Tullian Tchividjian's Blog, page 2

Monday Morning Music

The Robin Schulz edit of Lilly Wood’s track “Prayer in C” is just too good not to share with you guys.

I hope you all have a great Monday…and I hope this groove helps.

“I Have Another One…”

In a second season Frasier episode, Frasier tries to help Sam Malone, Frasier’s old friend and bartender from Cheers, reconcile with his fiancé Sheila, whom he left at the altar just days before. Frasier realizes that they both have infidelities in their pasts and decides, in the interest of saving their relationship, that Sam and Sheila should be honest with each other, and ask for forgiveness. “Honesty,” he says, “is the cornerstone of any healthy marriage.”

Sam confesses an infidelity to Sheila, and she forgives him. Sheila confesses an infidelity to Sam, and he forgives her. Everything seems to be back on track until Sheila says, “I have another one.” Sam says, “It’s okay, don’t worry about it. This is what it’s all about…honesty and forgiveness.” But then she says that it’s Cliff, from Cheers (the frumpy mailman played by John Ratzenberger). “Cliff?!?!?!” Sam explodes. This is over the line for him. He can’t take it and storms out of the room, calling off the marriage.

All too often, this is how we think of God’s forgiveness, and why assurance eludes us.

If God said, like Sam, “Oh, it’s okay, don’t worry about your transgressions,” we’d always be worried that one day one of our transgressions would be a Cliff. What then? What if it stopped being okay? But God doesn’t say it’s okay. Paul says that God “made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.” He nailed our indiscretions, our infidelities, our trespasses to the cross. He paid the ultimate price, laying our sins on the shoulders of his son. He doesn’t ignore them…he pays for them.

Today, remember that our God isn’t like Sam Malone! We need never worry that when we say “we have another” indiscretion—when we add a sin to the enormous stack that separates us from God—he’ll storm out of the room and call off our relationship. He has dealt with our sins forever, and cast them into the sea of his forgotten memory.

Portraits Of Grace: Christina

I’m really humbled that people feel comfortable telling me their secrets and stories. Maybe it’s because I’m a pastor. Maybe it’s because I’m pretty vocal and transparent about my own ongoing struggles and failures (people who are willing to admit that they’re messed up inevitably attract people who are willing to admit that they’re messed up). Maybe it’s both. But whatever the reason, broken people from all walks of life open up to me—a total stranger. Some come to the church where I’m the pastor. Many do not. I receive hundreds of letters a month from people who have found their way to me through my sermons, my writing, or my speaking engagements. But whoever they are, whatever their stories, and however they find me, I am always deeply moved that they’ve come and never surprised that God’s grace is what brought them.

For a long time now I’ve wanted to share some of their stories. The English poet T.S. Eliot once wrote, “All cases are unique, and very similar to others,” and I think he was onto something. Desperation is desperation, suffering is suffering, brokenness is brokenness, and it is universal. The stories I hear and read are all unique, but they are all the same. These are my stories, your stories, our stories. They are the stories of broken people living with other broken people in a broken world. So, I’ve decided to start a blog series entitled, “Portraits of Grace” where I will periodically (maybe once or twice a month) share stories about real people and their real experiences. These stories paint pictures of what it means to experience God’s grace and his presence in the painful, confusing, and desperate moments of our lives – which are seemingly constant. The most wonderful result is the freedom that these broken people experience and how that gift of love and unmerited favor is then bestowed on others – over and over.

Each story is based on actual events that have been painfully and emotionally shared with me. It is for this reason, that no one’s true identity is exposed and why some of the details have been purposely altered. I hope these stories are a great and comforting reminder to you that God always meets our mess with his mercy, our guilt with his grace, our desperation with his deliverance. For God is irresistibly drawn to the desperate; he hones in on the hopeless; his love is like a magnet to the messed up.

The following is Christina’s story…

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She sat in my office fidgeting with her rings, trying not to look me in the eyes. Christina was in her mid-30s and looked so small in the leather chair that faced me. All I knew about Christina prior to this meeting was that she wanted to thank me. For what? I wasn’t sure. I usually try to break the ice with small talk, but I sensed that Christina wasn’t the type. So, I waited until she was ready to speak. When she did, I wasn’t surprised that she was very quiet, but I was surprised at how calm she was as she told me her story. I said almost nothing the entire hour. There was nothing to say. God had done all the work.

“I came here today to meet the pastor who may have saved my life. To thank you for being the first person to really, truly share the message of grace in a way that touched my heart. That got to the core of my soul. That helped me finally believe that I was loved. That I was lovable.” I’m always uncomfortable when people attribute their newfound freedom to me, because I know that it’s not me. I’m just a messed up messenger with a message of mercy—a beggar simply showing other beggars where to find bread. But I knew what she meant so all I said was “thank you.”

She continued.

“I’m going to share with you something I’ve never shared with anyone. This is something that I’ve buried deep in my soul since I was a child – the very something that has plagued me and sickened me my entire life. The very something that I never understood formed my image of myself and how I imagined everyone else saw me. The very something that has stolen years from me and my ability to be intimate and genuinely loving. Are you comfortable hearing this Pastor?” She asked. I looked her directly in the eyes and nodded yes.

“As a child, from the time I can remember – about 4 I think – my father abused me. I never knew it was abuse until I was in middle school and realized that this type of ‘discipline’ as he called it was in fact sexual abuse. I had no context. I had no knowledge. I just wanted to be a good girl and not be punished. If I spilled my milk, missed the bus, asked for a second helping, or spoke out of turn, I was punished. If I was too quiet, too shy, too happy, I was punished. And my punishment was scary. I tried hiding, and begging, and hoping. There was no rhyme or reason to what my father considered bad behavior. Just my mere existence seemed to be reason for punishment.”

I never asked Christina what her punishment was. I was sick thinking about it. I could just imagine the fear and horror this little girl must have felt – never knowing how to act, who to be, or when to be present.

“For years, the abuse continued until one day it seemed as if the abuse was simply replaced with pure hatred. Without warning on any day, venom spewed from his lips as my father hurled insults and profanities at me – I was unlovable, ugly, screwed up, stupid and a waste of his time. My mother seemed to enjoy these moments because, as I recognized in adulthood, they allowed her to feel superior and feel as if she was the exact opposite of all the things he was saying about me. I wanted to love my mother. I wanted her to be my savior. To protect me. When she didn’t I was sure I deserved it. All of it.”

Christina paused and looked down – I saw the tears welling in her eyes. Her cracks were showing. She looked up and continued – with tears streaming down her face and a quivering lip. She seemed to care little that she was falling apart in front of me.

“I attended Catholic High School in constant fear of God – I was so ashamed of my behavior and the things that had happened between me and my father. But you see, up until high school I still felt like I deserved the treatment I received. In some sick way, my father had convinced me that this type of discipline was normal and that bad and unlovable children deserved it. When I realized what kind of abuse this was, I was mortified. The God I prayed to before every class knew my secret. I was the biggest sinner, the worst student in the school. There was no way I could prove my worth to Him either. I didn’t deserve His love or protection. I belonged nowhere. I belonged in Hell. The shame was too much to bear.”

Christina looked at her watch then and asked if I had more time – she wanted to make sure I heard the ‘good part.’ She laughed nervously at that. I told her to take her time. She was all that mattered at that moment. “That’s nice,” she said as she started to talk a bit more quickly. “I’ll fast forward a little. Throughout high school I worked really hard to prove to God that I was lovable – from volunteering, to doing other students’ homework, to babysitting for free, to befriending the unfriended. I thought I was doing all the right things. Then, in my early 20s, I felt like God had never really shown Himself to me – we still had no relationship. I felt so far from Him. I couldn’t feel any sort of love, and I couldn’t prove myself to Him. The shame was more poignant than ever. Even God thought I was a waste and there was nothing I could do to convince Him otherwise. So I abandoned all hope of having a loving God to guide me and protect me.”

“So, Pastor Tullian, for the next 10 years I was sort of on my own – hiding my shame, my guilt, and my unlovliness. Then I heard you speak on TV. You said, ‘We are all broken people, living in a broken world, with other broken people.’ It was that simple admission that opened my eyes and softened my heart. I read your books and listened to your sermons. I finally saw Jesus as a loving savior who died on the cross so that I could have a relationship with God. In love, he took my shame, removed my guilt, and set me free. He took everything bad about me and freely gave me everything good about himself. I heard you say that Jesus loves messed up people because messed up people are all there are. That was the first time I had really heard good news in my entire life. Only later did I realize that this is what Christian people call ‘the gospel.’”

I sat motionless as Christina finished. Tears were now welling up in MY eyes.

She went on: “I read everything I could get my hands on and started praying. I didn’t know any real prayers, but I knew what I wanted God to hear. And when I prayed, I began to see the love of God in the most mundane and ordinary moments and you know what I realized? I realized that I had been protected all along. God had heard my prayers – I just never heard His voice – because broken people have broken eyes and broken hearts. It takes Jesus to heal our eyes and open our hearts to then embrace the grace of God. I finally realized that nothing I did, or said, or accomplished defined me. That no matter what my father said or my mother failed to say, I was indeed loved and forgiven. All I needed to do was believe that ‘for in Christ Jesus there is therefore no condemnation’—a truth I have to revisit daily because I forget it daily.”

“To be fully known and fully loved at the same time is the essence of freedom as I understand it. And to know that God fully knows me and loves me and that because of what Jesus has done for me God, in fact, delights in me. Having faith in this has set me free. Really free. I’m no longer afraid and no longer ashamed. I now understand true and genuine love and feel worthy sharing it with those around me.”

I thanked Christina for telling me her story and reassured her that it’s not just “people like her” that need to be constantly reminded of this good news of God’s love for the guilty and shamed—I do too. And so do you.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…”

Monday Morning Music

Sorry for the delay today…I was traveling. But better late than never.

I’m loving the Adam K & Soha remix of Sylvia Tosun’s track “Underlying Feeling.” I hope you do too…

“Immersed in the sound I listen,

to the voice of the silent words you say,

Spoken with no condition…

Love.”

Don’t You Worry Child

One night about 18 months ago when I was putting Genna to bed, I asked her, “Honey, how do you think God feels about you?” Her immediate response was, “Disappointed.” After some probing, I realized that she wasn’t feeling convicted about any particular sin, she simply sees God as someone whose feelings toward her are basically unhappy ones. She knows that God is perfect and that she is imperfect—she understands that God is holy and that she is sinful—and so it only makes sense to her that God is perpetually displeased with her.

Seizing an opportunity to preach the gospel to my daughter, I scrambled in my mind for an illustration that might help an 11-year-old grasp the liberating power of Christ’s imputed righteousness.

I said, “Imagine some stranger (let’s call him Steven) comes walking down our street right about the time Mommy is making dinner. He walks up our driveway, through our front door (without knocking), into our kitchen, looks at mommy and asks, ‘What’s for dinner?’ Now, you and I both know that Mommy is hospitable. But a complete stranger walking in our house would freak her out. She’d probably say something like, ‘Who are you? And if you don’t turn around and leave right now I’m going to call the police.’”

I continued, “Now imagine that same stranger comes walking down our street around dinner time with your older brother. The two of them together walk up our driveway, through the front door, and into our kitchen. Your brother looks at Mommy with his arm around his friend and says, ‘Mom, this is my friend Steven. Can he stay for dinner?’ Her response would be totally different, wouldn’t it? She would say something like, ‘Nice to meet you Steven. Of course you can have dinner with us.’ Then she’d get another place-setting and treat Steven like a son at our table. Why? Because he was with our son.”

Many Christians (like my daughter) think that God is perpetually disappointed with them. But because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, God sees us as friends and children, not as enemies and strangers. God is a good Father and because Jesus brings us with him, God’s affection for us is unchanging and his approval of us is forever.

It Is Finished

I’m kinda sad because this past Sunday I concluded a 23 week sermon series through Romans. That’s right, ROMANS! Crazy, I know. I swore I wouldn’t even attempt to preach through Romans till I was at least 50 years old but I decided to do it because it was reading through Romans last fall that rescued me from a season of doubt and discouragement.

My confidence in the radicality of the gospel was resurrected after waking up one morning and desperately grabbing my Bible from my nightstand and reading the first eight chapters of Romans in one sitting. I got out of bed that day much different than I went to bed the night before. I told the people I serve at Coral Ridge that I was going to preach through Romans just as much for me as for them.

In both my preparation and my preaching through Romans I rediscovered Romans as theological therapy for the soul. Below is a link to all 23 sermons. I hope they help and encourage you the way they helped and encouraged me.

Love you guys!

You can watch the whole series here.

Monday Morning Music

This track by Duke Dumont (feat. Jax Jones) is sure to make you bounce all day. Happy Monday, my friends!

“As long as I got you, baby…”

Jesus “Did God” All Wrong

I have no idea why it took me so long to pick up and read the late Mike Yaconelli’s book Messy Spirituality, but I guess late is better than never. I highly recommend it. It’s short, easy to read, refreshingly honest, and immensely encouraging to those of who try so hard to be good and aren’t very good at it.

I read this short section during my sermon Sunday (you can watch it below). It’s powerful. I hope it opens your eyes the way it opened mine.

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The Body of Christ can be mean.

If a person is trying to follow Jesus and others are concerned about how they’re doing it, name calling can become vicious.

For almost 40 years, Margaret had lived with the memory of one soul-scarring day in the one-room schoolhouse she attended. From the first day Margaret came to class, she and Ms. Garner, her bitter and harsh teacher, didn’t get along. Over the years, the animosity between them only worsened until one fateful day when she was nine years old, Margaret’s life was forever altered.

That day, Margaret frantically raced into her classroom after recess, late again. Ms. Garner was furious. “Margaret!” she shouted, “we have been waiting for you! Get up here to the front of the class, right now!”

Margaret walked slowly to the teacher’s desk, was told to face the class, and then the nightmare began.

Ms. Garner ranted, “Boys and girls, Margaret has been a bad girl. I have tried to help her to be responsible. But, apparently, she doesn’t want to learn. So we must teach her a lesson. We must force her to face what a selfish person she has become. I want each of you to come to the front of the room, take a piece of chalk, and write something bad about Margaret on the blackboard. Maybe this experience will motivate her to become a better person!”

Margaret stood frozen next to Ms. Garner. One by one, the students began a silent procession to the blackboard. One by one, the students wrote their life-smothering words, slowly extinguishing the light in Margaret’s soul. “Margaret is stupid! Margaret is selfish! Margaret is fat! Margaret is a dummy!” On and on they went, until twenty-five terrible scribblings of Margaret’s “badness” screamed from the blackboard.

The venomous sentences taunted Margaret in what felt like the longest day of her life. After walking home with each caustic word indelibly written on her soul, she crawled into her bed, claiming sickness, and tried to cry the pain away, but the pain never left, and forty years later, she slumped in the waiting room of psychologist’s office, still cringing in the shadow of those twenty-five sentences. To her horror, Margaret had slowly become what the students had written.

Margaret’s teacher knew exactly what she was doing. She knew the power of name-calling. Margaret was humilitaed by a thoughtless and cruel act, robbed of the sparkle in her eye, cursed to live in the shadow of that nightmarish experience.

I believe many of us have experienced Margaret’s humiliation.

One day we became a follower of Jesus, seeking his presence in our lives and were doing our best to keep our sights on Jesus when we were shocked to discover our fellow “classmates”calling us names: “Ungodly. Uncommitted. Poor example. Unspiritual. Carnal. Unbiblical.” In other words, “You’re ‘doing God’ all wrong.”

According to his critics, Jesus “did God” all wrong. He went to the wrong places, said the wrong things, and worst of all, let just anyone into the kingdom. Jesus scandalized an intimidating, elitist, country-club religion by opening membership in the spiritual life to those who had been denied it. What made people furious was Jesus’ “irresponsible” habit of throwing open the doors of his love to the whosoevers, the just-any-ones, and the not-a-chancers like you and me.

Nothing in the church makes people in the church more angry than grace. It’s ironic: we stumble into a party we weren’t invited to and find the uninvited standing at the door making sure no other uninviteds get in. Then a strange phenomenon occurs: as soon as we are included in the party because of Jesus’ irresponsible love, we decide to make grace “more responsible” by becoming self-appointed Kingdom Monitors, guarding the kingdom of God, keeping the riffraff out (which, as I understand it, are who the kingdom of God is supposed to include).

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So take heart, my worn out and weary friends–God only loves messed up people because messed up people are all that there are. And remember Aslan’s famous words: “Life is hard. We must be kind to one another.”

Romans: Part 22 | Tullian Tchividjian from Coral Ridge | LIBERATE on Vimeo.

Monday Morning Music

This track by Bassnectar (Feat. W Darling) has been on repeat for two days now.

Happy Monday, my friends.

“And it’s you and me

against the world now…”

No One Can Love a Stone

A friend’s story came to mind right in the middle of one of my recent sermons where I tried to express how people aren’t attracted to Christianity because of our competence. Rather, people are attracted to our confession: we are broken, afraid, and worried just like everybody else. Her story was the perfect example of how we don’t attract others with our muscle and our might, our intellect and our have-it-all-togetherness. People tune in and take notice when we are the first to stand up and admit that we are weak–that we are bedraggled and broken and in desperate need of grace.

Her story goes like this: She had been through a difficult divorce and while there was no abuse in the marriage there was significant emotional neglect. After almost 20 years, she was alone with three children and a life of changes ahead. So, for more than a year after the divorce, she took the two youngest to a children’s therapist. The therapist was impressed–the children were adjusting quite well. My friend was so proud of her little ones and proud of herself for being the stable adult who was helping them weather the storm.

After a few months of sitting in the waiting room, staring down her own demons while the children used play therapy to explore their own, the therapist asked my friend to come into her office. The therapist posed one simple question to her: “How are you doing?” My friend just stared at her. Not one person in the months since her marriage ended had asked her that question. I mean, she had it together. She was the rock. She hadn’t shared her true feelings with anyone. No one even thought to ask.

Even though my friend wanted to appear strong and competent, for some reason she decided to be real. Fighting back tears, she explained to the therapist that the week had been rough and she was in despair. On one afternoon, she broke down in tears in front of the children after a long day of work–staring at a messy house, a pile of bills, and frustrating homework assignments. “I feel horrible that they saw me like that. That they saw me cry and break down.” The therapist held her shoulders and said, “Look at me. It’s okay to be human in front of your children. They need to see your emotion. They need to see that you aren’t perfect–that you’re not a robot. Everyone needs to see the authentic you, the real and broken you. No one can love a stone.”

You see, for her entire life my friend had been taught that it was not okay to show her brokenness, her frailties, her heart. From her strict parents to her insecure husband, she was bound and gagged. Be perfect. Don’t fall down. And, if you do fall down, don’t tell a soul. So, she lived a life where she guarded her heart and never let anyone see the cracks. That was, until she was finally given permission–first by a caring therapist and then by Jesus.

“Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen

The Hound of Heaven tracked her down and softened her heart. She has since soaked in the beautiful freedom of the Gospel and the power of God’s grace. Today, she is the first to admit the she is a mess–a broken person, living in a broken world, with other broken people. For the first time in her life, she says, she’s free to let her cracks show because she knows that a perfect offering was made on her behalf–setting her free from the need to be strong, to have it all together, to be perfect…all the time. She has discovered what the late, great Robin Williams once said he longed for: “To be free. Such a thing would be greater than all the magic and all the treasures in the world.”

Jesus came to liberate us from the pressure of having to fix ourselves and fix others. He came to rescue us from the enslaving need to be right, to win, to be strong. He came to relieve us of the burden we inherently feel to “get it done.” Because Jesus came to secure for us what we could never secure for ourselves, life ceases to be a tireless effort to establish ourselves, justify ourselves, and validate ourselves by what we do and who we can become.

Because of Jesus, we have nothing to prove or protect. We can stop pretending. We can take off our masks and be real. We hold the winning hand. We have nothing to lose by admitting our fears and failures, our weaknesses and insecurities.

That’s freedom! And if you don’t believe me, ask my friend.