He smiled and spoke direction and courage into me over scrambled eggs and coffee. It only took a minute.

But that minute yielded five more years of touring, new songs to sing and thousands of kids released from poverty. Time well spent.

Wess Stafford is the president of Compassion International. He’s written about the potential of a minute in his latest book Just a Minute, a collection of stories illustrating the power big people have to change the lives of little ones. (He even included a story of mine.)

Every minute with a child is a God given opportunity and this book shows how people just like us have made the most of them. As Wess writes, “I have become convinced that if God stands a child before you, for even just a minute, it is a divine appointment.”

Purchase Just A Minute today from Amazon.com, then share your own story at JustAMinute.com.

“Hopefully I entertain others.”

“You’ll be singing for us then? Oh good. What sort of music do you play?” he asked.

“Christian music,” I said. And I immediately feared the theologian would object to the use of that word as an adjective. And I wondered if he was thumbing through the history books in his head to the days of church patronage, lamenting the commercialization of church music since then.

Should I have said soft rock? Folk? Two minutes together and already N.T. Wright thinks I’m an idiot.

“I actually have a rather nice guitar myself,” he offered.

“What kind do you play?”

“I possess a Martin,” he grinned. “My children gave it to me upon my retirement.”

I said something inane about Martins being great guitars. Lots of bluegrass guys play Martins, I think I said.

“I’m a child of the sixties,” he said, “so I played a lot of folk music – Joan Baez, The Beatles, Bob Dylan…When I was young there were many things I never thought I would not do…so good for you. I haven’t found the time as I should have for music.”

“Well,” I said, “if you wrote shorter books that might free up some time to the play again?”

He laughed. Our driver wove through the airport parking lot to the main thoroughfare, into downtown D.C. and toward our hotel, while Bishop Wright and I talked about the weather in Scotland, missing our wives when we travel, the Occupy movement and the possibility of me letting him play my Gibson.

“I’ve written some short books,” he said.

I sing Christian music. And what a wonderful unpredictable life that is. Thank you.

Mold.

Like the sheetrock was a sandwich left in a lunch box over the Summer.

If you’re ever in this situation yourself, I highly recommend the folks at ServPro. These guys came to my house on a Saturday. They were early. They explained to my wife that no, she would not die, and then they went to work.

They removed a large section of our utility closet, which is in our kitchen, and sealed off the area with great sheets of clear plastic and told us not to worry.

There are guys in plastic suits coming out to the house every day to “take moisture readings” with things that look like geiger counters. They carry clipboards and scribble numbers on pieces of paper. There may in fact be an alien lying in a large glass coffin beside my pantry.

Wood floors wil be torn up. A roofer is coming out later today to figure out for sure where the water came from. If it can’t be determined then insurance won’t cover it and I’ll be launching a second blog tour for Third World Symphony. Or just moving to the third world. I haven’t worked out those details just yet. But I’ll keep you posted as things progress.

And I’m heading out of town later today, to a college in Mississipi, a gathering of college presidents in Washington DC, and a couple of Newsboys dates in Texas. I will feel guilty all week about leaving my family, my wife, to deal with all this mess alone. And the self-condemnation will most likely compel me to eat chocolate until I get to Texas, at which point I will switch to fajitas and liberal quantities of queso.

I will return home to find the mold and the multiple problems it spawned and the contractors it required completely gone. And I will realize my wife doesn’t actually need me around. And since access to the pantry will be restored at that point, I will open it, find the kid’s Halloween candy and eat all the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

And this is why I don’t iron.

The little girl is me. I come to Christ and he tells me I can be more – I can be like him. He sees something of himself in me like the maestro stroking the little girl’s slender fingers with his own also-thin thumb. The “seed” of Christ is in me, Paul says, waiting to be developed.

Now there are many practices God uses to develop Christ in me, or, as Paul put it, “conform” me to the “image of the Son.” I can become more and more like the maestro. I will.

(Every metaphor breaks down and this one does here, because while I do participate in my own becoming more like Christ, I have no real power in it. That is supplied by God alone. I could not save myself from the penalty of sin and I sure can’t save myself from the power of sin.)

As I listen to Christ I hear him say I should “pray.” So I do. I practice practice practice prayer.

And neglect rest, service, submission.

John Wesley prayed for four hours every morning, and more throughout his day, and his wife left him after fifteen years of marriage. Some guess that sexual dysfunction was to blame, or Wesley’s workaholic tendencies, or his famously fierce temper. Wesley and his wife needed more than prayer.

I read that Jesus cared for the poor. I practice practice practice simplicity and generosity.

And I sometimes find that I lose patience with my kids, I become defensive with my wife, I hurt a stranger with hastily written words.

This is practicing one thing while neglecting others. Prayer, but not rest. Compassion, but not peace.

The development of the maestro in us is stunted. We get stuck.

He stooped and uncapped his pen. “Do you play the piano?” he asked, scribbling his name in great loops and quick slashes on a corner of the thin book’s cover.

“I’m not very good,” she confessed.

“Well, there’s no reason you can’t be,” he said, taking her hand in his, running his thin thumb down her long slender fingers. “You’re made to play the piano.”

“My brother says I’m just noisy,” she said, eyeing her shoes and the immaculate marble floors of the concert hall’s grand lobby.

“Does your brother know more about music than I?”

Pink bloomed in the little girl’s cheeks and she squeaked out the faintest hopeful giggle, then covered her mouth with both hands.

“I know the secret to becoming a great pianist,” he said, bowing to one knee and leaning in. “Practice,” he whispered.

The girl pulled away, eyes wild with surprise.

“That’s all,” the man assured. “Practice this music. Every day, practice this. Instead of television, practice. In place of dolls, practice.”

The little girl’s jaw went slack as the pianist rose to his feet again and his voice began a great crescendo.

“Practice. Practice. Practice every page of this book! Every spare moment, practice!!!”

The girl was nodding along now, a smirk of a smile creeping up from her hopeful heart.

“And you…you, my dear, will be a great pianist one day. I promise.”

The little girl danced away, her piano book tucked under one arm, and did exactly as she had been told.

As many years passed the little girl grew less and less little. Her fingers longer. Her desire greater. Every day for countless hours, she practiced. Faithfully. Diligently. Exactly as she had been told.

Decades spent at the piano, and the stage still wasn’t hers. Her name was not known. No one was impressed by the woman who could perfectly play every note of a little girl’s piano book.

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” -A.W.Tozer

I watched the comments at NFL.com stream in as the Patriots slaughtered the Broncos.

“Pray your way out of this one Timmy.”

“I guess Jesus had better things to do today.”

(And those are the repeatable ones.)

Tim Tebow has inadvertantly revealed more about the state of faith in America than any pollster or sociologist could. If we’re listening well we can learn a great deal about the gospel – not the one we believe, but the one we’ve preached.

Some Tebow defenders commented as well, feeling as if Tebow’s faith was being attacked. But they were wrong.

The attacks were against a version of Christianity that Tebow – like most Christians throughout history – does not claim as his own. Yet, at times, most of us have sure sounded like we do.

Somehow, many have gotten the idea that we Christians view Jesus/God/faith/church as a talisman, a lucky rabbit’s foot. Keep Jesus in your pocket and you can defeat the most successful quarterback in NFL history. Ridiculous, right?

At first, I want to blame that prosperity preacher down in Texas. I want to put him on a flight to Haiti, lay a dying baby in his arms and tell him to tell her weeping mother all she needs to do is have faith and her little girl will “prosper.” But is the blame all his?

What about this familiar phrase? The family that prays together stays together.

Really? No matter what? If we just circle up once a day, talk to God and end with an “Amen” a forcefield will lower over my house, my kids won’t rebel, I’ll meet my wife’s every need, and she won’t cheat on me?

And if we skip a day? Does the forcefield evaporate, leaving my kids susceptible to addiction, me doomed to workaholism, and my wife prone to philandering?

God, forgive me for selling sure-fire easy-peezy drive-by solutions wrapped in biblical language to complex people living complex lives. Forgive me for making promises you won’t keep. Because of me they think you’re a liar.

I’m sorry.

RJ moved away and became a youth minister in California. Steve Dement took over his job. Not as night stock boy but as teacher and friend. Steve was an attorney in his late thirties, a single guy living alone – plenty of space for me and thirteen friends to hang out in on Sunday nights after church. We read the bible, rehashed the past week, ate pizza and talked about girls and parents and school. And always Jesus.

At college I worked for Louie Giglio for a short time, running sound for a weekly bible study he taught on Baylor’s campus, and watching him and his team of leaders prepare for each gathering, deal with conflict, pray, plan. Louie was teaching me more by example behind the scenes than by words spoken on stage.

Once we moved to Nashville, Greg Hodge took the baton. He was a songwriter and drummer who, along with his wife, mentored young married couples in our church. Funniest man I’ve ever known. And he has an encyclopedic knowledge of history and theology too. Greg taught me to think by disagreeing with me constantly, always asking the next question when I arrived at an answer – he humbled me.

Greg moved away to pastor a church and Billy Patterson filled his shoes. He was our missions pastor and it was Billy who showed me for the first time that “God so loved the world.” But more than the how’s and why’s of global evangelism, Billy taught me – and showed me – how to “abide” in Christ, how to relate to God, to live with God all day long.

Billy moved off to Rome and then on to Manhattan to teach others as he’d taught me. Then Diane came along shortly after that. The men before her had offered to teach me. But I pursued Diane – in tears, my mind malfunctioning, my faith in tatters, at the end of my rope. She showed me and taught me about love, a thing I’d lost sight of in all the knowledge gathering over recent years. She taught me that I was loved and why. And she taught me how to fight what can’t be seen.

All of these people have worked together, one on top of the other, to help me understand who I am as a “new creation”. They slowly, incrementally, showed me how God works in us so that we may think, believe, feel and behave more and more like Jesus over time.

This is discipleship.

Religion courses. Seminary. Bible studies. Conferences. Books. Sunday school classes. Church services. All great! But in my own life, the discipleship that has been most beneficial has been highly relational, one-on-three at the most, going at our own pace together, asking questions, flipping through pages, praying, together.

Through the years this is the sort of teaching I’ve enjoyed doing most too. This week I started meeting with a couple guys, in fact. We’ll sit down once each week for what will probably be ten weeks, at least. Then their next step will be to pass on what they learn to someone else. I’ll meet with them when they do that as well, to teach them how to teach, to encourage them along the way. Then the men they teach will teach someone else, and on and on.

That’s one form of discipleship.

A few questions for you then…

Have you been discipled?

If not, what do you think has kept you from doing that?

“Please play with me?”

I hurry across the room explaining for the dozenth time today that I’m still working.

I’m petitioned between phone calls, breaking to brew tea, rushing to the restroom. “Please play with me?”

We hoped Christmas and two sets of over-zealous grandparents would finally give him the tools he needed to self-entertain. My mother stuck to the only-three-present rule by consolidating a dozen into three boxes. “It’s three presents,” she insists, like a Clinton defense attorney playing by the letter of the definition and not the spirit of it.

Nonnie managed to fit every Spiderman toy ever created into Sambhaji’s three “presents.” Motorcycles, action figures, a remote controlled car and helicopter. A van load full of amusement possibilities driven from Texas to the living room floor and…

“Please play with me?

For the longest time I thought he wanted me. And he does to an extent. But it’s not so much a person he’s after with his pleads. It’s a plan I think.

He doesn’t know how to play. Paper and colors, PlayDough, balls, books, puzzles. Without instructions, a playmate to take the lead, he’s overwhelmed by the infinite possibilities of the moment, stumped and searching for a guide to mimic.

He looks at times as if he’s been dropped onto an alien planet designed for creatures with appendages and senses he does not possess.

There is progress being made. Today, Sambhaji played with a car for five whole minutes by himself while Becky and I had a real live adult conversation. He whooshed the little metal coupe across the couch, screeching around turns and crashing into cushions. Until I complimented him on the great sounds he was making with his mouth, and then…”Please play with me?”

This kid, like all kids, is a gift. A “present” packed with presents. But, like the rest of us, there’s some stuff missing too — lost in an institution, perhaps, where he was given food,clothing, shelter, and lots of love but little alone time. Few opportunities to learn self-guidance.

We’re doing great. We really are. Better than anyone in-the-know expected. Thanks for asking again and again. But there’s room for improvement – patience, for starters. So if your prayer list is short this week…Please pray with me?

Just As I Am by shaungroves

Second, several of you have e-mailed asking if I had sheet music for that very song and now, thanks to Worship Leader I do. Here’s the chord chart and sheet music they created for “Just As I Am”. Click the images below to download full quality pdf files and then hop over to Worship Leader magazine and check out all they have to offer musicians in the local church.