Archives For inspiration

You Complete Me

samuel kee —  November 27, 2012 — Leave a comment

Though I haven’t seen the whole movie, nor do I plan on it, I have seen a well-known clip from the movie Jerry Maguire.  It’s the scene where Jerry lovingly tells Dorothy, “You complete me.”  Dorothy tenderly replies to Jerry, “You had me at hello.”

In just a few words, Jerry encapsulates humanity’s greatest search.  Every human is searching for something or someone to complete them.  Every person is aware of their own inner emptiness, a voracious vacuum in their life that’s trying to suck meaning from every encounter or experience.  We’re haunted by the emptiness within us; we’re afraid that it’ll catch up to us before we can satisfy it.  We’re quick to try to fill it, to make it go away, to act like we have a handle on it.  But when we’re alone, we hear only the vacuum, the emptiness is just as empty as it ever was; we hear only one question, “Why am I here?”  We realize that our existence is incomplete—that something is missing—and we’re longing for something or someone to complete us.

But we must go deeper than the surface level in order to satisfy our emptiness.  You’ve probably heard of the phrase “unconditional love,” right?  Unconditional love is love without conditions.  Through sickness and health, poverty or pain, your spouse is to love you.  Even when you’re ugly, you’re partner is to put no conditions on his love for you.

I want to introduce the idea of “unconditional meaning.”  Unconditional  meaning is meaning without conditions.  No matter what you’re going through, you have meaning in your life.  The meaning in your life is not conditioned upon your circumstances or experiences.  It supersedes conditions.  It’s meaning that can be found in sickness and in health, in suffering and in prosperity.

The trouble with Jerry Maguire is that he was finding completion in a conditional relationship.  His being “completed” is dependant upon Dorothy’s existence.  Were she to leave (through death or divorce), the plug would be pulled on his life.  The meaning would drain from it and, once again, he would be incomplete.

Our souls are not searching for conditional completion, but unconditional.  Only unconditional meaning will be able to fill the empty space in our souls.  Jesus Christ is the source of our unconditional meaning.  To him we must look and say, “You complete me.”  How is it that Jesus can do this but no one else can?  Jesus was both fully God and fully human.  Thus he brings to our souls the infinite satisfaction of man’s pursuit of God.  He brings to us not only a complete identification with our emptiness, but also the complete power to fill us.

The way to find meaning in your life is to find him.  “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25).  This is the paradox of meaning.  To find your meaning, you must not look for it; you must only look for him.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

In God's Existence, Knowing God, Relationships , , , , , , ,
permalink

You have to hear this

samuel kee —  October 22, 2012 — 1 Comment

The more I work with people, the more I can see that we’re like colors.  Each person is so unique, so individual.  The deeper you go into a person, the more you realize how special each person is, with different abilities, capacities, interests, etc.  Nobody is the same.  Everyone is a world apart from the other.  To claim that people ought to be a certain way or fit into certain categories is to be incredibly narrow-minded and reductionistic.  For me to say, “I ought to be more like him,” is to burry my head in the sand.

We’re like colors: each one is different than the next, and no two are the same, but each one is perfect.  Red has no right to say to Yellow, “You’re not like me, so you’re wrong!”  No, Yellow is Yellow, and that’s okay.  Yellow is special; and no one can be Yellow like Yellow can be Yellow.  Red has no right to bully Yellow, just because it’s different.  Yellow is perfect, just how it is.

Hear me now, I am not saying that humans are perfect.  We have a ton of problems and shortcomings.  However, we are perfect in the sense that God made each one of us into a Masterpiece that reveals intrinsic beauty and value.  Nobody can be Yellow like Yellow can be Yellow.  And nobody can be you like you can be you.  There is no one like you, and that’s beautiful.  God squirted you out onto his pallet, and he has a specific purpose for you in his creation.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

In Cultural Issues, Finding Hope, Relationships , , , ,
permalink

Thanks to Derek Brumby for doing the video. It’s just a rough cut.

Posted on October 16, 2012 In Videos , , , ,
permalink Leave a comment

The Black Dog

samuel kee —  October 8, 2012 — 4 Comments

You’re alone in the woods at night, trying to make it home, when suddenly a dog attacks you.  The dog is large and black, without a collar.  His fur stands on end.  His ears point high and he has glowing eyes.  There is also a large scar running diagonal across his nose.  After biting you in the leg, he runs back into the cover of the trees.  Over the next several days, many of those in your community also report being attacked by a dog in the woods.  When asked to describe the animal, they all say the same thing: it’s a large black dog, his fur stands up, his ears point high, he has glowing eyes, no collar, and a scar running diagonal across his nose.  His attack is always the same; he runs out of hiding and bites the victim in the leg, before going back into the woods.

Oh yeah, and this happens to 35 of your neighbors, on 35 separate occasions.

How many dogs do you think were involved in these attacks?  Of course, you’d surmise that there was just one dog, not 35 different dogs.  Given the detailed description of the dog and how it attacked, you’d be right in assuming that the same dog attacked each person.

Now I want to talk about something else that attacks us, which no one can escape.  If you poll 35 or more people (which is a statistically significant number, by the way), you’ll find that each person is attacked by thoughts that can fit within these five categories:

  1. I have little worth.
  2. I am not good enough.
  3. I am not accepted.
  4. I cannot be forgiven.
  5. I am alone (and no one understands me).

You have probably been attacked by one or more of these, too.  I would wager that thousands of people could be polled, only to reveal that each person has been attacked by these five thoughts.  In other words, polling a thousand people would not reveal a thousand different thoughts, but just the same five.

Why?  Because it’s the same black dog.

And this black dog attacks us all with the same five lies about ourselves.  If you were to describe the ways that the black dog attacks you, you’d probably say, “He causes me to think I’m not worth it, I’m not good enough, I’m not accepted, I cannot be forgiven, and I’m all alone.”  If I were to ask 35 of your neighbors the same question, they would all report the same kind of attack.

Why?  Because it’s the same black dog.

The same Black Dog attacks us with the same lies.  This is crucial for us to understand.  It means that the thoughts that attack us are not true, but are from the poisonous mouth of our enemy.  He hides in the woods and attacks us all with the same deceitful thoughts.  His strategy is lies.  Lies are his teeth and he wants to sink them deeply into each of our hearts.

It’s not true.  It’s not you.  It’s the Black Dog.  If it were not the same dog, then each person would describe a different dog.  But the fact is, that we all describe the same dog.  It’s not in our heads, we are not the problem, it’s the Black Dog, turned loose in our world.

The Black Dog wants to devour us, bite by bite.  After recognizing his lies, then we must fight him with the truth.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

In Finding Hope, God's Existence , , , , , ,
permalink

Why Do We Have to Die?

samuel kee —  July 21, 2011 — Leave a comment

Our DNA is set to die.

“Daddy, if Jesus died for us, then why do we still have to die?”  My son, who was four at the time, was still trying to make sense of his grandpa’s recent passing.  He was looking to me for answers.  I was struck by the depth of his question, born from experience, no less.  At this point, dads, don’t rely on mom to answer the tough questions.  When we’re asked to step up to the plate, we must do so with courage.  If you don’t know the answer to your child’s tough questions, then do what ever it takes to figure it out.

I told him the story of Ulysses and the Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey.  The Cyclops was a savage beast with one eye and as tall as a tree.  He managed to lure Ulysses and his men into his cave and then roll a stone in front of the entrance, so that they were trapped and could not escape.  But one night, the men managed to blind the Cyclops while he was sleeping.  Then, they were able to escape!

Before we can escape from the cave, the Cyclops must be defeated.  Applying this to my son’s question, the cave represents death and the Cyclops represents sin.  The assumption behind my son’s question is that humans are alive.  Though this is hard to explain to a four-year-old, we must realize that we are not alive.  Though our bodies are alive physically, our souls are dead spiritually.  Scripture affirms this: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” (Ephesians 2:1-2).

This means that we are already dead; we start off in the cave.  The question is virtually unanswerable if we are alive; as my son said, then it makes no sense that we have to die if Christ already died for us.  But what if Scripture is right in saying that we are not alive, but dead?  Then it’s not a matter of figuring out why we still have to die, but how we can escape from the cave.

The real question is: “How can I escape from the cave of death?”  You see, we were born into the cave and have never lived outside of the cave.  Worse still, we’re being guarded by a monstrous Cyclops who keeps his eye on us at all times.  The only way for us to escape from the cave is if someone deals with the Cyclops.

The Cyclops, remember, is sin.  Someone has to deal with our sin, which is the power inside of the cave (“the sting of death is sin” according to 1 Corinthians 15:56 ), before we can escape from the death-cave.

Whether we like it or not, we are born inside of the cave; there’s nothing we can do about that.  Our DNA is set to die, following the course our souls have already blazed.

By understanding this, we can now see what Jesus’ death does for us.  His death on the cross destroys the Cyclops in the cave.  Though Ulysses and his men merely blind the Cyclops and manage to escape through trickery, Jesus finishes the job.  Jesus utterly destroys death, leaving it limp and powerless.  Having destroyed death, we are free to leave the cave.

This means that we do not have to stay in death any longer.  Did I say that we no longer have to die?  No, I did not.  I said that we no longer have to stay in death.  Remember, we were born inside of the cave; we all will die eventually (excluding the miraculous return of Christ).  But Jesus’ death on the cross means that we do not have to stay in death.  Since Jesus defeated sin, we are free to rise to life.  Or, as the Apostle Paul puts it, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our sins, made us alive together with Christ.” (Ephesians 2:4-5).

Because God loves us so much, he defeated sin so that we could escape from death.  Because God loves us so much, he made dead people come alive.  Jesus died for us, not to spare us from death, but to save us from death.  Had Jesus not done that, then we would remain forever in death, a torturous existence apart from God.

Now that Jesus has defeated sin, grab hold of him and let him pull you out of death.  The part about the resurrection of Jesus that thrills me the most is the fact that I can hold onto Jesus and let him pull me to life.  Feel the force of the resurrection pulling you back to life, out of the cave, out of the grave.

Jesus died for us so that we could finally live.  Every fiber in your being should ache at the prospect of coming alive at last.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

In Finding Hope, Knowing God , , , , , ,
permalink

Cherries

samuel kee —  June 16, 2011 — Leave a comment

God is giving us the ability to love others.

The cherries were the biggest that I’ve ever seen on our trees.  It didn’t make sense to me, however, since we were in the middle of a drought inNortheastern Ohio.  I learned that the cherry trees basically “freaked out” because of the lack of water, so to make sure that they didn’t die off, they produced the biggest cherries they could.  It’s remarkable to see that great famine can lead to great fruit.

Yes, there can be benefits from suffering.

“Sympathy is love perfected by experience” (H. L. Goudge).  That’s what the Apostle Paul has in mind in 2 Corinthians 1:4, when he writes that God “comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

Sympathy is love perfected by experience.  It’s harder to love someone when you don’t know what they’re going through.  Love is perfected when you can feel what another feels.  When we experience afflictions, God is giving us the ability to love others deeply, unlike we were able to do before.  God gives us a precious gift in our suffering: comfort.  In turn, we love others best when we pass along this same precious gift from God.

There may be many purposes in your suffering, but don’t neglect to see this one.  Your affliction can be used to heal another down the road.  You are burying seeds in the soil of suffering now, but you will soon reap the harvest and be able to give the fruit to another.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

In Finding Hope , , , , , ,
permalink

War

samuel kee —  June 5, 2011 — Leave a comment

Now is the time to get out of the war with God.

“Jesus was God’s answer to the human dilemma” (Ajith Fernando).  Jesus was/is perfect.  He’s exactly what we need.  We need someone who could stand in the gap for us, in our impossible situation.

We had declared war on God: that was our problem.  When our ancestors chose to rebel against God’s rule, they chose to take up arms against him.  They wanted out of his kingdom and out from under his rule.  They wanted to rule themselves and set up their own kingdom where that could be possible.  The human kingdom is not passive, either, but aggressive.  It aggressively attacks the will and ways of the heavenly kingdom.  We want to be at the center of the cosmos; we want life to revolve around us and our desires.

We war for the rights to the center.

If you could see the spiritual realm, you would see the raging battle, as the enemies of God relentlessly attack God’s kingdom and purposes.  The enemies fight for rights, not love, for glory, not submission.  The cataclysmic manifestations of our rebellion surface as molten physical disasters all over this earth, only to be echoed by equally devastating spiritual catastrophes.  Faith, relationships, emotions, and earth, are all wrecked, all casualties of our war with God.

Jesus knew full well what he was doing when he left his perfect union with God in order to come be with earth.  Jesus knew that he was stepping into a war; but that is what he came to do.  Jesus stepped into our shoes in order to end the war.  Jesus came in order to be the rebel in our place, to be the opposition.  He entered the war so that we could exit.  Once in battle, Jesus threw himself headlong against the armies of God, allowing himself to take the ensuing punishment of that position.

Jesus threw himself against his own Heavenly Father so that we could leave that status.  He became what we were—rebels—that we might become what he was: a child of God.  He was our bloody sacrifice, taking upon himself the full wrath of God that was destined for all of those at war with God.

Now is the time to get out of the war with God, to put up your arms in surrender.  Now is the time to stop fighting against him, since Jesus stands in the gap in your place.  Jesus has made the way out: he is indeed God’s perfect answer to the human dilemma.  God doesn’t want to be at war with us and that is why he sent his Son to end the war.  God loved the world so much that he sent his one and only Son, so that whoever relies on him might not be destroyed, but have eternal life.

The crux of the Christian life is humble submission to the will of God.  The Christian seeks to obey God, not fight against him.  The Christian knows that God is for us, not against us, for Jesus has ended the war.  Therefore, the Christian knows that God’s purposes will be for our good, rather than for our ruin.  The Christian trusts that God’s ways are not breaking our relationship with him, but, in fact, are doing the opposite.  Whether we realize it or not, the things that God allows in our lives draw us closer to him and mend the old battle scars.

In other words, when God answers your prayer, it is for your healing; when God doesn’t answer your prayer as you’d like, it is also for your healing.  Remember, he is not at war with you.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

In Knowing God , , , , ,
permalink

The Carriage and the Car: Jesus and the Law

samuel kee —  May 19, 2011 — Leave a comment

What is the purpose of the law?

Nothing was as important as one’s interpretation of the law, so believed the religious leaders of Jesus’ day.  They had their interpretation of the law, relying mainly on tradition.  Tradition explicated the law best, so they thought.

Then Jesus arrived with his own illumination of the law, one that flew in the face of their beloved tradition.  Jesus never wanted to do away with the law, but to clarify it and, even more so, to complete it (Matthew 5:17).  His is the best explication of the law, not theirs.  Their teaching led to slavery, bondage, and ruin; but his led to freedom and life.

It’s crucial to understand what Jesus meant when he said, “do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Matthew 5:17).  As I said, Jesus came to clarify and to complete.

The word “fulfill” means something like: to bring to its goal, keeping its purpose in mind.  It’s most helpful to use the analogy of a carriage and a car.  A carriage is a “vehicle” used long ago, having four wheels and usually pulled by horses.  If I were to ask, “What is the fulfillment of a carriage?” you could not answer my question without keeping the purpose of the carriage in mind.  The purpose of the carriage is to transport people (or goods) from one place to another.

Thus the fulfillment of the carriage is the car, for the purpose of the carriage and the car is the same: to transport people (or goods) from one place to another.  Even though the car is radically different than the horse-drawn carriage, it is its proper fulfillment.  The car brings the carriage to its goal, keeping its purpose in mind.

Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.  Catching on?

The religious leaders’ explication of the law was not the car, but more of the carriage.  In fact, they just swapped out the horses and inserted humans.  By piling on extra laws via the accepted tradition, they forced people into the harness and expected human righteousness to pull the load of the law.  The human yoke became hard, not easy, and heavy, not light.

But humans, no matter how spiritually strong, cannot pull the load of the law.  This was not the proper fulfillment of the law.

So Jesus comes zooming up in his 425 hp Corvette and declares, “This is the fulfillment of the law!”  Jesus replaces the horses and humans with an engine.  He does not destroy the law, or the carriage, but he fulfills it.  The car is the proper fulfillment of the carriage.

Jesus’ illumination of the law makes us want to stand up and cheer; for he releases humans from the harness of the law.  Even better, he gives them cars, which are auto-mobiles.  These are carriages that drive themselves, because they are powered by an engine.  And the best news of all is that Jesus is the engine; his righteousness is the power that pulls the law.  That’s all the horsepower we’ll ever need.

Humans cannot pull the law by the power of their own righteousness: no matter how hard I try and no matter how well I behave, I will fall short.  The law only keeps me enslaved like and animal in a harness.  When Jesus fulfills the law, he gives us a car that is powered by the gospel, which is the righteousness of Christ given to us.

Jesus is the power that pulls the law for us.  Jesus did not come to destroy the law, but to bring it to its goal, all the while maintaining its purpose.  Again, what is the purpose of the carriage and car?  To transport us from one place to another.  What is the purpose of the law?  To transport us from one place to another: god-forsakenness to God-with-us.  Namely, the purpose of the law and the purpose of Jesus is the same, to get sinners back into a relationship with a holy God.

The religious leaders thought that humans could make that journey, but Jesus knew better: only he could.  That is why he came to fulfill the law with his own power, extended on our behalf, that we might be restored to our Heavenly Father.

No human can pull the weight of the law on his or her own.  It is utterly foolish for us to place that expectation on anyone.  Yet Christians are notorious for “putting the cart before the horse” so to speak.  We condemn non-Christians first, for their behavior, as if somehow they should have the ability that no one else has ever had: to pull the law.  We judge them for their cursing, sexuality, beliefs, and raw behavior.  We criticize their morals and get angry at their actions.

But if we truly believe what Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, we should realize that nobody can pull the law apart from Jesus.  Nobody can do what the law says without an Engine.  This means that rather than judging or getting angry, we need to introduce them to the Car, first.  We need to tell them about Jesus and how he fulfills the desires of our hearts and satisfies the demands of the law.  Once they come to know Jesus, he will come into their lives with his Corvette and begin to pull the law for them, just like he does with us.

Jesus is the engine that pulls us from slavery to freedom, from being lonely to having a Lord.  Jesus brings us back to God by pulling the law with his own righteousness.  Our job is to get into the car and let him drive us where we could never have gone on our own.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

In Finding Hope, Knowing God , , , , , , ,
permalink

Pulling Trees

samuel kee —  May 2, 2011 — Leave a comment

Sometimes it feels like we’re between the pulling trees.  We’re chained at every corner of our lives and it seems like life couldn’t get any worse.  But this is part of the process of restoration.

The thing that we’re ready to call it quits over, God calls his starting point.

This video captures the heart of chapter 9 of my forthcoming book, Hope Stands: Ten Reasons Why You Must Not Give Up, to be released nationwide this September.  Many thanks to Tim Anderson, Tim Traver, Ty Anderson, and Jennifer Traver for helping to make this video.  Enjoy and share with a friend!  (You can find the rest of the videos at www.hopestands.com.)

© Samuel Kee, 2011

In Finding Hope, Videos , , , , , , , ,
permalink

Are You Cursed?

samuel kee —  April 22, 2011 — 1 Comment

He wore our curse as a crown.

Why didn’t they just stone him?  That’s what they usually did to false prophets.  Instead, they clamored to crucify him.  Crucifixion was something the brutal Romans did; it wasn’t for the Jews.  They would strip you bare and nail various body parts onto vertical and horizontal pieces of wood.  Grown men would lose control of all bodily functions while on the cross.  Women were rarely, if ever, crucified, because not even the Romans could stand the thought of a woman being hung on a cross.

So why did they crucify Jesus?  It was part of God’s perfect design.  God had written in the Old Testament that anyone who was hung on a tree would be under God’s curse (Deuteronomy 21:23).  Even more, they would be forced to die outside of the city, bearing the curse alone, so that the land would not be desecrated.  The one who died on the tree was to carry the curse so that the land and its people might be spared.

Right before Jesus was crucified, the soldiers twisted together a Date Palm branch and made a crown of thorns for him to wear.  The thorns of the Date Palm could be as long as nine inches.  This sardonic crown was then jammed onto Jesus’ head; yet, the soldiers did more than they realized.  The first curse came in Genesis 3, when God cursed the land because of Adam’s sin.  As a result, no matter how hard Adam would work the land, it would often produce thorns instead of crops.  Thorns, in other words, represented the curse.

Fast forward to Jesus, wearing the crown of thorns on Good Friday, dying alone on the tree outside of the city.  Jesus was wearing our curse, bearing our blame.  Jesus would die alone, outside of God’s presence and blessing, beneath God’s wrath and cursing.  He wore our curse as a crown on his head, taking from us the hat that was ours.  Even more, the fact that he was crowned turned Jesus in to the “King of Curses.”  He ruled over it, just as much as he was crushed under it.

All the while, the crown of glory would be shifted from his head to ours.  He would get the curse and we would get the grace. He would be totally rejected and we would be totally accepted.

He would die alone; and when we die, we will make it home.  Crucifixion was the means by which the judgment meant for us would be released onto him.  The judgment meant for your head has already landed on his.  This means that your future is safe.  When you stand before God, there will be no more curses left, for they all were spent on Jesus.

When the dust settles around the cross, you can go free.  This is true for every follower of Jesus.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

In Knowing God , , , , , , , , ,
permalink