On vampires and sin(ners)

 I love movies, stories, and theories about cryptids. Bigfoot, werewolves, chupacabras, mothman, all of that, I absolutely love it. The other day I was watching a vampire movie and they dove a bit deeper into the lore of vampires. In most modern movies vampires are just creepy/seductive bloodsuckers who want your blood, but there is a lot more to them than that. In this movie it went more into some of the classic vampire ideas. Their goal wasn’t just to stay alive and hidden in the shadows, it was to make everyone like them. They would wait to attack when someone was comfortable and at ease. But most importantly, they couldn’t enter a building without being invited. This movie was awesome and I really enjoyed it. 

However this movie stuck with me after I finished watching it, and I’ve been chewing on it for about a month now. The parallels that can be drawn between vampires and sin are fascinating, and this movie did an amazing job with it. When was temptation to sin strike the hardest? Generally when you are alone, or not too many people are around. It generally looks fun! These vampires would never go after a group where there were more people than there were vampires. They also made their life look super fun with music and dancing. The temptation was real and it was there for those people. 

However, my favorite parallel between vampires and sin is this; It must be invited in. Vampires can’t cross the threshold of a building until they have been invited in. You, the victim, must invite in the element of your destruction. Once a vampire is in it is HARD to get rid of, and generally takes a lot of gross bloody violence. The same can be said about sin in your life. You have to make a choice to let it in, and when it is in it can take some gross bloody figurative violence to get it out. Jesus put this into perspective in the sermon on the mount

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭5‬:‭29‬-‭30‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Vampires takes sunshine, lots of fire, or a stake through the heart to kill. If you want to truly work to eliminate a sin from your life it takes work. It takes exposure to the sun, it can’t be allowed to stay in the dark. It takes a stake to the heart of that sin, cutting out the root of it, to truly work toward removing it. It is next to impossible to take on a vampire solo, they are stronger, faster, and have a lot more tricks up their sleeve. It takes a group, or community, to eliminate one. The same can be said about sin. We are designed to live in community, and that community makes it harder for sin to take root, but also makes it easier to remove that vampire of sin from your life (so long as you are honest with your community… but that is a whole other topic). 

Anyways, those are just my quick thoughts that I’ve been chewing on lately. Now go open the curtains and stake the vampires! 

A life without fear… that’s the dream

 So there I was wondering through Costco, looking for things for men’s breakfast and for an end of summer youth group bbq when I get a FaceTime from my wife. I answer with the spotty connection that you get inside Costco to see the tear stained face of my daughter Talia. She had to have a blood draw with her dr appointment that morning and had a severe anxiety attack with it. In her fear she just wanted to call and see when I would be home because she wanted/needed a hug. So I talked to her for a while more and then wrapped up what I was shopping for and headed home. 

A few hours before this I was sitting in a room with 150-200 other church staff members from multiple churches across the state of Alaska. There was a pastors panel at one point where all the lead pastors of these churches got to share some thoughts, and one of them really stuck out to me. “What could we do if we didn’t live in fear.” This question has now been rattling around inside my brain for over a week. It’s a big question, and it just keeps on getting bigger. 

In 2 Timothy 1:7 it says “…For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power, love, and self control” (ESV). This verse combined with the question of “what could we do if we didn’t live in fear” is a massive topic, but I’m just going to hit the two main pieces God has been working on me in. 

The first way I started thinking through this question was what could we do for the kingdom of God if we didn’t live in fear, but instead lived in “power, love, and self control”. In the context of the verse Paul is writing to Timothy about using his God given gifts, to “Fan them into flame”. To practice and use them and grow them like a muscle. How many times a day are you stopped from doing something out of fear? For me honestly it’s quite a bit. Sometimes it’s not saying a kind/encouraging word to someone because I am unsure of myself or I don’t want to get stuck in a conversation I don’t want to get into. Sometimes it’s not speaking up when I feel God prompting me to share a word with people I don’t know well. I can hear it now “But BJ, you are a pastor, it’s your job to do those things!”… I know… but it doesn’t make them any less intimidating, if anything it makes them more intimidating! 

Later in the week I started thinking in a slightly different way. The thought process was still about the fear of what others think of me, specifically when I am weak. Making a phone call to someone, or sending a text, when you are at a weak moment in life is one of the hardest things to do. Be it wanting to cave to temptation or addiction, or being low in depression and anxiety and overall mental health. Admitting weakness is one of the most difficult, bravest things you can do. How much more would you reach out for support and help if you didn’t have a fear that other people would look down on you, or that you didn’t fear you were letting other people down. I know my answer would be that I would be sending a lot more texts for support (not phone calls… I hate phone calls.) 

What would life look like if I lived without fear? My life would look pretty much the same, but would feel much different. I would speak up more about what I felt God was telling me. I would open myself up for more support from the people around me. It would be much more community driven by allowing people to know who I truly am. I would stop and pray for a lot more people. I would reach out for help more. It would look a lot more like Gods plan for unity in community.   

Hopefully these rambling thoughts of a man who is continually working on and dealing with his own anxiety, and thinking through how to best help his daughter through it as well, has sparked the question of “how can I live without fear” and you are able to take one step closer to living in “power, love, and self control”

Bring Me The Horizon causes me to… worship?

 My most listened to song in 2022 was a song called “Strangers” by Bring Me The Horizon. In 2023 my most listened to single (I say single because there was one album I listened to a lot that pouched it down the list) was LosT, also by Bring Me The Horizon. Now many of you reading this, if you know anything about Bring Me The Horizon, might thoroughly begin to question a lot about me. A lot of their music is very dark, there is language in their languages that I don’t let my kids hear at their age, and often times the lyrical content can be seen as anti-God. I have been asked the question “how can you listen to that filth” many many times in my life. My answer is simple, “Because it causes me to live in awe of my God”. 

Now you may be sitting there saying “woah woah woah BJ, you are a pastor and have been in ministry for a relatively long time, how can you listen to that and find God there? With lyrics like:  

Why am I this way?

Stupid medicine not doing anything

What the hell is fucking wrong with me?

I guess there's no remedy, own worst enemy, I'm so terribly lost

HOW CAN YOU FIND AWE OF GOD IN THOSE LYRICS?!?!?!” 

Once again the answer is simple, it’s because I’ve been there. I have been that person honestly screaming those lyrics multiple times in my life. The end of this song offers no hope, it simply asks the question “why am I so messed up and broken, am I stuck this way forever?”I have felt that so so many times… but I have the answer. The answer is, when I decide to do life my own way on my own this is what everything will eventually degrade to. Feeling alone and lost and wondering what is wrong with me and if anything can ever get better. BUT I’m not alone. God is there with me. Seeing the hopelessness in the lyrics asking questions and calling out with no answer causes me to pause and reflect that, in times when I do feel this way, I know I can cling to God. Because of him I am not lost but I AM FOUND! 

I fully realize that the music I listen to is not everyone’s cup of tea. It’s not designed to be. Art is subjective. However you can’t tell me that what I listen to doesn’t cause me to live in awe and praise of who God is and how He has changed my life. Our relationship with God is called to be a personal relationship. It’s not a cookie cutter one size fits all relationship. If I tried to only connect to God in the way that I see other pastors or other people in my life, my relationship would suffer. There are specific things we are called to that all people who claim to follow Christ are commanded to do: Read His word, spend time in prayer, and gathering with other believers. We are called to pursue God with everything we have, and to live in awe and reverence of Him, and weird dark metalcore screamy screamy music is one of those ways for me. 

So find YOUR way to connect with Him. God created the world and art to explore and learn more about Him. Find what causes you to live in awe and reverence of our creator. Obviously avoid things that are sins, but outside of that the world that our God created is filled to the brim with art and things that should cause us to stand in awe of Him. It’s not going to be the same for everyone, so find what makes you reflect on and worship the God of the universe and then go share that reverence with the world!

Today I sit

 So lately life has been a whirlwind. I haven’t written in a while, life has just been moving too fast. Between two kids and ministry life it just never seems to stop. I got out of my habit of trying to have a quiet morning once a week and just put my head down to get through it. For the first time in a couple of months I am taking the time to sit and slow down, to take a breath of air, look at the mountains, and spend some quiet time with God. What follows is some of my reflections from that time. 

If you need help seek help. There are always people around you who are willing, but they can’t help if they don’t know the need. I constantly fight the “I don’t need help” mentality. I like to do it on my own. Some of it is because I feel a sense of pride in doing solo work, some of it is people are messy and I just don’t always feel like trying to work with other people. This has been a huge conviction for me these last few months as I have found myself in situations where I could do it on my own, but I just didn’t have the time. This has forced me to reach out to other men and not do it on my own. They don’t always do it the way I was thinking, but that ok. It still got done and it was still great. We are not called to do this life on our own, in fact the Bible says when we try to go it alone we will inevitably fail. We are called to community, we are called to togetherness. Yes people are messy, but life is so much better with others. 

On the messy people note, people are indeed messy. But their mess is not a reflection of you. We are called to love and help others, to help point them down the straight and narrow path. It is our responsibility to walk beside them and help guide them. If they fall off the path, it is our responsibility to reach out a hand to pull them back up. If they fall off the path it is not your fault. If you reach out your hand and they don’t take it that is not on you, it is your responsibility to keep offering that help. Their failure is not your failure. But you can be there for them, help lead them through, be a calm voice in the midst of the storm, and help lead them back to the light. We are called to help, not shoulder the weight of their sins, that is what Jesus died for, don’t let it kill you. 

Lastly, take a breath, take a moment, spend peaceful time with God. So often my time with God becomes agenda driven. I have worked in ministry for quite a while now. Time with god is expected of me, it’s part of my job description! It becomes a checkmark on my list of things to do that day, I get to put a little x by “time spent with God” after I take a quick minute to pray, read my Bible, and maybe read some from a book or something like that. Time with God can quickly become just a quick little part of my day that doesn’t feel like it has any sort of significance, it doesn’t impact the rest of my day, and that’s not the relationship that we are called to. God is supposed to infuse every part of our day. If we don’t take the time to rest in Him, to take time with Him, so soak in the bath of Him long enough to make our toes and fingers look like raisins then what are we doing? I’m not trying to say that every day needs to be a long drawn out bath in God, some days its just a shower, but we need to make sure we take time to be able to regularly bathe ourselves in Him, and in His presence. 

As stated in the beginning, these are all just reflections of the last couple of months thrown onto a note in my iPad. They are largely unedited, and just what I’m thinking. Some day I might say “hmmmmm that’s not quite right” or “well, problem should have said that differently”. But oh well. This is where I am right now. I will continue to grow, continue to learn, and continue to grow closer to God. These blogs serve for me as a time capsule, of things I have learned and things I am learning, things that God is actively working on in my life, and just maybe they might help encourage you to continue to walk on the straight and narrow path with me. 

Horse meat or beef?

 If you know me, you know my love of weird news, conspiracy theories, and just kind of out there things. So I love it when I find weird bits of news that are kinda weird, kinda gross, and work as a great metaphor. One of my favorites is from back in 2013. Around that time there was a company that was going around doing genetic testing on different ready-made meals. Some of the results were as you would suspect and some were… kinda disturbing. 

One of the craziest findings they had was at Aldies. The Tesco brand burgers and Findus lasagna advertised themselves to be 100% beef… but that wasn’t true. Really they were somewhere between 0% and 70% beef with the rest being horse meat. Now I will be the first to say that horse meat is not bad. In fact it tastes a lot like caribou, but I digress. When you are going to eat something that is advertised to be 100% beef that is what you expect! Many of the people eating those products, if they knew the truth, probably would have spat them out! 

Now at this point you may be sitting there reading this going “what is he doing talking about horse meat lasagna?” Well let me tell you. As a Christian I am called to be 100% for God. Serving God and God alone. Now, how are we supposed to do this? There are many many many instructions in the Bible, but it really can be summed up when Jesus talks about the greatest commandment. Love God with everything you have got, and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-40 paraphrased) When we start going against these things. When we start serving ourselves, serving our own gains, instead of loving God and serving those around us, we begin to transform into horse meat lasagna. It may look good, BUT ITS FULL OF LIES!!!!

Every day we wake up, and every moment throughout the day we have choices. Choices to love and serve ourselves, or chances to love God and serve others. What are you choosing today? Are you choosing to be 100% beef, or are you horse meat?

Hang the Code

The Code. It is the rules that all pirates in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies live by. They continually use it to get out of situations or leave people behind because they have to “stick to the code”… Until they don’t. At one point they say “hang the code” and go back to rescue one of their fellow pirates.

I have found myself quoting this a lot lately, “hang the code”. It seems to be a theme in my life lately. If we realize it or not we all live our lives with a lot of unwritten rules. “The code” of society and social groups we find ourselves in. The way we do things, the things we say, the things we don’t say, things that “have always been”. They are “the code”. There is comfort in the code. There is predictability in the code. The code is safe. 

But what if God is calling us to break the code… What if God is calling us to be more than just a face in the crowd, going along with the group. What if God is calling us to break the code. It’s scary. There are a lot of unknowns. It’s unpredictable. 

As Christian’s we are called to hang the code that society has, and then follow after God. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God with everything you have got, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Both of these things go against the societal code of safety and security. It’s not serving yourself, it’s serving God. It’s not looking out for number 1, it’s looking out for others. 

For me these last few weeks it has been changing up rhythms of an established ministry. Following after the vision that God has given us for what it could be. It’s been being a part of a team that switched up how we did baptisms in service. It has created a lot of work, a lot of uncertainty, but also a peace. By hanging the code, the unwritten rules of society and tradition, and following God we truly have to put all of our trust and hope in Him. 

What can you do this week to hang the code and follow after what God has called you to do? Maybe it’s something small and simple like making a meal for a neighbor or a friend. Maybe it’s something bigger, like talking about your faith with a coworker. Maybe it is stepping out and volunteering somewhere. Maybe it is entirely leaving your old life behind and starting new. I don’t know what it is, that is between you and God, but I want to encourage you to follow after Him and what He has called you to do. 

Hang the Code, follow God. 

A random coffee shop on a Tuesday morning

 So I found myself in need of going to a government office in Anchorage this morning. Because of potentially nasty road conditions I set off on my journey well before I needed to be there, and low and behold, I found myself at this office 20 minutes before it opened. I stood there for a moment looking at the locked doors, contemplating the 5 minute walk back to my car to wait, but it was cold and windy and I really didn’t want to. Across the street was a local coffee shop called “Dark Horse Coffee”. Now I named this coffee shop so now you know one of two options is coming… this was either the worst experience or the best experience.

I walk in, it’s a random little building in downtown anchorage. It definitely used to be a very very tiny house, and could certainly use some renovations. When I got stepped in I was greeted warmly by the two ladies behind the counter, and there was one other employee that was in the dining area calmly talking to (we will call him Andrew in this story) Andrew, a homeless man that had set up in the corner to warm up and charge his phone. Andrew is very socially awkward and certainly seemed to be autistic as well, but the lady slowly walked him through where the best place would be to charge his phone so that he could still keep an eye on it and his stuff. 

I ordered my coffee and went and sat down at a table, and watched. I’m a people watcher by nature, its fun to see how people interact with the world around them. I watched as all the baristas came and checked on Andrew and made sure he had everything he needed, but also lovingly gave him a time where he needed to be out by.

While sitting, drinking coffee, and beginning to type out this post another man came into Dark Horse Coffee who must be a regular. As soon as Andrew saw him he said “Hi (we are gonna call him Steve because I can’t remember his name) Steve! I need to talk to you!”

“Ok Andrew, I have a couple of minutes I can talk, but then I have some things I need to do.”. With that statement Steve went and sat down at a table and talked with Andrew for a good 5 minutes… by talk I mean Andrew talked to Steve, and Steve sat there nodding and asking a clarifying question or two. Most of the conversation was nonsense, about how one of Andrew’s friends has a car, and other things like that. At the end of the conversation Andrew thanked Steve for talking and gave him a fist bump. 

As I was sitting there watching all of these interactions going on I got to thinking, as I do sometimes. This coffee shop was a beautiful picture of what the church could, and should be. In fact it was doing what the church is charged with doing! Caring for people, be they members or not! 

Anyways, I just kind of wanted to share that story from this morning. It was an awesome, faith in humanity restoring moment. Thanks Dark Horse Coffee for the amazing Mocha and for just being good people, keep it up!