Maybe it's time to put my insecurities down...

In Acts 10, an angel of God shows up in the living room of a man named Cornelius, who was a Gentile. If an angel of God shows up in my living room, I'm pretty sure it could tell me just about anything and I would believe it. God could've had this angel explain doctrine, theology, the answers to questions we'd all be asking for centuries to come... but He didn't.

The angel said, "Go find Peter, he has something to tell you."

There are two things that are really interesting for me in this story. The first is that though Cornelius was the one who was "converted", it was Peter who changed his culture so that another could respond to the truth of Jesus Christ. The other thing that I can not ignore is that in this moment when the Gentile church was born, God prioritized relationship over correct theology.

It was more important for the church to be born in relationship with the Jewish followers of Jesus than for the church to have all the answers right.

Sometimes I put aside the constant plea of God that we love each-other and decide that the correctness of my opinion is more important than relationship... but it wasn't to Him.

In the moments when I do this, it's driven by that same insecurity I mentioned in my last post. When I notice myself using doctrine to dismantle relationships it is because my head thinks the issue at hand is in fact true, but my heart is scared that it might not be. So, I puff-up my presentation of the doctrine so that no one can touch it, and I burn relationships.

I confess to you that when I chose doctrine over relationship, it is out of an insecurity in what I believe.

Jesus' last words over his disciples was a prayer that they would "love others like God loved me (Jesus)." He was speaking to his followers so that they would love those who weren't... so that others might know God. 

It is not through the correctness of our doctrine that others will know God, but through our love.

"Maybe it's ok to feel insecure..."

3 times in my life people have told me that I'm arrogant. 2 of those people have returned to me, apologized and said that now they've gotten to know me don't think that at all. While I'm still waiting for the 3rd ... I can either use their apology to dismiss what they once saw in me or I can realize that they saw something that I need to look at.

It's not hard to see that the times that they saw my arrogance were times when I felt insecure. My response to feeling insecure was to puff myself up and push others back so that they wouldn't discover what I knew, somewhere deep in me...

In those times it was more important to me that I appeared strong, than it was to become stronger. In those times I missed my opportunity to actually grow into the man was yet to become.

I'm left with a question I must ask myself every day, "Is it more important to appear strong or to become stronger?"

Everyday I chose to either be a fool or a wise man- When I get feedback and choose to explain why it isn't accurate, I am a fool that misses an opportunity. When I choose to find whatever small bit is accurate in what I'm being told, it is inevitable that I will become a wiser, a better man. The deliverer of the message may be 90% wrong, but they just helped me become 10% better.

Thank you, to all those who were 10% right. You helped me to become the man I am.

Poverty in leadership

I heard a man talk about a moment when he met U2 and got to talk with Bono and The Edge. The most profound thing about that meeting, he tells, was that "they seemed just like us, which made us believe that we could be just like them."

I was at a meeting yesterday, where I heard Colin Powell talk about leadership. The thing that affected me most about him was that he revealed the nearness of who I could be. I realize that the people who have brought change in my life are the ones who diminish the gap between my current condition and the man I might become.


That is the kind of leader... the kind of man that I want to be. I want to be a man whose life reveals to others what they are capable of. To do so I need to not be aware of the difference between me and others- that reveals only poverty (in both sides). I need to be a man who is aware of how near we all are, which reveals the nearness of abundance... the nearness of who each of us can be.


... we are better with, not better than.