Self-promotion stinks, and most people can smell it.

I've noticed a recent trend on Twitter where creatives doing great work talk about all the reasons that announcing your own great work is a bad idea. Re-posting a compliment you receive online is lame/disgusting/distasteful. I get it. No one likes the guy at the party telling everyone how awesome he is. And 99 parties out of 100, that guy isn't awesome at all. Or he was born on 3rd base and acts like he hit a triple.

In fact, I recently saw a post from a creative professional I respect immensely, @JeremyCowart that nailed this sentiment on the head:

I should say I wish there were a 100 Jeremy Cowarts. He does phenomenal work and seems to love Jesus. Those that I have worked with, that work with him, adore him. That's a good sign he's a stand-up dude.

My contention is that this oversimplifies an important piece of most artist's lives.

The same pin used to pop the "humblebrag" balloon, is also frequently used against those trying to do what God commands for our joy. Brag on Jesus. Brag on what he's doing. Brag on what's he's done. And when you have 140 characters, it's not always easy to tell whether someone is trying to throw themselves a party, or share their gratitude and excitement about what is happening around them. Cowart's point seems to be, "don't be that guy" but reading others I wonder about who gets arrested by the Humble Police because they tried to celebrate something worth celebrating.

Does it matter who is at the bar? At Cowart's watering hole there are currently 47,000 patrons, and I'm willing to bet he hasn't shaken hands with many of them. That's part of being crazy talented like he is; his Twitter follower list is a lot longer than his Christmas card list. What if you're online audience is mostly people that know you well and know your heart? I suppose that's not common, but I do wonder if announcing a big break in a bar's backroom with friends and family is different than the picture he paints. We all don't have 47,000 people at our party.

Maybe who's in the room doesn't change anything. But if someone follows you on Twitter, aren't they agreeing that your particular networking/promotion efforts are of interest to them? Obviously, posting your work, and posting other's comments on your work are not the same. That said, if Obama posts a message about Cowart's work with the Dalai Lama being awesome, I'm interested and don't blame him for sharing it.

It seems God is not a fan of folks who make the world about them. That said, most circles I run in are not proficient celebrators. Cynics don't celebrate. They criticize. I want to be less critical and better at celebrating.

As someone who is assigned the task of communicating on Twitter what God is doing in our community weekly , I wish I had a better handle on this topic. Would love input on this one.

I walked out to my '96 Tacoma in the driveway last week, and had two thoughts:
1. "My car is dirty. Like, 'just got back from Burning Man' dirty."
2. "That tree only has one leaf left. Tomorrow, that tree will be different than today."
(see above picture I snapped)

Last night, Pastor Harvey spoke on the basics of idolatry, and how we as Christians have a means of escaping the clutches of idols in our lives. He defined an idol as anything the we trust, love, or obey. We're called to actively throw down our idols and run the race that God has marked out for us.

Over the past few years, I've had the painful experience of watching people I know quit their race...some have given up on God and others have given up on His people. Some have done both. A common thread I see is frustration with the pace of renewal. Many aren't getting the results they thought they would, or in some cases, what they were promised.

Salvation is typically addressed in three different ways in Scripture:
1. A starting point or decision to acknowledge Jesus as King
2. The ongoing process of becoming more like your King, what we call sanctification.
3. Our King Jesus' return and the end of all that is not as "it ought to be".

It has been said that sanctification is a crawl. That instead of the 100M dash, it's more like a marathon you run over the course of all of your days. There are seasons of rest and seasons of hardship. You are either gaining ground or losing it.

With things like bankruptcy, cancer, and divorce, it's easy to lose perspective on our trajectory. It's easy to not feel the presence of our King. It's easy to slip into discouragement or even frustration about our sin and the remaining brokenness in us.

Our identity is changed the moment we receive Christ. The power and penalty of sin has been dealt with. The presence of sin is here, but time is running out. The leaves are indeed falling, and soon...only one will remain. Then, it too will fall and all things will be made new. Even the presence of sin will be gone forever.

I can't help but long for the day the last leaf falls. We will then see how altogether different we really are.

Come Jesus.

Sometime around age 14 I decided that my bedroom needed a major overhaul. I basically woke up one morning and realized that my disaster of a room wasn't as cool as I thought. It didn't communicate independence and freedom as I previously believed. In fact I was suddenly pretty sure that it communicated that I myself was a disheveled disaster.

As I gazed around the room, I noticed that the most noticeable visual offender was the stack of decrepit and dilapidated CB radios on the shelf closest to the door. I had gathered these from garage sales over the years, a hobby I inherited from my grandfather. Most of them were not working, but a man can never have enough CB radios. My conversations with passing truckers on the nearby highway were often salty and a great place for me to learn new words I could throw around at school.

I decided that this CB graveyard would be the starting point for my full frontal attack on the clutter in my room. After clearing the shelf and inhaling a whole farm of dust-bunnies, I stared at the newly resurrected shelf and wondered what should replace my communicative toys.

The first thing that grabbed my attention was a collection of dusty trophies. These were mostly obligatory "great attitude" or "most improved" type trophies. Most kids who were at my caliber of play knew that they really should read, "you used to suck worse" or "thanks for not quitting and making me look like a bad coach". I dusted them off and placed them neatly side by side on the shelf. Regardless of the means by which I obtained them, they were a bit of a treasure to me.

I was recently reading when Jesus said that casting out demons, while amazing and supernatural, was not the fix that a demonized person required. In fact he went so far to say that if you remove an "unclean spirit" from the space of someone's body, and don't follow up with a replacing of that same space with the Spirit, that the person is actually worse off. Not only that, but he mentions that the demon would return and find "the house swept and put in order". Those words bounced around my head for a bit, as I wondered what that means and if I knew what that looks like.

Immediately I began thinking of all the people that taste the things of the Kingdom, and maybe even experience a season of victory over an area of struggle, but quickly resort to tactics of self-reliance. They start removing the things that cause them to struggle but never address the issue of treasuring Jesus, making him utmost, and loving His kingship. The picture we have in Scripture of repenting has 2 parts: then turning from, and the turning toward. Yet the turning from is what is emphasized and what most people identify as repentance. I've assuredly seen this in my own actions and felt this in my own chest.

There are very few guarantees in life, but I feel confident guaranteeing that if you remove temptation, modify behaviors, or resolve to change but never receive and treasure Jesus, it is only a matter of time before things go back to the old way or even get worse.

Jesus isn't looking for clean shelves. He is interested in being our treasure and filling our shelves with the things that only He can provide. The beautiful experience of walking with Christ, is that when He is your trophy on the shelf, the rest of your house looks different. He takes your life of disarray and breathes peace and change into the messiest of rooms.

²⁴"When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' ²⁵And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. ²⁶Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first."
Luke 11