I am learning that God designed sex to be amazing, mystical, life affirming and a living, giving gift. It’s the kind of experience men would fight wars for and women would endure high heels for. It is the kind of experience that God, in His infinite creativity and intentional wisdom, would use to compare his love for the church. The 5^th chapter of Ephesians outlines this comparison as Paul inspirationally compares the perfect union of husband and wife to Christ and his bride, the Church. What a love story! What girl wouldn’t (paraphrasing Eph 5:25-32) want a man who would love her, give himself up for her, help make her holy, help make her feel radiant and without fault, present her to the world as his perfect match, and to treat her and care for her like she was intrinsically woven into his essence, his own body – which by the way she is if we recall how Eve got here. Wow! And what man wouldn’t want a wife fully and totally on board with his vision and life in such a way as to be the light of her world? A women who at ever moment would affirm his strength, his abilities and his manliness above all other men’s man stuff.

And it is for this fact, Paul writes, “’…the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery…” (Ephesians 5:31-32). In our souls we yearn for this type of union with our spouses or future spouses. It is written on our hearts as if a promise. I would contend that the closer we get to God, the truer the promise of lavish sex becomes in married life. We can even experience these possibilities in our own romance with Him. In essence, the closer we grow to God, the more hopelessly romantic we become. Scott Peck in A Road Less Traveled wrote about being suspicious of a religious convert whose conversion was not also met with an intensified sexuality. He saw sex as a search for meaning; as is our search for God. When the two become one … well, that’s a whole lot of meaning.

I have been told, however, that when approaching scripture, to heed the scripture that may set up the section. I have always noticed that Bible editors love to insert the Husband and Wife header and in doing so draws one’s attention away from the verses the immediately preced this union metaphor. The word “therefore” draws my attention even to Chapter 4 which heeds us “to put off your old selves” (Eph. 4:22) to“be imitators of God as dearly loved children” (Eph. 5:1), to “live a life of love” (Eph. 5:2) and that the “fruitless deeds of darkness” (Eph. 5:11) need to be “exposed”. As we shine the light on our darkness and shame, we ought also to be intentional in making the most out of every opportunity in this journey of our’s and to be filled with the Spirit. Our lavish sex with our earthly spouse is conditional, I would contend, upon our exposing our sins, making the most out of the opportunities to share with others who God is and by drinking in the strength from the living water, Jesus Christ himself.  Lavish sex is worth being an imitator of God for. Lavish sex, for the single, is worth waiting for as we learn to find sufficiency in the arms of our Lord.

If we don’t talk about the ugly stuff, we can never claim the good gift that the Lord has prepared for us in an amazing sexual union with our marriage partner. I am drawn to sex therapy, sexual wholeness and exposing the dark areas of my life in hopes to liberate you and I from shame and prepare us to take hold of what the Lord wants to lavish on us, a great sex life with our spouses.

There are a lot of bookshelves in my house (at least nine) and all have “No Vacancies” signs hanging from them. Some shelves have two rows of books taking up residence that are crammed together so tight that I’ve considered leaving a can of WD-40 and a crowbar on the top of the bookshelf in order to pry them out. This population doesn’t account for the stacks of books that I have neatly, and not so neatly, piled in various places around the house—a drawer in the bathroom, the bedside table, throughout my office, and stacked behind the driver’s seat in my truck.

I don’t like to get rid of books. “Leader’s read,” one of my college professors taught me. To emphasize the point he wrote a book on the reading habits of great men including C. S. Lewis, Charles Spurgeon, and Teddy Roosevelt. Well God knows I want to lead. (He does, you know, I’ve told him many times.) So I started reading as much as I could and the books started piling up. I even had a library stamp created so that if my friends borrowed one, every time they opened the cover my book would prominently mention that they belonged back with me.

I started thinning the shelves a couple of weeks ago. Some of this action was due to marital pressure. My wife was going through the house simplifying and I knew that our bookshelves were on her list. If I didn’t have a go at them she would. But another part of my motivation was from freedom. There were volumes on my shelves that no longer had a voice in my life and their silence was taking up important space.

It wasn’t easy going through the titles in one particular corner of the living room. There were a couple shelves dedicated to leadership books, both from secular and Christian authors. My collection was library-worthy and when you read the titles out loud it is almost humorous. Here are a few that I took off the shelves not to return:

• 30 Days to Confident Leadership, by Biehl
• Understanding Leadership, by Marshall
• Excellence in Leadership, by White
• Transforming Leadership, by Ford
• Principled-Centered Leadership, by Covey
• Servant Leadership, by Greenleaf
• Christian Leadership, by Powers
• Perils of Leadership, by Prior
• Leading from the Second Chair, by Bonem
• Who’s in Charge? by Anderson
• Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun, by Roberts

I’ve begun to realize that this clean up is not just about my bookshelves, it’s more about me. What kind of a person collects this many books (and trust me, this is just a subset) on the topic of leadership? An insecure one, I’m afraid. One that desperately wants to be identified as a leader and feels that he isn’t up to par. One that has a degree in church ministry but feels he’d better study a little bit more. One who wants to make the final grade, graduate at the top of the class, and be given the plumb roles at all the best ministries. One that doesn’t want to be caught not knowing. This isn’t an indictment on any of these books, some of them have some really good insights, but when they are all strung together they make for one heavy necklace.

One thick book on the shelf really stood out to me. I remember the day that I bought it. The church where I was on staff was getting ready to send out one of our pastors to plant a new church. The Sr. Pastor asked me to order this certain book by a business guru that we would be giving to him as a farewell gift. Not only did I order the book for the church planter, but I bought one for my shelf as well. It was easy to rationalize having a copy for the resource library which I made available to our church’s leadership teams, but the truth is I wanted in on the secrets too. If this is the book that we give out to the people who have made it, if this is the graduation gift that a church planter needs to be successful, then the Good Lord knows I wants one… I needs one… My precious.

It seems silly now, on this side of that job. Maybe the problem was that I didn’t read all of those books enough. Maybe it was that I didn’t apply all of their principles correctly. Then again, maybe it was because I was focused on me becoming a great, Christian leader. And when I hold that motivation up into the light of the Kingdom, it is nothing but dross. Though it has a ring of piety to it, and I can stand in a pulpit and make it sound brilliant, it really is just another clanging symbol.

There are a lot of thoughts in my heart about leadership issues, maybe enough of them to fill up the pages of a book and be marketed to ambitious, insecure men like me. But what I really want is to have a heart that is secure, one that doesn’t need power, performance, or position in order to find my identity. I want to be able to skip the leadership section at Barnes and Noble, and sometimes—like Jesus did at the last supper—instead of picking up a book, I’d like to pick up a towel.

Lately a spirit of unity has been sweeping over the youth ministry community where I live. It seems that we’ve all come to the conclusion that if we don’t work together we’re like people swimming alone up a swift river, working really hard and not going anywhere. More than that, I think we’ve come to realize that in a city like Boulder, unity in the faith community speaks volumes to people seeking truth in their lives. Boulder is a place of deeply fractured belief systems. There is no one dominate world-view, and people are precisely attracted to living here for that reason. Being united in belief and practice stands out in sharp contrast to the world around us, and the power of cooperative truth can be a strong magnet to people looking for the Lord.

The last thing we need to have is a fractured Church. I think we’d all agree with this statement, at least in spirit, and I know that there are many people who have heartbeats driving them to promote unity in the Christian community. That is wonderful—and needed. I’ve been wrestling with this idea though, and I’m constantly confronted with the question of why. Why is unity so hard in practice? More importantly, what does Christ mean when he calls us to be one as he and his Father are one?

As I’m being led to work in unity with the people around me, I’m realizing just how hard it can be. I’m beginning to understand how little differences can actually become huge barriers in the process of gaining momentum. To begin the process of understanding each other and moving to a place of true undivided ministry, we can’t just expose the areas that we disagree on and attempt to reconcile them.  This approach is many times impossible and even dangerous. We will always disagree. In fact, we should disagree—it’s healthy. Homogeneous ministry approaches and worldviews can lead to blind-sided organizational structures and will miss out on reaching/communicating to whole groups of people. Without disagreement, it is impossible for us to improve, restore and grow each other as iron sharpens iron. An iron sword standing alone becomes dull and useless, as do we when we aren’t opening ourselves up to the criticisms (and even the slightly off-base ideas) of others. This leads us to the conclusion that it is not disagreement on its own that is causing so much strife within the Christian community—it is something much deeper.

Something is present in conflict that tries to take our differences (that which are inherently beautiful and part of our creation) and turn them into ugly irreconcilable monsters that threaten the very fabric of our being. Mistrust has a way of dividing and conquering the body of Christ. Mistrust acts like a cancer cell in our spirit. It breeds on itself and multiplies until it takes over whole regions in our lives. It takes away the freedom and beauty that comes when the Christian community acts in a healthy way.

Mistrust is developed in two major ways as it relates to the ministry community: It comes from our own insecurities around who we are in Christ, and it comes out of a misunderstanding of the kingdom of God. When we forget the darkness that Christ called us and redeemed us out of, we can quickly forget that the Lord takes us first as we are and then begins the process of transformation within us.  He takes all of our shortsighted ideas, our less-than-holy lives, and our brokenness, and in turn he gives us life.  He lets us on to his team; he asks us to join his ‘club’. We forget that we are imperfect sinners called to live deeply in grace, and then we project impossible standards of perfection on to those around us that are still actively falling short.  When they don’t stand up to those standards, we call them heretics and accuse them of watering down the gospel. Couldn’t this be what Jesus was partly rebuking the Pharisees for in Matthew 23:4 and Luke 11:46 when he mentions the burdens that they place on people without lifting their own fingers to help them as they stumble? It seems that one of the problems of the Pharisees was that they pictured a kingdom of heaven without the broken, messy, and redeemed people of the world. They were the epitome of mistrust. They didn’t trust each other, let alone other Jews and Gentiles. When Christ called lowly fishermen to be his disciples, heal, teach, and start his church, it raised more than a few angry fists.

All this to say, as we live in a kingdom of crazy, broken, and sinful people, we can’t let disagreements (however right and just we may be in the situation) become a foothold for disunity.  Instead, we should act like Paul encourages us to in Galatians 6:1—restore each other gently.  We need to pick our battles and any time we begin to worship the clarity of our theological pool, we have to remember that Jesus just might come walking through it with muddy boots on.

Let me make a quick disclaimer and say that online dating is, in general, a great way for people to meet people or even their future spouse. By now you have known of someone who has gotten married through one of these sites? With that being said I kissed online dating goodbye.

We are living in a “Have it your way” culture. When we want it we got it, from on-line shopping with next day delivery, to bootleg movies being sent to our cell phones before coming to theatres. We have created a culture in which we expect to get what we want when we want it, and in the way we like it. It is no wonder then that on-line dating has exploded as a means for finding that special someone. Just log on to the site and search through a menu-list for your perfect soul mate.

The reason why online dating was challenging for me was that I didn’t know what I wanted. Even more so, I suspect, I was looking for that feeling, that uncomparable zing thing, that “you will know when you meet him” kind of feeling to hit me when I went on dates. Getting zinged is really difficult when your expectations are so high. Plus, if things didn’t go well I always had 100 other “what if’s and potential zings” waiting back on line to be discovered.

“Having it my way” was interfering with what my heart yearned for most – serendipity. Defined, serendipity means having that something to make fortunate discoveries by accident. Accidents are things that are often left to chance, or at least chance by our human minds. At weddings we love to hear stories about how the happy couple met.  The best stories are those in which serendipity is involved. “I was at the Vegas airport Starbucks. He was standing in front of me in line ordering a half caff. He was wearing a New Order shirt and I said ‘Great band’. We talked for an hour before our planes left. He got my number and we never stopped talking. We got married one year to the date of when we met in line.” Serendipity is all about meeting someone in line, not meeting someone online.

Why is it we love these chance encounters? I think its because we like to believe that our destiny, our finding the love of our life, is not found in our own hands, but in God’s. We want to believe that our lives have a purpose. We hope that one of the most important relationships in our life is also being orchestrated by God. I want to believe that God has a plan for me so wonderful I can’t order it, specify it, buy it, earn it, or imagine it. I yearn to believe that love will come my way despite myself.

G.K. Chesterton spoke to my heart with these few lines from his well known work Orthodoxy: “(Man) was always outstripping his mercies with his own invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure, for the chief pleasure is surprise.” What Chesterton is saying is that by doing things our way we become experts at pleasure seeking. This pleasure seeking, however, robs us of our joy which is inexplicably more deeper than pleasure. And pleasure seeking keeps us from the season of the wait, the perfect breeding ground for experiencing the full beauty of the surprise which our Father has in store.

Fortunately, this sentiment against on-line dating is not only held by this author, a “single scorned”.  Oprah’s favorite sex-pert Robert Weiss (and Jennifer Schnieder, MD, PhD) also warn of some potential pitfalls of online dating in Untangling the Web: Sex, Porn, and Fantasy Obsession in the Internet Age (2006).  They explain that online dating sets up false expectations and creates barriers to really getting to know the person.  It provides “…a perfect set-up for ‘falling in love’….(because) it is often easier to express your feelings more openly and honestly” via computer (p. 86). This set-up also encourages fantasy making that may not survive the first face-to-face meeting.

The pain I felt with on-line dating is the pain suffered from deflated fantasies, both mine and those I caused.  Forget my personal pain, but what about the well-intentioned man that traveled from Scotland only to meet my deflated heart in the airport terminal. Men, try spending a week in a foreign country putting on a good face in front of a dissapointed woman! He left the “I (heart) New York” t-shirt I got for him as a welcome present, neatly folded on the bed as he left. I suspect he left a part of his heart somewhere behind in the U.S. as well.  Or what about the man I spent a month worth of time talking by phone and sharing my heart and aspirations with. When we attempted to meet up once while on a trip to his city, our evening plan for dinner, got changed to a Saturday plan for lunch, and then finally a squeezed in coffee after some tasks he had to run. Finally I said, “Forget it.” My fantasy of “this is a potential” was not to be relegated to a coffee squeezed in between errands. Especially since I was coming in from out of town and our degree of over the phone intimacy did not merit a latte. Get the picture?

So have courage. Those who have firm boundaries and tendency against flights of fancy, you may find a great forum for on-line loving. For the rest of us dreamers, I hold out for serendipity.

There are myriad theories going around about what killed Michael Jackson. Was it stress, fame, drug abuse, or self-hatred? A former Rabbi friend said that Michael loathed who he was, and that he had wound in his soul that he tried to treat as a malady in his body. He was constantly taking pain killers to try and mask the pain that he was suffering with.

Could it be that the deepest pain inside of him came not from his body, but through a wound in his heart? Could it be that the audience that Michael most wanted to give him approval was from a dad who drove his sons to fame but was ill equipped to give Michael what he wanted and needed most? In a recent interview Michael shared some of that pain.

I have meet countless men and women who are still waiting for their dads to affirm them and tell them that they love them. You would think in a culture like ours, those words wouldn’t be so hard to come by. But that is not the case.

Haven’t we all been there before, desperate to get our father’s attention? Did Michael’s self-loathing drive him to change his appearance so that he could be somebody that could be loved? Could it be that that the wound inside of Michael drove him to undergo hundreds of surgeries to make himself acceptable?

It is not surprising to me that many of the later pictures of Michael had him wearing a mask to hide himself. Was he saying to the world, Does anybody see me? Did he feel invisible? How many of us dads have missed those moments when our sons were saying, “Daddy, do you see me? Do I have what it take?” Or our little daughters were asking, “Daddy, am I beautiful?”

I didn’t get that for years as a father. I never knew how important I was a audience in my kids life. To be present, affirming and loving. Do you know why it is so hard for us guys to get that? If we never received it from our dads, it is almost impossible to give away what was never given to us. That truth has taken me years to understand!

Did Michael feel invisible to his father? Did that wound compel him to recreate his childhood at the Neverland Ranch and try and rediscover a childhood lost? Did that pain keep him stuck at countless rehersal, trying to make it perfect?

I have coached hundreds of fathers who were much like Joe Jackson, never equipped to give their sons what they needed most. Here is a truth: It is almost impossible for fathers to give love to their kids if their fathers didn’t give it to them.

What Wives know
I have met countless wives who have watched their husbands live less than they know they are capable of. Recently one wrote me and said that her heart breaks because her husband is still stuck acting like a boy because his father didn’t know how to bless and love him.

The sudden death of Michael Jackson breaks my heart because I know there are millions of children going to bed tonight in our country without the love and blessing of their fathers in their lives. What’s in us that compels us to sometimes go to the extreme to get our dad to notice us whenever we feel hidden or disconnected?

I believe God made us that way. He made us with a longing to be adored. He gave us a yearning to be loved. He made us want to be seen and appreciated. And He made us for His pleasure (His Smile).

So what is our hope if we didn’t have a dad who knew ow to love us in the way were designed?

We need a new father. We someone to leads us to a way that we can be healed from the aches of what we never received. I know of only one place and person: His name is Jesus, and not only does He want to set us free from the mistakes and sins in our lives, He also wants to give us a new Dad, our Heavenly Father.

To learn more, visit Ed’s website at www.PowerOfTheBlessing.com

Dear Church with the Corny Marquee Sign,

Charlotte Avenue was bumper to bumper traffic as one would expect at 6 pm on a weekday. Why I chose this route instead of taking the highway is beyond me.

As I inched up closely to the next stop light, I glanced up to read your old fashioned marquee sign with the archaic plastic letters, aged and tired. I rolled my eyes at your corny Christian saying.

After what seemed like an eternity, the light turned green and I finished my excursion to The Mecca of Things Unnecessary: Target.

Picking up my prescription (and contributing an additional donation of $64 to The Mecca), I traveled home, back on Charlotte Avenue once again.

Back to you again.

But instead of rolling my eyes again, I flashed back to my formative elementary school years when I’d pull down the boxes containing the same plastic letters in my dad’s workroom in the church where he was a pastor. He’d leave me a quote with a saying for the sign not so different than the one I’d read on yours today. Cautiously, I’d climb the church’s four foot ladder and meticulously line up the letters on the sign to form the words just right.

Because I was just as compulsive then as I am now.

I imagine your pastor similar to my father in those days.

Balding.

The only person “on staff.”

Away from his family.

Putting those little golf scoring pencils in the pews while picking up last week’s bulletins that people had left stuck behind the hymnals.

His office is a mess of old Matthew Henry Commentaries and prayer requests and he sits back in an old office chair with cracks in the leather, and as he looks at a photograph of a picture of his family, he leans back and takes a deep breath.

And I’m really sorry for rolling my eyes at your sign earlier. It was immature and inconsiderate. Because your boldness to say something positive on a street that sees so much darkness is nothing short of noble and redemptive.

And to your pastor I say thank you for being the man you know you’re supposed to be. It’s not an easy or popular job, and definitely not one that’s financially rewarding, but my own back yard is a better place for having you love and give the way you give.

And I can’t roll my eyes at that.

Some days I enter into my local Christian bookstore/knick-knackery, and–looking over the vast shelves of Purpose-Driven products, Beth Moore Bible studies, Veggie Tales merchandise, Precious Moments figurines, dumb Christian parody t-shirts, inspirational artwork and home decor, and books about the End Times–I think to myself: the Christian subculture just doesn’t quite have enough consumer items.

Something is missing, I ponder. Something like…Christian cosmetics!

Which is why, to me, the Christian bookstore always smells a little like despair. It’s not the candles. It’s the lack of Jesus-based grooming products.

Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered this wonderful line of cosmetics, courtesy of my cousin-in-law Lance and his link to Michael Kelley Ministries’ site. Behold! A life-affirming brand of Jesus-glorifying toiletries!

That’s right: Lookin’ Good for Jesus brand bath and cosmetic items.

I’ve never seen them on shelves, but apparently these products are sold in various retail outlets by an American makeup company called Blue Q, which seems to specialize in snarky and irreverent stuff. (I haven’t heard of any reaction to them in the U.S., though the Jesus cosmetic brand been met with some controversy among local Catholics in Singapore.)

Anyway, encouraging users to “Get Tight with Christ,” Lookin’ Good for Jesus products include…

Lookin’ Good for Jesus Bubble Bath:

(Product description: Take the plunge with a soak in everlasting Citrus and Juniper suds that make you feel like you’re walking on water.)

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Lookin’ Good for Jesus Sparkle Cream:

(Product description: Now, easier to be redeemed in his eyes with a handy travel size 2 oz. tube!)

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Lookin’ Good for Jesus Lip Balm:

(Product description: Returns lips to near virgin quality.)

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Lookin’ Good for Jesus Mini Kit:

(Product description: Redeems you in his eyes and takes the edge off sinning.)

The mini-kit contains vanilla nectar lip balm, Easter-Lily hand & body cream (with sparkle!) and a folding mirror compact. Also a mirrored Jesus statuette.

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I’m sure you can find these products in boutique stores in the U.S., though I haven’t exactly been on the lookout for them. If you want, you can certainly order them from the Blue Q website.

Now, for the reaction: I’m sure there are Christians who will find these products offensive. After all, hotsy blondes making come-hither eyes to a handsome Son of God isn’t the kind of thing you see in stained-glass church windows, even the ones depicting Mary Magdalene. It’s a bit irreverent.

Why? Because it uses Jesus as a blatant, right-out-in-front pitchman. And using Jesus as a brand…why, that’s just wrong.

Real Christians know better than to demean the Christ by attaching him to common consumer items. Wait–no. You’re bringing up Christian bookstore stuff? Like frames, posters, greeting cards, books, music, stuffed toys, coloring books, jewelry, conferences, artwork, clothing, breath-fresheners? No. Stop that, right this instant. See, that’s where you’re wrong. Sure, maybe we have attached Christ to those things, too, but there’s a difference. WE do it more subtly.

And that makes it OK. Because we know that Jesus sells. Everyone knows that. We just know better than to put a goofy picture of Jesus front-and-center on the product (except on, um, t-shirts). We’d rather hide Jesus in a Bible verse, or a little fish symbol, or by securing placement in a Christian bookstore.

Our Jesus junk is subtle, and we figure God’s OK with that, because look at the profit margin!

But when you stoop to overt, ironic uses of Jesus to sell stuff…well, that’s offensive. Am I right, people?

Can I get a witness? Amen? Anyone?