That’s what he said. Just, “Pray for me, John.”

He’s a man I’ve known for a long time. I’ve learned from him. I’ve laughed with him. I’ve respected him, and I’ve made fun of him. I’ve sat with people when his name comes up in conversation, and we’ve collectively rolled our eyes. We’ve heard stories about him and said, “That’s just like him.” We’ve told stories about him that included the phrase, “You know how he is.”

Today he asked me to pray for him. He said, “I’ve been wrong. I’ve written things that were just plain wrong. You suffered some of that abuse, didn’t you?”

I sat silent.

“I’m sorry. I’m rambling. This morning I got on my knees and told God I was sorry. I’ve gotten so caught up in being right. Does that make sense?”

I know the feeling.

We talked for a few minutes more. We talked about how easy it is to miss the “who” of Christianity and get caught up in the “what”. We talked about how we fool ourselves into believing that we’re fighting for truth, when we’re really fighting to be the one who gets everything right — to be heard — to be respected. If we can’t be liked or loved, at least we can be feared.

He was telling me this as if I was unfamiliar with the pattern. I know it all too well.

Christianity — at its core — is relational, not propositional. The diagnostic questions we must ask have less to do with how well we know our Bibles and more to do with how well we love the people around us. Are we more approachable or less? Are we becoming more like Jesus or more like the people Jesus criticized?

It’s strange how humbling an experience like this can be. Rather than putting me in some kind of superior position, it brought me down to the place of being a servant. Praying for him will be like washing his feet.

“Pray for me, John. Will you do that?”

Of course I will.

Elijah invites Elisha to volunteer for a life-changing ministry.

Elisha says, “Let me go home and tell my folks goodbye first.” This was probably Elisha’s way of saying, “Give me some time to think about this.”

Elijah replies, “Hey, take as much time as you want. Don’t worry about it.”

And then he lets Elisha leave and go home. He doesn’t feel the need to say, “But if you don’t volunteer, think of what you’ll miss out on. And if you don’t volunteer, think of what you’ll be depriving those people of.”

He doesn’t say any of that. He doesn’t pressure Elisha or coerce him or manipulate the deal at all.

It reminds me of the time a rich young guy came to Jesus and asked, “What do I have to do to be a follower of yours?”

Jesus replied, “You know the Law. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t commit adultery. Honor your parents. All that stuff.”

The guy said, “I know all that. I’ve done all that since I was a kid. Anything else?”

Jesus said, “Well, there is one thing. You need to trust me more than you trust your stuff. So, go sell everything you own, give the money away to the poor, and then come follow me.”

Anyone remember what happened next?

The guy walked away.

Anyone remember what Jesus did then?

He let him.

You know why?

Because manipulation is bad.

When Elijah finds Elisha, the latter is plowing in the field. He goes to Elisha and hands him a cloak as a way of inviting him to be an apprentice. There are a few things that make this difficult for Elijah.

First, it will mean that Elijah is no longer the only prophet. Up until this time, Elijah has been THE man of God; now he will have to be one of the men of God. That takes some humility on his part.

The other thing that makes it a little difficult for Elijah is that Elisha has a lot of money. He’s plowing in a field with 24 oxen. Most families at that time would have been lucky to own a chicken. An ox was like driving an SUV. Having 24 oxen was almost unthinkable. He’s got money.

Elijah the Tishbite from Tishbe was from the other side of the tracks.

It would have been so easy for him to look at Elisha and say, “God, you must have made a mistake. There’s no way he’s going to give all that up to pursue the lifestyle of a prophet. People don’t like prophets.”

Elijah had been dependent upon birds to bring him food. He had relied on a widow with just enough flour and oil to make a loaf of bread. He could have said, “God, he’s just going to say no. I’m not even going to ask.”

But he didn’t. And because the man of God stopped one day to have a conversation with a wealthy farmer about volunteering for a ministry, widows and servants and kings and whole armies were changed forever — because he simply asked.

We’ll talk about this more in the next few days, but for now here’s my question: Who is so far out there that you think they’ll never say yes to God’s call?

And here’s the bottom line: Don’t you dare say “No” for someone.

In a previous post we talked about stress reduction. I suggested that a lot of unnecessary stress is caused by our lack of doing what we know we should do. We overeat, we engage in risky behavior, we make poor financial decisions, we work too much and sleep too little, and all of this causes stress — over and above what we are able to handle.

But there is some stress that is unavoidable. So, how is it possible to experience the rest that Jesus promised us if there is stress present in our lives? How can we keep ourselves from worry in the midst of stressful times?

I think it comes down to a matter of perspective.

To demonstrate this, all we have to do is look at the biblical character Elijah. He lived during the life of the most wicked King Israel had ever known: King Ahab. Ahab had married a foreign woman (Jezebel) who was determined to introduce the people of Israel to pagan worship practices. She systematically killed off all the priests of YHWH and replaced them with priests of Baal. Ahab did a lot more stuff than that, but what’s important for this discussion is that God sent a man named Elijah to confront Ahab.

Elijah told Ahab that it was going to stop raining for a while. Three years, in fact. But during that time, God miraculously provided for Elijah’s needs — first with birds bringing him sandwiches and then through the faith of a widow and her son.

Eventually, God sent Elijah back to Ahab for a winner-take-all confrontation on Mt. Carmel. Elijah took on 850 pagan prophets and the false god they worshiped. After some prophetic trash-talking, Elijah calmly stepped forward and called down fire from the sky. After that, he had all 850 of the false prophets killed, and then he outran a horse 12 miles back down the mountain to the palace.

I can’t think of anyone who saw more powerful signs of God’s protection and deliverance than Elijah.

And yet….

Jezebel threatens to kill him, and he runs away. He goes a 12-day journey down to the furthest point in the southern kingdom. Then he goes one more day’s journey. In other words, he goes as far as he can, and then he goes a little farther. At this point, God shows up and Elijah says, “I have had enough. Kill me now.”

God deals with Elijah like you would deal with a cranky toddler. He gives him a drink and a snack and puts Elijah down for a nap. Eventually, Elijah gets all the way to Mt. Sinai — in the Sinai Peninsula — near Egypt.

At this point in time, God feels the need to point something out: “Hey, Elijah, Prophet of ISRAEL, what are you doing here — in EGYPT?”

Elijah tells him, “I’m the only one left. I served you as best as I could, but now I’m as good as dead. Why don’t you finish the job?”

God says, “Watch this.”

Elijah stays put in the cave, but there’s all kinds of commotion going on outside. An earthquake, a fire, a tornado. And then God whispers. It’s the whisper that gets Elijah’s attention, so he goes and stands at the entrance to the cave.

I think God is saying to Elijah, “See what I can do when I get ready? Anytime I want, I can do all this.”

“Elijah, what are you doing here?”

Elijah thinks God is still looking for information — like maybe God didn’t hear his answer the first time. So, he repeats himself — word-for-word — probably a little louder this time to make sure God gets it.

God says, “I heard you the first time. Did you hear me? Get up and go home. There’s a new king.”

“You mean, Ahab won’t be king forever?”

“No, and there’s a new prophet?”

“You mean, I won’t be the prophet forever?”

“No, I was here before you, and I’ll be here after you’re gone. I’ve been at work getting things ready for the next chapter. Just because you don’t see it happen, doesn’t mean nothing’s happening. Oh, and by the way, you’re not alone. There are 7,000 just like you.”

Strange: Elijah and God look at the same situation, the exact same circumstances. God says, “I’ve got these people right where I want them.” Elijah says, “I am all alone and as good as dead.” God wasn’t panicked; Elijah was.

Elijah freaks out and runs away because he doesn’t see things from God’s perspective.

Maybe these are the days of Elijah after all.

I’ve finally converted to a Mac — a Powerbook G4 with a 1.67 GHz processor, a 15-inch monitor and a SuperDrive.

In the process of switching everything over, I’ve lost everything in my email inbox (it wasn’t entirely accidental). I had more than 700 email sitting there and the task of moving it all was just so daunting that in a moment of insanity I simply selected all and pressed “DELETE”.

Oh, it felt good.

Anyway, if you’ve written me anything that I haven’t responded to — you should probably send it again. Sorry for the inconvenience.

But not too sorry….

Just returned home from Phoenix where I had a great time with the folks at the Gateway Church of Christ. They’re super-excited about creating an environment where kids and parents can come together to learn the same thing. They’re making bold strides toward ending the dysfunctional cycle of parent-church-child relationships that currently exists in most churches. They’re implementing changes and starting to really think strategically about things. I can’t wait to see how things develop for them in the next few months.

By the way, if you’re ever in Phoenix, go eat at Pizza Bianco. They don’t have a website as far as I know. And the wait is ridiculous, but it might be the best pizza in America. I’m not kidding.

For those of you who have asked, my knee is still swollen, and I still don’t have full range of motion. But it doesn’t hurt anymore. That’s probably good and bad at the same time. I’m sure a doctor will tell me all about it — when I finally get around to visiting one.

I went with my friend and co-worker Jeff Sandstrom, and we laughed ourselves silly. I love having a good travelling partner.

I’m tired and will get back to talking about stress and other things. For now, I do have a question for you. It’s a question that was actually sent to me in an email, so here’s the body of that email. I eagerly await your ideas:

“Can you ask [this] question on your blog? Is it possible that Rick Warren’s book and Mel Gibson’s movie were going to trigger a national revival? Rick Warren said he thought it would when he started holding his ‘MegaConferences.’ Did Dan Brown’s book [The Da Vinci Code] have anything to do with thwarting their efforts?”

Well, what do you think?

Jesus himself said that if anyone was tired, exhausted and stressed out, we could come to him and he would give us rest.

Is anyone out there ready to say that this is their normal experience? Does anyone out there feel like the one word that could summarize their current lifestyle is “rest”?

Judging by the comments and email I’ve received in the last 24 hours, I’d say this is an area many of us struggle with. And it’s not for a lack of ideas. There were many great suggestions. CJ, I’m obviously not taking one of yours (fasting from my blog), but I am taking the other two.

I think Amy and Kerry make really interesting points that I want to follow up on. Amy is right: a certain amount of stress in life is unavoidable. Some can be avoided, so it is wise to talk about stress reduction. But some isn’t, so it is also wise to talk about stress management.

I think a lot of our stress (notice I’ve changed the subject from my stress specifically to our stress in general — Do I know how to avoid, or what?) comes from disobedience. God tells us to take time off, enjoy small pleasures, celebrate life and the goodness of God. If I don’t obey God — whether it is in taking a Sabbath rest or in overextending myself financially or treating my body as a Holy Temple of God — I bring avoidable stress on myself.

Overeat, gain weight, feel terrible, add more stress. Drink too much, do stupid things, feel terrible, add more stress. Practice deception — even in small things — cover my tracks, wait to be discovered, feel terrible, add more stress.

Any time I disobey God, I end up adding more unnecessary stress to my life — stress that is easily avoidable if I will just do what I know I’m supposed to do.

I am rarely this open about things, but I feel the need for confession. So, here are some areas where I have been walking in disobedience:

I’ve been talking more than listening.
I’ve been eating too much and not getting enough rest.
I haven’t been exercising and treating my body right.
I’ve been more concerned with how God’s correction applies to other people than how it applies to me.
I haven’t been trusting God with my finances.

How about you? Anything you want to confess? Any areas where you’ve been walking in disobedience that have added unnecessary stress to your life?

I have a friend in Texas who is a doctor, and he told me once that probably 80% of the people he sees are really coming for stress-related illnesses. Stress is a badge of honor in our society now. If you’re not stressed out, something’s wrong.

If you’re not worrying about the next hurricane, you’re probably worried about rising gas prices — or the war in Iraq — or whether or not gay people will be allowed to get married — or Harriet Miers’ Supreme Court nomination — or the state of your church — or real estate prices — or your kids — or your marriage — or your parents’ declining health — or your declining health — or what might happen this weekend — or what happened last weekend — or whether you’ll get the promotion — or if you’ll be able to find a babysitter for your job interview next Monday morning.

On and on it goes. We wear stress like a badge of honor. And it manifests its negative consequences in physical problems, emotional problems, relational problems, spiritual problems. We’re stressed out and exhausted, and we don’t seem to know what to do about it.

I had a conversation with a very good friend of mine recently. You know — one of those friends I’ve known for forever — a guy who is almost more like a brother than a friend. And we’ve been getting on each other’s nerves for the past couple of months. We couldn’t figure out what the problem was exactly. I just think we didn’t really like each other that much for a while.

And then it hit me: I’m so drained that I can’t give anyone my undivided attention. Not myself. Not my wife. Not my kids. Certainly not this friend.

So, this marginlessness life I’ve been living has impacted (negatively) the conversations I’ve had with and about my friend. If I was rested, if I was living at a sane pace, we could have unguarded conversations where we shared openly and freely. But because I am too tired to do that, I end up saying things I shouldn’t say and reacting in ways I know aren’t helping anyone.

My stress is threatening my health and my relationships. Yet I still continue to feed the monster.

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel this way?

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Dan Brown is right about one thing: there was a culture war going on in the early church between those who accented Jesus’ divinity and those who stressed his humanity. There were extremists on both sides; Dan Brown merely sides with the extremists who stressed Jesus’ humanity to the exclusion of his deity. And, while that same culture war may still be going on in 2005, perhaps it’s not entirely fair to blame it all on Constantine. In the Nicene Creed, Jesus is understood as both fully human and fully divine. Some have trouble with that paradox. Others take the paradox itself as evidence of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Forty years after the Council of Nicaea, in 367, the highly influential bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, delivered an Easter sermon in which he endorsed the writings that make up the New Testament as we know it today. To eliminate potential confusion, Athanasius wanted other books with other teachings destroyed.

“But someone,” writes Elaine Pagels, speculating specifically about the monks of a monastery in Upper Egypt, “gathered dozens of the books that Athanasius wanted to burn, removed them from the monastery library, sealed them in a heavy, six-foot jar and, intending to hide them, buried them in a nearby hillside near Nag Hammadi,” where they were unearthed in 1945, providing fodder for conspiracy theorists in general and Dan Brown’s novel in particular.

In a real sense, however, Brown’s novel only underscores the wisdom of Irenaeus. Pagels defines a Gnostic as “one who knows.” She suggests Irenaeus and other early church leaders “used the term derisively to refer to those they dismissed as people claiming to ‘know it all.’” At the core of Dan Brown’s novel is the conviction that folks like Leonardo Da Vinci, Robert Langdon and Elaine Pagels know things about God that lesser people cannot know, matters kept secret from common Christians like us who are not “in the gnosis.”

Don’t worry — I’m not broken. But my tooth is.

I feel like I’ve been beaten up. Allow me to explain: I have petellar tracking disorder – an imbalance in the knee area that causes the kneecap to shift or tilt out of place. What really gets me is that it never happens when I’m playing full-court basketball or something really physical. It happens getting off the sofa, or — as in the most recent case — rolling over in bed at 5:00 in the morning.

Every four or five months, my kneecap falls off its track and refuses to allow my leg to straighten out or bear much weight. It’s ridiculously painful and necessitates an equally painful trip to my friend Lee Strickland — chiropractor extraordinairre. Lee performs electro-stimulation to the muscles around the knee to try and reduce the amount of swelling. Then he “adjusts” the knee — a euphemism for doing something that feels about like someone taking a hammer and whacking my knee repeatedly for about three minutes.

I have to admit: it works.

Unfortunately, this happened just before I was scheduled to go out of town (again). So, I limped my way through airports in Atlanta and Philadelphia. I arrived and was taken to my hotel in Morgantown, PA. I met up with my friend Bill Winegardner, and we watched the second half of the USC-Notre Dame game — what a fantastic finish! Then we went downstairs and asked the lady at the front desk of the Holiday Inn where we should go to dinner.

She sent us to a place in Reading called The Ugly Oyster. Those of you who know me, you know I love to go to places like that. And it was good. If you ever find yourself in Reading, you’ll find it on 5th Street. Order a Crab Cake Sandwich. It’s really good.

Our waitress was just doing her job — trying to upsell us on dessert. But nothing they had sounded that great to us. So, she brought us each a Tootsie Pop. Walking to the car, I bit down and my gold cap in the back of my mouth came out. I have it in my shaving kit. It still has purple candy remnants on it.

It doesn’t hurt really. I was afraid it might affect my speech, but people tell me I’m not lisping or anything. It’s more a source of anxiety than anything else.

Oh, and I spoke in “big church” yesterday. And then I did a 5-Hour Workshop. For those of you who speak for a living, you know how long yesterday was for me. We got lost on our way to the airport, but I arrived in time to catch my flight home. My knee is feeling better. I slept some on the plane. As I said, my tooth doesn’t really hurt. The folks in Pennsylvania were really great, and the weather was beautiful. Tonight, I’ll be in the studio with Reggie Joiner and Sue Miller discussing the virtue of Generosity.

All in all, things are pretty good. I’ll get back to the whole Dan Brown, Da Vinci Code, Paul’s take on physical resurrection thing tomorrow. Or maybe I won’t. I’m teaching this Wednesday night on Elijah, and I have several thoughts about him bouncing around in my head that I’d like to get your take on. Maybe I’ll do both. Or maybe I’ll do neither. Who knows?

For now, I’m interested in hearing from you. How are you?