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All human beings have a nagging desire to know and understand. We all want to know what’s around the corner. My 4 year old son asks often “what we are doing tomorrow?” and my retired father often wonders “How long am I going to have good health?” No matter where you are on the spectrum of life or what season you find yourself in, we all want to know, to figure it out, and to have all the answers.

This last week, we talked about the concept of gospel listening. The art of paying attention to the patterns in God’s greater story of Creation – Fall – Redemption – Recreation in each of our own personal stories.

This has been particularly convicting to me – because I’m finding out just how bad of a listener I can be. Too often I’m more concerned about telling someone what I think, or fixing a problem rather than hearing gospel patterns in someone else’s story that would allow me an opportunity to speak good news into their life.

In America, we often consider ourselves “blessed,” but maybe we need to re-think the concept of “blessing.” When things are going well for us physically or materially, the words “God sure has blessed us” roll quickly off of our tongues without a second thought. But what about when circumstances are difficult? What about when things do not go as planned? What about when we suffer a staggering loss? Do we consider such times a “blessing” from God? Our African brothers and sisters serving with ALARM do just that. This type of thinking sounds backwards and upside-down to most American ears, but Scripture backs it up.

I love driving into Nashville. A pretty incredible city with so much to do, see, explore and experience. Live music on Broadway, movies and plays in the summer at Centennial Park, the Grammy-winning Nashville Symphony, great restaurants in The Gulch… and our boys LOVE spending hours at the Adventure Science Center. But the reality is, in almost 17 years living here, I’ve rarely taken side roads to get into the city. I almost always take the interstate. 15 min from Brentwood and I’m in the city. And this might sound like stating the obvious – but I’ve never figured out how to get on the interstate without using an on-ramp!

It might be that one of the most important things I said at Fellowship Brentwood as we studied the exclusivity of the gospel:

“Follow the evidence.”

My point was that our faith in Christ, based on the Word of God, is not “blind faith.” It is a faith in reliable, verifiable, historically accurate, internal, external and abundant EVIDENCE that the Bible is trustworthy, and therefore its message is true. I would submit that the Christian faith and its claims in the 66 Books of the Bible, stands alone.

When we become a believer in Christ, we are given a new identity – as a disciple, a follower of Jesus. Not based in what we do – but in who we are. It’s truly a “new way of being.” And as my fisherman friend does with fishing, Jesus has called each of us to reorient our entire lives around our identity as followers of Him. Not long ago, Mark Irving wrote a great post on the DNA of Discipleship – the intersection or overlap of three essential elements: Gospel, Family and Mission. I’d really encourage you to read this post. As we find ourselves where these three circles intersect, our new identity as a disciple on mission becomes more clear.

When I got married I had this innocent and extremely naïve belief that I had met the person who would enable my happiness and meet my needs. That was a deeply sincere belief. As a matter of fact, I thought that is why people got married. To have their needs met and to find happiness. After two or three years of increasingly painful and disappointing marriage, we finally reached out for help. We found help in the form of another couple who began to mentor and coach us, to literally show us that there was another way to do this thing called marriage.

I can only imagine what it’s like to go watch a movie as a family if you have boys. It probably involves action, adventure, swords and super heroes. But God has given me three lovely little ladies (pictured here), which means that when we go to the theater as a family, my experience is … well … different. It contains less action and more drama; fewer swords and more pixie dust. The “action” in the “live action” version of Cinderella that we watched last week simply meant that the movie contained real actors & actresses, rather than the original animation.

“I’ve begun to view the gospel as a verb, not just a noun (“gospeling” each other), and have become more fluent with it. It also helped me think through my own personal story and how it relates to God’s Greater story (Creation – Fall – Redemption – Re-Creation). The tangible experience of gathering to eat weekly and applying Gospel principles with each other was most compelling because I sometimes regard weekly bible studies or meetings as another thing to take me from ‘the stuff of life’. After going through the Gospel Primer with this group, I have the perspective that our family has to eat any way, so why don’t I invite others to join us?”

By mile 16 last Saturday, I knew qualifying for the Boston Marathon was not in the cards that day. Over the last four months, I’d logged 775 miles, many speed work sessions, a bunch of tempo runs, and followed the perfect taper plan to be ready for my goal: Run the Carmel Marathon in Indiana and qualify for Boston. My personal best marathon was only 4 minutes away from this goal. I felt very ready.