Kevin DeShazo

I say I believe in a faith that can move mountains…though I’m not sure I could move a mustard seed.

I say I believe in a faith that can raise the dead…though I’m not sure my faith can raise even my head.

I say I believe in a faith that can walk on water…though I’m unsure I can even take a step.

I say I believe in a God of love…though right now all I can muster up is anger, frustration, disappointment.

I say I believe in a God of hope…though doubt runs through my veins.

In Pete Wilson’s book Plan B, he asks a question.

What would you do in your life if you were absolutely confident that God was with you?

I have hated that question for the last 2 months.  Hated it.  I will tell you day and night that I think God is with me.  I’ll write about it.  I’ll sing about it.  I’ll meet in small groups about it.  But I won’t dare live it.  I won’t dare believe it.  The last 18 months have been pretty ridiculous.  Without going into detail, let’s just say it has been tough.  Tough for a person who, for 26 years, nothing in life ever went wrong.  Literally, ever.  Everything I touched turned to gold.  I’m not being boastful, I’m just being honest.  For 18 months, everything I’ve touched has turned to death.  I had an employee about 4 years ago tell me, “Kevin, I hate to say this, but something bad is going to happen to you.  We don’t go through life without difficulty.”  Those words ring in my head every day.  Every.  Single.  Day.  And anger builds.  I wish I could run out on some bridge, yelling and screaming at God like I’m in some Hollywood movie, and he would magically show up.  That would be easier, I think.  I’d like to say that through trials I’m learning more about my faith.  And in some sense I am.  More than that, I’m waiting.  Waiting to see if He is ever going to show up.  If something is ever going to give.  If at some point this God that moves mountains, calms seas and raises the dead will show His face.  In the meantime, I’ll keep telling you that I believe it while thinking, “do as I say, not as I do.”

photo attribution

I have been reading the comments on this post by Carlos Whittaker, regarding a note sent to him by a homosexual friend who was kicked out of ministry.  You can, and should, read Los’ reply here.  I am grateful for his response.  Here is what gets me.  His blog is ranked #3 in “Christianity” blogs.  He has over 200,000 unique visitors each month.  Yet there was some serious, serious hate spilled in the comments section yesterday.  Stuff that would (should) make you cringe.  I was crazy angry.  And sad.  And ashamed.  This is a serious issue in the Church.  We are becoming known for what we are against, rather than what we are for.

It is easy to be against something.  It is easy to degrade somebody’s beliefs.  Somebody’s opinion, religion, sin.  It makes us feel good about ourselves.  We believe that we are so much better than John who looks at pornography or Thomas who is pro-choice.  Or Tiger Woods who, well, you know what he did.  There is no risk involved in being against something.  Just find an angry mob and join right in with your plank-eyed hatred and protesting.

But to be for something?  To show mercy, love, forgiveness, support?  To fight for the man being exiled from his church, family, work, and friends for his sexuality.  To sit with him over coffee and pray for him.  To listen to him.  To hurt with him.  That isn’t easy.  That is out of the ordinary.  That is risk.  That is what we are called to be and do.  Jesus was known for what he was for.  And what he was for changed the world.

Are you being identified for things you are against?  What are these things?
What are some things that you need to stand up for?

I’ve had a lot of questions about the title of my blog, “Life in Slow Motion.”  It is a pretty simple answer, really.   Number one, it is the name of a song (and CD) by one of my favorite artists, David Gray.  Secondly, it is a reminder.  I tend to get in a hurry.  I like to consider myself a laid back guy, but I can very easily and very quickly get caught up in the busyness, hurry up and go pace of life.  I don’t want to live that way.  I want to be intentional.  I want to slow down.  I don’t want to miss things.  I want to enjoy rocking my son to sleep, talking/dreaming/watching movies with my wife, having coffee with friends, serving my King.  I don’t want to always be concerned with “what’s next.”  Oddly enough, that is exactly what we talked about at church this weekend. From the book of Luke, chapter 12:

22. Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.” (NIV)

25. Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? (NIV)

29. “What I’m trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving.” (MSG)

Powerful words.  Being anxious is just another way of saying we don’t have faith in God.  That we believe in Him, but that we don’t believe Him.

What are you worrying about?  Do you need to slow down, and take life in slow motion?

Today is Ash Wednesday.  The beginning of Lent.  Generally, I’ve not been one to give up anything during this season.  Mostly because I get tired of hearing people say they are giving up chocolate.  Or Facebook (Twitter will be the trendy pick this year).  Or soda/pop/coke – whatever variation works for your particular region.  Not that those are bad things to fast from, I’m just not sure what benefit one gets, in a spriritual sense, from giving up those things.  If giving up Dr Pepper brings you closer to Jesus, that’s a story I want to hear.  Maybe I should give up judging others?

This year, I am choosing to take part.  I am going to give up gossip.  Over the past year, it has snuck up on me and taken over.  It is killing my soul.  I hate it.  I have always hated it.  Now I’m the guy doing what he hates.  I need to shut my mouth and listen to people, listen to their story, rather than telling my version of their story.  Gossip assassinates character.  More than anything, it distracts from the Kingdom.  And that is unacceptable.  While giving up gossip, I will add reading one chapter of Proverbs per day during this season.  I started this in January but got off track quite quickly.  I also want to be intentional about listenting to people.  Really listening to them.  Listen and find out ways I can help them, serve them, pray for them.

If you read this, I want to know what you are giving up and what you are adding, if you are taking part in this season of Lent.  Even if you’ve never commented before.  Make yourself known.  If you’re not participating, I would also like to know why (sorry, I’m curious nosy).

**Edit: I saw this quote yesterday from an old high school friend, TJ McCloud, regarding the season of Lent, and thought I should mention it here.

Fasting, or giving up anything for a time is a powerful thing, but only when tied to deep prayer and purpose.

So, what are you giving up?

I posted this video of Francis Chan, Pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, CA, on my other blog (if you are a dad, or soon to be dad, check it out), but wanted to post a different take on it here.  This video was shown Sunday during church and a few things really struck me regarding the safety we try to create in our lives.  Maybe better put, how we avoid making any impact on this world.  We are consumed with fear.  Fear of getting hurt, of dying, of failing, of semi-failing, of looking stupid, of looking “too” smart, and on and on and on.  Rather than try, we just sit.  We sit in our safe house.  Drive in our safe car.  Go to our safe schools.  Our safe jobs.  Our safe friends.  We avoid all situations that involve any risk.  As a result, nothing changes.  We stay in the same neighborhoods, talk to the same people, have the same conversations.  We put on our bicycle helmet and ride our bike, with training wheels, on the sidewalk in front of our home.  It’s easy, I get it.  I’m no different.  Is this the life we are called to?  We live our lives like this, go to church on Sunday and think we’re going to change the world?

With risk comes the possibility of failure.  With risk also comes the possibility that we will change something.  Someone.  For good.  Maybe it means we finally go after our dream.  Maybe it means we stop worrying and go on that mission trip to Africa.  Maybe it means we stop being afraid and go serve at our local homeless shelter.  Or maybe it means we just sit and listen to a friend that is hurting and pray for them.  Whatever the case, it means we trust Him.  Which may be the scariest part of all.

There are so many needs that will go unmet if we continue to be safe.  If we don’t do it, He will find somebody who will.  I want to be that somebody.

So what’s stopping me?  My fear is not failure, but how others will perceive me if my risk fails.

What about you?  What fear is stopping you?

I am Tiger Woods.

I have lied.

I have cheated.  Not on my wife, but cheating is cheating.

I have deceived.

I have covered up wrongs.

I have believed in the size of my ego.

I have allowed my pride to cloud my decisions.

I have believed that I am bigger, better, entitled.

I have created a false image for others, while privately being somebody else.

I have been, and still am, a hypocrite.

Do I deserve to be judged, humiliated, divorced, stoned?  Or do I need prayer?

What about Tiger?

Friday night Megan asked if I would take the night shift with Gabe.  That she had to ask is an entirely different story.  To be honest, I rarely get up with Gabe.  When he was younger, I would get up and help every now and then.  Lately, not so much.  Given his recent sleeping pattern, or lack thereof, I knew it would be a long night.  Sure enough, the crying began.  Megan made a bottle for him and I went to work.  5 minutes later, he was passed out.  Snoring.  In a milk-induced coma.  “This is nothing.”  I go to lay him down and head back to bed.  Before I make it back to the bedroom, he is awake.  “Really?”  Back to his room, I find him in his crib practicing his new trick, standing.  2 attempts to just lay him back down.  No dice.  Back to the bottle.  Passed out again.  Snoring.  Knocked out.  Wait 5 minutes, lay him down, all is good.  30 seconds.  Wide awake.  I punch the air and cuss under my breath.  “This never happens for Megan.”  I am furious.  How hard is it to lay a kid down?  Let alone one that is already asleep.  How incompetent am I?  Back to the rocking chair.  Eff the bottle, the kid isn’t hungry, he’s just sleepy.  We’re about 40 minutes into this routine, by the way.  Rocking, finally back asleep.  Dead to the world.  Laughing in his sleep.  Cutest kid on this planet.  My son.  “Jesus I need help.  I can’t do this.  I can’t even lay my son down without waking him.  Please help.  He needs rest.  I need rest and have no more patience.”  I wait about 25 minutes, bringing this shift to a total of an hour and a half.  Time to lay him down.  “Seriously, Jesus, I can’t do this.  I really really need your help.  If this doesn’t work I honestly may punch a hole in the wall.  What anger problem?  Just help me, OK?”  I lay him down, he rolls over.  And sleeps.

What a kick in the face.  I like to think I am a fairly smart guy and can handle most situations – other than working under the hood of my car or skinning a deer.  Do you skin a deer?  As capable as I like to think I am, I couldn’t lay my sleeping son in his crib without waking him.  I literally needed God to help me with that.  Thankfully, He’s that kind of God.  No walls were punched.  Nothing broken.  Except for my pride.  Really, it was a great lesson.  I have to lean on Him.  I must.  For everything.  Even something as small as laying my son down to sleep.  If I need His help with that, where else am I ignoring His outstretched, helping hand, thinking that I can go it alone?

This post is not my own, but I could definitely have written the same thing – although mine would have been in far too many words.  To give credit where credit is due, I am stealing this post from Pete Wilson.  Pete is the pastor at Cross Point Church in the Nashville area.  Somehow he ended up following me on Twitter, so I followed him back – I am quite glad that I did, because his tweets (I still hate that word) prove quite challenging at times.  You can read his blog or follow him on Twitter :

The Ugly Truth About My Prayer Life

There is an employee at Qdoba here in OKC who goes by the name of Eric.  Megan and I, pre-child, would frequent this particular establishment of goodness, many times engaging in conversation with Eric. For those that are questioning my loyalty to Chipotle, this was before that particular deliverer of goodness had arrived in the metro (plus, Megan isn’t a fan of Chipotle – we are working through this).  When Megan was pregnant, Eric would always ask how far along she was, how the pregnancy was going, if we knew if it was going to be a boy or girl, etc.  Extremely nice guy – although sadly I didn’t know his name until Sunday.  I actually ran to Qdoba about 2 hours before we had Gabe (I was starving) and spoke with Eric, excitedly explaning that we should be having our son very soon.  He lectured me about why I should be at the hospital, instead of filling my belly – sadly he was correct, as Megan was finding out at that moment that she would be having a C section.  Dad failure numero uno.  Back to the point.  Eric had shown me pictures of his kids (a 4 year old boy and a 6 month old baby girl) and always made it a point to ask how things were going.  Not the typical service at Qdoba.  To be honest, we always hoped that he would be there whenever we went in.  We looked forward to seeing him.

Post-child, we don’t go out to eat all that often, so Eric had only seen Gabe once.  This Sunday we ventured out to Qdoba after church with some friends, informing them of our “friend at Qdoba” who, sadly, was not behind the counter.  Seated outside and enjoying the weather and conversation, the door burst open and out walked Eric, who had been working in the back but had noticed us and came out to see Gabe.  In the midst of playing with our mini-human he says, with an almost eerie calm, “Yeah we just lost our little girl.”  What the?  Shocked, stunned, saddened and in disbelief, the four of us just sat there.  How do you respond to that?  He went on to say that they really didn’t know why it happened, but the doctors had given it some medical name that I have never heard (and can’t remember).  She was 9 months and 23 days old.  All we could do was say, “I’m so sorry.”  That’s it?  That’s all we had?  We, four people who supposedly love Jesus and claim to want to be more like Him, didn’t even offer to pray for this man who?  Sadly, I’m ashamed to say it did cross my mind and I balked.  I don’t know why I balked or what went through my mind.  Maybe pride, not wanting to be embarrassed, not wanting to feel like an idiot.  No idea.  That is a completely different post between me and God, but freaking a – how ridiculous is that?  We said “sorry” and let him go back to work?!  Anger doesn’t begin to describe how I feel about my own lack of action.  This man just lost his 9 month old baby and all I can muster up is an “I’m sorry.”  Absolutely ridiculous.

Other than disappointment, I imaging you are thinking, “how on Earth is he going to tie this in with abortion?”  Answer:  read on.  Eric and his wife didn’t know when their daughter was born that she was sick (mostly, because she wasn’t).  They had no way of knowing she would die in 9 months and 23 days.  However, I would vehemently argue that, had they known they would have such a short time with her, they would have said, “Bring it on.”  Abortion would not have crossed their mind.  If, God-forbid, we were to find out that Gabe was sick and going to die next week, every single day with him would have been worth it.  Regardless of the pain, anger, depression and sadness that would follow, it would be worth it to have had this time.  Actually, there was a slight chance that he was going to be born with Down Syndrome.  We were a bit freaked out, knew that if it did happen it would be quite a challenge, but he was still going to be our son.  More than that, who are we to say that somebody born with Down Syndrome (or any disease) is not worthy of life?  I cannot imagine why anybody, let alone a parent, would be pro-choice.  If your 5 year old gets diagnosed with MS are you going to determine that it is better for him to die immediately than “suffer” through life?  How selfish is that?  When I was a kid, I was pro-choice.  I had no concept of abortion, but figured a woman could decide what to do.  As I got older and became more informed (and really, just understood what it was), it was a no-brainer that abortion was heinous and wrong.  I am reminded of 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child I spoke and thought and reasoned like a child.  But when I grew up, I put away childish things.”  Who are we to decide the value or worth of a life?  Because someone may be ridiculed as a result of a disease they are born with, they shouldn’t have the opportunity to live?  Because life might be hard for them, they shouldn’t have the chance to overcome?  Incredibly, there are 3,700 abortions each day in the US (more frightening is that 115,000 take place around the world each day).  Each freaking day.  That is 154 each hour.  Nearly 1.5 million per year.  That makes me want to puke. Let’s be honest, life is hard.  At some point, we are all ridiculed, defeated, beaten down (both physically and mentally) and worn out.  But we persevere and move on.  We have a choice of how to respond.  We have the opportunity to live and experience and grow.  Should everyone not be granted that opportunity?  God help us.

Last night John McCain and Barack Obama met in what was touted as a Civil Forum, led by Rick Warren at Saddleback Church in California. I was excited to watch this program and found it quite interesting. Let me start off by saying that I am an uninformed voter. By no means am I well-versed on politics or on the detailed backgrounds of these two men. Part of that is because I simply do not have the time to dig into it. My family, my job, my faith and my hobbies take up enough of my time. Reading political articles in what spare time I do have does not interest me. The second reason that I am uninformed is because I find it hard to really get an unbiased opinion. The supposed “experts” on CNN and Fox News appear only to be interested in furthering their name and beliefs and are incapable of objective analysis. Those who are Democrats hate everything John McCain says and believes in and vice versa for Republicans and Obama (I’m generalizing here). Here is what I believe: Obama cannot be as great as people think he is and McCain can’t be as bad as people say he is. There has to be some middle ground and last night got my attention as potentially a chance to see who these men are. Warren asked some good questions. It wasn’t his job to interrogate and nail these two down for answers. If they answer his questions, you hopefully get to see a bit of their heart. If they don’t, you get to make up your own opinion. Personally, I thought that McCain came out much better than Obama. He spoke to the audience as well as Warren, which to me says that he is confident in his answers and is not afraid to be held accountable. Obama spoke almost solely to Warren, which some perceived as better because he was relaxed and conversational. Makes sense, except that there were several thousand people in the room to be acknowledged and addressed. Two questions stuck out to me. When asked their biggest personal moral failure, McCain uncomfortably, yet quickly, responded with the failure of his first marriage. Uncomfortable because he was unfaithful and accepts responsibility for a horrible act that hurt his supposed partner in life and doomed their marriage. Good answer. He made a bad decision, acknowledges it and accepts responsibility. Obama answered that he tried drugs and drank as an underage teen, mostly out of selfishness. Really? That is your greatest moral failure? Apparently you are nearing sainthood if your biggest moral failure is being selfish. You’ve gotta come with something better than that. The second question was regarding abortion and when human life begins. Obama dodged it by saying that to answer that, either from a theological or scientific perspective, was “above his pay grade.” Senators get paid $169,000, while the President earns $400,000. Will that be enough to qualify you to ansewr that question? An opinion on abortion should not decide whether or not you vote for a candidate, but to give such a weaksuck answer was incredible. McCain, almost before Warren finished the question, answered that life begins at conception. No ifs, ands or buts. End of discussion. Like it or not, that’s my belief. End of discussion.
Obama appeared all night to be pandering to both sides, hoping to not give either side a reason to abandon their vote for him, or apparently a reason to vote for him at all. I don’t think he was being dishonest, he just seemed to think through the potential consequences of each answer. I still do not know who Obama is or what he has done that makes him capable of handling the duties that come with being a President. Good public speaking and an endorsement from ultra-liberal Hollywood (how Hollywood became an expert on politics, I will never know) doesn’t equal good leader. McCain, on the other hand, doesn’t care (he cares about what you believe, but not what you think about him). He has his opinions and beliefs, is confident in them and unashamedly does not hide behind rhetoric. As President, that is a must. At the end of the day, you must make your decision, be confident in your decision and face what consequences may come — both good and bad. No President makes all good decisions. If you screw up, admit it and move on. You can’t sit around thinking, “well, if I do this then Nancy Pelosi is going to be extremely pissed off. On the other hand, Tom Ridge will be quite pleased, and I do have that meeting with him in the morning.” You must be well-informed (unlike me) by those around you, so that you can make decisions from a position of confidence and peace, not wavering trepidation. I’m not saying that McCain is without fault or that I am in agreement with him on every statement/issue. I, as of now, simply believe that I trust him more with decisions than I trust Obama. When all is said and done, Jesus is not a party member. He wants confident, compassionate leadership from somebody who will rely on Him for decisions to better the United States of America and mankind as a whole. He hates murder, AIDS and poverty. He loves the rich, the poor, the middle class, Republicans and Democrats, the famous and the marginalized. He has a plan for this nation that is bigger than McCain or Obama. That, in the midst of political positioning, is all that we can trust in.