What Are You Fixing On Doing?

 Once I arrived in Daytona Beach, Florida from Michigan, I heard the phrase, “What are you fixing on doing?” Since I was only nine years old, I had no idea what they were saying, so I knew enough not to repeat the phrase until I learned what it meant in its entirety. Being young, I took the phrase literally and didn’t understand how I could fix anything. Once I discovered what the meaning of the phrase was, I was unimpressed and refused to still use it. The phrase just means, “What are you going to do?” For some reason, the people in the South added the word “Fixing” to this phrase. Maybe, people in the South wanted to fix everything and everyone. I would judge, but if we look closely enough, people around us are trying to fix everything and everyone, except, of course, themselves. 

As a former youth pastor and as a current teacher, I have been a fixer. I have tried to fix problems in the church, and in the schools in which I worked. If the situation was one that required a solution within the curriculum, or procedures, or something that would not affect people directly, it was well received and it was fixed, but the moment I tried to fix people from their flaws, it was a disaster. It was not until a couple of years ago that I realized that the only person I can fix is myself. 

There was YouTuber who condemned those of us who claim that we can only fix ourselves and that we have forgotten that God is the one who fixes us. It is true that God fixes us from our brokenness, but he does not do everything for us. He wants us to confess our sins, repent from our sins, and walk in a new direction in life. We cannot do that for anyone else. We can reveal our own change and inspire and empower others. Maybe the reason we are trying to fix others is because we refuse to see the brokenness in ourselves. 

No one wants to feel broken. I have students who struggle with reading and writing, and they would rather fail then to reach out for help and reveal that they need help. The same with us as adults in our lives. We should reach out for help, but instead we would rather fix all the people around us. It makes us blind to what we must do to be healthy. After a while the people who see our brokenness leave us or distance themselves from us because they do not want to become broken, and then we turn and blame them. It’s a vicious cycle, and we must end it, especially in the church. 

If someone is broken and is going to harm themselves or others, we need to get them help. At the same time, we must remember that we cannot fix them. They have to do the work in order to become healthy again. 

If we see a person who is broken, we need to walk alongside them and bring our empathy to them. We need to listen. We need to be slow to anger and slow to speak. We need to pray for them. If we see a brokenness in the church, we must step up and listen to those who see life differently than us and love them in their brokenness. We need to pray for them. We need to be slow to anger and slow to speak, especially eliminating gossip about them. The real solution is that if we see our church community is broken, we need to fix ourselves, then our church community will have one less person that is broken. 

If we see brokenness in our family, we need to pray and begin to fix ourselves. If we see there needs to be “fixing” in our workplace, we need to pray and begin to fix ourselves. Do we see a pattern? Our own brokenness affects the people around us. The only person we can fix ourselves. If someone’s brokenness is affecting us so much that it is breaking us, then we must move forward in life from the relationship. It’s difficult. I’ve done it, and my life has been healthier in all ways ever since. It’s time that those of us who are Christians begin to fix ourselves. 

That YouTuber was wrong. She tried fixing those who think differently than her. God can fix us, but we must be willing to let him work in our lives. We cannot force anyone else to commit to the fixing that they need to do. If we force people into fixing themselves, they do not change. They do a small change to please us, but then they return to their old ways with more anger and frustration because if we do not see what we need to do to have a better life and do those changes, then people forcing us will just make it worse. 

If other people fix us, we not only remain broken, but we don’t have the resources or tools to fix what went wrong in the first place because someone else did it for us. We can lead people to the tools and resources, but we cannot do the fixing for them. They will remain lost, broken, and empty. 

We must be willing and open to the change that we must endure. God works within each of us. We must trust the power of God. God can fix people. We must allow him to do the work. We can be the voice people need to hear, but we cannot force them to change. It’s time that the church allows the power of God back in into its presence and see the great things he can do. It starts with all of us fixing one thing about ourselves. Soon, we will see the fixing that the church needs as we all work on our own brokenness. 

A Tribute to Rich Mullins: Christianity is More than Morality

 On this day, twenty-four years ago, musician and artist, Rich Mullins, was killed in a car accident. He left us, but his words and music should continue to resonate with those of us who are passionate about Jesus more than we are with our denomination or any moral behaviors. Rich Mullins was ahead of his time. He had concluded and spoke out that Christianity was so much more than moral behaviors. I always knew that, but I would keep it to myself because people would chastise me. They chastised me because they were relying on those moral behaviors for their Christian lives. We must be better. 

Rich Mullins attended the same Bible College that I did. At Cincinnati Bible College, the rule book was equitable to a moral standard book, and it was thick. Not that a Christian school cannot have rules, but there must be an understanding that moral behaviors can keep us healthy, but they do not in any way create in us a closer relationship to Jesus. Our relationship to Jesus is not about behavior. It’s about communicating with Jesus and being who we are when no one is looking. That is a true Christian. 

To have a closer relationship with Jesus we spend time with him, but not to learn about him and what he did when he was on earth, but to hear his voice above the noise in our own lives. Jesus didn’t lecture Zacchaeus on his behavior with cheating people on their taxes. Jesus accepted Zacchaeus and then went to his house for a party. The presence of Jesus changed Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus could hear Jesus above the noise because he was listening. We must listen to Jesus.  It wasn’t a disciple that went over and berated him. The twelve were fearful of Zacchaeus. They were just as surprised at his change as anyone else was. We need to allow the presence of Jesus to change our behavior. Jesus empowers me. Yes, he speaks through the voices of humans, but those voices do not guilt shame me. They empower me, which is how I know it is the voice of Jesus. 

Rich Mullins was probably not the best example for following all the rules at Cincinnati Bible College, which is why I admire him. He was one of the best examples of someone who loved God, struggled with life, and served others. He lived on a Native American reservation to work with the people. That is putting Jesus’s love into action, which is much better than following all the rules at college. I may have broken some of those rules, especially when it came to “No dating on your internships.” Let’s just say that an internship offers new people and new opportunities. I also experienced the love and grace of Jesus from those relationships. 

Finally, we can mourn the loss of a genius like Rich Mullins who challenged the system of church, but we can do better as we live a life that refuses to follow Jesus with just our morality. Jesus is so much bigger than any morals or rules that humans have created. Let us emulate his love and grace. Let us love God and love others as ourselves. Then, when people wonder how we are managing our lives, they will see Jesus. People who are not walking with Jesus can have strong morals and serve people. People who are walking with Jesus serve people and love them with love and grace. People walking with Jesus have people say, “I want what you have.” May we live our lives to hear that statement because awe we all know, we just have to take it “Step by Step,” because our God is an “Awesome God.” 

May We Never Forget 9/12/2001

 

On September 12, 2001, America was different, but unlike what we may see in our current society, life was beautiful the day after 9/11. We were united. We didn’t care if someone was a Democrat, or Republican, or super liberal, or super conservative. We didn’t care about anyone’s economic status or ethnicity. On September 12, 2001, we were all just Americans. It took a tragedy to unite us. The tragedy of 9/11 is not that people have forgotten about it. Remembering the tragedy for the tragedy is tragic if we do not remember the difference that the tragedy created in our lives. 

Unity. On September 12, 2001, we were united. We wept with those who were weeping. We did not stop and ask if the loved one they lost was a Democrat or Republican or if they had the same religious beliefs or value systems as we did. We just grieved with so many who lost a loved one.  We cared that every individual was a human being, and we needed to start seeing every individual as a human being that God created. 

We were united because we all felt the pain. We were united because we all felt the pride of the first responders and the other unsung heroes who risked their lives to save the lives of other people, many of them strangers. Our unity on that day and the days that followed, was one reason we recovered. We knew this country was not perfect, but we also knew that our unity could give us strength to become better humans and work together for a better society. 

Unity will reveal the strength or weakness of a group of people. There is power in unity. Division reveals our weaknesses. Division rears its ugly head when we demand that everyone behaves and aligns with all our ideas. Division arises when we choose to mock, belittle, and degrade people because they have a different point of view than us because they have had different life experiences than us. It reveals that neither side is right or righteous, no matter which side claims to be Christian. It also states that neither side is for humanity but for their own cause. For those of us who are Christians, we must remember that Jesus was always for humanity and his selfless act of his sacrifice was for everyone. On 9/12/01, we realized the importance of selflessness. 

Selflessness. On September 12, 2001, we were a little more selfless and a little less selfish. The realization that so many first responders risked their own lives for complete strangers made us realize that they didn’t just do their rescuing because of their job, but because they were selfless and cared about humanity. We wondered if each of us were willing to sacrifice our own lives for a stranger. Before we could answer that, we had to realize that the stranger might believe and vote differently than us, and on 9/12/2001, we realized that the sacrifice was greater than the other person’s beliefs. 

As Christians, we must remember that Jesus died for all, even for those who did not believe in him and who were against him. Jesus sacrificed his life for all. Maybe we can remember to sacrifice for strangers. Maybe we can sacrifice our rightness and our political agenda for the love others. 

Love. On 9/12/2001, we realized we needed to love more. We must show love to other people over all other attributes. Love does not envy. It does not boast. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love is kind. There are three great attributes, faith, love, and hope, but the greatest of these is love. The commandments are summed up to love God and love your neighbors as we love ourselves. Love is what causes us to sacrifice. 

Love is not just reserved for those for whom it is easy to love, but for those with whom we struggle. 

If we want our country to be great, we all must do our part. We all must love other people. If we begin with loving others, people will see the change in our attitudes and actions. Our social media posts will be ones that project love for humanity and not malice toward anyone. It will take work. It will take time because love takes work and time, and as it grows, we see the people we love grow and change with strength and love and sacrifice for others. The love that we show and the sacrifices that we make will all bring unity to humanity once again

Ia It Selfish to Fix Myself?

 I saw a video on YouTube of someone berating Christians who believe that we can only fix ourselves and not fix other people. She claimed that we cannot fix ourselves, and that only God can do that. She then claimed that the people who believe this are not even Christians. While she was berating those Christians, she then went ahead and told everyone what they needed to believe and think to be better humans. (Actually, she wanted them to be better Christians, but I don’t believe that Christianity is a competition, so I’m changing her words.) In other words, she was trying to fix other people. I wish her video was interactive. I wanted to ask her if she could repent from my sins for me because that would make my life much easier. Then, she could fix me, and I would not have to do a thing. 

I have been struggling with this topic for a long time, and in the past few weeks, I have encountered situations in which people were more grossly engaged in focusing on what other people were doing, rather than on themselves. From a young celebrity getting pictures removed from social media because fans do not like his new girlfriend, to a student tattling on someone, while she herself was breaking a rule. The young fans cannot separate fantasy from reality, and the student could not understand why if she would fix herself, the world would be a better place. 

The world becomes a better place when we begin to focus on our own sins and flaws and fix them because our own world is better. Life is beautiful when we remove our flaws and gain our strengths. We not only see the beauty in our own world, but in the world around us. Once we see the beauty, we do not have to focus on other people and what they do in their personal lives because we are so busy focusing on what we must do for those other people to have better lives with love and encouragement. 

Jesus saw this flaw in all of us, in which we prefer to focus on other people’s sins than on our own sins. “Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged. For you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure you use. Why do you look at the splinter in someone else’s eye but don’t notice the beam of wood in your own eye?” (Mathew 7:1-3) (CSV) Those of us who are Christians, must focus on our own sins and flaws before we ever focus on anyone else. If we focus on our own sins, we do not have time to focus on others’ sins. Believe it or not, if everyone would work on their own sins, the whole world would become better because we would all have a vision of what sin is in our lives and how it needs to be removed. 

For years, the church has focused on what those outside of the church have done wrong and have lost control of what is happening inside the church. Paul has warned us to not judge those on the outside, but on the inside. If we as Christians, would focus on the sins of those of us in the church and confess and repent from them, the church would become more appealing to those on the outside of it. 

It is easier to focus on other people because we do not have to do anything but sit back and let our fingers fly on our phones or computers. The damage we have caused is that now, those outside of the church are judging everyone around them that does not think, believe, or act like they do. They have the name, “woke,” but they are a reflection of how the church has behaved for years. They too are judging people for what they say, believe, and do and desire for punishment for their misdeeds, but never confess their own misdeeds. It’s just like those of us inside the church. We influenced it. Now, that we see the grossness of it, we need to begin to make the change with ourselves first before we can influence them. 

It is not selfish to work on ourselves. It can be the one job that if we all do, would make our society a much better place. We can only fix ourselves because we are the only ones that can repent of our sins. We are the only ones that can go to God and confess our sins. That is the beginning of fixing ourselves. Other people can inspire us. We still must put the words of their inspiration into practice. No one can do the work for us. We are the ones who must do the work. That is why so many of us claim we can only fix ourselves. The church needs to allow people to fix themselves and then, the church will be healthier as everyone is working on bettering themselves. 

We need to see a sin in our own lives and begin working on eliminating that sin. Once we begin eliminating a sin in our lives, we begin to grow in our faith. People see our growth. People see the change. Then, we become a witness for Jesus because they see the change in us. We must stop berating other people and keep that to the people who are outside of the church. Once people see the difference from those of us inside the church encouraging and inspiring people and people outside of the church berating people, they will want to be inside the church.

The YouTube Christian woman was partially right. God does fix us. He changes us, but only when we ask him. We invite him into our lives. That is the first part of fixing ourselves. We all need Jesus. If we all focus on Jesus and what he wants from our own lives, then we will have a better life on earth because we have a heavenly vision with Jesus. It is selfish to focus on the flaws and sins of others and never right our wrongs. It is not selfish to focus on ourselves for spiritual health and begin to rid the sin in our own lives.