Michael Kelley's Blog, page 241

A Trip Down Memory Lane – Theme Song Style

See how many of these songs you recognize in this medley.

 

Thank You, Endorsers

We are one month away from the release date of Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal: A Boy, Cancer, and God. And because it's Wednesday, and um, "Wednesday" is in the title of the book, I wanted to highlight some of the endorsers that appear in the first couple of pages.

But I wanted to do so in a way that is also a heart felt thank you to these good people of far greater influence than my own who took the time to not only read the book, but to also write out such thoughtful and beautiful lines that hopefully will inspire others to pick it up. I've tried to group these friends and mentors in logical ways in order to highlight a few of them each of the next few Wednesdays in leading up to the book. So here is the first set.

First of all, there is Calvin Miller. Dr. Miller was one of my professors at Beeson Divinity School and left a mark on me not only from his teaching, but also his great kindness and creativity. An accomplished artist and author, Dr. Miller has been influencing the church for decades. I'm humbled and honored at his words:

A huge man and a tiny child walk hand in hand through these pages, then right out of the book and into your heart. Read it for your own edification, if you wish! But be alert! There are other parents you may not have noticed, who grieve quietly and are much afraid. Look hard, they're not usually out in the open, but they are there in the shadows of desperation. They need this book. Care! Then buy it for them. Then read them the first page and leave them alone. From that one page they will begin their own journey through Gethsemane. Then in the company of Michael and his Savior, their neediness will dissolve in wisdom.

Then there is Dr. Robert Smith, Jr., another professor of mine from Beeson and, quite frankly, the greatest preacher I have ever heard. Dr. Smith taught me the value of not only intellectually engaging the Bible, but feeling it in your bones. Of not only teaching the text, but allowing the emotional impact to flow through you. I'm so thankful for him and his endorsement:

Finally comes an approach to human crisis that debunks faith in faith and faith without fright. For Michael Kelley, untried and untested faith is not little faith—it is no faith at all. This work commends faith in the God of the Scriptures who both delivers and sustains in the midst of crisis. Michael is no arm- chair observer; instead he is an eyewitness who believes that one cannot get to the banquet table in Psalm 23:5 without going through the valley in Psalm 23:4.

Next is Dr. Timothy George. Dr. George is the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School. For this alone, I am in his debt, for seminary for me was a wonderfully formative experience. But Dr. George also emphasized to me the importance of understanding our roots in the faith and the history of the Christian church. So honored by his writing:

Have you ever wondered why?  Have you ever walked through what the psalmist called the Valley of the Shadow of Death?  Have you ever where God could be found in the midst of your pain?  If so, this book is for you.  It is a true story about Michael, his son Joshua, and cancer. But it is also a story about hope and the God whose love reaches us in the deepest depths, the God whose middle name is Surprise!  You must read this book!

Finally is my friend and mentor Randy Hall. Randy is the CEO and founder of Student Life, and my boss for the time I lived in Birmingham. I especially appreciate his words about parenting here because of the lasting commitment I have seen in him to his family:

Parenting is a word that should make us all tremble. The daily joy comes with multiplied challenges for anyone blessed with the responsibility to lead and care for little lives. Anyone who knows Michael and Jana respects that for their family, parenting has taken their family on a journey face-to-face with leukemia, with too many needles, hospitals, and departures from the "normal" parenting journey. In Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal, Michael's "father" voice shares the difficulty of the most simple things like playing baseball and the joy of looking back to see that the journey has led them to the heart of Christ.

I'm excited next Wednesday to share endorsements from Jared Wilson, Jonathan Leeman, and Trevin Wax.

You can pre-order Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal: A Boy, Cancer, and God here.

Jesus – Better Than Katniss Everdeen

That title may or may not mean anything to you, but it means something to me because I just finished reading the first book of The Hunger Games.

Yes, it's young adult fiction. Yes, it has a love triangle. No, it's not about vampires and werewolves. Just wanted to clear that up.

The book was good. Really good, I thought. We are dropped into a post-apocalyptic world with one government and everyone divided up into 12 districts according to what they produce. There's the mining district, the farming district, the machinery district, and on and on. And every year, two "tributes," ages 12-18, are chosen from each district to compete in The Hunger Games, a contest in televised throughout PanAmerica in which the tributes kill each other off until there is only one left.

Think The Running Man meets Lord of the Flies.

The heroine is Katniss Everdeen, a young woman who is a skilled hunter with a bow and arrow. She lives in District 12 with her mother and younger sister, Primrose. And, as fate would have it, her little sister, the embodiment of purity and innocence, is chosen to represent the district. Without thinking, Katniss volunteers to take her place with the full expectation that there is no way she would actually win the games, but would instead die a brutal, public death.

So at the core, we have heroic self-sacrifice where one gives her life for another. I'm sure, given the popularity of the book series and the upcoming movie, more than one student pastor has thought about how to work Kat and Prim into a sermon illustration. But before we start making the Christian comparison between Jesus and Kat, how both willingly and lovingly gave their lives for another, can I encourage you to remember this?

Jesus is better than Katniss Everdeen.

It's not just the fact that in His sacrifice, Jesus emptied Himself of far more than any other person ever would. It's not just that Jesus had more than enough power to vanquish all His enemies at any given moment. And it's not just that there's no question as to whether or not Jesus has actually won the victory over sin and death. It's that the comparison really breaks down when you consider who the heroine was sacrificing herself for, and who Jesus was.

Primrose loved animals. She wore dresses. She liked to sing and had not a violent bone in her body. She was absolutely innocent. We are deceiving ourselves if we look at this character and see ourselves anywhere in her. Rather, we are the embodiment of Romans 5:6-7:

"While we were still helpless, at the appointed moment, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!"

We're not the innocent little girl; we're the arrogant tributes who don't see the contest for its barbarism but instead a chance for fame, wealth, and glory. We are the lemmings who fist bump all the way to death and hell and have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to safety, and only then do we realize the kind of danger we were in. And Jesus isn't sacrificing Himself for someone pure and true; His sacrifice is for the rebels who would willingly pick up spears and stones and send Him on His way.

Jesus is better than Katniss. Thank God He is.

David, Goliath and the Gospel

Where is Jesus in the story of David and Goliath?

Matt Chandler here explaining the difference between a moralistic interpretation of the story of David and Goliath and a gospel-centered approach.

For more information on The Gospel Project, check out the website.

Fridays Are For One Question

One of my goals in 2012 is to read more. More often, and more quantity (though if the Mayans were right, it's not going to matter too much. But I digress…)

Yes, reading. My older son shames me with his commitment to books. He'll knock out a "Magic Treehouse" adventure novel in about 2 days. Me? It took me two weeks to read The Hunger Games. But I'm working on it.

Right now, I've got a copy of the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson which, by all accounts, is very long and very good. But I wondered today if we might share some recommendations.

Today's question is about that one book that you love to give away. The one you will always talk about. The one you would recommend under most any circumstance:

"What is your favorite book to recommend to others?"

Fast and Phenomenal Finger-Painting

This is Chilean artist Fabian Gaete Maureira. He's a street performer whose skill is speed finger painting. Prepare to be amazed:

(HT:22 Words)

"Teach Us To Pray"

It's a simple enough request. Like so many times recorded in the gospels, Jesus was praying and when He came back to His followers, they knew where He had been. So they asked Him: "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples" (Luke 11:1). What follows is Jesus' answer to their request, a prayer that has been often analyzed, repeated, emulated, and dissected.

That's not the purpose of this post.

Instead, think about the question itself. It's debatable what led to their question; maybe it was some kind of spiritual jealousy: "John's disciples have a special way to pray – we want one, too!"

Maybe it was an effort to get Jesus to tell them some kind of perceived secret He was holding onto: "What is it you do out there, all by yourself? We want to know what's going on! Let us into the loop!"

Or perhaps it was just good curiosity springing from a genuine desire to pray. We don't really know. But the fact that we don't know the true intentions of the disciples actually only serves to make the request, and what happens after, all the more encouraging for me because I certainly know what it's like to have mixed motives in prayer. Maybe you do too.

- We pray to get God to do things for us.

- We pray more about our own comfort than for the good of others.

- We struggle to pray with confidence because in our hearts, we don't really think God will answer.

- We have no idea what to pray for. In fact, our hearts are so deceitful we often find ourselves praying in a contrary fashion to the will of God.

Given our weakness (and I'm lumping you in here with me now) in prayer, here are two ways that this request can encourage us in prayer, and then a simple point of action that flows from it:

1. Prayer is a learned skill.

These disciples asked Jesus to teach them something. That means that prayer is learnable, perhaps even as learnable as trigonometry or changing a tire. If it's learnable, it means that it's not necessarily natural. So our inability to pray isn't something we have to just live with. It's something that can change.

2. Jesus wants to teach us the skill.

This is the fifth time recorded so far in the book of Luke that Jesus has been praying. In fact, the book records Jesus praying at most of the big events of His life. So the disciples asked Him to teach them. Now often when someone asks Jesus a direct question, He will answer them with a parable or a seemingly unrelated teaching. He'll force them to think about the heart of their question, taking them to a deeper level emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. But here?

Here Jesus answers them. Straight out. Jesus wants to teach us to pray.

So here, I think, is one simple action point, given the above things are true:

We should practice.

I have fallen into a sort of grudging acceptance for the poorness of my prayer life. I guess some people have it, and some don't, I tell myself, as if praying is like shooting a beautiful jump shot from beyond the three point arc. But if prayer can be learned, then there's nothing wrong with actually practicing. That's how you get "better" at anything – you practice.

And evidently, the disciples practiced. It's funny that this same group of followers, here so inept at the practice of prayer, are praying all the time in Luke's companion volume, the book of Acts. Here they're not asking to be taught any more; here they have learned. And here, the Holy Spirit is at work in incredibly powerful ways as they prayed.

They must have learned after all.

So today, I'm telling God about my prayerlessness. I'm asking Him to help me practice. Like a 4-year-old who wants his father to help him throw a ball the right way, I'm going to put myself to the work with the ready assistance of my dad. And, like that Father, I believe God is not going to berate me for my inabilities, but to encourage me to keep going.

Because you don't throw a 90-mph fastball overnight.

Paterno, Sandusky, and the Nature of the Law

One of the biggest stories of 2011 will no doubt be the sexual abuse scandal at Penn State. For a couple of months now, details have continued to leak out about Jerry Sandusky's guilt or innocence and the role of legendary coach Joe Paterno. There has been much written in the last coupe of days about the legacy of Paterno and how he should be remembered.

I'm not meaning to speculate about how the forthcoming trial will unfold in this post. Nor do I mean to comment on the way the believing community should react to either Paterno's memory or Sandusky. But there is an idea that has been said and articulated in different ways time and time again in the national media in reference to Paterno that points to something deeper in us at a couple of different levels.

The idea in question is this: legal obligation versus moral obligation.

Essentially, the argument as I understand it goes like this: Paterno did all he was legally required to do when he found out about the potential abuse being perpetrated by Sandusky. He reported the incident / s to the campus police. That was all he was required to do from a legal standpoint.

But from a moral standpoint, he was required to do more. Much more. What's curious about this idea is that it has come from the Christian and the non-Christian alike. Because these charges are of such a heinous nature, the believer and the non-believer seem to be standing together on the basis of morality, and together they seem to be saying that the legal minimum was not enough.

It's almost as if there is in all of us some base level of morality – a law of conscience if you will. Something that's ingrained deeply within us that requires something of us. And that "something" is not just to do the minimum required, but to do and be more than we are. We feel it, and it has suddenly risen to the level of the national consciousness.

What we are seeing playing out before our very eyes is in a sense why the law doesn't work. The law, apart from Christ, is about the minimum. It's about what is required of you. But even when we keep the minimum, there is still something inside of us that knows the truth. It's the nagging feeling that there is something else. Something more.

And then here comes Jesus, and He takes it to another level:

"Murder you say? Well, there's something more. Murder isn't just about the physical act of killing. It's about thinking ill of someone in your heart, too."

Jesus won't let us settle for the minimum. He fulfills the law, body and heart. And thankfully, He fulfills it on our behalf. But in so doing, He gives us a new heart, one that doesn't only feel the need for something more, but actually desires to do it. To love, and to not just murder.

"Am I Killing? Yes I Am."

Unreal. Shocking. Happening. Today.

(HT:Z)

Fridays Are For One Question

I think the Superbowl commercial thing may have just gone to a new level. Vokswagen, who last year had the phenomenal commercial with the kid using the force to start the car, has released a TEASER for their Superbowl commercial.

It's a trailer for a commercial.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. But seriously – watch this first:

 

Now tell me that's not awesome.

For today's question, I wonder if you have a favorite.

"What's your favorite Superbowl commercial of all time?"