This past week, I met with a brand new believer and talked about what to focus on in the days ahead.

I went to church and me and two other guys worked through some scripture and I led in prayer.

The following day, I attended a small group with faculty members at the university where I work. We spent time in devotion and then listened to each other’s stories and worked on discerning God’s work in and around those stories.

On Sundays, I taught a college bible study class where we learned what makes a good Christlike community.

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All of that plus a symposium on campus where colleagues and I spoke about being a Christian librarian and the unique role we play in the academic environment of our students.

All of these things, I have prayed for and desired to have happened. I want to be in the midst of other’s spiritual journey, guiding them and passing along some things that I have learned and expressing the reality of Christ’s transforming power.

Quite significantly, not one of these opportunities I had to push or pull to make happen. I didn’t have to twist arms to get people to do this with me or to show up. It just happened and that is a testament to God working. I simply made myself available and am in tune enough to know when God is guiding circumstances and people’s hearts.

Are you making yourself available? Have you asked God to use you in whatever way he sees fit? And are you faithful to move whenever he says move?

I don’t consider myself special because of these opportunities that I have, just thankful that God sees enough in me to want to use me. He wants to use you and will gladly provide you chances to minister to others and to serve. Just make yourself available.

One part of my spiritual and personal story that I haven’t discussed much is the pregnancy, birth, and early life stages of our daughter, Joy. My wife recently wrote about this and I thought I would share it on the blog with a series of posts. God has moved in profound ways concerning Joy and her life has taught me many things:

Enter my wife, Leah.

When Joy was born, the main issue that she had was a severe and complete unilateral cleft lip and palate. The other issues that the doctor predicted, some being life threatening, were not present. Other issues would come later, but nothing beyond the cleft lip and palate was immediately noticeable.

The issue with cleft lip and palate is that the ability to get suction to eat is almost impossible. Joy had no “roof of her mouth”. Everything that went in her mouth, came out her nose or went down into her airway.

Her orthodontist made an oral appliance (like a retainer) to put in her mouth to give her a sort of barrier between her mouth and nasal cavity. We kept it in her mouth using denture cream.  It took a long time to feed Joy and she would get so tired . Scott and I would both get up with her so that one of us could help keep the other awake. It was exhausting. Joy had issues with pneumonia due to aspirating milk and even had a feeding tube at one time.

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Would it bother you if I told you that I listen to the Grateful Dead and a band called the Mother Hips? Would it matter if I tell you I don’t like Christian movies?

What is the first thing you think of when I tell you I would rather listen to NPR than Christian radio stations? That I follow some liberals on Twitter and have voted for Democrats on occasions? That I own a Subaru?

I tell you this not because I think I am cool (I know me and I am not cool) or because I think the people that make different choices than me are stupid or less sophisticated. I am not trying to shock anyone. I am not saying that I am right or better than anyone else.

What I am trying to do is point out the absurd tendency in humans to use cultural markers to categorize, identify, judge, and even dismiss. These cultural markers often have nothing to do with the emphasis that Jesus clearly stated for his followers.

Jesus said that if we are his children, we will obey his commands. What commands? You can start with the Sermon on the Mount. He later said that anyone who follows him must take up their cross and die to self. That is a demand much more costly than whether my kids watch Sponge Bob or not. He also said that the world will know his followers by how much they love. Wow, that takes work and humility and sacrifice and is hard to quantify to impress followers on Facebook.

I have expressed my problem with judgement here, so I am trying not to turn this into a finger pointing session. I simply think that the time has come for Christians to shift their focus away from superficial Christian subculture markers and who is in and who is out thinking and, instead, become obsessed with character transformation, spiritual growth, intimacy with God, and love, in the most Biblical sense.

You may not like my choice of music or politics but in the words of John Wesley, “If your heart beats in love for Jesus, then take my hand and we will walk together in fellowship.” And our focus will not be on categories of cultural adherence but on our love for God and others. If we work on that, then these other things will take care of themselves.