We had an awesome conversation at lunch about incarnational/missional living and reaching our culture, and I thought I’d share a little bit of it with you.
Click here to listen.

I think God is trying to teach me something—discernment and wisdom. Many, if not all, of my posts were impulsive and reactionary. Which, in itself, isn’t bad. But here’s where it all goes south. Restored to Grace was a public blog. One that I was using as a journal. Those are my thoughts. They’re to be wrestled with in my mind with no one but myself and God (and one or two very trusted advisors).

My life is changing at breakneck speed. I’m no longer a kid just stumbling along trying to figure things out. While I can’t say that I’ve got everything all put together (because, as we all know, none of us do. . . and thank God for that; it’s nice to know that he’s writing our story, and we aren’t), I can say with a fair amount of certainty that I know what I want from life and who I want to be. And now I’m in a position of leadership. And not the kind of leadership I had at my last job where I was just telling people to alphabetize the items on the shelves. I’m a spiritual leader.

And while something inside me shies away at the thought, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s God’s calling on my life.

And because of this calling, I can no longer vomit my initial thoughts and struggles into the public forum. I have to act differently from how I’ve previously acted. Paul wrote these words to the church in Corinth (who, incidentally, had some seriously skewed ideas about the spiritual and physical “realms,” not unlike ourselves in many ways) —

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”

This verse has been weighing heavily on my mind these last several days. I know what I have to do. First, I have to be very careful about what I allow to define me. While I’m not the sum of my blog posts, status updates, and tweets, to the people who know me primarily through those avenues I am. And I have no way of changing their views of me. My friend-pastor-boss likes to say, “We are our own PR firm.” That statement couldn’t be more true. And the task of maintaining our public image is made especially difficult in today’s world with Facebook, Twitter, and the blogosphere.

I’m not talking about not being authentic. I’m talking about being intentional.

Second, I have to be careful to not react to whatever situations or ideas may come my way. My old mentor (and former friend-pastor-boss) used to exhort me day after day to be careful about my reactions to fundamentalism. Yes, there have been personal hurts. Yes, their approach to the Gospel is quite skewed. But by constantly reacting and trying to “prove that I’m different,” I continue to give them control over my life.

Someone told me recently that in reacting, we give in to our sinfulness. While emotions are a gift from God—allowing us to experience joy, love, and even sadness, emotional highs and lows are Satan’s way of turning our emotions against us. Emotions should never govern our actions, but instead should give power to our rational thought which in turn controls our actions.

Think about it this way (the following analogy is my own, though possibly not originally, as the aforementioned acquaintance didn’t give this to me; I’m saying this so you know I’m not putting words into her mouth) — Our actions and decisions are like a car. They take us from point A to point B. Our carefully reasoned thoughts act as the steering system (wheels, rack, pinion gear, steering wheel, etc.) which controls the direction of the car. Our emotions act as the engine, setting our actions into motion. Without emotions, we don’t really take action. But actions driven by emotions alone are as dangerous as a car without a steering system.

Another of my former pastors once reminded me, after one of my errors in judgment came to light, of this principle from Proverbs 19—that although wisdom without zeal is dead, zeal without wisdom is deadly.

I’m guilty of that. I have for too long allowed the car of my actions and decisions to be governed by the engine of my emotions without the control of my reasoning. Recently a circumstance came into my life that vividly highlighted this. Thankfully it was only a fender-bender that affected an interpersonal relationship that I hadn’t yet invested much time or effort into. I’m glad God didn’t allow this to progress to the point of irreparable damage to the work he’s allowing me to do.

This lack of self-control has led me to take dogmatic stances on grey-area issues. It has caused me to make quick-snap decisions that ended in my hurting people I care about. It also turned me into a democrat.

Paul wrote about this in his second recorded letter to his protégé Timothy.

“God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

Power, love, and self-control are all gifts from God. I pray these words come to describe me in time. For now, I’m progressing there. “Under construction,” if you will.

But I want to thank you all. Thanks for reading Restored to Grace these past three years. It’s been an interesting journey, and one thing I hope I’ve learned through it all is this: God is not giving up on me.

Or on you. Phil. 1.6.

This is one of those moments.

I feel like a little child, helpless and lost, calling out to his dad. Hoping to hear something. Waiting for his father’s voice.

And just as all hope seems lost, Daddy’s arms scoop the little child up. All is right in the world.

Because Daddy’s here. His arms will hold you.

And he’ll never let go.

Let me tell you a story. Like many stories, this one has a beginning. It began with a man whose love betrayed him. She turned her back on him and decided to prostitute herself. She settled for a broken, disgusting substitute for love instead of the true love of her lover.

The man couldn’t bear the thought of his love selling herself, so he devised a plan to win her back. He disguised himself and entered the brothel.

While disguised he began trying to win his love’s affection again. But she didn’t recognize him. She mistook him for someone crazy, and in a terrible turn of events, she murdered him.

Her own lover. Murdered.

And I can’t help but wonder if that’s what we do time and time again. Yet he still calls out to us.

“Do you remember me? I love you. Come back to me.”

And everyday we make choices that nail him to the cross again. We can’t recognize our Lover.

But every so often someone notices. Someone looks at this life and says, “This is not right.” He looks around himself and begins to notice a shadow forming. He looks up and sees a cross.

Dark. Cruel. Menacing.

And through the darkness he hears a voice whispering to him. You were supposed to die there. You were sentenced to that death. But someone decided to rescue you. Someone decided you were worth it. And he went there instead.

He went there instead.

What kind of love is this? A love that would make that kind of trade?

If my love spurned me, betrayed me, and walked away from me, selling herself to a disgusting imitation of love. . . could I take her place in the face of her execution?

Of my own accord, no. But because I know I’ve received that kind of love, I would be unable to do otherwise. I’d be compelled to love like my Lover has loved me.

But it’s only because of that love.

But my story didn’t end there. Because God’s story is much bigger than that. His ideas for me move far beyond what I could possibly imagine.

I can’t even begin to describe the kinds of changes God was working into my life during my first year attending Liquid Church. It was time for me to learn about his grace. I had no idea what that meant.

After I’d been attending for a few months, Tim preached a sermon series called iGod that had me questioning everything I believed about God. It wasn’t necessarily new information, but it was a new perspective—a paradigm shift, if you will.

I had somehow (during my seventeen years in fundamentalism) developed a lifestyle that belied my belief that God is personified in love. I was living like I believed God was some cosmic scorekeeper who was keeping track of everything I did, ready to put my poor score on display.

But this guy was talking about a God who really cares. Was I serving a scorekeeping God? Or was I serving a God who is Love?

I wanted to believe this, but it would be a while before I could truly accept that truth.

Six months pass, and I decided to join the Liquid Kids team. Little did I know what kind of journey God had in store for me then. But that was the beginning of something beautiful. And scary.

And even quite painful.

* * *

I think now would be a good time to tell you where I got the name for this blog (y’know, after nearly three years of writing here). My story has been one of searching for the “meaning” of grace. I’ve been trying to capture this concept and wrap my mind it for so many years, but until March 2008 (when I started this blog), I had no tangible understanding of it.

Before I started attending Liquid, I was fully invested at a church that had a vice grip on my family. Much like Bob Jones University, this church dictated the way you were to live your life, forcing you into their mold of 1950s Christianity. And if you failed to do so, they’d call your faith into question.

After being part of a “family” for seventeen years, the idea of leaving doesn’t really make sense. But after certain events took place, after certain words were exchanged (and some that should’ve been exchanged were kept silent), we had to get out. We had to get to a safe place.

But God wasn’t about to let us flounder. I’d started attending Liquid with my childhood best friend during the summer of 2007 after I’d returned to New Jersey from South Carolina. My family left our former church in November of that year, and my brother started attending Liquid a month later. My parents were a little more cautious and, after searching for a church home for several months, started attending Liquid in April 2008.

That’s where I found grace.

In his first letter, Peter (one of Jesus’ closest followers and friends) wrote these words:

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

That’s what this blog is about.

That’s what my story is. It’s a constant cycle of suffering, grace, and restoration. There’s much more to this story than I’ve told in these six posts, but stick around. I may tell it to you one day.

And seriously, thanks for reading.

I’m not exactly proud of the attitude I developed in the years following my graduation from Bob Jones University. But I understand that my “rebellion” has helped me to understand grace much better.

I acted out in a lot of the same ways that most people would act out in high school. Lots of drinking, smoking any substance that could be smoked (legally or otherwise), feeding my addiction to pornography, etc.

But all of that came about because of a question I was asking myself: does God really even care?

My biggest fear was that someone would find out about my brokenness. That someone would see what I was doing and call me out on it. So I hid it behind a polished exterior.

The problem with this is that there’s no healing possible when you hide. Thankfully, God had placed someone in my life who introduced me to an environment where healing was possible. A place where I didn’t have to hide who I was because I knew I wouldn’t be judged for how I was living.

I would be accepted, loved, and cared for. And with love comes the natural impetus to seek change.

Slowly stuff started to change. Life started to look different for me.

And my big question was answered. God really does care.

Throughout high school I played the part of the good Christian. I had to. I’d made up some story about how I’d “gotten saved” when I was just five years old. I got baptized when I was in the fifth grade. I was one of the good kids.

But no one really knew me. Because I knew that if anyone ever found out about my secret sins, I’d lose all my credibility. I knew that if anyone ever found out that I was questioning my own faith in Jesus, I’d be told to shut up.

I had all kinds of questions. I wanted to ask my pastor, but I was afraid of the consequences. I couldn’t be real with him. I couldn’t be myself.

But I wanted the church to like me. So I plugged away. I kept playing the part of the good Christian boy. And we all know that good Christian boys go to good Christian schools.

So after high school I packed my suitcases and headed down to Bob Jones University. Little did I know what was in store for me there.

I won’t go into all the details of my experience there, but suffice it to say that the institution found a way to push me far away from God. But I didn’t know any better because I had grown up being taught that God was judgmental, vengeful, and eternally angry with all of humanity.

Who would want anything to do with that kind of God?

Let me cite an example. This story is a microcosm of my entire career at the university.

I was printing a paper for one of my literary criticism classes when I noticed I had a new email. I was about to let it by when I saw that it was from the Dean of Men’s office, and they were requesting that I appear before them.

Now, here’s the thing about the Dean of Men’s office. You’re probably not going to come out of there alive. It’s not like the Discipline Committee line where you’re tried by one of your peers and/or some random person staring at a computer screen. No, you’re sitting in the fiery judgment of the man who, with one breath, can expel you from the university.

So I sat through the entirety of En305 completely unable to focus on what my professor was talking about. All I could think about was my impending doom in the Dean of Men’s office.

(Side note: does anyone else find it odd that there’s a Dean of Men at this school?)

After class I made my way down the excessively long sidewalk to the inner sanctum of the Administration Building. I sat in the waiting room outside Mr. Daulton’s office, nervous, but not nearly as scared as the first time I’d been here. Still, my fate at college hung in the balance.

He called me into his office and wasted no time getting to the point. “Do you know why you’re here, Nate?”

That was a trick question. Last time he asked me that, I got in trouble for something else entirely. I decided to keep my mouth shut this time.

“Someone from outside the university found some rather disturbing content on your MySpace page,” he said. “He forwarded your page to us because of his concern for you.”

Riiight. Because someone from outside the university who happens to be stalking university students’ MySpace pages cares enough about the university’s standards to tell the school about this.

“What kind of content?” I asked.

“For starters, what you’ve listed as your ‘favorite music’ is anything but God-honoring.”

I waited for him to continue. There was no way I was going to say anything now.

“Additionally, I see that there are several R-rated films listed here as your ‘favorite movies,’ and one that is particularly disheartening is ‘The Matrix.’ Would you like to explain?”

“No, sir.”

“Nate, do you think a film like ‘The Matrix,’ or any R-rated film for that matter, fits into the standards set by Philippians 4:8?” he asked.

I wish I’d said yes. I wish I could’ve shown him how that narrow-minded view of Scripture is what’s causing Christians to be so out of touch with culture that they’ve become ineffective and even harmful to the mission God called them to.

But I didn’t know that yet. I hadn’t discovered this perspective yet. All I knew was that I’d made his god angry. And I was going to pay for it.

From that moment on I began to slowly give up on my faith in Christ. I remember thinking, After I get my diploma, I’m done with the whole “Jesus thing.” If this is what his followers are like, I want nothing to do with any of it.

After that my life would begin to look radically different.

I knew nothing. Growing up in traditional fundamentalism kept so much hidden from me. And as much as I love my parents, they were ill-equipped to handle the whirlwind of two teenage boys in the house.

I mean, think about it. If you spurn everything in society, calling all of culture “taboo,” there are a lot of things that you and/or your children will come across that you’ll have no idea how to deal with.

Including something as important as sex.

If you look through the Bible, you’ll see just how important human sexuality is to God. Part of the Imago Dei is sex. I won’t go into all the correlations, but I alluded to them here. Unfortunately, the Church has shirked her responsibility to communicate it.

And by not owning the concept of sex, the Church has offered it up to the world’s system of handling things. As you can see, it’s pretty distorted.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming the Church for my struggle with porn. But the Church needs to talk about these issues instead of brushing them under the rug, or worse yet, calling these issues out and pouring judgment on those who struggle with them.

It’s not easy for me to talk about this. It’s something I battle everyday.

I wouldn’t be much of a man if I didn’t deal with with it. But it’s just that I hate this fight, and I often wish it would just go away.

So there I was, a scared preteen boy trying to figure this world out on my own. What began as curiosity soon became fascination. And from fascination it grew into a full-blown addiction.

And I was never really honest with myself either. I always heard that people who were addicted to something lost the ability to function normally, and since I was able to go to school, study, play basketball, sing in choirs, and do all the same things “normal” people were doing, I wasn’t really addicted.

So I continued down this road. For years I fought this battle, never talking to anyone about it. I was too scared. I knew it was wrong; I knew something had to change. But I also knew that if I said anything, I’d be in trouble.

So I walked this walk alone.

Let me pause my story for a bit. If you’re battling porn like I, find a friend and talk through it. You already know that it’ll ruin you, but everything you’ve tried has failed. Trust me, you will continue to repeat your failure until you open up and talk to someone about it.

It’s not easy. These battles never are. But doing it alone makes the fight far more difficult than it needs to be.

I mentioned in part 1 of this story the author Anne Jackson. Her story has been a source of hope and encouragement to me over the last few years. If I thought I had reason to be afraid of the fallout from my admission of an addiction to porn, hers had the potential to be completely devastating.

But it resonated with me because, even though she and I are nothing alike, we have similar stories.

Check hers out below.

I never realized that what I had been taught throughout most of my life was actually antithetical to what the Scripture teaches about our lives in Jesus.

While people at the churches I grew up attending won’t admit it, they actually advocate a works-based system of following Christ. Doctrines like “rededication,” “letting go and letting God,” and “the victorious life” run rampant through these churches. There’s more of a focus on someone’s external condition than on his/her internal condition.

I could go to camp every year and “rededicate” my life to Christ but never actually follow him. And that’s exactly what I did. I prayed a prayer when I was a child, and everyday between 1989 and 2007 I lied. I lied because I didn’t really have a clue who Jesus was. I lied because I’d never encountered him, and it seemed like everyone else did.

I even lied to myself.

I came up with this elaborate story of how, when I was just five years old sometime in November of 1989, I was sitting in my grandmother’s living room, my aunt told me about Jesus, and I “accepted him into my heart” that day.

I was too afraid of not having a story that I made one up.

And somehow I believed it.

I really wanted to be a Christian, but I think I got so caught up in looking like a Christian that I never had the opportunity to find out what it really meant to be one. I felt so much pressure on me to live up to a certain standard, but I could never measure up.

The year I discovered rock music was devastating. I wrestled with it because I knew it was something that was sinful yet strangely enjoyable. While I couldn’t find anything inherently wrong with it, I knew it had to be sinful because my pastor said it was.

And I couldn’t piecemeal my life. If I broke one Christian rule, according to James 2.10, I was guilty of breaking all of it. So the fact that I liked rock music meant that I had broken all of God’s commands. Since I wasn’t completely surrendered to Christ, I was a carnal Christian, and by conclusion, of no use to God’s Kingdom.

But I tried to compartmentalize. If no one at church found out that I listened to rock music, I’d be fine. I looked like a good Christian, so therefore I must have been a good Christian.

But all that pressure to live my life according to what they claimed were God’s standards was eating away at me more than I ever realized at the time. Now add to that pressure cooker puberty, curiosity, and a new toy called the Internet. . .

After two years of online correspondence with activist/author/fellow blogger Anne Jackson, I finally got to meet her face-to-face. And she’s exactly what I expected. Who she is over email is the same as who she is in person.

But that came as a challenge to me. Because I know that’s not me. I’m still afraid to be real.

And I’m really afraid to talk about this.

So after a deep breath let’s start from the beginning.

I grew up in a fundamentalist culture, more specifically the independent Baptist fundamentalist culture. The seventeen years I spent there shaped my view of God and gave me many gross misconceptions about who God is and how he works in our lives.

Most of what I learned growing up stems from what’s called Keswick theology (chefarianism). (I’m indebted to Dr. Camille Lewis for her enlightening me on the pervasiveness of this view.)

Keswick theology is, in my opinion, harmful to a healthy view of our Creator and is the primary reason non-Christians have such a negative perception of Christians. Sadly, however, this is what’s been taught in churches across America.

Ideas like “the victorious life” or “dedicating your life to Christ” are the result of Keswick theology which essentially removes the human identity with the goal of being completely surrendered to God. Here’s how Lewis describes it.

For the Keswickian there are two types of Christian: carnal and normal. For the normal Christian, the self is dethroned, yielded, absent. Any hint of self-identity, however, is carnal. Sin, in the Keswickian perspective, is overwhelmingly powerful. And while it can never be eradicated, it must be continually thwarted. Full surrender is the only solution; anything less is willful rebellion. What this comes down to is complete capitulation of anything human or anything personal. The self is useless. It has no rights, no personality, and no humanity.

It’s in this setting that my journey begins. . .

Read part 2 here.