I fly to speak in Cincinnati today and I’m worried.  It’s been a rough spiritual year since last October.  I find myself asking a lot of questions about a lot of issues and wonder if I have anything of any value ready to say.  Since I’ve been to Cincy more than once, in fact some of you reading here may be there when I speak tonight (weird, huh—writing now at 7 AM in Orlando, but will be speaking then at 7 PM in Cincinnati), I have a slight worry that perhaps my inability to have the pizzazz and pop you expect will leave listeners with nothing of spiritual value.

However, that might be best for myself.  One of the biggest issues a normal human faces is the challenge of the pursuit and desire of fame.  That gets to our pride.  A friend emailed last night with a rant against a “Christian celebrity” and their new book and how, in my friend’s view, the entire thrust of this person’s ministry is antithetical to Jesus’ theology.  Now, I’m not sure the person in question actually has set out to be a celebrity, but clearly they have achieved a high degree of fame.

This is a huge problem for most leaders I know.  I constantly face it in my little world.  My way of dealing with it is to be as honest as I can with those that look to me for advice, leadership, guidance.  Honest, I mean, about my own weaknesses and failings.  In other words, I have to work diligently to scramble back down off of any pedestal that others put me on.  It is a tough task, constantly.  It’s tough because, at the root of life (for me and most I know), we want to be famous.  We equate success with fame.  It’s also tough because I like to hide my flaws, probably mostly because of the previous sentence.

This idea of fame or notoriety cuts completely against the grain of what the Bible teaches as the path to real success.  One famous partner of Jesus, his cousin John the Baptist, said “I must decrease so he [Jesus] can increase.”  Wow—impressive to say, tough to really do.  I try to keep that sentence constantly in my mind.  But the pursuit of fame, or perhaps I might say the quest to AVOID the ordinary, hits every person I know.

So many students that I work with look at fame as being a key marker for success.  I think the opposite is really true.  Listen to these words from Oswald Chambers, one of my spiritual heroes:

We do not need the grace of God to withstand crisis—human nature and pride are sufficient for us to face the stress and strain magnificently.  But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus.  It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God—but we do not.  We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people—and this is not learned in five minutes.

Wow.  This is the idea, that, to succeed, we must die to self.  We must sacrifice our own wants for the good of others.

Our nature wants fame.  For our real growth, to become a truly deep and wise person, we need to embrace our ordinary, and then live in that—something truly extraordinary.

What exactly is the gospel anyway?

I asked the following question to my wise spiritual friends recently–Tell me what are your top answers/reasons you give a non-Christian as to WHY they should be a Christian.  Let’s go ahead, by the way, and assume you’ll already tell me/them about the heaven/hell thing, so leave that off.

I’m asking for real answers related to real experience down here.  I mean, when you tell someone to be a Christian, I can see more and more people looking at you with a quizzical expression wondering “why in the world would I do that?”

Leave off the answers that point to the truth of the Bible–I already know that and they won’t care (usually).  These are real people going through real issues, just like the people around you.  Where do you point them to give them any hope that your faith could actually deal with their issues, especially since you know of plenty of real Christians who STILL have those same issues.”

In case you, my readers of the blog, are curious, yes I am still a Christian. Yes, I still am the apostolic voice, the leader, for Numinous Inc.  Yes, I still love Jesus.  The issue is that finding the truth of the gospel around me seems a struggle.  Or, walking the Christian life is still a struggle.

Not sure why I think it should be any different.  I mean, Jesus was pretty darn clear about this, but over the past months, I guess I’ve just lost a bit of my perspective.  Maybe you need to pray for me rather than just reading the blog assuming I’ll have all the right answers.

Anyway, this issue is going to be a focus of mine in the coming days.  All around me good people, Christians I know well, end up hurting and struggling.  It does come across as unfair.  Isn’t the Christian life supposed to be “life abundant?” 

God is graciously taking me by the hand and leading me again to the Good News.  I’m going to try and unpack it more as we go along, so I hope you join me for the ride.  In the meantime, besides praying for me, feel free to drop me a line with your answers to the above question.