I have met a lot of great people. I have met great parents, great husbands, and wives. I have met great leaders and read the biography or autobiography of other great people. Of all the successful people I have met or read about, they all have one intangible quality about them: they have grit. Grit is resolve, the ability to push through. People with grit do not give up. Life can be tough, we all know that. When things are challenging or when things do not go like we planned, how would we respond? Will with throw our hands up in the air and give up or will we push through?

Grit is especially required in marriage and vocation.

All relationships take work. Most relationships will go through rough times. We are all people, and as people, we will do and say things that complicate relationships and hurt others. In year eleven of my marriage, the relationship with my wife hit a wall. In every marriage, it is rarely one person’s fault. I will speak to my failure.  I was a workaholic, gone all the time, and seemingly more interested in other people than my family. I was burnt out and becoming detached. One day our marriage imploded and it was rough, for both of us. The reality of divorce seemed all too close. During the hardest of times, the one thing that got us through was grit, the raw courage to not give up, to work on it, to fix it.

Our work and vocation can  be particularly exhausting. Each vocation comes with its own unique challenges, mine included. I love what I do. I love being a Pastor. The church I serve is vibrant, generous and life-giving. I so appreciate that I get to do life with the staff I serve and the people I lead.  In the scriptures, the role of Pastor is described as “Shepherd.” Shepherds lead sheep. Sometimes sheep bite, and it hurts. Over the past 20 years I have been unfairly criticized, personally attacked, yelled at, manipulated…you get the point. Every job has its vocational hazards. As a result, many of my colleagues have quit; well over 50% of those I was in school with gave up on church work before they truly got started. In some cases, I don’t blame them. I almost quit myself. What kept me going? Grit. I decided not to give up. The first few years of my ministry my income was very low. To supplement it, I drove a delivery truck and worked as a substitute teacher, once I worked all three jobs on the same day! Those years were hard. What kept me going? Grit. Pure determination to not give up. To keep fighting and pushing when it would have been easier to throw in the towel.  I remember distinctly the day I stood at the end of my driveway looking out at Pikes Peak (I lived in Colorado) talking on the phone with my dad. I was done. I asked my dad if he could get me a job at his company. He said he could, but I would not be happy. It was not what I was called to do. It was some of the best advice I was ever given, and I pushed on.

Travis Bradbury, an expert in emotional intelligence, once said, “Humans are creatures of habit. If you quit when things get tough, it gets that much easier to give up the next time. On the other hand, if you force yourself to push through it, the grit begins to grow in you.”

Grit is something you can grow. It grows by the practice of not giving up. Whether it’s marriage, parenting, your job or school, you will need grit to push through. Let’s all commit to being a little grittier. You never know what good things await if you only push a little harder.

I was scrolling through Facebook a couple of days ago and stumbled upon an article that essentially pointed out everything that’s wrong with the church. I suppose the author was well-intentioned, but all the article seemed to do was promote disunity in among followers of Christ. My heart was heavy as I read the comment feed. People were naming churches that “hurt” them and complaining about everything wrong with every church they had ever attended. Sometimes people miss the most common denominator. Do we realize that we are attacking the very thing Jesus loves…and died for? (Ephesians 5:25: “Just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”).

As a pastor myself, I realize the church is far from perfect; I know this because I am a part of it. Don’t those outside of the church attack it enough? Do we really need to attack it from the inside as well? Yes, healthy criticism is good when done in the right spirit, by the right people, for the right reason. But most pontificating does not bring about real change. We puff our chest out and share our opinion as if it is doctrine and walk away not understanding the carnage we leave in our wake.

I have learned this in my 42 years of life: people notice…. everything. People notice how we treat each other, what we say about each other and how we interact with each other. Many people make decisions about Jesus and the church based on how they observe us acting towards one another. What is the message we send?

I get it—people get hurt in churches. People in the church have hurt me and I have hurt people myself, I own that. Why does this keep happening?  It happens because all churches are made up of people. Imperfect, broken people. Sometimes we use the word “hurt” as spiritual talk for “I did not get my way”. Other times “hurt” means someone had an opinion or made a decision I did not agree with; other times we genuinely hurt each other. Sometimes my wife hurts me, but I don’t go on social media and rant about it. Sometimes I hurt my wife and instead of telling a bunch of people we barely know, we talk about it—face to face. Yes, there are churches and leaders out there that need to be called to give account for their actions, but there is a better way than jumping up on our metaphorical soap box and lumping all churches of all time together in a speech of disappointment.

People are messy. I am messy.  Yet, despite all the mess, Jesus loved the church and died for her. The church is called “his bride”. You better be careful what you say about someone’s bride. If you say something bad about my wife, you and I are going to have problems. My marriage is not perfect, but that is not your issue; it is my issue, my wife’s issue, and the issue of a group of people whom we trust that we have let into our lives.

Let’s watch our words. Jesus loves his bride, the church, and each individual member of the church.

Let’s watch our words. Jesus loves his bride, the church, and each individual member of the church.

The glorious cause of the church is “faith expressing itself in love” (Galatians 5:6). I went into detail on this in Love Revolution part 1. The ultimate display of “faith expressing itself in love” is what Jesus did on the cross. The cross is the banner of this revolution. Faith expressing itself in love could find no greater fulfillment than a person giving up his or her life for someone else. So what do we, as followers of Jesus, do with the cross? How should we view it?

Much debate has been had in modern circles concerning the placement of and display of the cross. Some churches have crosses up everywhere, others have no cross up at all; some seem embarrassed of the cross, others seem to worship it. I wonder what the response would be if one of Jesus’ disciples, who had actually witnessed the crucifixion, walked into our churches and saw the cross on display. Would he be horrified? Would he look at us and say, “Do you even know what happened on that?”

It is very easy to forget the brutal reality of the cross. The very first churches had no cross at all. For the first Christians, the most common symbol was the fish. The cross became a symbol of Christianity 400 years after the resurrection of Jesus. It became so popular, in fact, that some pagans accused the Christians of idolatry because it seemed as if they were worshiping the cross.

The cross is a symbol to be embraced; it’s not an icon to be worshiped. As with many things, it is easy to vacillate between extremes. For instance, in our church, we have a cross on our stage. It serves as a reminder of what Jesus has done for us. About a year ago someone in our church congregation was offended that we placed the cross to the side instead of in the center of the stage. In fact, they were so offended that they left the church. Really?! The placement of the cross was about ten feet off-center. That reaction made no logical or spiritual sense—leaving a church because of ten feet? Had that person lost that much insight into the message of the cross?

On the other hand, some places of worship display no cross at all because it may offend someone. While I have no desire to offend anyone, our faith is filled with a hard truth: the apex of what Jesus came to do was centered on the cross. “For God so love the word that he gave”…He sent he sacrificed…”His only son…” (John 3:16)

The cross is the banner, the symbol of the love revolution. What Jesus did is the motivation for this Love Revolution. Faith expressing itself in love.  We embrace the message of the cross, it is why we do what we do.