Gardeners hate weeds. Criminals hate police. Simply, the universe hates order. So the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says. It’s true in nature and it’s true in human beings.

This past weekend, I had a friend from LA send me an email. He said this:

Dude, this is going to sound totally out of the blue – it seems like everyone I know (believers) are either getting cheated on by their spouse, getting divorced or having sex while unmarried…Are you experiencing this in your friends in Nashville? Is it just L.A.? Is it just being 27-35? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Listen to me when I say this post IS NOT about condemning people. Tell me: who LOVES what it feels like when sin has run its course? Nobody. Because it most often leads to heartache. I’m not here to pile on.

I HAVE seen these things – pre-marital sex, adultery, and divorce in Nashville. I see too many people I know – Jesus-followers – getting drunk on a regular basis – and, as drunk people do, making bad decisions after getting drunk.

It’s happening because people like you and I INTENTIONALLY avoid God. Imagine a gardener who looks out on his garden. “Hmm…looks like some weeds are coming in over there. Ah, it’ll be fine. The vegetables can grow around it.” Imagine a cop who sees a criminal rob a store. “Wow! That guy is getting away with theft. Well, I’m hungry. I need to get a pizza.”

We are a generation of Jesus followers who have slowly slipped into negligence. And it’s crept up on us in the guise of sophistication. Honestly, many days, I feel the same way. I think in the vein of the negligent gardener or cop – “I know I have these rules I’m supposed to follow, but they seem awfully restrictive and Jesus has given me freedom from rules. I seem to be somewhat irrelevant in this culture if I don’t drink. I want to enjoy life and these things over here seem enjoyable. Much more fun than rule following.” So we loosen the belt. But the pants have fallen down.

If there aren’t rules, sin IS the rule. If you don’t weed, you get weeds. If you don’t patrol, you get crime. Everything tends toward disorder. Most especially, the human heart. If you don’t talk to God about your heart, you will sin.

Do you know one of the greatest faults Jesus found with people He came across? Calling the Pharisees hypocrites, He said, “These people honor me with their lips, but their HEARTS are far from me…You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions” (Mark 7:6,9).

Your heart is THE MOST important thing you have. The gardener stands guard over weeds. The cop stands guard over criminals. My dear friend. Listen. GUARD. YOUR. HEART. Jesus continues, “For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly” (Mark 7:21).

Ask your heart a question. Seriously. Ask it this…heart, where are you sinning? Heart, what rules do you love to break and ignore? Look at your actions and behavior. Where do you feel out of control? What wrong thing(s) do you do without even thinking about it?

Vegetables get damaged and neighborhoods become run down. Our lives may suffer greatly for sinful choices we make. All of this can be reversed with care and attention. Pull out the little secrets in your heart. Patrol for lies that try to seduce you into compromise. God’s traditions may seem old-fashioned. Perhaps they are. But the human heart hasn’t changed for a long time. His ways still apply.

Somewhere in America right now there are NFL and NCAA teams practicing for football season. There are coaches screaming in the players’ ears and pushing them to the breaking point.

In my hometown of Nashville is a church – my church. I really like my church. We’re currently doing a series explaining the DNA of how we want to live. They’ve chosen three phrases to describe things:

1. Radically Devoted (to Christ)
2. Irrevocably Committed (to one another)
3. Relentlessly Dedicated (to reaching the lost)

I love those things. I really do. It’s clever. It’s biblical – it’s the two greatest commandments and the Great Commission. Except for three problems. I find myself more:

1. Partially Devoted (to Christ)
2. Conditionally Committed (to one another)
3. Pretty Much (Not) Dedicated (to reaching the lost)

I know the top 3 things are GOALS of the church. But the bottom 3 are REALITIES for me (and a lot of people I know).

You know what I feel like? I feel like I live life in one of those money booths where money is blowing all over the place. That’s what my heart and mind feel like pretty much every day. It’s loud and windy and totally chaotic and hard to keep a hold on things. While I wish my life was built on rock-solid adjectives like radical, irrevocable, and relentless, the truth is that far less-weighty adjectives define my interior life.

And while we should all desire the firm adjectives, the weak ones usually define us.

They did for most people in the early church, too – the ones we read about in the New Testament. They were screwed up. Big time. Like me. Like us.

And do you know what Paul said to them? He said, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” (1 Cor. 11:1)

Coaches exist to motivate their players to greatness and to goals – a Super Bowl. A Tostitos National Championship. That’s why pastors exist, too – to teach and encourage and shepherd and model good behavior. They’re not perfect, but they’re very special people – people who daily try to get us to follow them into goals like being radically devoted, irrevocably committed, and relentlessly dedicated. Frankly, I don’t like that language. It seems forced and impossible. And so far away from where I am right now. But we all need goals. And those seem like pretty good ones to me.

Pick up that Tonka truck. Now throw it across the room because you just spotted a Bernstein Bears book. Crawl over to the book. Flip through it in 20 seconds. Now slide it across the floor so it hits one of your less-favorite stuffed animals. Then get up and waddle over to your blocks. Stack a few of those up and then throw them into the air. This is the life of a little kid, who, in the span of 30 minutes, can make a perfectly clean playroom look like a toy battlefield.

It seems to me that in a lot of ways, we never grow up. As we grow up, our toys change. From blocks to clothes. From stuffed animals to entertainment devices. But our lives get more complex. Hobbies, interests, and causes come across our horizon. They’re inspected but frequently discarded in short order as either uninteresting (which is probably fine) or because more and more items come across our path preventing us from really sinking ourselves into those thing that DO interest us (which is probably NOT fine).

Like the people on the conveyor belt in Wall-E, it seems like we’re shuffled through life from one thing to another. And then 5 years go by and we get sad, asking, “What’s happening with my life?” But we know the truth. Little is happening with our life. Life happens to us. For the fortunate few that have rock solid attention spans, they make something of their lives and we’re left wondering why that can’t be us. But in many ways, the comparison is moot. As a dude in St. Louis recently said, “Some of us are born on third base but think we’ve hit a triple.” For some, their God-given abilities allow them to be excellent. They certainly work hard to be successful, but lamenting we’re not them is unhelpful.

How to Beat a Short Attention Span
Our aim should be to stop the conveyor belt or make adjustments while it’s still moving. When the next hobby, interest, or cause comes across your path, stop your life for a little bit and examine it – for longer than a little kid. Start slow. Get online and read some articles about the topic. Search YouTube for videos. Search a Twitter keyword and see what other people also interested in that thing have to say. Follow the links they post. Research the best books; buy them and read them. And then, and this is the important thing…put that hobby/interest/cause down beside you ON THE CONVEYOR BELT!!

Let that interest or cause travel life WITH you through your day! Create events in your calendar every day that remind you to spend time in pursuit of that thing until it’s a habit. For me, it’s Haiti. I’ve re-arranged my life not to forget Haiti. I wrote a computer program that automatically searches Twitter for news articles/photos/videos so I can quickly scroll through the article’s headline and know if I want to read it (or if I’ve ALREADY read it so I don’t waste time going there again). I have a time set aside to learn Creole (spoken in Haiti) and also a time to read about the country. I’ve started talking with other people interested in Haiti. And I listen to a radio station over the internet broadcast from Port-au-Prince to get used to hearing Creole. So even though I’m still on life’s conveyor belt, not only is Haiti next to me, but it’s becoming PART of me. And I haven’t even been there yet. The point is to be creative in how something can be a part of your life!

Obla-di Blah blah blah
Now, it’s true. Life must go on. You have responsibilities. But God has responsibilities for YOU. And ME. There are things He wants us to do in our life. Primarily, He wants us to love Him and love our neighbors. Are the things traveling with you on the conveyor belt helping you do those things? If not, do what Hebrews 12 encourages, “cast off everything that hinders…” I can’t tell you what in your life is a hindrance, but you know. You have a feeling in your heart that you really shouldn’t do something. It’s not that the thing is WRONG. It’s just not RIGHT. You feel there are other ways you could spend your time. You MUST listen to that voice. That voice is trying to guide you to your role in the kingdom of God!

The irony of this post is that life will happen to us immediately after reading/writing it. You’ll be inclined to forget this in a matter of moments. Whether it DESERVES to be remembered is up to you. But, if you like it, put this little post nugget in your mind. Because, literally, my brothers and sisters, this world is FULL of hurting people. People who need not only material goods but they need to hear about the hope of Jesus and the life to come and how He can be everything for them – even in their suffering!

The One
Some 12 years ago, a movie was released that rocked our country. In “The Matrix,” Keanu Reeves played a character name Neo whose life seemed out of control. Things happened to him almost against his will. He was on the conveyor belt. Until one day, things changed with one word. The world needs us. So much. Please don’t tire of people telling you that. Don’t say it’s the same old line. People need you and me. It may not be a million people. It may be 10. But you can ROCK those people’s worlds. It just takes a simple, firm word: I will not be scared. I will not be distracted. I will not have a short attention span. When it seems like you can’t stop life, think of Neo. People need you!

YouTube won’t let me embed it, so please watch the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4FUPSGiy8Y

I did something two days ago I never thought I’d do. I prayed for Osama bin Laden.

It happened while I was out on a run. I was thinking about how US forces have been unable to capture Bin Laden. And I wondered if it isn’t a testimony to Bin Laden’s hiding skills or the talent of our soldiers but that God, for some reason, doesn’t want him to be found yet.

Bin Laden has been the instigator for terrible things. And a part of me would just like to see him dead. But then I thought about Saul (who later became Paul). He murdered people for a living. After standing in approval of Stephen’s death, “Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison” (Acts 8:3). As the apostles and believers continued in their work, Saul’s rampage also continued. “Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples” (Acts 9:1).

A realization grabbed my heart. Saul was the 1st century church’s Osama bin Laden. But Saul was rescued from his life of hatred and murder. And I don’t see why Bin Laden couldn’t be either.

It is often the extreme cases that teach us what we really believe about something. In principle, a man can be against adultery. But when a beautiful woman tries to seduce him, what does he REALLY believe? How will he choose?

We can say that God is capable of touching anyone – that He can save anyone from their sin. But do we believe it? Even for Osama bin Laden? Did Jesus die for Osama bin Laden? Does forgiveness have any bounds? Does it transcend nationalism? It does. It would be to God’s glory to rescue Osama from the sin he’s been living in. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have to answer for his sins to an international court. But that courtroom is but a child’s playground compared to the eternal judgment of God. May Jesus somehow speak to Bin Laden the same way He did to Paul!

“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting…I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you.” (Acts 26:14,16).

Today, I prayed for Osama bin Laden.