this isn't high school

This week at FUEL we’re kicking off the school year with a brand new series called Radical: A Life Of Fanatical Faith. Over the next four weeks we’re going to talk about what it means to live with radical faith, what a radical life looks like, what radical love looks like, and what radical relationships are. It’s going to be a super practical series and should challenge our students in some really awesome ways.

It started challenging me before it even had a chance to start challenging them.

I normally get “challenged” in a very routine way: I hear a talk on a topic or read a verse on a topic, realize I’m not doing what that talk or verse says I should do, and then realize I need to be doing what that talk or verse says. After that I think to myself, “Challenge accepted” and then go about trying to conquer that challenge.

This one happened in a different way.

This one happened through my living out that fanatical faith in a way that I never had before.

Last Thursday I went to Nashville with Nicole to see Hillsong United. If you don’t know who that is, they are the leading writers of modern worship music. They are one of the groups that brought in the rock and roll worship movement. If you go to a “contemporary” church, chances are you sang one of their songs yesterday in church.

Nicole had been to two other United concerts before and she told me how great they were live. I expected big things going in.

The show started about eight. They played, and played, and played and it was awesome. Being with 6000 people in a setting that is completely focused on Jesus is an amazing feeling. I was also on the very front row and it was so loud that I couldn’t hear myself sing which let me know that no one else could hear me either. I could sing as loud and as bad as I wanted.

After about two hours of playing, United shifted into one of my favorite songs: With Everything. They went into it from another song so it took me a few lines to realize that we were actually singing it. I had been looking forward to this song all night. I knew it was going to be great and that it was going to be loud and that it was going to be awesome.

I didn’t know God would speak to me in the most clear way he’d ever spoken to me before during it.

The whole idea of With Everything is that we’re going to give God everything that we have and hold nothing back. As the song started kicking into gear, I started singing:

Break down our pride
And all the walls
We’ve built up inside
Our earthly crowns
And all our desires
We lay at your feet

By this time in the song, I was in full “bass player stomp” mode. All bass players do this at some point or another. They start stomping one of their feet with the beat of the song and start bobbing their upper body along with the rhythm. I don’t know why we do it, but it’s something that we do.

The song kept going and I kept doing the stomp and singing:

God of all days
Glorious in all of your way
Your majesty, the wonder and grace
In the light of your name

The bass player stomp kept picking up. I had to switch feet because I had stomped so hard. As I’m typing this right now, my head is doing the bobbing part of the stomp. I was fully engulfed in the song and just kept going:

With everything
With everything
We will shout for your glory.
With everything
With everything
We will should forth your praise

Our hearts will cry
Be glorified
Be lifted high
Above all names
For you our king
With everything
We will shout forth your praise

At this point in the song everything stops for a split second and then everyone starts shouting “Woah” in the rhythm of the song. With the full stomp going, I started shouting. I was straight up yelling as loud as I could.

And then my voice cracked.

I was yelling so loud and so hard that my voice was literally cracking and going in and out. It was like puberty all over again.

My first thought was, “Oh crap. Who just heard that? That’s so freaking embarrassing. I need to bring it down a notch or seven.”

Right then, as soon as I thought that, in a way that I’ve never experienced, I felt God say to me, “No you don’t. It’s beautiful.”

I kept singing, although with a little bit less force, while I tried to figure out what was going on. Without even being able to ask the question of, “God, is that you?” he just kept going:

“This is beautiful. This is what I want from you. No holding back. No caring about what people around you are doing. All of you. Don’t stop.”

God told me not to stop so dang it, I wasn’t going to stop. I kept singing. I went full force again. My foot was trying to stomp a hole through the floor. My voice was cracking every other “Woah.” I didn’t care. I just kept going.

That was the last song of United’s set. They came back on for an encore that was great and then me and Nicole left. After saying bye to one of my students that I had seen there, we jumped in the car and started on the 2.5 hour journey back to Knoxville.

I drove and, since it was one in the morning, Nicole slept. In the quiet time of the drive I was able to start to process what it was that God was telling me during With Everything. I didn’t quite figure it out that night but I think that I have in the days since.

When I was in college, my entire identity was being a super fan for Liberty. My nickname was SuperJon and people from other colleges knew the name SuperJon. I showed up on campus at other schools and people would say, “Oh, hey, are you SuperJon?” That was my identity. I was known for being a fanatic for Liberty athletics.

Being that fanatic was so much of who I was that I started a club to help make other fanatics so that we could travel to other schools and show how fanatical we were. We’d go to games and scream our heads off.

It was normal for me to look like an idiot and not care while at a basketball game.

It was normal for me to leave a football game with no voice at all and be completely exhausted.

It was normal for my voice to crack while trying to be loud on third down or in the last two minutes of a basketball game.

Those things were normal, but at no point in my life had I ever not cared what I looked like or who was watching me while in church.

At no point in my life had I ever left church exhausted because I gave Jesus my all.

At no point in my life had I ever yelled for Jesus so loud that my voice cracked.

God was telling me he wanted me to be as fanatical about him as I was about Liberty athletics. He wanted me to not care about looking cool in front of my friends, my girlfriend, or my students. He wanted me to stop saying that I was tired and skipping out on a quiet time and start changing my entire schedule around for him like I used to for Liberty.

He wanted me to be radical.

He challenged me.

Challenge accepted.

Say your prayers and take your vitamins.

Have a nice day.

-Jonathan

A month and a half ago I was laying in bed in a hostel in Guatemala City, Guatemala and couldn’t sleep. It was the day before we were set to fly home to Knoxville and we had to wake up really early to catch our first flight. I was doing the annoyed open your eyes, exhale, roll over, find a new position to lay in, close your eyes, and think, “Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep.” move that we all do when we can’t sleep.

After doing this a couple of times, a name popped in my head. I didn’t think much of it and just flipped over and told myself to go to sleep. The name popped in my head again. Annoyed, I exhaled even louder, rolled over, and tried to go to sleep.

Then it popped in my head again.

By this point I was starting to realize this was a God thing. I’ve learned lately that when God puts a name on your mind in a way that you can’t shake it that there’s probably a good chance he’s wanting you to pray for that person. There was only one thing that made this name awkward:

It was my ex-girlfriend.

Wanting to be obedient, and selfishly knowing the only way I’d get to sleep was if I prayed for her, I went ahead and said a prayer for her that I was led to pray, rolled over, and went right to sleep.

Okay, that was easy. No big deal.

If you know me, or if you’ve been reading this blog for more than a day, you know that this story didn’t end right there.

The next day, while waiting out a 7-hour layover in DC, I kept hearing a flight boarding for Allentown, PA. Once again, I didn’t think much of it other than I remembered Allentown being semi-close to where my ex lives. Trying to entertain myself and kill time, I started Facebook stalking people. I ended up checking out my sister’s Facebook page and saw that she had written on my ex’s wall the day before.

It was at this point that I started feeling a little weird. There were way too many references or points towards my ex in a 24 hour span. Trying to figure out what was going on, I went to her Facebook page.

And that’s when all of the dots connected.

The top post on her wall was a note about how she had been hit by a deer the night before and how she was stranded on the side of the road for a few hours. After I read the note, I looked at the time the note was posted and did some math to figure out exactly when all of this had happened:

It was the exact time that I was tossing and turning in my bed in a hostel in Guatemala City.

As I flew home to Knoxville that night, I sat listening to a podcast from my old pastor while staring out the window at the city lights below. The entire time I was listening to that podcast I felt God telling me, “You need to tell her you prayed for her. Yes, it will be awkward, but you need to do it. I want you to do it.”

I didn’t want to do it.

I got home and told Nicole about the whole thing. She was a little weirded out by it because it was my ex (and rightfully so, I would’ve been weirded out about it if the situations were reversed) but she told that if I felt like that’s what God was telling me to do then I should do it.

Still not convinced I should do it, I asked a couple of friends if they thought I should and they all agreed that it sounded like it’s what God wanted me to do. So, the next morning, I sat and spent 30 minutes writing a two paragraph Facebook message. It was the first time that I had attempted to contact the girl that changed my world in almost three years. After writing, rewriting, and rerewriting the message, I finally sent it:

Honestly, I fought even writing this all day but felt like I was supposed to tell you about it. I don’t know why God chose me to pray for you that night from 5000 miles, three countries, and two time zones away but he did. He’s protecting you and has your back and I think for some reason he wants me to tell you that. He wants me to let you though that no matter what, through ways that you wouldn’t even think of, he’s got your back. He’s not going to let you down or leave you hanging.

I hope things are going well for you. Don’t feel like you have to respond to this or anything if you don’t want to. I’m just passing along something that I felt like I was supposed to. Have a great day/night/whatever it is when you read this.

She responded a little while later telling me thanks and how much she appreciated it. I thought the whole thing was over. I was obedient and did what God wanted me to do and so I patted myself on the back and started moving forward.

And that’s when God told me he wasn’t done yet.

He wanted me to go a step further.

The podcast I had been listening to the night before on the plane was about forgiveness. It was talking about forgiving others and asking them to forgive you and how those two things are absolute keys to being happy with your life. I went back and forth telling God that I had already forgiven my ex and I’d moved on from it and all of that. He reminded me that I’d never told her that I’d forgiven her and then took it another step and reminded me that I’d never asked her to forgive me.

Crap.

I knew I had to do it. As if the first message wasn’t awkward enough, I had to send the super awkward forgiveness message three years after the break up. Knowing there was no way around it, I sent it:

My biggest regret is that I never had the guts to apologize to you and ask for your forgiveness so, since I’m on an awkward streak, let me do that now: I’m sorry for anything I said or did that was hurtful or immature after we broke up. I know it was three years ago but I’ve never said that to you. I was dumb and didn’t know how to deal with pain so I handled it wrong. I said things I shouldn’t have that were hurtful and I apologize.

That message got no response. None. Crickets would’ve been more of a response than what came from that message. I didn’t let that bother me though because I knew I had done what God had told me to do. I was proud of myself for stepping out and doing the awkward. I put it behind me and thought that it was over and done with.

And it was.

Until last Sunday.

I was on top of a mountain in Jackson Hole, Wyoming when I got a text from one of our leaders who was in the town shopping: we just ran into your ex haha.

I literally had to show that text to three other people before I was convinced that they were talking about my ex-girlfriend.

After asking a couple questions through text, the leader called me and told me what had happened. Apparently my ex-girlfriend was in Jackson Hole on vacation and some of our students saw her. They introduced themselves and told her I was one of their leaders. Thinking this was the most awkward thing that’s ever happened to me, I texted a couple of my friends to tell them and they couldn’t believe it either. By the time I had gotten to the bottom of the mountain I had a message on Facebook:

So weird I saw your youth group today!

That message led to a few messages back and forth about how strange it was that we were in the same place and blah blah blah. The weird thing for me was that for the first time in three years, there was no animosity in those messages. In the past, I had always felt some type of animosity anytime that I had thought about her, talked about her, or anything of that nature. All of that was gone. It was just two people who knew each other sending small talk messages through Facebook.

Two days later, once we finally got home from Wyoming, I turned my phone on and there was a message sitting there from my ex:

I saw my last message never went through so I’m sending it again- I never saw your last message from our convo earlier this month. Anyways I never had hard feelings toward you and was never offended by anything I heard that you said. Stuff like that is expected in messy breakout and I really only wished you the best. Sometimes I’ve wondered if you ever would have become a pastor if our breakup hadn’t happened. Anyways I hope I never offended you either

As I read that, I honest and truly felt a weight lifted off of my shoulders. I didn’t even know that this weight was on my shoulders. I sat and analyzed the whole situation because I’m weird and that’s what I do. I started to remember all of the different times over the past 2.5 years that I felt God telling me, “Hey. Apologize. Get forgiveness.” I thought about how, until that point, that relationship was the only one that I had ever not had closure to. At some point or another, in every relationship that had deteriorated whether with a girl, a friend, or a boss, I had asked for forgiveness, cleared the air, and had closure.

And now I had done that with this relationship.

It sounds like a petty and simplistic thing, but in the three days since getting that message, I’ve noticed how things have been different. In that time period, with those things not holding me back, I’ve felt how God has allowed me to fall in love with Nicole more. I’ve felt how he’s allowed me to love Nicole better. I’ve felt how he’s made me more excited about our future and getting engaged and getting married than I’ve ever been. All of the walls that I had built up from the pain of that breakup were torn down when I read that last message. I had been chipping away at them for the past 14 months with Nicole and, in that moment, God came through with a wrecking ball and got rid of all of them.

I never once had feelings for my ex-girlfriend, but the weight of knowing that I hadn’t been forgiven or asked for forgiveness was one that I didn’t know was holding me back from loving Nicole the way that she deserves. I knew that God had told me to get that forgiveness on multiple occasions, but I never understood why. Now that I’ve gotten it, I only wish that I had been obedient two years ago when he originally told me to do it.

We all have pain and hurt that we’re somehow clinging to. Someone hurt us years ago and those thoughts always pop into our heads at the worst times. Those thoughts keep us from living our lives to the fullest. Even when those thoughts don’t pop up, we’re so used to them coming around that we anticipate them which hampers us even more. We become scared of the pain popping up that we do whatever we can to mask it and hide from it.

Forgiveness isn’t pretty. It is often awkward, can bring up bad memories, and can upset other people that are currently in your life that weren’t in your life when the original thing happened. Knowing all of that, it’s still something that is needed. I don’t think that God wants us to go around holding grudges and pain from past relationships. Just as he forgives us, he wants us to ask others for forgiveness and wants us to forgive others.

Who do you need to forgive?

Who do you need forgiveness from?

Take a scary step and send them the awkward forgiveness message. I guarantee you that it’ll be worth it.

Say your prayers and take your vitamins.

Have a nice day.

-Jonathan

Mission trips are hard for me. I love serving people but I’m only “good” at certain ways of serving and those ways are not what you generally do on mission trips. Manual labor is not my forte. I enjoy cutting boards and nailing things down for a few minutes and then I get bored with it or screw up and whoever is in charge tells me to go away and let someone with skills do it. I generally get in the way of the people who know what they’re doing and, because of that, I’m put in roles that aren’t as fun but are needed.

The past week and a half while on a mission trip with 100 other people, I often found myself in the role of “people pusher” or “question answerer” or even “babysitter.” These are not my favorite things to do but with a group the size of ours, it’s one that someone has to do or there is chaos with 85 high school students running crazy.

The downside of this role, and the downside of any major supporting role on any trip, is that you don’t get the typical “wow God” moments that your students or other leaders do. It’s very easy to hear the stories from other people and how God showed up here or how God amazed them in this way and get down or disappointed that you never experienced that. I know on my first trip in that role last year I really started feeling that way. I thought everyone around me was having this incredible God experience and I wasn’t so either I sucked or God didn’t care enough about me to show me the things he was showing everyone else.

And to be honest, I started feeling that way on this trip too.

On Tuesday afternoon it started raining. I hadn’t had a chance to sit down and stop or even clear my head since we had left at 8:30 on Saturday morning. The bus group I had on the 29 hour drive to Wyoming was loud and I got maybe an hour of sleep. Once we got to Wyoming I had to make sure kids could get in at the place we were showering. I had to make sure everything worked for worship in the form of the sound, the lyrics on screens, and all of that. On top of all of that, I had to make a video every day to recap what we had done and I was the only one on the trip from my group of leaders for my small group.

As the rain started coming down, all of the students doing VBS started asking me, “What do we do?” I looked for our VBS director and couldn’t find her so all I could say was, “I don’t know.” After the 23rd kid asked me the same question, I sort of snapped and my “I don’t know’s” became pretty harsh.

My boss saw that, pulled me aside, and ended up benching me for the rest of the afternoon. He had me go back to where we were staying and take some time to rest, clear my head, and get ready for the week that was coming because we still had 7 days left on the trip. It was during this time “off” that I started feeling disappointed that I wasn’t getting the experience that everyone around me was.

That disappointment lasted the rest of that day and part of Wednesday. I kept trying to find out what my role was. What was my purpose on this trip? Everyone else seemed to have a perfectly crafted out role besides me. It took me figuring out what my role was not for me to figure out what it was.

It was not to be the leader – that role was for two other people so I learned to stop trying to lead the trip.

It was not to be the idea person – that role was for other people. Their ideas worked better than mine and were accepted more than mine so I learned to shut up and stop trying to give ideas.

It was not to know what was going on – I routinely told students the quote of the week was that Jonathan knows nothing. It wasn’t my role to determine what went on and when it was going to go on. I found out what was going on right when the students did many times. It frustrated me like crazy quite a bit but I had to accept my role and learn to just do what I was told.

My role was to support others – I was there to congratulate students for working hard. I was there to encourage them to keep doing what they were doing. I was there for a hug or a high five telling them great job. That was my role. For someone who is used to leading and used to being in on the decision making and used to knowing the ins and outs of what was supposed to happen, this role was very, very tough. I love supporting our students, but it’s hard when that’s all I’m doing.

Every day there was a frustrating struggle between wanting to do what I’m used to doing and wanting to be in the role that I’m used to being in and accepting and doing the role that God wanted me to do.

Every day this struggle kept me from having that “wow God” moment that every other person was having.

On Sunday morning we decided to skip out on the church we were planning to go to and stay at the rec center we were sleeping at to have church on our own. After worship, our pastor invited students to come and tell their stories of what God had showed them throughout the week. As student after student came up I found myself getting jealous of all of these “wow God” moments when I had been dealing with frustration and searching for one, just one, of those moments.

Then, out of nowhere, my “wow God” moment happened. One of the workers at the rec center we were staying at had walked into the gym while we were having worship. While he was standing there, he asked to talk to our trip leader. I was one of a very few that saw the two of them walk outside to talk to each other. I didn’t think much of it, just that it was some logistical thing that I’d find out about later.

I was wrong.

That worker, who’s name is Ben, told our trip leader about a guy who had been working at the rec center, Derek, who had tried to commit suicide four days earlier and was in the hospital. Derek was struggling with things at home and had a rough home life. At the end of all of our students sharing their stories, our trip leader stood up, told us all of this, and invited us to gather around Ben to pray for Derek.

So that’s what we did.

100 people prayed for a guy we’d never met who was sitting in the hospital.

The thing is, this was no coincidence:

No outside group had ever been allowed to stay at the rec center we were staying at before.

We had planned to be at a church a few miles down the road that morning.

Us being in that gym at the time wasn’t supposed to happen by our plans.

God had a different plan though. Just as he had a different role for me than what I was comfortable with or liked, he had a different plan for us than what we had planned. He had planned for us to be in that rec center gym at that time to pray for that person.

So there we were, 100 people praying for a guy we’d never met. At one point it hit me that God loves us so freaking much that he would orchestrate a group of 100 people from 1783 miles away to be in a place to pray for one person who was struggling and having a hard time.

He loves each and every one of us that much.

My eyes started getting a little watery when that hit me. It started to make all of the frustrations worth it. It started to make all of the disappointments from throughout the week not matter. It started to make all of the jealousy go away.

God shows up to us in different ways. He had a reason and a role for everyone else on our trip. I thought my reason and my role was different than what it was. It took God showing me that he had different plans for me to realize the way he wanted to show up to me.

Mission trips are still very hard for me. I think they always will be. I may never have the same experiences on those trips that I have while at camps or retreats or even in a normal service, but God will always teach me something.

It may take days of frustration and disappointment, but by the end of the week, God will always show up.

He works on his time.

He works in his way.

And, at the end of the day, Jonathan knows nothing.

But that’s probably a good thing.

Say your prayers and take your vitamins.

Have a nice day.

-Jonathan

I’m weird.

Yeah, that’s probably not the best way to start off my first post in two months but it’s the truth. I’m weird. I have a weird way of thinking. My boss has told me he’s never met someone, especially a dude, who thinks like me. He always points back to a conversation we had when I first started working here. We were having a cook out for an event and, two days before the event, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, “Crap, did anyone buy hot dog buns?”

Yes, that’s how my brain works.

So you see, I have weird quirks. It’s who I am. I recognize most of them, understand a lot of them, and can control some of them. One of those things, and I may have mentioned this on here before, is a constant struggle in my head between me feeling like I’m not good enough and me feeling like I’m the best person on the planet. Those are two completely opposite things that I bounce between. Sometimes I find the safe ground in the middle but I’ve been known to go from one end to the other in a matter of minutes.

The battle between those two things is at the root of why I quit writing for two months.

Back in December I came up with this great plan to take This Isn’t High School from this little po-dunk blog about a kid growing up and turn it into the next up-and-coming student ministry blog.

I was going to be known as one of the rising voices in the student ministry world.

I was going to be on my way to getting a book deal.

I was going to be bigger than just another student ministry intern.

I decided to break down and spend the $17 to get the “.com” name for the web address. I changed the layout completely and started using capital letters. I changed the tagline from “One Kid’s Story of Growing Up” to “Student Ministry | Growing Up | Being Awesome.” I started sending in the posts that I thought were good to student ministry and church blogs hoping that I could become a guest post and get my name out there. People were going to view me as something other than just another student ministry intern.

I made writing schedules. I knew that I had to spend 30 minutes every night writing. I made sure that I was posting something at least on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Those were my three biggest reading days so I wanted to feed my ego with posts on those days. I would tweet twice a day with some catchy phrase describing my post hoping people would read it. I’d check my dashboard 10-20 times a day to see how many people had read that day’s post. I was determined to have a great student ministry blog and not just one from another student ministry intern.

I wanted to be more than just another student ministry intern.

I wanted to be bigger.

I wanted to be more known.

I started feeling like I didn’t measure up because those things weren’t happening. My viewers weren’t going up. My students never texted me or Facebooked me and told me how much they liked my last post. No one ever commented on anything.

Was I not good enough?

Am I a bad writer?

What am I doing wrong?

Should I write more?

What if I wrote less and just made each post better?

Do people not like me?

These are all thoughts that ran through my head on a daily basis. I began building my self-worth and my view of myself on how well my blog was doing. I neglected the fact that I was part of a thriving ministry, that I had a great girlfriend, and that, other than my little hole of the internet, everything in my life was going absolutely fantastic. My profile and my name and my voice weren’t growing, and obviously that was my fault (in my head), so I didn’t think I was good enough anymore.

In April I realized this wasn’t healthy. I realized that I was being completely stupid and that the only way for me to stop being stupid was to completely quit. I had to stop. I couldn’t just slow down like I had originally thought. I had to put it down, walk away, and not even mention I was doing this to anyone. So that’s what I did. I didn’t visit the site, look at the views, or anything for nearly two months. I honestly didn’t even think about it. I didn’t think about writing or becoming a bigger name or being more than just another student ministry intern.

I focused on what God was actually calling me to do.

Right now.

Today.

The disconnect in my head ultimately came down to this: My definition of “not just another student ministry intern” and God’s definition of the same phrase were two completely different things. I felt like God was calling me to “not just another student ministry intern” but he was calling me to that in a way that was not what I expected it to be.

In my head, it was, “You’re going to be big. I’m making you out to be one of the rising stars. Put your work in and people will know your name. Do this, and you won’t be just another student ministry intern.”

God’s voice, however, was saying, “Work hard. Stay humble. Do the things no one else wants to do. Support your pastors. Love your students. No one will know your name but I’ve known your name since before time. Do this, and you won’t be just another student ministry intern.”

I chose not to hear that. I chose to hear my version because it seemed more fun. It seemed shinier. And, honestly, it seemed like it would feel better.

A week or so ago one of our students posted something on Twitter that concerned me a little bit. She seemed to be going through a lot of the emotions that I went through in college. I sent her a message and part of it said, “I’ve been there. I’ve probably written some things that you can completely relate to. Let me know if I can help at all. I’m here for that.” We went back and forth and I ended up sending her a list of things I had written on here for her to read through. The first one she read was nearly identical to something she’d written the night before.

In that moment, as she told me that, I felt God lean down, tap me on the shoulder, and whisper in my ear, “Psst. That right there is being not just another student ministry intern.”

As that day and the few that followed it went along, I started to get the itch to write again. I hadn’t had that itch in almost two months. It felt good but it felt weird and scary at the same time. Knowing that the pride and insecurity issue could easily pop up again, I knew that the only way that I could start writing again was if God told me that it was okay. I started praying about it, asking if it was okay for me to start again, asking if I would be able to balance the pride vs insecurity issue. As I prayed about all of it, the thought of that student popped back in my head and I felt God, in that way that only he can, whispering, “That right there is why I’ve given you the gift of writing. That’s what I want you to do. I don’t want you to be the next big thing. I want you to tell your story and let me work through that. Trust me.”

So, 1300 words later, what does all of this mean?

It means that I’m going back to what this blog was when it started. I’m going back to telling my story. This is going to be a personal blog. It’s not going to be a ministry blog. It’s going to be my fears and my failures; my wins and my achievements; my ups and my downs. It’s going to be what God’s teaching me through the things that are happening in my life today.

It’s going to be honest.

It’s going to be raw.

It’s going to be one kid’s story of growing up.

And that’s it.

Oh, I almost forgot: say your prayers and take your vitamins.

Have a nice day.

-Jonathan

Series: Guardrails

Attendance: 0

Mixer/Game: There wasn’t one.

Extra fun things: None of that either.

Worship Set: We had one planned but didn’t use it.

Bumper Video: We would’ve used the normal Guardrails Intro.

Topic: Guardrails – Why Can’t We Be Friends

Scripture: Proverbs 13:20

Thoughts: We had to cancel FUEL for this week. There were very severe storms in the area with tornados and giant golf ball, egg, and tennis ball sized hail. They were so severe they did this to my car.

Anyway, we didn’t want to just cancel FUEL and move on to next week. Instead, we filmed Chris’s talk and posted the video online at about the same time we would’ve been doing the teaching had FUEL been going on. We didn’t know how it would go over but some of the comments have been great.

“This was awesome. Less distractions and could rewind when I missed something. Thanks for the message!”

“dude chris this was amazing man thanks so much for filming this.”

“Chris! I want to thank everyone involved for posting tonights talk on facebook. God really used it to affirm some of the tough decisions ive had to make lately so once again thank you so much”

The internet has completely revolutionized ministry. There are so many different ways to do things now. If you leverage them the right way, you can have a bigger impact than anyone could’ve imagined even five years ago. Next week I’ll be able to talk about how we’ve leveraged technology even more after we do something I’m really excited about for FUEL.

Anyway, here’s the video:

I love Easter. As a Christian, my whole life centers around it. As someone who works at a church, Easter weekend is like our Super Bowl weekend. It’s insanely busy and crazy but it’s all worth it because more people show up for church than at any other time in the year. More people come to hear about Jesus on Easter weekend than on 2-3 weekends combined throughout the year.

One of my favorite parts on Easter morning is reading Facebook or Twitter. Everyone comes up with their own creative and unique way of saying something about Jesus. It can be the traditional “He is risen!” status or it can be a song lyric from some worship song. The more creative people (aka the emo ones) will find a lyric from a secular band that could sound like Easter and post it (yes, I’m looking at every single one of you that posted a Mumford and Sons lyric).

As the morning goes on, people start posting Scripture or quotes that they heard from their pastor as their status or tweets. Pastors and church workers will start posting about how they’re blown away by the amount of people that have showed up or how God has moved in their service. A lot of them will even say how they’re so grateful for the x amount of people who were saved in their services that morning.

Reading all of this on my phone in between services is great. It gets me pumped up. It reminds me that we’re all working together and that every individual church makes up the Church.

However, every year I leave and go home feeling like I was missing something. I feel like there was something else that should’ve been said in those tweets or Facebook statuses.

I feel like we didn’t tell the entire story.

You see, we start in Matthew 26 (Mark 14, Luke 22) about how Jesus was with the disciples and doing the Passover meal. We talk about Judas betraying him. We talk about the first communion. We talk about Jesus in the Garden praying for a way out but ultimately praying for God’s will to happen. We hear about the kiss from Judas and Peter’s denial.

After we teach about all of that, we move on to Matthew 27 (Mark 15) and talk about how Pilate said Jesus was innocent but the Jews wanted him killed anyway. We teach about the beating that Jesus was given and how he was tortured. We even throw in a reference occasionally to Simon carrying the cross for Jesus. We talk about all of the things that happened before Jesus died, him saying, “It is finished” and then how the veil was torn, there was an earthquake, and dead people started coming alive again.

Then we move to Matthew 28 (Mark 16) and the resurrection, aka “The Good Part.” The two Mary’s get to the tomb and Jesus isn’t there, the stone’s been moved away, and then the angels appear to them. They go to tell the disciples about what happened and Jesus meets them on the road. Then we hear about the disciples seeing Jesus.

And then we go home.

Somewhere around Matthew 28:17 (Mark 16:15) the service ends and we all leave and go eat ham and mashed potatoes. Or, if we keep going, it’s usually the part about Jesus asking Peter if he loves him and telling him to take care of his sheep when they were eating breakfast on the beach. We never, ever, talk about what Jesus said to them before that.

The first thing that Jesus says to his disciples, the guys who knew him better than anyone else on the planet, after he rose from the dead was to go tell everyone about what he’s taught them and what he has showed them and what he did.

It’s the first thing he said but it’s the first thing we skip over on Easter.

We all made a big push to invite our friends and people we knew to church yesterday. For some of us it was awkward and for others it was an easy conversation. Sadly though, yesterday was the only service that many people will invite their friends and neighbors too all year.

Telling everyone about Jesus was the first thing Jesus told his disciples to do. Generally speaking, the first thing someone tells you to do is one of the most important things to do.

Yesterday many churches had 2-3 times as many people attending their worship services compared to what they usually have. Imagine what the world would look like if we continued inviting our friends and neighbors and that 2-3 times as many as “normal” because the new “normal.” Imagine if 3200 adults at Two Rivers Church became “normal” as opposed to the 1200 adults we have on a normal week now.

Jesus wants us to change the world and he wants us to start by telling our friends and our neighbors about him.

The easiest way to tell people about him is to invite them to church.

The question becomes who are you going to invite?

This post is just a fun one that I came across that I thought you’d enjoy. It was random and really fun to write when I wrote it back in November of 2009. The last paragraph is still true to this day too.

i’ve been pretty bored tonight. when i say that i’ve been bored, i mean i randomly went to the search page on twitter to see what was going on in lynchburg from people i’d never met.

throughout my boredom and twitterstalking (is that a word) i ran across quite a few people who had blogs. of course they had blogs. everyone has a blog. anyway, on a few of these was this thing called “no shame november.” i’d heard of no shave november but not no shame november.

no shame november sounded like it could be fun. i like to admit random things about myself and honestly it feels pretty good. combine that with an urge to write tonight and you’ve got what this post is about. some will be serious. some will be funny. all of them will be me.

i’m not ashamed to say that i’d listen to n’sync any time it is on around me. i even did the bye bye bye dance at football games because i’m that awesome.

i’m not ashamed to say that i spend more time on the internet than any one person should.

i’m not ashamed to say that not knowing where i’m going to be in six months sometimes scares the crap out of me.

i’m not ashamed to admit that i don’t have it all together even though i try to act like it when i’m around other people.

i’m not ashamed that i struggle with things on an every day basis and that i lose in those battles quite a bit.

i’m also not ashamed to say that i know i can’t get through those struggles on my own and have to rely on someone much bigger than me.

i’m not ashamed to admit that i once wore soffee’s to a friends house because i thought it’d be funny.

i’m also not ashamed to link to that picture.

i’m not ashamed that it took me an embarrassingly long time to get over my last relationship.

i’m not ashamed to tell everyone that i write cheesy emo song lyrics in my head whenever things happen only to forget them five minutes later.

i’m not ashamed of the fact that i get lonely at times.

i’m not ashamed to admit that i sometimes spend more time finding the song lyric to make the title of these posts than i do actually writing them.

i’m not ashamed to say that i do have regrets in my life. i’ve learned from every single thing that i’ve ever done, but i do regret some of those things.

i’m not ashamed to admit that even as a dude, i’ve thought of my future wedding, future kids, and all of those girly things guys never say they think about.

i’m definitely not ashamed to admit that i am the worst in-car singer on the planet but still sing like i should get a grammy when i’m in the car alone.

i’m not ashamed to say that there is nothing to eat or drink in my house. or that i’m out of toilet paper. or that i need a new sheet for my bed because this one is ripped right down the middle. (ok, that was mainly just for me so that i can remember to buy all of that if i get a chance to go to the store tomorrow.)

and lastly, i’m not ashamed to say that i completely love this blog. i know that there aren’t that many people that read it (i average anywhere from 30-60ish people per post). i know that sometimes it just becomes me whining about something going on in my life. i know that sometimes the posts are boring and don’t mean anything. with that being said, having a place where i can put my thoughts down is great. even more than that, having a place that i can do that and have it affect people is so amazing that i can’t even describe it. i normally just write for the sake of writing but some of the feedback i’ve gotten from you guys has made this more than worth it. thank you for reading. thank you for the feedback. and thank you for being awesome.

say your prayers and take your vitamins.

have a nice day.

-jonathan

one of the good things about having a blog that barely anyone reads is that i know who my readers are for the most part. i have a general idea of the type of people that read the things that i write. i know the types of jobs that you guys have. i know where you’re coming from when you’re reading this.

and if i’m not mistaken, i don’t think a single person reading this works in a church full-time.

you all have “real” jobs. you have to do something other than talk about jesus all of the time to make a living. you all spend much, if not all, of your time, energy, and money working on your job or your schoolwork or whatever it is that you do.

the idea of going out and trying to reach the world for jesus on top of all of that other stuff is simply exhausting to think about.

you have to get up early to go to work. then when you leave at five (if you’re lucky) you are dead tired. when you get home you’ve got to cook dinner, pay bills, clean the house, wash clothes, or one of 100 other things. there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done that needs to get done. how are you supposed to find the time to be super christian?

i’m right there with you.

i know that i should do more. i know that i should share my faith more. i know that i should do more in my church. even more than knowing that i should do these things, i know that i want to do them. i know that i want to do more. i know that i want to share my faith more. i know that i want to do more in my church.

but that night i have an event to work.

and i can’t go do that because i’ve got a paper i need to write.

and yeah, i’d absolutely love to help with that, but i don’t have the time to do it this week.

does that sound familiar? i’m guessing that it does.

on sunday i was watching the superbowl. i was just hanging out by myself at home relaxing and watching the game. i was pulling for the colts but didn’t really care who won. i just wanted to escape and be entertained for four hours.

on one of the first media breaks, cbs ran a doritos commercial. it was the one where the man was telling the dog to bark for the chip. the dog couldn’t bark because he was wearing one of those shock collars. the dog decided to get even with the man and put the collar on him and then started barking.

it was made by a liberty grad.

when the next media break rolled around, cbs played another doritos commercial. this one was one where a guy faked his own death and was laying in a casket full of the delicious nacho cheese flavored chips watching a game. he ended up getting too excited and blew the whole prank.

it was made by mosaic church in california.

soon after that, the colts had a fourth down in field goal range. they trotted out their field goal kicker to try and get three points on the board. they snapped the ball, the kicker kicked it, and the ball went through the uprights. after the kick, the kicker pointed to the skies. the announcer in the game said that the kicker points to the skies as a religious symbol on every kick no matter if he makes it or not.

in a span of 45 minutes, a record audience saw three things from three christian people.

three people used their job and their abilities in a way that reached millions upon millions of people.

mosaic church knew that if their commercial got aired people would be talking about their church. they knew that with people talking about their church, they had a wide-open door to walk through and start talking about jesus.

the kicker for the colts knew that publicly praising god no matter the result of his kick would draw the attention of the people around him. he knew that when they saw that over and over, they would ask what his deal was.

they were intentional.

and that’s what we have to do.

we may not have time to go out and volunteer with these events. we may be too busy to do all of the things that we want to do. we may not have the resources to become the super christian.

we’d be kidding ourselves if we thought that all of the people that we work with are christians. that’s just dumb. it’d be awesome if that was the case but i highly doubt that it is. if we’re going to be stuck at work, or stuck in school going to class, or wherever else it is that we’re stuck, we need to at least make the best of the situation. we need to be open about our faith. we need to look for opportunities to show jesus to the people around us.

it doesn’t take much to do this. maybe it’s simply having a better mood and being encouraging to other people. maybe it’s bringing someone coffee just for the heck of it. maybe it’s just being there when someone wants to vent. eventually the people around you are going to wonder why you are the way that you are and bam, there’s your door to start talking about jesus.

when we’re intentional about looking for open doors, god is intentional in opening them.

the world doesn’t need the super christian. it simply needs the intentional christian.

say your prayers and take your vitamins.

have a nice day.

-jonathan

One of the coolest things I got to do while working at Liberty was travel to the women’s NCAA Tournament in Louisville, Kentucky. I got to go back in the tunnel, to all of the media places, and even sit on the floor on the baseline during the game. I was also able to talk about Jesus to a few people. This is that story.

when i was four, my parents enrolled me in the local public elementary school. from that moment on, i went to public school. first it was king primary, then king intermediate. after that i moved on to the public middle school and then the public high school. in my senior year at that public high school, i applied to go to college at a public college. instead of going straight there, i instead went to a public community college for a year before going to that public college. after spending a semester there, i transferred to my very first private, christian school at the age of nineteen.

for fifteen years, i lived in the public school world.

for fifteen years, i lived in the secular world.

for fifteen years, being a christian wasn’t normal.

i remember back in high school, before myspace existed and facethejury was still the cool social networking site and not an adult dating site, it was a big deal to say, “i’m a christian” in the information part of my profile. when myspace started up and i joined in january of 04, i made sure to put, “i’m a christian” in the about me section. it was a big deal to set myself apart and claim to be a christian.

it wasn’t normal.

when i transferred to liberty in january of 2006, i transferred into a world i’d never been around. it was like christian overload. they were everywhere. suddenly it was like everyone from facethejury and myspace who had ever written “i’m a christian” on their profile decided to come together and go to the same school.

it was weird.

in the past four years, i’ve gotten very comfortable in my christian environment. it’s normal to randomly break into talking about god while driving back from dinner. it’s normal to pray before class. it’s normal to dress modestly.

it’s normal to do everything that’s not normal at a public school.

i’m still shocked how much it shocks me sometimes when i leave our little bubble and go somewhere else outside of it. it reminds me that the world outside of the liberty bubble needs jesus a lot more than i realize at times. with that in mind, any time that i travel outside of the bubble, i always ask god to give me the guts to talk about him if the opportunity comes up.

this past weekend i travelled outside of the bubble all the way up to louisville, kentucky (which sadly is the furthest west i have ever been). i was with a group from liberty so i was still somewhat in the bubble, but not nearly as much as normal. everywhere we went, people asked us where we were from. sometimes those conversations would go into more detail than the simple, basic answer.

unfortunately, none of them led to being able to talk about jesus that much.

i kept looking though. i kept trying to find that opportunity. on friday morning, at 8:15 in the morning in bistro 19 at the park inn east in louisville, kentucky, i finally got that opportunity. the restaurant was pretty much empty and i was sitting by the window. across from me was our bus driver for the weekend. we had both finished eating and were just hanging out killing a little time.

at some point during our conversation, the whole idea of god and church came up. our bus driver mentioned that he was raised catholic and his wife was raised in a protestant church. he had started going to church with his wife but in his words, hadn’t completely switched over from considering himself catholic. from this, we started talking about the catholic church and some of the differences between that and the baptist church. it was a really cool conversation that included him cracking some really funny jokes about catholics. in the end, we were able to talk a little bit about jesus and luckily, our bus driver said he believed that jesus was the only way to god and claimed to be a christian.

that was pretty cool.

another time happened while i was at freedom hall. i can’t remember if it was friday or saturday, but i remember someone pointing down to the bracelet i was wearing and asking, “hey, what’s freedom 424?” this was my opening to talk about that ministry and what it was doing. i was able to talk about jesus just a little bit there. that conversation wasn’t able to get very deep, but hopefully that guy went and checked out the website after we talked.

that was pretty cool.

when we’re intentional about looking for open doors, god is intentional in opening them.

last weekend, i had two opportunities to talk about jesus. neither one of them led to someone becoming a new believer, but one planted a seed into a “young” believer and another one planted a seed about what the church was doing to help others in need. i have no clue what god plans on doing with those seeds. i don’t know how they’ll grow or if they’ll turn into a tree or some weeds.

all i know is that god gave me the opportunity and i took it.

when god gives us chances, we have to take advantage of them. the only way we can change the world is if we take the breakfast conversations and random questions and turn them into intentional opportunities to talk about jesus.

statistics say that it normally takes 7.6 times of someone hearing the gospel before they make a decision to become a christian.

maybe you’re number one.

or maybe you’re the point six.

either way, god takes simple conversations and produces complex results.

and that’s something i want to be a part of.

say your prayers and take your vitamins.

have a nice day.

-jonathan