Have you ever sent an email, text, or some other message you wished you could take back right after pushing “send”? A few months after college graduation I was getting my hair cut in Breckenridge, Colorado. The lady cutting my hair noticed I was reading The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Leslie Newbigin.

Figuring I might know a little about theology, she asked if I could explain why there was so much evil in the world. Since I had just taken a class on apologetics, I decided to tell her everything I knew about why God might allow evil. Every time she had a question, I had a quick retort.

From my perspective the conversation was going great. But all of a sudden she started crying and said, “This is a bunch of &$%! You have an answer for everything. It can’t be that easy.” I was completely taken aback. This made me a bit nervous, especially since she was holding scissors next to my head! 

I’ve always had a fascination with Russia. As a child, I remember sitting and watching the hockey game in the 1980 Winter Olympic games, USA versus the USSR. The Soviet players appeared so serious and void of emotion. “Why do they look so mean?” I asked my father.

He explained the Cold War to me in age appropriate terms. An “us and them” mentality began to grow in my young mind until my dad said something that broke this chain of thought. “You have to realize it’s not the people we are against, it’s their government. It is a group of people forcing evil ways on their country. We must pray for the people in the USSR, for God to help them.”

Fourteen years later I found myself preparing to live in part of the former Soviet Union. I was headed to southern Russia as a missionary. The Iron Curtain had fallen a few years prior. The world had experienced crazy change practically overnight. I couldn’t believe it - had God heard the prayers of my father and thousands and millions of others?

[This originally appeared on the Mars Hill Church blog]

I was originally assigned the task of looking at advice on how to be a man from a men’s magazine. Problem is, there wasn't any.

Esquire's June/July 2010 issue was called How to Be a Man. Appropriate. With a title that declarative and a tagline of “Man at His Best,” I was anxious to comb through it to see what they had to say about manhood. With a base circulation of 700,000 and competition like GQ, Maxim, and Details, Esquire is arguably one of the largest and most influential men’s magazines in the world. They've got to know what they're talking about, right? Esquire’s website describes their audience as "the affluent and successful man." Should be exactly what I'm shooting for here.

With Irony As Our Guide

The other day I was looking through old picture books with my kids. My son’s favorite is one a preschool teacher gave him about Loggerhead sea turtles. It’s a sweet story that follows the life of a baby sea turtle into adulthood. They wanted to hear it again, so we cuddled on the couch and read it for “old times” sake. However, this time I noticed a piece of wisdom in the story that I’d missed before.

The mother Loggerhead builds a nest in the sand, lays her eggs and heads back out to sea. Weeks later, the baby turtles crack through their eggs. However, many hungry eyes are watching and waiting. The babies’ shells are soft and make them an easy meal. Many sea gulls and crabs hide in the wings waiting for them the turtles to make their journey toward the sea. So the babies wait until nighttime in hopes of using the dark to camouflage them. 

What are the questions you most fear being asked about your faith? Even as a trained apologist there are many tough questions I hope don’t come up in my discussions with non-believers. Some questions are simply difficult to answer. But we can’t ignore the tough questions. Such an approach is cowardly and counterproductive for the kingdom of God. We must—yes, must—be prepared with an answer for the toughest questions (1 Peter 3:15). We have nothing to fear because the truth is on our side.

I recently had the opportunity to endorse Mark Mittelberg’s upcoming book entitled, “The Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask (With Answers).” This book is based upon a survey Mark sponsored with Tyndale Publishers through the Barna Group of one thousand self-proclaimed Christians. They asked each person what faith questions they would feel most uncomfortable being asked by a co-worker or friend. Some questions are expected but a few might come as a surprise.

My father died when I was four. I grew up never knowing much about him. My mother remarried a wonderful man who adopted me and loved me. I didn't have a burning desire to find out who my birth father was until my wife and I decided to visit Minnesota a few years ago to visit the place of my heritage. Maybe to find Dad.

I'll never forget the experience. Karin and I stayed with my father's older brother, Sam. As you can guess, it didn't take long for Uncle Sam to ask me if I wanted to see photos of Dad, as well as some letters he had written. I quickly agreed.

The three of us climbed up into his attic where all the stuff was stored in an old trunk. My uncle pulled the light on with a string, passing around fading photos, reading letters aloud, and listening to Uncle Sam tell story after story.

Restore our fortunes, Lord, as streams renew the desert. Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy. They weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest. - Psalm 126:4-6

Today is one of those mornings that I don't want to get out of bed. The pressures of the world and the burdens for my friends is almost unbearable. Part of that is realizing that I need alone time. The other part is hearing the cries of my friends and not able to do anything about it. 

Makes me feel helpless. 

I had a conference call with most of the members of my Throw Mountains team yesterday. We're being attacked. We need prayer. And, we're not the only ones.

Does God get sick of the whole world? At first glance, it seems like indeed there is a link between events in the world and the anthropomorphic description of God getting ill. On one particularly slow Sunday in church (confession here: I do sometimes take notes on the sermon and when the sermon doesn’t lend itself to notetaking, then I still write some things down anyway) and so I began to think to myself, ‘is there really something that makes God sick to the point of actually vomit?’ And, to my surprise, I actually found out that there is a whole bunch of verses on vomiting in the Scriptures. In fact, there are 13 separate occasions in which the act, what we call throwing up—getting seriously ill to the stomach, whatever you’re comfortable with, is not only mentioned, but actually references God on more than one occasion. Which leads me to conclude that yes, God gets sick at times.I won’t recount all 13 passages. They are graphic to say the least, particularly the one in Job 20:15 that has Zophar speaking and talking about the treatment of the poor. Ok…never mind, I will share it and it goes like this: