“Not only did Jesus do the will of the Father, not only was that His whole goal in life, but Psalm 40:8 tells us that He delighted to do the will of the Father. To become like Jesus, then, is to come to the place where we delight to do the will of God, however sacrificial or unpleasant that will may seem to us at the time, simply because it is His will.” — Jerry Bridges

God doesn’t want us merely to serve him; how we serve him matters.

God commands us to serve him with gladness. He loves cheerful givers and wholehearted servants.

God isn’t pleased when we serve him with clenched teeth or grumbling in our hearts.  It doesn’t bless him when our attitude is okay God, I’ll do what you want, but I won’t be happy about it.  If I were God I’d probably say at times, “If it’s so tedious and miserable to serve me then don’t bother.”

We’re all tempted to serve the Lord joylessly. It might be going to our small group at the end of a long day. Or playing with our kids  when we’d rather relax. Or caring for that weak believer at an inconvenient time.

How we need the power of the Holy Spirit to serve the Lord with gladness.

By the power the Holy Spirit, we can find delight in blessing our enemies. We can enthusiastically care for that constantly needy person. By the power the Holy Spirit we can give generously even when we’re tight, and pour out our lives for others when we’re tired.

So pray! Ask the Lord to help you delight to do his will.

Whatever it is, no matter how difficult it is, Remember what God requires he empowers us to do. When we ask God to help us delight to do his will, and then step out in faith and obey, he changes our hearts. Remember, God is out to make you like Jesus, who delighted to do his will. And God will not fail.

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photo by thebittenword

I recently started taking a daily dose of fermented cod liver oil. It’s as bad as it sounds. It’s flavored with cinnamon to make it “bearable”, but the cinnamon actually makes it worse. It takes a significant amount of self-control to not gag and/or possibly punch a wall when I shoot the oil down my throat. Why am I inflicting this upon myself? Because cod liver oil has numerous health benefits, including reducing anxiety, which I regularly battle. I’ve also been drinking raw milk lately. I’ve had long term sinus problems and raw milk supposedly can reduce sinus problems.

The more I’ve looked into different health remedies the more I’ve discovered that there are an infinite number of options. I could eat a raw diet, organic diet, paleo diet, founders diet, South Beach diet, and Atkins diet. I could go gluten free, wheat free, dairy free, meat free (NEVER!), or sugar free. All of these diets probably offer legitimate health benefits. But I’ve also realized that there are two significant temptations when thinking about improving my health.

Worry and Fear

There is a lot of frightening, alarmist literature out there about the dangers of processed food, sugar, beef, wheat, and just about every thing else. Some of the information may be true, some of it may be bunk, a lot of it is conflicting. That’s not my main concern here. My concern is that all the alarmist literature may cause us to forget about our sovereign God.

God has numbered the days of my life. He has my children in the palm of his hand. He cares very much about me and my family. Yes, it’s good to be concerned about the food that goes into the mouths of me and my children. But if this concern morphs into fear and worry then it has become an idol. I have begun trusting in my diet rather than in my God. My diet has become my refuge and strength, not my sovereign God.

It’s good to be concerned about health but health cannot be my God.

The Search For Everlasting Life

My other concern is that in our search for optimal health we’ll miss the big picture. We live in a fallen world. Our bodies are slowly crumbling and collapsing. Our ultimate hope is not in this world. Our ultimate goal is not perfect health in this world. We’ll never have perfect health in this life. Perfect health will come on the glorious day when we receive our resurrection bodies! On that day it won’t matter if we’re vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, wheat free, or anything else free. We’ll have new resurrection bodies that will never die! I can’t wait for that day!

Finding out which foods are “good” and which foods are “bad” can take a tremendous amount of time and energy. We need to be careful that the search for optimal health doesn’t consume so much of our time that we neglect the weightier matters of life, like our walk with the Lord, time with our family, fellowship with other believers, and serving in the church.

When we are on our death beds we won’t regret spending time with our family. We may regret that the amount of time our health research took us away from our family.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe health is important. I want to be a generally healthy guy. But I always want to make sure that I keep my priorities straight. And I want to keep that final day in mind, when all this health research won’t matter one bit.

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Successful meetings don’t just happen.  You have to plan, think strategically, and cultivate the concentration of red-tailed hawks, which everyone knows concentrate better than say, pelicans or hummingbirds.

First of all, you must eliminate distractions:  Here’s an example of how we do it in our pastors’ meetings:

Bob: Hey Stephen, where’d you get them shoes?

Stephen: You like ‘em?  I think they have kind of a Civil War look.

Bob: More of a North Pole look.  And your toes look so long.

Stephen: Go online and look up what Civil War guys wore.  Welcome to the world of fashion.  Of course you wouldn’t wear these when you hang out at the CoGo in Bolivar.

Bob: Little too much point for a man don’t you think?  You’re going to have foot issues.

Stephen: I’ll be having foot issues when I kick you in the face.

Notice that  we immediately dealt with the distraction of one of our pastors’ shoes.  Now we are free to concentrate on the meeting. We begin with a quick team-building exercise:

Me: Bob, can you read us what we were supposed to do since last meeting?

Bob: Sure.  Let’s see, (eyes scanning his notes) Stephen,….you…were….supposed….

Stephen: Why are you talking like a robot?  (Mechanical voice) I-AM-A-ROBOT.  I-HAVE-NO-SOUL.

Bob: I’m not talking like a robot!

Joe: You did kind of have a robotic tone to your voice.  And remember, you don’t think you have a Western PA accent either.

Bob: I ain’t got no Western PA accent n’at!  What’s wrong with yuns?

Me: Bob, say this: The steel mill has many colorful pools.

Bob:  The still meel has many kellerful poles.

All of us: (Howling with laughter).

Bob: What?  I said exactly what you said!

After team building, we review previous action items to see if everyone did what they were supposed to since the last meeting:

Me: Stephen, what are you doing?  Are you sending tweets?

Stephen: Hey the meeting hasn’t started yet.

Me: Well why don’t you just Tweet me when you’re good and ready.

Me: Ok boys, let’s get down to business.  Stephen, you were supposed to call Kittrell about speaking this summer.

Stephen: Kittrell?  What?  Has he no first name?  HEY!  GET KITTRELL ON THE PHONE!  SOMEBODY CALL KITTRELL!  KIIIIIIIITRELLLLLLLLLL!

Me: Only time in history I don’t say his first name….

Stephen: HEY KITTRELL, CAN YUNS SPEAK AT OUR CHERCH IF WE GIVE YUNS SOME STILLER TICKETS AND CHIP CHOP HAM N’AT?

Bob: HEY, I don’t talk like that!  By the way, I read my kids the bodily discharges section of Leviticus.  They loved it.

Joe: You WHAT?

Bob: Yeah, they kept saying, “Daddy read us the bodily discharges part again!”

Me: Good grief, what’s gonna happen to this church when I’m gone?

(Loud airhorn noise) HONNNNNNK

Me: What is that?

Joe: That’s my airhorn app.  HONNNNNNK!

Next, we take a few minutes to review the previous Sunday meeting:

Joe: Mark, your opening illustration on Sunday about the guy who laughed himself to death was pretty lame.

Me: Hey it was hilarious.

Joe: Did you happen to notice that you were the only one laughing?

Me: It was a brilliant way to introduce a message on death.  You know, get them laughing then stab ‘em in the gut with conviction.

Bob: Except no one was laughing.

Joe:  HONNNNNNK!

Stephen: SOMEBODY CALL KITTRELL!

After periods of intense concentration it’s good to take short breaks to keep everyone fresh and alert.

Me: Alright.  We’ve covered Stephen’s shoes, my brilliant preaching and Kittrell.  We’ve helped Bob with his Western PA accent.  We’re getting a lot done.  Ok break time.  I need to use the bathroom and get some more coffee.

Joe: That makes a lot of sense.  Use the bathroom then get more coffee.  We’ll be taking breaks every two minutes.

Me: I’ll break you one, right in the head.

Bob: Like I said, I don’t have a Western Pa accent.  Hey, can yuns make me some coffee n’at?

That’s how it’s done folks.  Put these principles into practice in your church or company then buckle up and get ready to shoot into productivity hyperspace.

photo: Stephen preps for a pastors’ meeting by performing an air guitar solo.

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I once had a garden. Well, you could loosely call it that.

I’d had this romantic notion about how good it would be to get out in the fresh air and get my hands dirty, get back to the earth, and all that kind of stuff.  I could picture how good it would feel to pluck bulging tomatoes and harvest basketball-sized green peppers and enter a 200 pound pumpkin in the state fair.

I was partially inspired by my next-door neighbor, Steve. Steve loved his garden. He was in it every evening puttsing around, weeding, watering, pruning, plucking. Steve simply loved being in the garden and working hard at it.

Though I had a romantic notion of a garden in my mind, there was just one problem. I didn’t want to work.

After I plowed the initial space, put down plastic and planted the original plants, I had no desire to be out there. I got no joy from plucking the suckers to make the plants stronger.  I didn’t want to weed.  It was even tiresome for me to water the garden in the evenings. It wasn’t like the garden was huge, I just wasn’t into it. I didn’t want to work at it.

Steve’s garden and my garden were separated by about 20 feet.  Yet at the end of the summer there was a huge difference in our gardens.  Steve’s was neat and laden with rich ripe vegetables. My garden was weed-infested and anemic looking.

I did have a pumpkin vine that was about 240 feet long and took up about half of my backyard, at the end of which was one lone pumpkin the size of a softball.

What was the difference between our gardens? They both got the same amount of sunshine and rain.  But Steve worked away at it every day. Little by little, one day at a time. Steve applied himself faithfully to his garden, whereas I didn’t.  After my initial efforts I expected the garden to produce all by itself with no effort on my part.

So what was the difference?  Diligence.

It’s the same with our faith. If we want to have strong faith healthy face, we must be diligent.

“Would you like to possess more faith? Do you find believing so pleasant, that you would like to believe more? Then take heed that you are diligent in the use of every means of grace—diligent in your private communion with God—diligent in your daily watchfulness over time, temper, and tongue—diligent in your private Bible reading—diligent in your own private prayers. It is vain to expect spiritual prosperity, when we are careless about these things. Let those who will, call it excessively precise and legal to be particular about these things. I only reply, that there never was an eminent saint who neglected them.” – J.C. Ryle via Erik Kowalter

“Do not neglect the means which the Spirit has appointed for help. Pray, meditate, hear, read, do your best, and expect his blessing. Though your ploughing and sowing will not give a harvest without the sun, and rain, and the blessing of God, yet the sun and rain will not bring a crop unless you plough and plant.” – Richard Baxter

Over the years, I’ve observed that the believers who do the best in trials, who seem to have mighty faith, are those who have been diligent to cultivate faith.  They’ve sown, watered and weeded.  Plodded and plowed.  Day by day.  Little by little, consistently reading Bibles and books, praying,  meeting together with the saints.

Excuse me, I have to go to the store now to buy some vegetables.

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photo by eneas

In a recent blog post on the debate about homosexuality and Christianity, blogger Rachel Held Evans said:

Time and time again, I talk to Christians whose experiences, like mine, go something like this: “I used to think that homosexuality was a sinful, promiscuous lifestyle that people chose in rebellion to God, and that Christians need to rally against the ‘gay agenda’ through legislative action. Then, my best friend (or brother or sister or son or daughter or high school buddy or neighbor or mentor) came out, and everything changed. Their story didn’t fit the stereotype. It didn’t fit into my previous categories. Their story made me see that things aren’t that simple, and that the ‘war’ between Christianity and homosexuality represents a false dichotomy that is incredibly painful and destructive to Christians with same-sex attractions. After that, I could no longer support the sort of rhetoric and actions that only serve to make this world a more hostile and hopeless place to the ones I loved. I kept thinking about all the depression, all the suicides, all the secrets. I just can’t support a culture that, perhaps inadvertently, fosters that.”

Everything changes when you are confronted with someone else’s story.

She’s right. When discussing the relationship between homosexuality and Christianity, we do need to hear people’s stories. We need to know what it’s like to experience same-sex attraction. We need to understand the feelings of pain and isolation that so many of them feel, and we need to express our love, affection, and compassion toward them. If we’re going to minister to those in the LGBT community, we need to understand them and love them and bless them.

However, we can’t let people’s stories determine our convictions. Only the Bible has the authority to do that. As a pastor I am confronted by this brutal dilemma all the time. A couple comes into the church out of a messy background. They love each other deeply. Their past marriages have been a disaster. They finally feel like they have found their soul mate, and they want to be married. But due to past circumstances, one of them may not be free to remarried.

With all my heart I want to tell them that it’s okay to be married. I want to tell them that God wants them to be happy above anything else. I want to be an encouragement and a joy to them. Their story is a wonderful story of true love, and I want them to be married. I don’t want them to be lonely for the rest of their lives. But I can’t marry them. The Bible supercedes our stories. I don’t understand all the reasons why God established marriage the way he did, but he’s God and he is the standard of truth.

The same is true when it comes to homosexuality. I have friends who are gay, and I wish I could tell them that it is totally fine in God’s site to be gay. You have no idea how much I wish I could say that. I don’t want them to be lonely. I want them to find meaningful sexual expression. I want them to have deep, meaningful relationships. But I’m confronted by the Bible, and the Bible makes it clear that practicing homosexuality is a sin.

My concern for my generation is that we tend to place more value on experience than anything else. Our experiences shape our theology and our ideology rather than God’s word shaping our theology and ideology.

It is true that everything changes when you are confronted with someone else’s story. But the Bible confronts us with an even bigger story. It tells the story of God taking a world that is a complete disaster and recreating that world. All of our stories are footnotes in the larger story. We fit into God’s story, not the other way around. We need to make sure that we let him tell his story. That really does change everything.

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photo by Kevin Cole

What would it be like if Jesus first incarnation was today instead of 2,000 years ago? I tried to imagine what it would be like interviewing Jesus’ mother.

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The strange events of the last three years began with a woman named Mary Ellen Reese.  It took me eighteen phone calls and twenty-three emails to get her to agree to an interview.  She lives in the tiny town of Idaho, Pennsylvania.

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ME: Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Would you mind telling me the story of how the baby was born?

MARY ELLEN REESE: You know I don’t normally do interviews.

ME: Why not?

MER: Because usually the requests usually are from blood-sucking tabloid journalists trying to get the “real story”. They want to know who I really slept with, or whether I was raped. They don’t believe the story I’ve told. They think I’m keeping a secret.

ME: So why did you agree to let me interview you?

MER: Because you seem different. Like you’re after something different. Like maybe you actually want to hear the real story. Plus you wouldn’t leave me alone.

ME: I do want the real story. I’m after the truth, not some trashy tabloid cover.

MER: I believe you. But if I see my picture on the front of a magazine, I’m going to hunt you down.

ME: I understand.

MER: The story starts, let’s see, thirty-four years ago when I was eighteen years old. I’ll let you do the math and figure out how old I am. I was just out of high school and engaged to my sweetheart, Joe Adams. I was working as a receptionist at a law office. Joe had just finished up trade school and was working on a construction crew.

Now you’ve got to understand something about me and my Joey. We were good kids. We grew up going to church and knew that sleeping together before we got married was wrong. Call us old fashioned, but that’s what we believed. That doesn’t mean that we didn’t make out a few times, but we certainly didn’t sleep together.

It was six months before the wedding that all the craziness started. One night as I was sitting in my living room, watching one of those stupid reality television shows, I suddenly felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I’m not one of those silly superstitious people who think that there are ghosts around every corner, but I swear, I felt my skin start to creep. There was something in the room with me, and I knew it.

I turned to my right and I saw it, just standing there, looking at me.

ME: What was it? What did you see?

MER: Well, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I saw an angel.

ME: What did he look like?

MER: Like a thousand fires blazing all at once. Like a bright hot firework that leaves spots in your eyes after it explodes. He shimmered and blazed and was slightly transparent all at once. I was absolutely terrified.

ME: What did you do?

MER: What would you do, get up and dance? I sat there, stock still, not moving a muscle. I tried not to look at it. I figured that if I sat still long enough he would go away.

ME: Did he?

MER: No. He spoke to me. I still get goosebumps all these years later as I think about it. His voice sounded warm and blazing hot all at the same time. Like a waterfall and jet engine and a lullaby. It’s hard to describe to someone who has never heard it.

ME: What did the angel say?

MER: I thought he was going to say something terrifying, but he didn’t. Instead, he smiled (actually smiled!) and said, “Hello, favored one.” When I heard that I was perplexed, and little bit disturbed. Favored one? What the heck was this angel talking about? I’m a simple girl from the tiny town of Idaho, Pennsylvania. I never was homecoming queen, never a sports star. What was all this “favored one” business?

Then the angel said, “Relax, it’s okay. Don’t be afraid. God is pleased with you. You’re going to have a son. And you’re going to name him Joshua, and he will be incredibly great.” Now when the angel said that, I about had a heart attack. A son? Didn’t this angel understand basic human biology? I had never had sex with anyone. I hadn’t slept with Joseph yet, and wasn’t planning on sleeping with him until we got married. Well, now that I think about it, he was an angel, so maybe he didn’t learn biology in heaven, or wherever it was that he was from.

ME: So what did you say to the angel?

MER: I told him what I told you. That I was a virgin. That me and Joseph hadn’t been together yet. That I didn’t know how it was possible for me to have a baby apart from having sex with a man.

ME: What did the angel say to you?

MER: He said that the power of God would come over me, and that I would conceive a baby by the power of God.

ME: Wait, hold on a second. Are you saying that…well, this is a weird question, but that somehow you had…sex with God…or something like that?

MER: No, no, no. Nothing weird or crazy like that. One morning a couple of weeks after the angel incident, I woke up and I felt terrible. Like everything in my stomach was trying to get out all at once. I ran into the bathroom and puked my guts out. That’s when I knew that I was pregnant. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. The night before I wasn’t pregnant, the next day I was. I took one of those home pregnancy tests to make sure, but I already knew.

ME: What did you say to the angel when he told you that you were going to have a son?

MER: What could I say? I said that I would do whatever God wanted. I said that if God wanted me to have a son, that I would have a son.

ME: And you never had sex with anyone?

MER: No. Never. I swear. I wasn’t raped, I wasn’t sleeping with somebody else in secret. I was a true virgin.

ME: When did you tell Joe?

MER: I told him three days after I found out that I was pregnant. I was so nervous. My hands were shaking as I told him, and I felt like I was going to throw up all over his linoleum kitchen floor.

I could tell as soon as I told him that he didn’t believe my story. He had a nice smile spread across face, but I could tell that he was torn up on the inside. And I don’t blame him. If it hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t have believed it either. But it did happen to me, and I couldn’t change that fact.

ME: What did Joe do?

MER: In the kindest, sweetest voice, he told me that we should probably call the engagement off. Then he asked me who I had slept with. I tried to convince him that I hadn’t slept with anybody. I cried and pleaded with him, but he still didn’t believe me. He didn’t raise his voice, he didn’t curse at me. He just kept saying that we needed to call off the engagement. I left his apartment feeling depressed and like a piece of trash. I went back to my house and cried until I was all cried out. Then I went to sleep.

The next morning I was jerked awake by my cell phone buzzing away on my end table. I picked it up, still half asleep, and it was Joe. He said, “Good morning Mary.”

As you can imagine, I was awake pretty quick. Joe said, “Something happened to me last night. I had a dream.”

“What kind of dream?” I asked.

“Uhh, like no dream I’ve ever had before. Normally my dreams are crazy and scattered, but not last night. It was the most vivid, real dream I’ve ever had. There was an angel in my dream. A real, live angel. Not like those ridiculous things you see on TV. A real angel, and he was talking to me.”

“What did he say?”

“He told me that we needed to get married. That you were telling the truth. That this whole baby thing was real. As he was talking to me, I felt like my chest was on fire and like my lungs were about to pop. I woke up covered in sweat and breathing real heavy, like I had just gotten done running a long race.”

“So what does this mean?” I asked him, my heart beating fast.

“It means that we’re still getting married.”

I let out a little squeal of joy, then managed to compose myself. “Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you Joe. I love you. Thank you for believing me.”

“I love you to Mary. I don’t understand all this, but I know that I love you, and that God wants us to be together.”

ME: And when was the baby born?

MER: Don’t tell me that you don’t know biology either! Baby Joshua was born nine months later, just like that angel said.

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photo by Zitona

My method of studying in college was what you might call “brute force learning”. When I didn’t understand a subject I would beat it into my brain. I would study my notes and the text book until my brain finally tapped out and grasped the subject. I would force my brain to get it. I would put my brain into a submission hold. And that method worked pretty well for me. I made it through college with good grades, without embarrassing my mom, and without having a nervous breakdown.

Unfortunately, the brute force learning method does not work when it comes to Christ. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians was that they:

…may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge…

Paul understood that the love of Christ is so vast, so massive, so heavy, so crushingly glorious, that it could not be comprehended with the natural mind. The love of Christ is so expansive that it cannot be grasped, so glorious that it cannot be comprehended. All the synapses and neural pathways that line our brains are not sufficient to understand how much Christ really loves us. If you try to put the love of Christ in a box of natural knowledge it will blow all the doors out.

Charles Spurgeon says:

If there is one subject more than another upon which I wish ever to speak, it is the love of Christ. But if there is one which quite baffles me and makes me go back from this platform utterly ashamed of my poor feeble words, it is this subject. This love of Christ is the most amazing thing under heaven, if not in heaven itself.

Paul prayed that God would give the Ephesians a supernatural knowledge of the love of Christ. A knowledge that was more than head knowledge. He wanted them to know that Christ loved them, not just in a head knowledge, “can you pass the test?”, kind of way, but in a breath taking, heart igniting sort of way.

That’s what I want. I want to comprehend the astonishing, wonderful love of Christ. I want to know the love that surpasses knowledge. I want that knowledge to transform the way that I raise my children and love my wife and lead my church and hang out with my friends. Isn’t that what you want?

Today, pray that God would give you the strength to comprehend the incomprehensible love of Christ. As you wash dishes pray for comprehension. As you walk to class pray for knowledge. As you bang out yet another spreadsheet pray that your brain would be detonated by the love of Christ.

Because when we get it, everything changes.

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I’m digging this new song by Citizen. (click on the player below)

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Have you ever done something you regret?  Ever made a poor decision that had long-lasting consequences?

Ever done something without praying or seeking counsel only to have it backfire on you?  And now years later you continue to pay the price.  Or worse yet, maybe others now suffer because of your sins or failures.  Your children or spouse.  It’s so easy to be filled with regret when you think about it.

Maybe you weren’t saved at the time.  Or were a young believer.  Maybe you gave in to a momentary temptation.  Or made a decision believing it was God’s will, and found out later it was a terrible decision. And now you’re stuck with the consequences.

What can we do?

First, we must trust the sovereignty of God.  God is sovereign over all things, even sin.  And for a believer, God causes ALL things to work together for good – ALL things – including our sins, bad decisions, mistakes and failures.  Even if we must suffer painful consequences, God is working all things for our good.

After Joseph’s father died, his brothers feared he’d take revenge for selling him into Egyptian slavery.  Rather than ask Joseph’s forgiveness, they lie and say before dad died he told us to ask you to forgive us.  Then they come to Joseph, fall down and offer themselves as servants.

But Joseph, who understands God’s sovereignty, replies:

“Do not fear, for am I in the place of God?  As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.  (Genesis 50:19-20)

Joseph forgave their sin against him because he knew that God’s sovereign intention for their sin was to get him to Egypt and position him to provide for multitudes – including his brothers’ families – in a famine.  Joseph could see how God caused all things to work for his good and the good of many.

How about his brothers?  Yes, they should have been sad about their sin and asked Joseph’s forgiveness.  But they also should have marveled that God would work their sins not only for Joseph’s good, but for THEIR good and their children’s good as well.

The most astounding example of God using evil for good is the Cross.

What men meant for evil, God intended to bring about the salvation of multitudes.  Our sins nailed Jesus to the cross, where he suffered immeasurably. But God worked the evil of the cross for our good.  For there Jesus paid for sins and purchased forgiveness and all the benefits of salvation.

Had Adam never sinned, humans would be living in paradise.  But we wouldn’t be adopted sons of God, joined to Christ, have God himself dwelling in us, or be conformed to Christ.  Sinners who have received Jesus have far more than Adam had before he sinned.  God is so infinitely great, he took the worst thing that ever happened to the world and worked it for the good of multitudes – all to his glory and praise.

So though we may have to deal with long-lasting consequences of sin or bad decisions, we must put them in our sovereign God’s hands and trust he’ll work even our failures for our good and his glory.  We must focus on GOD, not our sins.  We must fix our eyes on his infinite greatness.  He is infinitely greater than sin.  And he will be victorious in the end.

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MINNEAPOLIS – Desiring God Ministries announced today that it was partnering with Activision Studios to release a “Don’t Waste Your Life” video game. Speaking on behalf of the ministry, Tony Reinke said, “We believe that there are basically two unreached people groups left in the world. There are the individuals living in the 10/40 window and there are the young men living in their mom’s basement. We really believe that this game will be a tool to reach these desperate young men.”

Jonathan Parnell, who has been working closely with Activision, revealed some of the details of the game. “This game is going to be a little bit different. Instead of losing points for dying during a mission, you will actually gain points. In this game dying is gain when doing the mission. The more you die, the more points you get. It’s a little counterintuitive but we really think it’s going to drive home the point. We’re also going to have different “hedonism” power ups that you can add to your character. If you find a C.S. Lewis scroll, instant power up. If you find a glass of orange juice AND drink it correctly, instant power up.”

A member of the Activision development team who wished to remain anonymous revealed that, “…there are going to be some pretty sick evil bosses at the end of each level. I mean, we’re talking the Sea Shell King, the Doom Tube, and the final boss, Retirement Randy.”

At the time of this article it was unclear whether the game would incorporate physical movement. Parnell said, “We’re working at adding different gestures to the Nintendo Wii version of the game. We’re modeling the gestures after the image below.”

Possible gestures for the "Don't Waste Your Life Video Game"

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NOTE: Desiring God is one of my favorite ministries out there. If any DG employees read this (I’m talking to you Reinke and Etter), please feel my affection.

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