PUBLICATIONS
Stuck: How We Are Reverse Born Again
It’s a common thought that it’s wise “to meet people where they are.” But what if we don’t know where we are? This book entertains the idea that, although humans can dock two fantastically complex machines in space and manage all manner of equally complex coordinates in the process, we may not know our own coordinates. The machines in space may be secured while we are adrift. How is it that we are so skilled at feats of engineering yet so alienated from ourselves that we aren’t where we think we are? This book aims to shed light on how we arrive at such self-estrangement and how to begin clarifying where we actually are. The clarity, I hope, will make it easier for us to connect with one another so that our relationships are less troubled and are more likely to be transformed into sanctuary.
Cleanup: How Repentance Restores Relationships
Imagine a runner, deep into a marathon, who, instead of catching much-needed water bottles generously tossed by the crowd, throws into the crowd toxicity balloons that burst on impact. This scenario pictures the damaging offload that selfishness dumps into relationships. Scripture calls this selfishness "the flesh," and this book will show how repentance—a vital change of heart—drains the toxicity from relationships and fosters a joyous self-giving otherwise known as love. The exhaustion of defensiveness begins to lift. When love enters the bloodstream of relationships, our frantic striving for safety and control gives way to fresh air, the hope of knowing and being known.
We Hate to Wait: Shedding Our Harried Self-Love
It seems that the only time we're not hurrying is when we're rushing. By the time we heed the calls of smartphones, iPods, iPads, emails, podcasts, downloads, app shopping, YouTubing, web browsing, posting, and responding to posts, we've ridden the amped-up hurry-train so far that we're lost. In fact, the last items in our list ("posting and responding to posts") sound so much like "marrying and giving in marriage" that we might well conclude that we are wedded to whipped-up drivenness. We need a fast from going fast. The gospel of Christ calls us to rest, but learning how takes time. We're invited to ease off the hurry-train and learn the pace of waiting. But waiting for what? To become a bit more like Jesus, who lived at a breathtakingly still point before the one who sent him.
Unstuck
We live in a vast social wordscape made up almost entirely of chit-chat, or we're being talked at rather than with. Often, we feel targeted by others' words rather than invited into a mutual conversation. It can be hard to find a relationship that involves solid words on which to rest our tattered souls. In your hands, you hold a book with pages dusted by the Word, Jesus Christ. It assumes that since Jesus is still alive and still hears and speaks, there really is hope that humans can do the same. In fact, we're designed to do the same, we've just lost the skill. This object you have found, this book, invites you to engage in spiritual conversations, those that the Spirit of Christ, our helper, has always hoped we could have with each other. In spiritual conversations, chit-chat and targeting give way to real talk in which to rest, heal, repent, and grow.
False Guilt
God's longing is that we simply come to him in gratefulness rather than hoping to earn his acceptance through an agonizing, distant performance of duties. Gratefulness for what? For Christ's self-giving that dives to the very bottom of misery (the cross) on his journey to set us free from the tyranny of "it's all up to me." We learn to follow him in thanksgiving instead of laboring for a grim and unsmiling God. The aim of False Guilt is to help us truly grasp the fact that, through faith in Christ, we have already been made clean and need not sweat under the self-scrubbing of impeccable performance.