Review: God's Comeback Kids by Don Kimrey

I'm so excited....Don's book, "God's Comeback Kids", came in the mail today!

Actually, it's a gift for my daughter, who turns 13 in a couple of weeks. But before I gift-wrap it, I couldn't help devouring this gem myself and banging out a review.

If you'd enjoy warm, anecdotal writing about some of the more lovable, yet flawed folks of Scripture - along with deeply poignant, touching applications to your own life's struggles - drop everything you're doing and order yourself a copy at the link above. Don's casual, down-to-earth style of writing is humorous at times and convicting at others, but is always enlightening and enjoyable.

As the title indicates, this book focuses on the stories of the biggest mess-ups God ever saved, as well as some hapless dudes who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time (from a human perspective!). If you are a Greek snob looking for an exegetical study of present perfect and auxiliary verb tenses, well... this is not that book. If you are looking for life lessons to be gleaned from the grace God lavished upon His repentant or underdog children, you will be blessed by Don's treatment of Joseph, Moses, Job, the Prodigal Son, and - my personal favorite - the Apostle Peter. (I did wonder why he left out the ultimate 'comeback kid', King David. Perhaps because David was such an obvious choice that his inclusion would have been a bit cliche. At least David left us with the great penitential Psalms, to aid in our own spiritual "comebacks").

Some of these "comeback kids" were victims of circumstance; they landed in perilous or unfortunate situations through no fault of their own. Don thoughtfully paints a 3-dimensional portrait of the characters of Joseph and Job, who even in horrific circumstances strove to glorify God. Through their life stories, he draws parallels to how we are to react when life throws a curve-ball.

From the chapter on the "comeback kid" with whom I most closely identify:

"Peter was also very impulsive. That's putting it mildly. There was no pretense about him. You weren't ever left to wonder what he thought, or how he felt about you. His impulsiveness was certainly one source of his prideful downfall. As you read the account of Jesus in agonizing prayer in that Garden, you can probably hear Pete snoring in the background. Peter was only dimly aware of the approaching soldiers led by Judas, the traitor. He was awakened abruptly. Startled, and perhaps only half-awake, confused with the torchlight playing off the Roman soldiers' armor and faces, with swift, instinctive angry skill he unsheathed his sword and sliced off a soldier's ear.

I've apologized for Peter for that act on several occasions. I feel I now know him well enough to tell you he did not mean to slice off the soldier's ear. He meant to split his skull! Wide open!

Jesus took control of the situation, corrected it, and commanded Peter to put his sword back in its scabbard. Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword," He said (Matthew 26:52).

Something I've observed which may be worth your further thought: Sometimes a person's great strength can also become his or her greatest point of weakness. If someone has a "gift of gab", that "gift" can become the Achilles heel which leads to a downfall. An above average beautiful lady or "too handsome" guy, has more than once allowed that to lead to unjustified pride which almost always leads to destruction. Of one sort or another, and sooner or later - if allowed to run its course unchecked."

Don's driving ambition, as he describes it, is "to get as close to Christ as I can and stay there." This passion shows through, loud and clear, in his writing. Although he demurs to call this work a "Bible study", it is far too deep and rich to be labelled simply a "devotional". Anyone, new Christian or seasoned believer alike, can learn a new lesson by examining the lives of these heroes afresh through Don's writing.

It was a pleasure to read, and recommend.

Prayerlessness and the (my) Carnal Nature

The other night, I was reflecting on why, exactly, I've been finding it so hard to pray these last few months. I mentally ran through the possible excuses rationales reasons, and came to the earth-shaking conclusion that it's due to my inherently self-centered nature.

None of my pre-packaged excuses held up under scrutiny:





Rationale #1: I'm too busy. True, I work outside the home on average 3 days per week; regularly drive over 100 miles round-trip and am raising four children. It's also true that I co-lead a Bible study and have written a book for the Christian market (for which I am courting publishers), but all of that stuff depends on a dynamic prayer life. So....what am I saying to God? I can function and do "His work" independently of Him?

Rationale #2 (related to #1): There's just not enough hours in the day. Partially true; maybe that's why Jesus got up to pray in seclusion "while it was still dark outside" (Mark 1:35).

Rationale #3: I don't feel His presence. Right. Which is why we're told to pray by faith. A corollary of this is the fact that God's blessing and presence in our lives is conditional upon our obedience, which assumes a committed prayer life.

Rationale #4: I'm still scarred from my "journey into charismania" experience. It's been nearly three years now. Get over it already.

The real reason, or at least part of it which surprised me a bit, boiled down to self-interest. I'm not thinking as much as I should about praising and worshiping God because He is holy and has commanded it; I figure He's so great, distant and occupied that it doesn't matter much to Him if I pray or not.

Think about it. He's got over 6 billion people on earth, perhaps a billion of whom have been born again and thus can truly be considered His people. (That's an estimate; obviously I don't know the actual numbers). Does He really notice, much less care, if one inconsequential person like myself bothers with prayer?

Do I honestly think my spending time with Him does anything for Jesus?

I am trying to articulate the general impressions that I hold in my heart - of course I have never specifically reasoned it out so cynically, but this is the logical end result of my apathy. It's all about me. Why should I invest time with a God Who has so many other people to keep track of - I'm never going to be "special" to Him. Just a face in the crowd.

But do I not know Him? Doesn't my Father know the number of hairs on my head, and want me to know fellowship with Himself, the Spirit, and the Son (1 John)?

Several years ago, when I first started interpreting for Beth Israel Deaconess Med Center, I was required to attend new employee orientation. The CEO of the hospital, Paul Levy, attended the closing to warmly address us. Levy is a pretty famous dude in Boston - he's on the news all the time, and is very popular for managing to avoid staff layoffs at BIDMC. He shook our hands and said something like "welcome aboard" before we all went down the hall to get coffee and bagels. He's the big boss and technically I can say I've met him, but if I ran into Paul in the cafeteria or on Longwood Avenue, I guarantee you he would not know me from a hole in the wall. If I told him, "I work for you - I'm your hospital's only Bulgarian interpreter", that would certainly put it into context for him, and he might even recall seeing me hanging out in hematology on occasion. But that's about the extent of the interpersonal connection we would have.

Although it's a poor analogy, that's how I've been viewing God lately. I have this weird idea that heaven is going to be like this: I'm in the intake office filling out the admissions paperwork for what seems an eternity - there are so many people ahead of me. God is making the rounds, saying "hi" to His familiar servants; much like our friendly CEO often does. He sees me, and it takes Him a second, but He recalls my name.

Yipes. I can get so apathetic and cynical sometimes that I scare myself. Where is the flame that once burned so bright?

The point of prayer is to adore the God Who created and adopted us; to confess our sin, which disrupts our fellowship; to continuously thank and praise Him for Who He is and what He's done; and to intercede for others and present our petitions in Jesus' Name. I have gotten so off-track by making it all about me that I need to spend time in prayer just repenting - how is it that I often give up in prayer because I don't know what to talk about? Pretty obvious, if my eyes are on myself.

In "The Hidden Life of Prayer", David MacIntyre writes: "And yet, instinctive as is our dependence upon God, no duty is more earnestly impressed upon us in Scripture than the duty of continual communion with Him. The main reason for this unceasing insistence is the arduousness of prayer. In its nature it is a laborious undertaking, and in our endeavor to maintain the spirit of prayer we are called to wrestle against principalities and powers of darkness...there are times when even the soldiers of Christ become heedless of their trust, and no longer guard with vigiliance the gift of prayer. Should any one who reads these pages be conscious of loss of power in intercession, lack of joy in communion, hardness and impenitence in confession, "Remember from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works." (Emphasis mine).

Some Things Should Remain Unsaid...or Better Yet, Un-Thought

This morning I had the dubious pleasure of interpreting once again in criminal court, on a charge of open and gross lewdness for a guy who claims he didn't do it. That's all well and good, but it was a random anecdote from someone who should have known better that has me shaking my head. Higher education, evidently, is no indicator of general classiness.

Standing outside the courtroom with the defendant, I was explaining to him the process of jury selection when a lawyer (not his) walked out of the clerk's office. Thinking we were speaking Russian, he paused and upon learning it was Bulgarian, told us his Russian wife had hired a Bulgarian cleaning lady and they couldn't understand each other. He proceeded to tell us about his house on "Maatha's Vineyahd" and how many Bulgarians are working there during the summer. (My client is reasonably proficient in English and understood him perfectly). He described his housekeeper as a "young girl; very pretty" and commented on how attractive the young, slender, Bulgarian girls are who work on the Vineyard. "Of course, I'm married, so I can't do anything about it - I can only look," he virtuously informed us.

Warming to his subject, the forty-something family man continued, "It's like when I was young, years ago....I used to go to Catholic school. It was an all-boys school, and back then, the teachers were mostly all priests - no laity. Some of the priests would really be checkin' out a couple gals that (sic) worked in the office, and sometimes it was really funny - you could see 'em jus' lookin'. So this one time, this one priest - he's really enjoying the view, and one of the fellas goes up to him: 'Hey Faddah! Whatchu lookin' at -- you ain't supposed to be lookin'!' So he calls all of us around, all together, and he goes: 'Listen, fellas, just cuz you're on a diet doesn't mean you can't look at and smell the food!"

By this time, my client's defense attorney had joined us and groaned at his colleague's priest joke. To clarify both the punch line and his philosophy, the first lawyer emphasized to the defendant: "Just 'cause I'm on a diet doesn't mean I can't look at the food!" He then left for lunch. I said nothing, but his attitude repulsed me - and not because of the sexism. I could care less about stuff like that - it just makes the subject look like a buffoon. What struck me was his cavalier view of lust - not only was he not attempting to put it to death, he seemed to be reveling in it. Boasting about it, while framing himself as a pristine example of chastity, presumably because he had not (yet) given in to adultery.

Let me back up for just a moment and frame my state of mind for you. Recently, a cyber-friend of mine created quite a storm on her blog for having the audacity to say porn is wrong and adds nothing to one's life spiritually or emotionally. Period. Some things God has declared wrong, and we shouldn't do them (or even think of them - Proverbs 4:23; 23:7; Matt. 15:18). I've never seen porn as anything other than a black and white issue, and was frankly shocked that even unbelievers - let alone professing Christians - would see it in shades of gray. This particular blogger is one of several I have seen recently derided and attacked for discernment and passionately following after Jesus - as if our faith is something we should be "moderate" about. Pulling conviction out of our back pockets on Sunday morning while the rest of the week we push it to the side of our hearts results in what is commonly termed "cheap grace". It is not true discipleship. From Genesis to Revelation, God makes it clear that what we allow into our hearts and choose to meditate on will eventually corrupt us.

Was this (somewhat banal) exchange scandalous? Not in this day and age. Nor was it, in all likelihood, the worst thing that was said in court this morning. Lest you think I am holding a probable non-Christian to Christian standards, I assure the reader that is not my point. For all I know, the lawyer might be a nice guy outside of court, if a bit crass. If anything, he did nothing more than point up the world's utter contempt for what the Bible calls true holiness. That's the definition of worldliness and we should expect as much from the world. However, I find his priest story telling, if not surprising.

In my 19 years as a Catholic, I noticed this "how-close-to-the-edge-can-I-get" mentality towards sin as very typical, and it was just this hypocrisy that (in part) pushed me out of the denomination and toward biblical Christianity. (Which isn't to say that apathy towards personal sin doesn't exist in other churches - it most assuredly does.) However, particularly among the clergy (and nuns), there seemed to be a subtle "shell"; an outward form of godliness that was hard to pin-point, even while these same individuals seemed to deny it's power and certainly lacked the Holy Spirit. The idea of a priest so flagrantly violating the principal of Matthew 5:28 ("But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart") doesn't shock me, but that he would joke about it with a group of adolescent boys somehow does.

Furthermore, his analogy was stupid and defied common sense: if you are on a diet, does it make sense to go out, buy a cake, put it in the fridge, and then sit down cross-legged in front of the fridge? Exactly how long do you think it will be until you succumb? As I recently counseled an eating-disordered woman, the further you remove yourself from temptation, the more likely you are to have victory. Don't buy junkfood and have it in your house; then you can't eat it at night. Buy healthy food. Do you see a spiritual parallel here? Philippians 4:8 tells us: "...whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."

Likewise, many who know Christ see lust as "no big deal", yet Christ's warning was unambiguous: it is a big deal to God. Therefore, shouldn't it be to us? Repeatedly, Paul warns us to "be on the alert", yet rationalizations and banal joking about our baser instincts seems to be so socailly acceptable that even Christians don't blink an eye. The other day, I read that it takes 3 seconds to decide which way your thoughts are going to go: whether you'll pursue a thought until it becomes a meditation, or whether you'll hit the mental "delete" button. The notion that we cannot control what we think about is a fallacy. Even if we're thinking about it, the correct course of action is to recognize it as rebellion against Christ and to repent immediately - not to joke about it. Tolerance toward sin (or even seeing it as cute, daring and nothing to make one blush) is neither endearing nor funny. There is a growing trend within the professing Church to drag banality into the pulpit, which is worse. Wherever it's displayed - by a lawyer, priest or Reformed pastor in a Che Gueverra T-shirt, it's still annoying and tacky.

"Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me." - Psalm 51:10