On top of everything else, I lost my voice. Which is why I want to write about how important speaking, or confessing the truth, is. I start a Rant series on kindness, and then I find myself in a position where I really need to receive some kindness... and (thank the Lord) I have people in my life ready, willing, and able to give it to me. Receiving and releasing. Speaking the truth into manifestation. Let me say it like this, "Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him, What doest thou?" (Ecclesiastes 8:4). And we are kings and priests, right? Where OUR word is, there is power. For example, if you wake up saying, "I know today's gonna be horrible... I just know it." Well, it probably will be. We speak things into existence. What we magnify is what manifests in our lives. If all we focus on is doom and gloom, that's all we're going to experience. And I'm not saying that's all there is. The truth is the truth whether you know it or not. Whether you believe it or not. But you are what you eat, right? What you feed is what grows. So even if there is goodness and light available, if all you can focus on is the doom and gloom, to YOU all there "is" is doom and gloom. But if you can let the light (of love) shine, you'll be able so see things clearly. You'll be able to get past all of the surface stuff and into the deep stuff. If you wake up and say, "No matter what challenges (opportunities) I face today... its going to be a great day!" Well, it probably will be. You attitude determines your altitude, right? An attitude of gratitude is the best way to receive and release. Being grateful for what God HAS given you, instead of being upset about what you (think you) don't have. We have been blessed with all spiritual blessings. We have been given all things that pertain to life and godliness. We have everything we need. Everything. And when you have everything you need, you can be grateful for what you have. You can focus on those things are good and true. You can Rant about kindness and then watch it manifest in your life. You can--like me--be obsessed with love, and then see it everywhere you look. Matthew 7:7 says, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you." You find what you're seeking. You see what you're looking for. And, look, it would be easy for me to whine and cry and moan about this last weekend. It was pretty awful. But I choose to go the other way. A more excellent way. I choose to see the good in situations. To look for, and find, the kindness. The grace. The mercy. The love. And to speak that truth. To let the power inside come out in Word and in deed. We can give power to whatever we speak... but why would we give power to anything but love? Why would we give anything but what's REALLY inside? By knowing and believing that its really inside? Because what's inside is too big to keep inside. Speak it out. Walk in it. See it, and believe it. See it, and be it! Kindness is one of the best things in the world... especially when you get it... when you really, really need it. Or when you give it... to someone who really really needs it!

I always talk about how loving someone is the most holy thing you can do. Well, being kind to someone is about the most loving thing you can do. And I say "about" because sometimes you aren't actually helping them by giving in. Sometimes you're just enabling. And that's NOT helping. But even when we have to say no, we can do with kindness. We can do it with understanding. Instead of crushing people, we can validate them. Even if its not going to go their way. "I hear you, I understand where you're coming from, but I can't do it." Like that. Let me say it another way: "But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ" (Ephesians 4:15). Growing up in all things. Remember that maturation process we're always talking about? And it comes from speaking the truth--which is "God is love, and He loves you"--in love. Speaking love IN love. Not this religious "tough love" stuff that we seem to hear so much about. Like parents disowning a child because she got pregnant. That's not love. Love is wrapping your arms around someone when they feel like they're all alone. Love is giving everything you have and everything you are. Which, as always, is not to say that you should put yourself in, or keep yourself in, a bad situation. Give it all you've got, but know that that's either enoguh... or its not. If it is, great. If its not, shrug your shoulders and move on. And either way, be cool about it. I read a quote somewhere, and I can't remember who said it, but it went something like this: "If you bless someone, never remember it. If someone blesses you, never forget it." Don't hold things over people. Don't play the "I scratched your back, now its time for you to scratch mine" card. Do things because they are in your heart to do them, not because you think you'll be able to get someting out of it--now or later. And here's the thing: If you have someone's back, but don't require anything from them... chances are they WILL return the favor. But not as a quid pro quo. Simply because that's what true relationship is. Me looking out for you and you looking out for me. And if that's what's happening, then neither of us need to look out for ourselves. Selfishness is replaced by selflessness. Instead of being self-centered, we can be Christ-centered. Which means people-centered. Because whatever you do to the least of them, you do unto the King. How we treat our neighbor is how we treat (and understand) our God. Because what you believe is inside WILL come out. If you think God is out to get you, chances are you'll be out to get other people. Trying to make yourself look bigger by making them look smaller. But that never works. People can tell what's real (and, yes, I realize sometimes we have blind spots, or sometimes we willfully deceive ourselves, but the cream always rises to the top). The deep calls out to the deep. The light in me recognizes the light in you. Mercy begets mercy. Grace begets grace. Love begets love. And kindness begets kindness. Its like a snowball that rolls downhill and just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Better and better!

So this was fortuitious timing. Last night I was stricken with a terrible pain in my left side. So bad that it woke me up in the middle of the night. I told my mom, "Something's wrong, I need to go to the hospital." And she didn't hesitate. She drove me to the hospital. Kindness. Being there for someone in a time of need. But she had to go to work. So my younger (not my little) brother Ben drove all the way up to the hospital. To sit with me. Make sure all was well. Bring me home safe. Its a kidney stone, for those who really want to know, and while I always say, "Family is forever," I'm very grateful of how my family has wrapped me up in love and kindness. It really puts things in a real world perspective. And for me, I'm a guy who doesn't like to ask for help. Probably because I don't like to NEED help. But at the same time, I truly believe that asking for help when you need it is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of wisdom. Because its not good for man to be alone. I honestly don't know if I could have driven myself to the hospital. And thank God I didn't have to find out. Because people need me. One little boy, my son, in particular. So I guess what I'm trying to say today is that BEING kind is kind of the whole point... but don't feel bad about RECEIVING kindness. God showed (and continues to show) us His grace through His kindness. Mercy is not getting what you deserve, right? And grace is getting what you don't deserve. But one of my favorite movies taught me, "Deserve's got nothing to do with it." Instead of trying to figure out of someone deserves it, or if someone has earned it... just be kind. Be kind, please rewind, right? For those of us old enough to remember Blockbuster. Just give what you've got. Let the kindness that God has given you be the kindness that you give to others. And it doesn't have to be family. Again, thank God for my family. I'm blessed. But Jesus spoke of the greatest love a man can have being laying your life down for your friends. And (I believe it was) Abraham Lincoln who said, "I destroy my enemies by making them my friends." Kill 'em with kindness. Kill 'em all. Leave people speechless because you gave them more than THEY think they deserved. Love is so powerful, kindness for kindness's sake, that it will knock people's socks off. It will show people a more excellent way. And when you see a more excellent way--when you see something better than what you've got, what you've settled for--you can walk that way. You can walk by faith (not by sight) and you can live by faith. You can trust that God is good, and merciful, and kind because He proves Himself to be good, and merciful, and kind. He doesn't expect us to just blindly follow Him. No, He showed us the way. On the cross. By laying His life down for us, His friends. And we can do the same to each other. Not by actually dying for people--though that can and will and does happen--but by dropping everything when someone is in need. By taking them to the hospital in the middle of the night. Or even by giving them an ear to hear when they need to talk. A hug. A smile. Random acts of kindness that aren't actually that random. Purposeful acts of kindness!

So Logan was doing his homework tonight, and one of the things he had to do was write three sentences about what makes someone a leader. The first thing he wrote was, "To be kind." Because a true leader doesn't use his followers to his advantage, he takes care of his followers. Kindness. Number one. Not the bottom line, but the top line. First things first. And that really hit me hard. Because he IS kind. He's got one of the softest, sweetest hearts of anyone I've ever seen. Which is why I always tell him that I'm proud of him for his good behavior... but I love him because of his heart. But, of course, that got me to thinking about kindness. And I thought about Ephesians 2:7, "That in the ages to come he might shew us the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us through Christ Jesus." Like... we still seem to--for some unknown reason--have this idea of a mean, angry God who is out to get us every time we mess up. Even though, in the Old Covenant (which is where this idea seems to originate) God set up an entire system of animal sacrifice in order to keep us OUT of trouble. The sacrificial lamb... the scapegoat... It has NEVER been God's heart to "get us" in a negative sense. It has always been His heart for Him to be our God and us to be His people. And that's what happened on the cross: God GOT us. In the best way. And He didn't get us by taking anything. This idea that God was so angry that He HAD to kill someone and Jesus stepped in to save us from God is really kind of absurd when you understand that Jesus IS God. So, what? God was saving us... from Himself? Nah. God died in order to save us from death. Before the cross we were dead in our trespasses and sins. So we needed a second death in order to catapult us into a new life. A death to death. The death OF death. So that we wouldn't have to struggle with all of that anymore. Grace, right? And I've always taken Romans 5:20, "Morever the law entered, that the offence might about. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound" to be the difference between the New and Old Covenants. The Law was the Old Covenant, and that's where sin abounded. But now, on this side of the cross, grace abounds. The sin of the world has been taken away. Those who are born of God CANNOT sin because His seed remains in them. And, as we saw in our key verse for today, God's grace was prompted by His kindness. He did it out of the goodness of His heart, if I can say it that way. He did it because He loves us. He gave us His only begotten Son. His Spirit. His life. He gave us everything He has and everything He is. That's what love is. To me, that's what kindess is. Seeing a need and meeting it. Giving what you've got out of an open heart. Letting what's truly inside come out by knowing and believing that its inside. Being kind to people whether you're a leader or not. Letting the kindness you've been given lead YOU and then leading with that same kindness. Receiving and releasing it and in that way experiencing it . My dad has always said, my whole life, "You can never be too nice to people." And those, friends, are words to live by!

To end this Rant series, let me connect the idea that we've been talking about--keeping our heart open to love rather than closing it down in order to avoid getting hurt--with 1 Peter 3:4, "But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price." And the context of this verse is that what's on the inside is more important than what's on the outside. But I want the phrase, "hidden man of the heart." Because when you keep your heart open... maintaining it, using it the way its supposed to be used... the hidden man of the heart is no longer hidden. Christ in you the hope of REVEALED glory, right? What's inside coming out.  But what's inside CAN'T come out if its all closed up. How could it? It has to overflow from a full heart. Which is the scientific defintion of full: filled to overflowing. What's inside WILL come out--or, rather, what you know and believe is inside will come out. What ever it is, it WILL come out. Its too big not to. Hurt is too big to keep in. Bitterness is too big to keep in. Whatever it is that you know and believe is inside you WILL come out. Forgiveness is too big to keep in. When you know you've been forgiven... you forgive people. Automatically. Naturally. When you've gone through something you understand when someone else is going through it. You can have empathy. Love is too big to keep in. When you know you are loved... you love people. Automatically. Naturally. Whatever is hidden in your heart (or, again, what you believe is hidden in there) comes out. Either you keep it closed, bottled up, and it ends up exploding on you and everybody else... or you keep it open and it flows. Seems to me that there's clearly a more excellent way. And His name is Jesus. His name is love. The hidden man of the heart is Jesus. And when the heart is open, He's not hidden anymore. He's revealed. To you, and in you, and through you, and as you. So don't let your past define you. Don't let your wounds destroy you. The heart, to my way of thinking, is stronger than we think. I know, for a fact, that it can ache. But even when it feels like it breaks... it heals. It can stay open. It WANTS to stay open. Love is the heart's purpose. So shutting it down is, in effect, destroying it. Wasting it. You can't live without your heart. Living is loving. Loving is living. God's heart beats with love in our chests. If we let it. If we don't shut it down. That's not how you guard your heart. That's not how you protect yourself. The only way to truly live is to let God love you and love God back by loving the people you come into contact with. And the only way--the ONLY way--to let God love you and love Him back by loving the people you come into contact with... is by keeping your heart open. Receiving and releasing God's love is impossible if your heart is closed. But if your heart is open... it happens automatically. Your heart beats without you telling it to. Love flows in and out without you making it. Just by you accepting it. The hidden man of the heart is revealed when your heart is open. GOD is revealed... LOVE is revealed when your heart is open!

If it was easy, everybody would do it. Right? It can be hard to continue to put yourself out there once you've been burned. Because conventional wisdom would tell you that once you get burned... stay away from the fire. But here's the straight truth: GOD is the consuming fire. And He doesn't burn US, He burns away everything IN us that isn't HIM. Look at Matthew 19:28 in the Amplified Bible, "Jesus said to them, Truly I say to you, in the new age [the Messianic rebirth of the world], when the Son of Man shall sit down on the throne of His glory, you who have [become My disciples, sided with My party and] followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel." Now I don't want to get bogged down on the twelve thrones and all that right now. But I kind of touch on the idea of Messianic rebirth of the world a bit, and I like to quote it now and then. Because when that happened--on the cross--the consuming fire that is love literally consumed everything EXCEPT love. Only love remains. But it sure doesn't feel like that all the time. A lot of the time it feels like, "the more I love the less I'm loved." A lot of the time it feels like we're pouring our love into a black hole that just swallows it up and doesn't give anything back. But that's why I made the connection between returning to what has always been true--we left our first love, which is God first loving us--but He's calling us back. Because if we understand that we don't NEED anything back... we can love without expectation. We can just give what we've got. Simply because we've got it... and because its too good to keep to ourselves. A gift is better experienced when it is shared. LIFE is better experienced when it is shared. Its not good for man to be alone, right? We're all in this together. Love is giving. You can give without loving, but you can't love without giving. So to live is to give. Giving everything you have and everything you are without expecting to get anything back. Giving because its what you've got... and because its what people need. Giving because your heart is open. What's inside WILL come out--or, I should say, what you BELIEVE is inside will come out. So knowing and believing that you are loved is the key to everlasting life. You can experience Jesus' abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of love by letting HIM live it--love it--in you, and through you, and as you. So when you get burned, just know that God only burns away things you didn't need anyway. God made you in His image--in the image of love--in the beginning. And then He conformed you to the image of His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased on the cross. You ARE loved. That's the ultimate truth of the universe: God is love and He loves you. But if you let the world steal that from you by getting you to close your heart down... that's tragic, man. That's heartbreaking. So give God a chance. Give love a chance. Maintain... keep... guard your heart... by letting God love you and loving Him back by loving others with that same love!

We all have reasons to close our hearts down. We've all been hurt. Beat down, busted, and disgusted. Life gets us all. And I think that's really just a "natural" reaction--you get hurt, and you lash out. You shut it down so you can't get hurt again. But I put "natural" in quotation marks because on this side of the cross we have a new nature. Not the selfish, soulish, carnal nature that defined Adam before the cross. Let me say it like this: In Psalm 51:10 David cries out, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me." That's what happened on the cross. And I love the word "renew" because it speaks of a return to how things were originally. A return to your first love, if I can say it that way. Which references Revelation 2:4, "Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love," and 1 John 4:19, "We love him, because he first loved us." Our first love is HIS love for us. That's what we left, in a sense, when Adam and Eve hid from the presence of God. He still loved us--always has and always will... He IS love, after all--but we closed ourselves off to it. We brought it into a realm where we thought we needed to earn it with our performance. But David was a man after God's own heart. Which, I've always maintained, means he WANTED God's heart. He knew something was missing. He had a God-shaped, love-shaped hole inside. And while he couldn't fill it himself, at least he knew what WOULD fill it. Create in me a clean heart. An open heart. A heart that hasn't been dirtied up and kicked around. A heart that isn't bitter, and resentful. A heart that can receive and release your love. Bring me back to my first love--which is you, Father God, loving me. And from there, from that foundation, we can build. We can let what's inside--what's REALLY inside, which is the love of God--come out. By knowing and believing its in there. Heart and soul is the old catchphrase, right? But really its heart and spirit. A clean heart and a right spirit. An open heart and the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of truth that leads and guides us into all truth. The truth that God is love and He loves you. The truth that no matter how much tribulation you face in the world... you can be of good cheer. Because God, Jesus, LOVE, has overcome the world. Love is the ultimate power in the universe. So if we close ourselves off to it we leave ourselves powerless. Because saying that love is all powerful doesn't mean love is most powerful. It means love is the ONLY power. Love wins. Love WON. On the cross. When a God wrapped in human flesh chose to prove His love by laying His life down. By giving His life for us, and to us. So like I said, I understand the impulse to shut it down. I've been there, done that, got the t-shirt. I have a phd in shutting it down--Personally Have Done It. But that's no way to live. Especially when there's so much more available to us. A more excellent way. A way, a truth, and a life... of love. It comes from a clean heart. An open heart. And a right spirit. The Holy Spirit.

Keeping--or guarding, or maintaining--your heart is not about closing it down. Its about keeping it open. Open to love. So that the love that IS inside can fill us up to overflowing and come out. Naturally. Look at our key verse again, "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23). And right there we see WHY keeping our heart open to love is so important; the issues of life low out of the heart. And what flows out of the heart? Love! What is the issue of life? Love! We were created to be loved and to love each other with that love. Let God love us and love Him back by loving each other with that love. Whatsoever you do to the least of them you do unto Him, right? How we treat people is how we treat God. Which is why it drives me nuts when people will ignore people in need in order to "serve God." Blowing off someone who needs you because you have church, for example... to me... is about the most unholy thing you can do. The issue of life isn't going to church. I've long said that its more important to understand that you ARE the church. And I'm not saying you SHOULDN'T go to church, I'm simply saying people are more important. I believe there are two important things in this world--God and people. Loving God and loving people. Loving God BY loving people. But you can't do that with a heart that's closed up with bitterness, and anger, and hurt. Hurt people hurt people. I get that. You can't give what you don't have, and you can only give what you do have. I read the other day that everybody is healing from something they don't talk about. And that hit me right in the feels. Because its so true. We all have things we're trying to get over. Things that could easily destroy us, if we let them. But we don't have to let them. We don't have to shut down. Remember when Peter was walking on water and he took his eyes off Jesus and started to drown? Jesus asked him, "What's gotten into you?" Because even though we DO go through stuff-in this world you WILL have tribulation--we don't have to let stuff go through us. When we know that the fire in us is always hotter than the fire we're in... we can let the fire burn away our bonds (like the three Hebrew boys in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace) and we can come out smelling like roses. We can refuse to let our past define our future. We can learn and grow instead. I'm gonna keep saying it: If you never make any mistakes, you can't learn from your mistakes. Maturity is a process. We're all in this together. Learning and growing with each other. FROM each other. But if you isolate youself--even in order to keep yourself from getting hurt--you end up alone. Shutting your heart down only leaves you with a God-shaped, love-shaped hole inside. But if you keep your heart open to love--letting love in AND letting love out... receiving and releasing the love you've been given--that's when you can live out of abundance. That's when you can truly experience the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of love that is the gift of God! Experience it... by giving it away. By sharing it. Doing what you do from an open heart full of love!

The thing about the heart is that what's in it... comes out of it. If you have hatred, or bitterness, or sadness, or anger in your heart... that's what will come out. We really do live from the inside out. Because what's inside is always too big (no matter what it is) to stay inside. You've probably done this, or at least known someone who has; you bottle up your emotions, trying to hold them tight, and then, after a while, you explode. You lash out. Something small sets you off because it is literally the straw that breaks the camel's back. Its the tiny snowball that starts an avalanche. So what I'm trying to say is that shutting your heart down--and that is almost always a reaction to getting hurt--is the worst thing you can do. You have to let what's in there come out. And I always say it like this, "Feel what you feel. But don't let it control you." If something makes you angry... be angry. But don't let your anger control you. Let that emotion out in a healthy way. I used to shoot freethrows in the driveway. Some people run. If I'm running its because something's chasing me, but that's not the point. The point is, you have to experience and express your emotions. Or they WILL control you. You can't close your heart down. Even though that's what a lot of people seem to think Proverbs 4:23 is all about. "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." This is our key verse for this Rant series. And we're going to get to the issues of life. But I want to start with "Keep thy heart." The Message Bible reads, "Keep vigilant watch over your heart; that's where life starts." The Amplified Bible says, "Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flows the springs of life." Keeping and guarding. But, again, that doesn't mean shutting it down. It means using it properly. If you keep a car in the garage for a long time it won't run the way it should. Its tires will get soft. Because its meant to be driven. Its meant to be turned on. The same thing with musical instruments. If you don't use them for a long time, they'll get to be out of tune. Guarding your heart doesn't mean, "I got hurt, so I'm shutting it down. That way I won't be able to get hurt again." Guarding your heart means making sure you're using it properly. Keeping your heart doesn't mean closing it. Keeping your heart means keeping it open. The word "keep" is number 5341 in Strong's Hebrew Concordance and it means, "to guard, in a good sense (to protect, maintain, obey, etc.) or a bad one (to conceal, etc.):- beseiged, hidden thing, keep, monument, obeserve, preserve." Maintain your heart like a finely tuned instrument. Obey your heart. Follow your heart. Let what's REALLY inside (LOVE) light the way. Keep your heart open so God's love can get in (and, yes, I understand that its (HE'S) already in there), and so that God's love can get out. That's what the heart is for. That's its (HIS) purpose. To be loved, and to love others with that love. That's the New Commandment for the New Man. That's what life's all about. That's what life IS. A closed heart that can't receive and release love is a dead heart. But an open heart is our life!

WE are the house of God--the temple of the Holy Spirit. And I emphasize WE because its not an "us vs them" thing. Its a "we're all in this together" thing. So WE need to stop causing so much separation. Between us and each other... and between us and God. Because there IS no separation between us and God. How could there be when God lives IN us? When we live IN God? Paul wrote, "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). So the thing that we are so desperate to get... is really the thing that we already have... and couldn't get rid of if we wanted to. Now, Jesus DID say that we are, "Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye" (Mark 7:13). Like when Adam and Eve hid from the presence of God. The presence was still there, but they were willfully separating themselves from it because they were naked and ashamed and were afraid that God was mad at them. Guys, God is not mad AT you. He is mad ABOUT you. Head over heels in love with you. To the point that He swore He would never leave you nor forsake you. To the point where He gave His only begotten Son so that you might have something (someONE, Love) to believe in, and in that way experience the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of Love that is the gift of God. Experience it by letting Jesus live His own life in you, and through you, and as you. Experience the gift by giving it away. By sharing it. That's what it means to be builded TOGETHER. We can't do this on our own. You can't love without having someone to love. You can't give everything you are and everything you have without having someone to give it to. It takes two to tango, as they say. Relationship is more than just yourself. I always quote the song that says, "What you got if you ain't got love? The kind that you just want to give away..." Because that's what love is; love is giving. God filled us up to overflowing so that His love for us could come out of us (naturally) and flow all over everybody we come into contact with. Its not about building walls to hide behind. That's not how you guard your heart. You don't guard it by closing it down. You guard it by keeping it open. Open to love. When Logan and I pray I always thank our heavenly Father for an open heart full of love. An open heart that lets love in... and out. (I think our next Rant series is going to be An Open Heart, so stay tuned for that.) Relationship is what makes life worth living. Connecting to people on a real, true level. The deep calling out to the deep. The God (the love) in me connecting to the God (the love) in you. We are builded together. Bonded together. We're all in this together. That's how we learn and grow--I teach you and you teach me. That's how we survive and thrive--together. Love is not building walls. It (HE) is building bridges. Temples. Houses. Homes.