But I noticed something new today about this passage. Something that’s been hiding in plain sight. We all know the story of Jesus predicting Peter’s denial of him, Peter responding with a “nu-uh Jesus, I wouldn’t ever do that,” then proceeding to do it anyway. We know the story.

But I was struck when I read something in verse 61 I’d never noticed before:

Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him. (Luke 22:60-61)

Just as soon as Peter betrays Jesus for the third time, the rooster crows. We all knew that part. But it’s what came after that I thought was fascinating: Jesus looked Peter square in the face.

Part of me imagines Jesus with a “I told you so, stupid” look on his face when he does this. Part of me imagines the worst look of pain and sorrow on Jesus’ face Peter had ever seen. In that moment when Jesus looked at him, Peter knew. Peter knew he had messed up. In fact, verse 62 says that Peter “went outside and wept bitterly.”

When we come face-to-face with God, as Peter did, we realize our inadequacy. Our finiteness. Our brokenness. But the grace of God is just that: he can take someone, no matter how broken, look them in the eye, know their faults, and forgive them anyway. Peter denied he even knew Christ, and he was used to help found the church!

No amount of brokenness we ever feel can compare to the grace of an infinite, matchless God who can look us in the face, faults and all, and forgive us. That’s what I learned today from Peter’s Moment.

“Robb says the man died bravely, but Jon says he was afraid.”
“What do you think?” his father asked.
Bran thought about it. “Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”
“That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father told him.

There’s a misconception that bravery and courage are the absence of courage. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Bravery is being deathly afraid, and acting in spite of it.

We’ll never be without fear. But our bravery must look our fear in the face and, empowered by the Holy Spirit, act and change the world.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine from Austin (shout out to Ben Sledge) posted this sermon from a friend of his on Facebook. Let me just say, I loved it. This message from Josh Riebock on our potential and was crazy powerful. If you’ve got 45 minutes, it’s worth it to watch. After you’re done reading this, of course.

During his message, he quoted a friend of his who said this:

“Our greatest fear is that others see us the way we see ourselves.”

When I heard that, I was blown away. When you really get to the core of our fears and our self-consciousness, it’s really fundamentally about what we think of ourselves—and what we think others think of us. We’re afraid that people see us the way we see ourselves. I struggle with this. I’m sure you struggle with it too.

The fear is huge. But overcoming it is even bigger. We need to listen to the God who’s on our side and stands with us and tells us who we are in Christ, forming his image of us. Not an image of who we think we are or who we think we should be. See yourself the way God sees you. It’s the first step to healing.

If you didn’t know, I spent my entire summer interning with the awesome people at Gateway Church in Austin, Texas. Yes, this means that I had to deal with Kenny Conley every day. And other great people at Gateway like Cathy Harwick (the fantastic children’s pastor at Gateway), Corey Schwarz (the south campus children’s pastor who was never, ever mean to me), Linnea Danna (the wonderful Operations Director), and Wendy Justis (she’s the one with the orange hair up above). I also got really connected in Gateway College, the awesome-tastic college ministry at Gateway. I met lots of great people like Mattias, Sledge, David, Colin, and tons of others who are simply too awesome to name here.

I learned a lot of awesome stuff this summer. I met some really awesome people. Time is too short to share it all here. But I’ll share some of it below in blast-out bullet point form. If you want to know more, just talk to me. I’d be glad to tell you.

• Austin is amazing. It has the best food of I think anywhere on the planet.
• Kenny Conley loves movies. Cathy Harwick likes to get a little crazy. Corey Schwarz has a beard. (And it felt weird.)
• Small groups work.
• Trust is essential to a community and to a team.
• Leaders reproduce themselves in others. They work themselves out of a job.
• Dreamers need doers.
• Kids are hurting and broken. They need someone to love them.
• None of us are perfect. We’re all in process together, growing and becoming more like Christ.
• Community is critical to growth.
• Christ shows up in a whole lot of places you’d never expect.
• We all have something to contribute to the conversation. Listen.
• Story changes lives.

That’s just a little spurt of some of the things I took home with me. It was an awesome summer. I’m hoping to go back next summer. Maybe sooner. It was good stuff.

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. -1 Corinthians 1:27 (NIV)

I’m a nerd. I’m willing to admit it. See, this is one of my favorite verses in the entire Bible. I love the message it brings to us about broken lives and about the good news of Christ. On Sunday afternoon, instead of taking a longer nap, I decided to wake up and do a word study on the word “foolish” in this verse. Told you I was a nerd.

Regardless, what I found when I dug into this verse a little was fascinating. The word translated foolish in this verse is the Greek word mōros. Yes, it is one of the roots from which we get our word moron. While it can be used to carry a meaning of a dull or stupid person, it also carries a deeper meaning.

Mōros carries a meaning of “morally worthless, a scoundrel… mōros scorns [a man's] heart and character.”

The fools Paul is referring to in 1 Corinthians aren’t unintelligent people. They are morally repugnant people. Scoundrels. The opposite of those human logic would dictate the God of the universe would choose. He has a whole world at His disposal and he chooses the “morally worthless?”

I’m glad God chose me, a morally worthless scoundrel, to be part of his Kingdom. To share in his good news. To take his message out. I’m glad he chose you too. Welcome to the club, you fool.

I just got done watching the movie Invictus for the first time. And I must say, it was an amazing movie. Probably one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. It’s about the true story of Nelson Mandela using the game of rugby to unite the incredibly divided nation of South Africa in the mid-1990s. Before going any farther, watch the video above for a reference point.

As the South African rugby team enters the last 7 minutes of extra time, the score is all tied up. The team captain, François Pienaar (played by Matt Damon) calls his team into a huddle. The entire crowd of 63,000 South Africans breaks into a song of support for their team. And not only those 63,000, but millions of South Africans all over the country. In the huddle, François says to his team, “Do you hear? Listen to your country! Seven minutes. Seven minutes!”

I won’t ruin the end of the movie for you, but I will say that hearing the voices of their nation completely changes the way the South African team plays. Hearing the support of their entire nation transformed them.

If you didn’t know, I’m interning this summer with Kenny Conley and Cathy Harwick at Gateway Church in Austin, TX. As I’ve been hanging out with them and talking ministry, I’ve come to understand how truly important it is to have the voices of the entire church cheering on volunteers. It’s one thing to have the coach (kids’ pastor) and your teammates cheering you on. It’s something else entirely to have the voices of your entire church behind you! It’s vitally important for you, as the leader of the kids ministry, or any ministry for that matter, to communicate to your church how important it is for your church to encourage your volunteers and let them know how vitally important what they do is to the body! It’ll completely transform the way your team plays. Cheer them on!

Welcome challenging times as opportunities to trust Me. You have Me beside you and My Spirit within you, so no set of circumstances is too much for you to handle. When the path before you is dotted with difficulties, beware of measuring your strength against those challenges. That calculation is certain to riddle you with anxiety. Without Me, you wouldn’t make it past the first hurdle!

The way to walk through demanding days is to grip My hand tightly and stay in close communication with Me. Let your thoughts and spoken words be richly flavored with trust and thankfulness. Regardless of the days problems, I can keep you in perfect Peace as you stay close to Me.

Sometimes the greatest truths are the ones that should be the most obvious. We can’t make it through a day on our own. The way to walk is to grip His hand. Be trusting and thankful today. See things change.

Image from Flickr user Jo Ingate.

This morning in kidmin at Liberty (my church) was awesome. We were using week 3 of the God to the Rescue Easter curriculum, available absolutely free online. It’s really great stuff. Most importantly, the kids connected really well with the message and had a lot of fun. We did some wild and crazy stuff like the Licorice Race (look it up in the Kommunity at KidzMatter.com!) and Human Horseshoes. I tried to greet as many of the kids as I could personally and ask them how their week was going. It was just overall a really great morning.

After the service though, I began to think: there are so many kids that come in and out of those doors every week, and hundreds more just in our community that are unreached. It’s kind of overwhelming to think about. To think: how can I possibly impact the lives of all of those kids? I felt like the lonely sailboat in the middle of the huge ocean that you see above.

But then I realized: I’m not called to impact all of those kids. That’s not my mission. My mission, as a servant of God, is to put what little I have to offer into His hands and let Him do the work. My call is to put the one drop of influence I have to offer into the lives of the kids I minister to. My one drop sometimes seems insignificant in the context of an ocean. But it’s not. My drop, and your drop, and the drop of the dozens if not hundreds of other believers that will minister to these kids at some point in their lives accumulate. And not under our own power. He brings the people into the lives of these kids that they need at that time to be their “drop.”

The next time you’re sitting around and questioning: can I really make a difference? Remember this: you’re just a drop. You’re a meaningful, God-inspired, God-fueled drop. And He can’t wait to use your drop to make a change in the world.

I love this song. Plain and simple. I’ve loved it for a while now. I had a new experience with it last night, however. Something stuck out to me like never before. I was singing this song in church and everything was going as normal. But when I got to the line that says, “The angel made it clear, he told them have no fear, He’s not here, He’s not here…,” I had this sudden moment of realization. A “duh” moment in my faith. I’m pretty sure I almost screamed the “He’s not here” parts of that line out of sheer excitement.

I realized for the first time the power of the angel’s words in Matthew 28 verses 5 and 6: “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen…” Can you imagine the sheer shock that must have overcome these women? “He’s not here, he’s risen!” What a crazy statement! The Savior of the world, who just days earlier had been beaten beyond recognition of a man, was now restored and risen again. In his life, we could have life too.

HE’S NOT HERE! He’s living and moving and transforming all around us. He’s not here. He is risen. That’s good news.

Reality, however, is something else entirely. While yes, technically, news corporations do control the news content and the dominant conversation of culture (Cultural Studies theory by Stuart Hall), we help control it.

See, while a journalist has a personal bias, they also have the bias of money. That newspaper you hold in your hands, that network newscast you watch, and that blog you read are all paid for, fundamentally, by advertising. Advertising pays the journalist, the photographer, the producer, the writer, and the bosses. Money drives the news—but not in the way you might think. Realistically, corporations do not try to manipulate the news through huge payoffs, nor will most journalists accept such bribes. (Not to say it doesn’t happen, but it’s not often.) Many journalists will not bow to the wishes of advertisers.

Advertisers want to reach the most people they can. They’ll pay more money to reach more people. So if a news organization wants to make more money, they need more eyeballs looking at their content. How do you get more eyeballs looking at your content? Have content those eyeballs want to look at. The news that is reported is reported because we the viewers have told the news organizations to report more news like that by virtue of our viewing consent.

So while we can spend hours upon hours whining, complaining, writing letters, and writing Facebook statuses, the reality is that none of it matters. If we’re going to continue consuming the content, all of our complaining does not matter. If you don’t want to hear Glenn Beck ever again, stop talking about/listening to/watching him. If you want the news to stop talking about a topic, stop reading the stories about it.

We don’t change things by complaining. We change things by doing. It’s the same across every part of life. I’ll admit, I’m guilty of this many times. I like to complain. It’s human nature. But let’s commit together to changing things. Change your world with actions, not words.