The second problem is that the more often we conclude that we are worthless the more likely we are to live as if this is the case. Why try when nothing we endeavor to accomplish works anyway? This notion can be debilitating and can keep us from making progress toward our goals. Hope is one of our primary motivators. With the loss of hope goes the confidence that with time and effort our situation can improve.

The biggest problem with determining our own value by how much we have accomplished is that it leaves us inherently unstable. When we feel good about what we have done we have value. When we seem to fail or when we are no longer able to do what once made us feel accomplished, we are devalued. This ebb and flow can pick us up and beat us back down throughout our lives unless we learn to see our value somewhere higher.

This is especially important to understand during a time when so many are without work and spend many months looking for jobs. Research has shown that a prolonged job search without being hired can have a more devastating long-term effect on the human psyche than almost anything else that we can experience.

For others the challenge is struggling to move up in life while looking around and seeing others within their own age group who are well-established in their careers. This comparison can lead one to the devastating conclusion they they just don’t have what it takes to succeed.

So what is it that defines our worth? While struggling through this issue in my personal life I recently remembered a sermon by Henri Nouwen called “Being the Beloved” that I heard a few years ago. While watching it on YouTube I found strength in the reminder that who we are and what defines is that we are beloved sons and daughters of God.

All our lives we look for our identity, defining ourselves by what we have, what we do, and what people say about us. Each of these things leave us unstable and empty. What truly defines our worth and gives sustained hope is that we are God’s beloved children. This is our identity and our task is to claim it and to live under the influence of this reality.

Only when we understand that our worth is not wrapped up in what we have done but rather in a love that we have freely received, will we be able to break the grip of the idea that we are what we do. Believing that we are more than what we have done will then empower us to live out the value that we have received rather than fighting to prove our worth.

When we don’t feel well connected to community we begin to beat ourselves up and to think that there must be something wrong with us or we would have more friends. The vicious cycle begins when we so dislike ourselves that we think others don’t care for us either. The more we retreat into isolation the more our insecurities are affirmed until we have walled ourselves into self-made prison cells of isolation.

I think that part of the reason why we struggle to make changes even when we know that we need to is that we allow ourselves to be tied down by the way things have always been. I could connect more at my job or at my church but I have been at both of them for several years without doing so. How am I supposed to all of the sudden engage now? I think this is part of why travel is appealing. There is no history to hold me down. What’s to lose? Engage every person you meet, enjoy every meal and take a picture of every place. What do you have to lose?

Somehow we need to remind ourselves that it is not impossible to create new routines. We have to believe that if life is worth living the way we live it is worth changing. I think that at the heart of believing life can change for the better is the underlying faith that we are beloved children of God and that he wants us to live our lives to the fullest. We may not always know what this means or how this can be true in light of our current realities, yet if we truly believe that God loves us as much as he says does, it will change our outlook.

Henri Nouwen once said that we all hope for a good life and define what this means in various ways. We sometimes base the value of our lives on what people think of us. At times we build our confidence on what we have accomplished. Other times we define ourselves according to how much we possess. Throughout our lives each of these will go up and down. Sometimes we will feel loved and other times criticized or disconnected. At times we will have a lot and sometimes we may lose it all. There are times where we feel like we can accomplish whatever we want and others where we feel hopeless to do almost anything. If we are counting on any of these for stability our lives will always fluctuate above and below the line of wellbeing.

The one thing that holds true through all of these is that we are God’s beloved children. He says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” (Jeremiah 31:3) This is just as true when we feel worthless and that our lives are over as it is when we feel accomplished and like things are going quite well. If we can begin to believe how much God loves us, we will see our lives and the people in them through new eyes. This will raise our perceived limits on how much others can love us and how good life can be. This is the place to start in the journey back to wellbeing.

Several months after graduating I found myself living the same life that I did as a student. I was staying up too late, working on too many projects at once, rushing from place to place, not taking care of myself and feeling increasingly disconnected from friends. The only thing that seemed to snap me out of my routine was traveling.

During the road trip that I took back in July to Northern California and Southern Oregon, I had to constantly remind myself to slow down and appreciate the moment. Although I thought this roadtrip had set me straight I found that within six weeks I was still stuck in the same rut so I bought the All You Can Jet pass from jetBlue to take a journey of reflection and rediscovery. Travel does not repair anything and it is not an end in itself but it is one of the few things that pulls me away from the daily thoughts and routines that weigh me down. It helps me to appreciate the beauty of the moments that I overlook at home.

Now that I am back I am trying to begin anew to understand what it means to live a good life post-graduation. This quest has caused me to begin reading a book called Wellbeing for which polls were taken all over the world to determine that the five essential components of wellbeing are career, social, financial, physical and community. The spiritual is what motivates many through each of these areas. We tend to focus on only one or a few of these at a time and as a result the areas that we let slip wear on us throughout our daily lives.

I resonate with this because I have experienced how much one or another area of my life can affect my perception of everything else. In my next post I will talk about which of these areas seems to impact me the most…

We are familiar with the expression “You have to go where the wind takes you.” This is a sailing metaphor which as a sailboat owner I can confirm makes a lot of sense. You may have a destination in mind but your not going to be able to go directly to it under wind power. When you set out to go sailing you don’t really know what kind of route it will take to get to your destination. The wind determines that and the wind changes.

The other day while enjoying the waves at Juan Dolio beach in the Dominican Republic I realized that this metaphor also applies to the surf. When you step into the ocean you agree to go where the surf takes you. You can fight the waves but as one wave after another pushes you around you realize that you have entered into a force far larger and more powerful than yourself.

Those who swim in the ocean realize that they are taking a significant risk. Yet the beauty of the beach and the allure of the water on a warm day draw us in anyway. We understand the reward so we dive into that which under adverse conditions could drown the most experienced swimmer.

Not everybody takes the risk to swim in the ocean. I can think of at least two reasons why some would choose to avoid this risk. The first is that those who have not learned to swim or are still tentative about their abilities may fear that they will not be able to handle themselves in the water. The second reason is that some may not like the temperature of the ocean.

While reveling in how warm the Caribbean was I heard a man call out to his wife to jump in. As she walked toward the water., I heard her say, “It is too warm. I don’t like when the water is this warm. I wanted to ask, “Have you been in cold water?” I grew up in the Midwest and my earliest experiences with a large body of water were in Lake Michigan. If you want to know cold water jump off the pier with us next summer and try to swim across the channel that connects the Great Lake with Portage Lake. Better yet, jump into Lake Superior off Minnesota’s North shore like some of my crazy friends from this frigid state. Even in sunny san Diego, the ocean is not all that warm. Sure you get used to it as we alway say but there is still something magical about swimming in an ocean or a sea that is truly warm.

Fear of what might happen to us and disinterest in the adventure that diving in would bring, are the same reasons we avoid the “surf” in our lives, The ocean is uncertain. Solid ground keeps us under control and feeling that we can decide what will happen to us.

Fear prevents adventure and keeps us from living fully alive. A life directed by fear will cause us to one day day look back and realize that we never lived the way we wanted to nor did the things that we felt called to do.

Disinterest in anything that is not exactly the way we like it also holds us back. I have wanted to become a good surfer since I moved to san Diego. What holds me back? Part of the problem is that the water is uncomfortably cool and also it has been a struggle to try to get any good at it. More comfortable and less risky are the sports that I feel confident enough with to feel under control.

Engaging the ocean can seem hard, uncertain, strange and rough. Despite all of this we are called into the water to swim. We go where the surf takes us because we know that the one who made the waves also controls them, guiding our lives through all of the uncertainties to the course that will enable us to live fully alive.

One of the unique features of the Christmas story is that due to the intervention of history, a Roman Emperor’s call for a census, Jesus came into the world under circumstances that were far from ideal. Rather than preparing to give birth in the safety and comfort of her home, Mary embarked with Joseph on an arduous journey to Bethlehem in the final days of her pregnancy.

Nazareth, where Joseph and Mary resided, lie in the hills of Northern Israel, not far from the Sea of Galilee. Since Joseph came from Bethlehem in Judaea, just outside of Jerusalem, they had to travel a long way by donkey and by foot back to his hometown to register for the census. Upon their arrival in Bethlehem, it would seem likely that Joseph sought out relatives with whom to stay in his hometown. Although the traditional interpretation of Joseph and Mary’s accommodations is that there was no room in the “inn”, a closer look shows that the same word is more often translated as “home”.

Ancient Near Eastern society valued hospitality, especially extending a warm welcome to family. This is why it seems unlikely that Joseph would have needed to stay at a local inn. Since Joseph almost certainly had relatives in his hometown, how did he and Mary end up staying among the animals on the night of Jesus’ birth? Two factors that likely contributed to this unusual circumstance were a lack of space to provide adequate hospitality and the design of Jewish homes during that time period.

This is a manger found among the ruins at Megiddo in Israel.

The second factor is that the design of ancient Jewish homes typically involved a single level with blocked off rooms and a common area that typically housed the family’s domestic animals at night. If there were no rooms left for Joseph and Mary, the only place for them to stay was in the common area of the house, not unlike our living rooms, among the animals. What then was the manger that Mary lay Jesus in after wrapping him in swaddling clothes? Far from the quaint little wooden cradle of our imagination, Jesus’ bed was a single block of stone with the top chiseled away to leave space to hold animal feed. The King of Heaven come down, lay in a trough meant not for holding babies but for feeding animals.

When our tour guide in Israel first pointed out this manger among the ruins at Megiddo, the group found it hard to believe her. It was so different than we had imagined. Yet a significant part of the Christmas story is that from the moment Jesus entered the world, he identified with people everywhere who have no proper place to lay their head. This newborn baby came to us not for the comfort of a well-suited home but to be received by those for whom he came to give his life.

How do we welcome Jesus, providing hospitality like we would for close friends or family during the Christmas season? Jesus said that whatever we do for those in need, we do to him (Matt.25:37). We provide hospitality to Jesus by feeding the hungry, giving drinks to the thirsty, inviting in the lonely, providing clothes for those who cannot afford them, caring for those who are sick, and visiting those who are in prison. If Joseph and Mary were to visit us with their newborn baby Jesus, would we leave them to sleep in our living rooms, providing that which was meant to hold food for our pets as a place for the baby to lay? Or would we offer the very best space in the house for them to rest? How we respond to Jesus’ challenge to care for those who are in need is the best indicator of the kind of hospitality that we are offering to him with our lives. Let’s dedicate ourselves to assisting those who lay their heads in “mangers” all over the world this Christmas night.

If you are interested in connecting to organizations in East Africa that care for the needy, please let me know and I will be happy to do whatever I can to help provide you with an opportunity to show hospitality to Jesus by loving people.

I recently taught a class at my church entitled For the Bible Tells Me So: A Discussion of the Bible’s Reliability and How and Why I Can Trust It. It is the second session in a program that we call FloodU or Flood University, consisting of foundational classes addressing spiritual questions, growth, relationships, and transformation. If you are part of Flood or live in the San Diego area, I’d encourage you to look into these three four week courses all offered free of charge.

I have provided a link to the PDF of the presentation that I gave and you are welcome to download it and take a look. For those of you who attended the session, it will make more sense since the talk filled out its contents further. I will be tweaking the presentation in the future and will update this link as I do.

If you are interested in further dialogue about this subject, I would be happy to correspond or meet up to talk about it in person. You can contact me through the site.

For further reading, a few books that I would recommend are:
- New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell
- The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, Craig L. Blomberg
- The Case for Christianity, Lee Strobel
- Who Moved the Stone, Frank Morison

Click here to download the presentation.

Staring at the vast Syrian army, the man in this story also felt overwhelmed and that nothing he or anyone else could do would matter. When his spiritual eyes were opened, however, he saw that the power of God was greater than all of the violent oppression that the Syrians could inflict. I’m thankful for the reminder that God’s power is not only greater than my own weakness but also greater than all that oppresses East Africa. It is true that by myself I cannot change anything but I pray that God, through his power, might use me to help bring needed changed to this beautiful but needy part of the world.

One of the things that I believe made C.S. Lewis such an influential theological writer was that he was not first and foremost a theologian. Encountering his conversion and theological interests later in life, Lewis approached his thoughts on Christianity from his literary background. The uniqueness of his resulting perspective has reverberated around the church ever since his Christian writings began to circulate.

I hope to learn from Lewis’ example what it takes to understand and share my faith, in particular through writing, from a unique and personalized point of view.

“For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem.” (Romans 15:26)

The regions of Macedonia and Achaia, or modern-day Greece, were some of the most wealthy areas of the New Testament world. It is likely that many of the Gentile converts in these regions, as well as the Jews living there, were quite successful in the world of trade and business. The Christians in Israel, however, suffered under intense persecution. They lived in a society where leaving strict Judaism to convert to Christianity meant giving up your place as a citizen of society in good standing. The Christians in Jerusalem, in particular, suffered greatly at this time.

Learning of their Jewish brother’s sufferings, the believers in Greece decided to make a generous contribution to the church at Jerusalem. When the apostles and other traveling ministers brought news to them of Christians’ needs abroad, they opened their hearts and gave.

We have a similar situation today for in America we have more wealth than anywhere else in the world. Our Christian brothers and sisters abroad, however, suffer lack in many parts of the world. Somebody needs to travel like Paul did, seeing each situation first-hand and carrying word of the needs to the rest of the Church. Somebody also needs to be willing to give to the needs of those who are part of our own body, shared with Christ as the Head. Just like we would not ignore the needs of our own family, we must not turn away from the needs of our family in the Lord. At Mission Focus our desire is to bring not only the testimonies of the Church abroad, back to the West, but also the needs. We pray that God will open our own hearts and many others, to provide for His people.

I just noticed that Paul emphasizes the importance of “one” six times in Romans 5. He repeatedly affirms that it was the offence of one many that caused sin and death to come upon all. Contrasting Adam’s failure with Christ’s perfection, he also states that it was the righteousness of one by which all receive life. As I reflect upon what I’ve experienced and what I’ve seen on this trip, one thing that I want to make sure that I do not forget is the power of one. Short of placing ourselves in the unique position of Christ or of Adam, there is a principle that one life carries unlimited potential, for better or for worse.

World history is replete with individuals whose use of power and position brought death to thousands. The death toll for Idi Amin’s dictatorship in Uganda was 250,000 people. Imagine this much death, over a period of a mere 8 years and in one of Africa’s smaller countries. History has shown that one man has the potential to bring death and destruction to multitudes.

The contrary is also true, however, for there individuals who through vision and compassion bring life to the people around them. Generally, you will find them alone, or perhaps in groups of two, and although many may admire their work, few will ever help them. It is a fact that is as equally true as it is sad that most people will only ever consider reaching out to help a world of needs all around them.

I don’t want to sound self-righteous because I need this reminder more than anyone else. Overwhelmed complacency too easily creeps in, leaving me debilitated and and devoid of a sense of urgency. Maybe one of the reasons that I love travel so much is that being confronted with the needs abroad face to face, is only the way to awaken my soul from its slumber.

I will never forget people like Stephen and Beatrice Njau, whose open hearts have saved the lives of destitute children and brought hope to the hopeless. It inspires me that 26-year old Nathanael had the vision and compassion to start caring for orphans suffering with AIDS, literally lifting them from the jaws of early death.

We only have one life to live. Why not spend it on what really matters? I’m tired of being preoccupied with the mundane and the material. I don’t want to live for myself. God’s greatest command is to love Him and to love others. Why is this so hard to remember? As Christians, our hearts ought to be the widest and most open of all to the needs of others. I hope and pray that that what I have seen and experienced on this trip will change my life forever.