is for you. And when you find Him, you will never be the same.

Awesome!

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Once upon a time I found myself standing in a redwood forest. A few miles away on one side of me was the booming metropolis of San Francisco, California. Less than a mile in the other direction was the roaring Pacific Ocean. But as I walked into that giant, ancient forest, a curtain of absolute silence descended. Not only did all outside sounds stop, it was as if time stopped.

On one side of me, an ocean churned its way between California and China, and on the other side of me the entire San Francisco Bay area teemed with over seven million people living out every great and terrible part of life all at the same time. But in that forest, there was absolute stillness. Even the rays of light that penetrated to the forest floor seemed to be asking respectful permission to enter. 

This was like no place I have ever been before or since. 

It didn't feel so much as if the forest was happening all around me, but rather like the forest had already happened, long ago, and I was being allowed to step back in time to see it.

As I stood there, surrounded by huge thousand-year-old trees, I was acutely aware that I will live my whole life and die, and in my entire lifetime, with all of its ups and downs and every other thing, this forest will barely even change.

That was an important moment for me, because my everyday life doesn't feel like that at all. 

My everyday life feels like it is flying by all of the time, and like the best I can possibly do is to try and keep up. Oftentimes, in the midst of the rat race of life, I think I lose perspective on things. The most important things always seem to be getting lost under a pile of other things that feel more urgent, or at least more immediate.

But in that forest, I was reminded of the profound eternality of God. He always has been, He is right now, and He always will be. And like every other part of Him, His perspective on things is also eternal.

He does not get wrapped up in the busyness and distractions of life. Instead, in every moment, He is Himself and He is doing His thing in His timing.

That's frustrating for me sometimes because I get very wrapped up in my things and my timing. But I try to remember something that the Bible says about God in the Book of 2 Peter, Chapter 3 in the Bible.

“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

Right now, in this moment--be it a boring moment, or a busy moment, or an empty moment, or a full moment--in this moment God is patiently working in His timing to do His thing. And one of the things that He is doing is patiently waiting on us to turn to Him.

I think I can make time for that. I hope you can, too.

Awesome!

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