My recent post on the subject of spiritual intimacy was the most widely read article I have written on Thursday Circle. You can read Part I here. It generated some incredibly healthy and important discussions online, in my office, in the classroom, and in the living rooms of many of you who read the piece. And it raised some weighty questions. So here is part two of the discussion. Let the conversation continue.

Of all the questions I received throughout the past week, most boiled down to some version of “how far is too far?” Along these lines people were asking whether or not any and every form of communal prayer is a breech of spiritual intimacy. Others wondered how we walk the tightrope of appropriately guarding our hearts without extinguishing authenticity, transparency and the kind of intimacy necessary for a healthy community.

The analogy I most frequently gave, albeit crass, relates to way we think about our physical boundaries in the forms of handshakes, side-hugs, long embraces, and make-out sessions.

When someone stops me in the foyer of the church while we are grabbing coffee and shares with me that they just found out that they lost their job, I offer to pray for them. Handshake

When someone shares his or her story with me in my office and we close our counseling session with prayer. Side-Hug

When someone from my inner circle of relationships (more on this in a minute) shares something that requires confidentiality and I commit to praying for the next few days, or months. Long embrace

My spiritual life becomes intertwined with the spiritual life of another. When I move from my personal spiritual life, to our spiritual life. When you are no longer able to distinguish your own journey from the journey you are on “together” with someone else, you have entered into a spiritual Make-out session.  

Again, I readily admit that there may be better analogies out there, but these physical ones seem to be so clear that they make good starting points when speaking about other types of boundaries. Rarely do we find that we just “somehow” moved from shaking hands to kissing. The boundaries are incredibly clear for most of us.

As I mentioned earlier, another aspect of spiritual intimacy relates to how we conceive of community. In this regard many readers have wondered how we might achieve God’s intention for authentic “life together” (to borrow Bonhoeffer’s term) while simultaneously placing boundaries around our spiritual lives? One answer is to reorient the very way we think about community. All too often our Christian response to developing community is “the more intimacy, the better.” Not only is this incredibly unrealistic, it isn’t even remotely healthy.

In the book Search to Belong Joseph R. Myers outlines four types, or spaces, of community: Public, Social, Personal, and Intimate. The general thesis of Myer’s work is that these spaces are not only real ways that we experience community, but that we desperately need to ensure that we experience each regularly.

With genuinely good intentions we (especially those within the church) strive to move every relationship we have into the intimate sphere. We wear name-tags, we gather in small groups, and we are encouraged to build our lives around activities intended to move all of our relationships from public to intimate ones. One of the ways we frequently do this involves increased levels of spiritual intimacy. With Myers categories in view let me give some practical boundaries for healthy spiritual intimacy.

Public: The kind of spiritual intimacy you experience in corporate worship. This community is comprised of strangers and acquaintances, friends and family members. Your spiritual connections are broad.

Social: This group is generally smaller. It is co-workers, or fellow members of the same athletic team, clubs or classes. Here you know some people better than others and prayer centers on general requests for health, the stress of assignments, or for a wrecked car in the shop.

Personal: This group is your “inner circle.” It is Jesus pulling aside James, Peter and John. It is your accountability group, your closest friends, or your immediate family. They know your struggles, you are free to be yourself and be open and honest about your fears, your doubts and your disappointments.

Intimate: As you might imagine, this is the relationship you have with only one person. It is the relationship in which you stand completely naked and vulnerable before one another. Nothing is hidden. It is only coupled with the physical counterpart of consummation. One flesh.

Again, Myers argues that these categories are not only just present realities, but necessary and essential aspects of living as healthy beings, ensuring that we are experiencing each of these spaces of connection with others. And before the question is asked, “If I am not married yet, how do I experience intimate spiritual connections?” My response, you may have guessed, is no different than if someone were asking me about physical intimacy before marriage; celibacy until covenant.

I hope this helps a bit. Talk among yourselves.

To continue the conversation follow Steve Woodworth on TWITTER

I often tell my preaching students that if you want to know what is going on in the personal life of a preacher, just listen to their sermons. So, if you have been following Thursday Circle this year, even sporadically, you will notice that I have spoken much about the business of forgiveness and the pain of addiction- two subjects at the very heart my story, and the last year of my life in particular.

And so it is that I find myself while I type on the keyboard this week that I am being inspired by Jason Isbell’s new album “Southerner.” Isbell is a former member of the band Drive By Truckers who is all at once a gifted singer, poetic songwriter, talented guitarist, as well as a former drug addict and a recovering alcoholic. 

This week he sat down with Terry Gross on Fresh Air for an interview that proved to be part performance, part confession. The entire piece can be heard here, and is well worth your time. Isbell is humble and gentle and speaks with a certain mix of deep-reflection and tenderness, especially when he speaks about his father and his wife. Both of which played important roles in his recovery.

This week I also watched a documentary on the life of Todd Marinovich, the boy wonder whose father dedicated his entire life attempting to build his son into the perfect athlete, only to watch him spiral down into a drug induced darkness of heroine, cocaine, and crystal meth that few people will ever experience.

The stories of Marinovich and Isbell have much in common, not least of which is the role that family and art played in their recovery. The piece at the top of this blog is a painting by Marinovich entitled “Mask.” Anyone who has ever been addicted, to anything, understands the reference. Addicts are actors. When we aren’t busy anesthetizing life, we produce records, throw touchdowns, we preach sermons. All the while trying to make sure that Mr. Hyde doesn’t reel his ugly head in view of the public. But just like Dr. Jekyll of Stevenson’s work, eventually the master becomes the servant and the entire charade comes to a screeching halt.

Isbell sings candidly about this experience of transformation in his song “Live Oak.” Gross asked him to sing it on the show and before he agreed Isbell confessed something particularly insightful. It captured the essence of the journey all addicts must travel before they reach the other side. In a few simple sentences he is able to express both the absolute fear as well as the desperate desire for freedom prevalent in every attempt to let go: the reason many of us can’t, and the reason we must never stop trying. 

Isbell said, “I was inspired to write the song by this worry that I had, what parts of me will I lose after I go through this process? I was scared, you know, what else am I going to lose, because it can't all be better? Everything, you know, the changes can't all be good changes. There's got to be something that you're losing there, some kind of potency or, you know, humor even or some sort of attractiveness not only to the person you're with romantically but to your family, to your friends.”

That is the fear, the unfounded fear, that people only love you when you are high, or drunk, or thin, or gambling, or gossiping…name your vice. Despite the fact that nearly everyone in your life is shedding countless tears over your choices and pleading for you to get help. Even after you have been estranged from your kids, or lost a spouse, or a job, or a scholarship, or friends, or a will to live…you continue to lie to yourself to justify the addiction. People like me better this way.   

Addictions of every stripe become so much a part of our identity we, quite literally, forget who we are without them. Which is why Isbell’s next line had me fully choked up as I drove alone in my car.  

“Now, had I known then what I know now I probably wouldn't have been able to write that song because I see that I still have all those parts of me that I want.”

I still have all those parts of me that I want. That’s freedom. That is second life.

It was not all that dissimilar from a conversation I had with my own therapist when I began my personal journey to recovery. We were sitting in the borrowed office of a local pastor drinking cheap coffee and siting on uncomfortable furniture. I remember the way that she just gazed across from me, cutting through all my attempts at smooth talk and justifications, and asked, as if it was the most innocent question she could ask, “Steve, is this getting you what you want most out of life?”

I felt like some kid had just screamed, “the emperor has no clothes” from the crowd at the parade, and there I sat, feeling completely exposed.

It is a question an addict can’t run from. There is no lie an addict can tell (themselves, at least) that could possibly frame their life of addiction as the dream they had always had as a child, or the goal they have always pursued.  

Helping someone remember that dream is the road to recovery. For me it has always been the desire to break the sin cycles of my family: to be a present father, to be a faithful husband. None of my vices were pushing me in that direction and I just needed someone to help me see things clearly, to help me remember, to give me hope that freedom could actually come. Isbell says it is possible. Marinovich says it is possible. I can tell you it is possible.

You will still have all the parts of you that you want, and so will everyone praying for your freedom today.  

I am not going to talk about politics today. I think the nation could use a little detox. Instead, I do want to talk about the leaves outside my office window. Fall is, without any shred of doubt, my favorite season. And I have had the amazing privilege of living in four entirely different states whose hillsides each come alive with blazon color when the nights of October come quicker and colder. In New Hampshire, Oregon, Western North Carolina, and now, North Georgia, fall comes every year like a best friend visiting from a distant country. We have not talked much throughout the year, but we are so comfortable with each other that the conversation can simply pick up where it left off as if no time or distance has ever passed. Fall causes me to become contemplative. I slow down. While summer fans adventure, activity and long nights that extend well past bedtime, fall ushers in a season of quiet for me. When I get the first glimpse of color something almost spiritual ignites within me and I feel as if most days I long to be walking, intentionally slow, along a path in the woods with no destination in mind, and no clock to obey. But I also love fall because it is a reminder to me that time is not standing still and that change is possible. There have been seasons of my own life that have felt quite endless. Struggles, fights, battles and wars that appear to have no end in sight; wounds that feel as they will never heal; addictions that look like they will never shake free; attitudes that haven’t shifted in months; bitterness that is only getting more bitter; depression that is only getting darker, and a loneliness becoming increasingly lonely. Then I find one morning that as I peer across the steam lifting off my mug of coffee that out the back window I can see the faintest hint of orange, or yellow or crimson red gathering around the edge of a tree on the boundary of the property. That night as I sit on the back porch I recognize that it is darker at this hour than it was the night before. Maybe later in that same week my wife suggests we turn the heat on. My kids spend the weekend sorting through boxes in storage to look for their favorite sweatshirt that has been packed away for the summer. Windows spend more time closed. And soon, very soon, I will see my breath in the air as I drive to work amidst a dazzling display of forests on fire with color that stands even more brilliant against the crystal blue sky hovering overhead. Fall is the glorious and gracious annual reminder for us that you will not always be who you are today, that this too shall pass, and “that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns” (Phil. 1:6). In you…in me…in our country…in our world. Amen.

I spent the last 3 days at a conference in Dallas, TX focusing on evangelism. Theologians and pastors and administrators from 16 different colleges gathered together to think about how we might create a culture of evangelism on each of our campuses with an ultimate goal of deploying 50,000 students each year equipped to share the gospel around the world. In 10 years, the exponential effects could be that over 1 million were living out the great commission faithfully throughout the Earth. I was challenged and inspired, refocused and rejuvenated...until I walked back out into the real world. Last night I felt compelled to tell a waitress at IHOP that God loved her. Instead, I just smiled and said “thank you.” A woman who shared a shuttle ride to the airport with me asked what I did for a living. "I am a professor and pastor," I told her, but I didn’t tell her why, or what drove my passion to teach college students, or even that I was a Christian at all. I spent the flight home to Atlanta with a civil engineer from Dallas. I know he graduated from Clemson, and that he was born in Charleston, SC. I wanted to ask him if he attended church in Dallas, but instead we sat inches from each other staring at our iPads in silence for almost 2 hours. In the real world, sharing your faith is difficult. Added to my own discomfort of nudging my way into the spiritual life of strangers, I also observed on this trip just how determined our culture is to ensure that we increasingly pull away from community. The airport, the hotel, and the airplane were packed with people who created their own world of existence by way of earphones and glowing screens. We are a society who is more and more becoming blind and deaf. We have become islands by way of technology. It reminded me of he Police song which shares the laments of an island castaway who assumed the whole time that he is all alone only to discover as he awoke one morning unable to believe that he saw "a hundred-million bottles washed upon the shore." He continues, "seems I never noticed being alone, a hundred-million castaways looking or a home." This is not an excuse for my lack of obedience, it is an observation that while sharing the gospel may appear harder than ever these days, in some ways, it couldn't be easier. People are starved for human connection. Like the movie Crash implies, people with do almost anything for touch. As a people, we are dying to belong. This makes the initial stages of evangelism shockingly easy, and seemingly impossible. In our current culture it can be as difficult and intimidating for some to simply say "hi" as it is to ask them if they know who Jesus is. At the same time taking a moment to recognize the humanity of someone standing next to you, or actually addressing them by the name on their name-tag, can open possibilities for God to enter the moment in profound ways, in ways not possible in past generations, when chatting with strangers at airports was common policy. I will say, that with 15 minutes left of our flight, I finally mustered the courage to turn to the man next to me and, almost with my eyes closed, stammered out, “Do you attend a church in Dallas?” He did. In fact, the man I was sitting next to was a devout Catholic named Michael who had grown up attending Catholic School and who had seen the Pope during a trip to Rome. The moment passed quickly. The wheels on the plane descended, seatbelts unbuckled, and we all filed back out into the airport as quickly as we had entered. People put earphones over their ears once again and stared into glowing screens trying desperately to ensue they didn’t make contact with anyone around them. But for 15 minutes Michael and I connected as two humans made for relationships in a fallen world by a God who sacrificed everything to make us whole again. O’ Lord, that your people would be brave enough to reach out to the blind and deaf with the Gospel of eternity. Give us courage, and help us to see the lost sheep of the world with the eyes of the Great Shepherd who left the 99 for the one.

Malala Yousufzai is a 14 year old girl from Pakistan. Today she is in critical condition following a surgery that removed bullets from the left side of her head; bullets that flew from the barrel of a Taliban gun. Malala’s troubles with Muslim extremists began when she was just 11, the day she decided to sit down behind a computer to begin chronicling life in her small village within the Swat Valley. Her blog drew attention to the oppressive life under the regime that denied education for woman and won her a nomination for the International Children’s Peace Prize. Unfortunately, it simultaneously earned her a spot on the Taliban’s hit list. Last week they made good on their promise by tracking down a van carrying Malala, reaching a rifle into the window, and opening fire. It should make anyone who has heard the story question, deeply question, the validity of the theology of any group who sustains their power by seeking to kill 14 year-old bloggers who threaten their authority. But it should also draw attention to the fact that girls around the world are at risk every day for acts that are far less controversial than blogging. In fact, more girls are murdered ever year in China and India than are born in America annually, for one simple reason…because they are girls. You can make a difference in this statistic. Visit the site: http://www.itsagirlmovie.com. Sign the manifesto. Get educated. Spread the word. Stand with those who are most vulnerable. Speak for those without a voice.

Confession: someone hurt me last year, and I don’t want to forgive him. In fact, I want him to pay dearly. Jesus asked his followers to do plenty of outlandish things. If they were to be true followers, he told them, “eat my flesh and drink my blood” (John 6:53), “hate your mother and father” (Luke 14:26), “sell everything and give to the poor” (Luke 18:22). But no matter how insane any of them sounded, or sound today even, nothing Jesus said has ever been as difficult for me to follow than his command to forgive. Theologically I get it. From a purely Biblical perspective I can tell you that I cognitively understand that we forgive because we are forgiven. That whatever wrongs someone has committed against me pale in comparison to the sins I have committed against my Creator. From the comfort of my counseling chair in my office I frequently wax eloquently about the dangers of bitterness and the fact that the real person who is set free in the process of forgiveness is “you.” I know. I know. I know. But in the real world where you and I live the command for me to forgive sounds as ancient and impossible as Jesus’ suggestion that I can move a mountain off of its foundation with nothing but my faith. Absolutely impossible. Nothing takes more humility and nothing demands more of me. Hearing Jesus’ command to forgive makes me anxious. It makes me defensive. It makes my heart pump a bit harder and my chest compress a little tighter. Forgiving feels more like an invisible hand is reaching into the depth of my soul and ripping away something that feels so essential to my life and existence. Which is exactly what the process of forgiveness is. I harbor grudges, and you harbor grudges, because they bring us some semblance of control. If I can hold something over someone else it gives me power, it gives me a sense of superiority. It feels good to be angry. We can grow very accustomed to the poison of hatred coursing through our veins, and we can become addicted to being the victim. Nothing feels quite as good as feeling sorry for yourself. When we choose to forgive, it has been said, we relinquish our right to punish whoever hurt us. That is why forgiveness is so difficult. I want revenge. I want someone to pay. Even this very day I carry with me a wound given to me by someone that I want to destroy. It’s killing me, but not nearly as much as the kind of death I have convinced myself that I would experience by forgiving and letting go. Today I am reading Jesus’ famous exhortation to forgive someone “seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22) and I am doing the math. 490 times. Today that sounds about right. That totals almost a year and a half of forgiving this same person every single day. Maybe that is what Jesus intended us to see. Forgiveness is not easy and it takes naming your wound and naming the tormentor every day, maybe for over a year, and asking for freedom, begging for the spirit to come and help you to unclench your fist. Forgiveness is NOT saying that someone does not deserve punishment; it is surrendering your right to deliver it to them. It will cost you to do this, but rest assured that as you pass through the process, when Jesus says, “I totally understand,” he means it. Freedom is waiting. 489 days left to go.

In his book Wild at Heart John Eldridge writes, “The history of man’s relationship with God is the story of how God calls him out, takes him on a journey and gives him his new name.” Like Abram, Sarai, Jacob, Gideon, Moses, Peter, and Paul God is helping his people understand their true story by hearing the name that he is speaking over their lives. Distinct from the name on our birth certificates, penned by a fallen mom and dad, God’s name for us is birthed from an eternal understanding of who we truly are, and who we are meant to be. In so many ways, it is a name far more real than any name we have ever been given. The difficult part of embracing the new name is not necessarily discovering it, but truly hearing it, owning it, and believing it. So often the reason for this is that God gives us a new name for his own glory and not our own. While a new name may grant us hope for the future, more than anything it is the means by which God is writing his own story. For this reason, the new name we are given by God is often formed through the wounds of our past. Indeed, as Eldridge writes later, “He will wound us in the very place where we have been wounded.” Gideon, alone, frightened and hiding in a wine press is called “mighty warrior.” A barren man and woman become a “father and mother of nations.” The persecutor of God’s church becomes one of its greatest missionaries. The disciple who rejects Jesus is called the dependable rock. God is not making mistakes; he is drawing attention to the magnitude of his transformative power. The same power that created the universe ex nihilo (out of nothing), the same power that raised Jesus form the dead, is the same power at work in the lives of millions as God comes to each of his children and transforms their stories of tragedy and failure into tales of epic redemption and victory. Why? So that the world will know his unspeakable grace and bend their knees in humble submission. Every story of transformation becomes a living, breathing example of the depths God is willing to stoop in order to rescue a life and how great is his ability to save. The redeemed are called ambassadors. We are story-tellers declaring the truths about the author and perfector of our faith who longs to finish your story the way he wrote it before the foundations of the earth. Give him the pen, listen for your new name, and let the watching world be in awe of what God is able to do with our tragic tales, perfectly suited for surprise endings. Everyone has a story. http://vimeo.com/13509635

Earlier this week the entire world was reacting to the foolish words of Todd Akin (see quote here, http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/world-affairs/2012/08/todd-akin-legitimate-rape-quote-day). In public statements about abortion after rape, he decided to defend his personal views by talking about "legitimate rape." Facebook blew up. News outlets pounced and women from as far away as Africa raised their voices. My hope in talking about this today is not to add another voice to the controversy, but very simply, to applaud the world for getting this one right. During my ten years in college ministry, I have yet to have a year pass in which I didn't sit across from a young woman in tears as she spoke to me about someone taking advantage of her body without her permission. More frequently than not, the evil was committed by a person they knew, or thought they knew. Someone they trusted, someone who was suppose to protect them from such nightmares. I have been deeply satisfied to watch the world respond unanimously on this issue in the last week. Regardless of race, religion, or gender, the majority of the world appears to still recognize something of the sacredness,intimacy and value of the act of sex. Admittedly, our world has fashioned unimaginable ways to distort and destroy this gift as well, but today, much of the watching world appears to agree that when a woman says no (or a man),no one has a right to betray their will. As a pastor, there are few issues,if any, that rival the devastating effects of rape. Almost nothing can compete with the sense of loss, guilt, isolation, shame and fear. God has designed sex to be a final consummation of the gift of marriage. It stands as a beautiful covenantal agreement that symbolizes, in so many ways, the deep covenantal love between God and his creatures through the image of his son the groom and the church his bride. It is intended to be the deepest and most profound expression of human love. For everyone today who has had that vision tainted by a stranger, a parent, a lover, a teacher, a pastor, a friend, or a sibling...today the world has affirmed your pain. You are not alone and we agree that what happened to you was infinitely wrong. There will never be such a thing as legitimate rape. Jesus has never abandoned you in your pain and he is not silent in your agony. He is making all things new, and he is able to write a new chapter. As Dan Allender once said, "God is writing your story, but he is not writing the sin in your story." The pages authored by the hatred of another can have a different ending. You are not alone today, life can begin again.

Recently Pepper Schwartz, a sociologist at the University of Washington, wrote an op-ed on Americans’ fascination with the love-life, and recent wedding, of Jennifer Anniston. Regardless of whether or not you care for Jennifer Anniston, the principles of the article can apply equally to our obsession with Beyonce, Adele, Lebron James, or the stars of “Teen Mom” or “Jersey Shore.” In her piece, Schwartz notes that we live in a media culture today that so frequently brings the lives of celebrities into our living rooms, smart phones, and tablets, that they feel like friends to us. Furthermore, and this is the point that was most fascinating to me, Schwartz noted that because of the familiarity (however real or contrived it may be) that we feel with celebrities, we find ourselves living vicariously through them. When it comes to Anniston specifically, Schwartz says that women follow her love life because A) when Anniston gets dumped it helps women to feel better about their own heartbreaks arguing, “if Jennifer Anniston gets dumped, anyone can” and B) Women are watching to see if true love will stick this time for Anniston because, again, “if it can happen to her maybe it can happen to me.” Schwartz closes the article by stating that the "fairy tale ending" we hope to glimpse in the lives of celebrities “is a stand-in for the fairly tale ending we want for ourselves.” After reading the article, I couldn’t help but reflect back to my favorite book on preaching written by Frederick Buechner in 1977 entitled Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. One of the main premises of the work is the way in which each of us, regardless of time, language, and culture is drawn to fairy tale: the ugly becoming beautiful; the poor becoming rich; the oppressed finding justice; the overlooked becoming the centerpiece. It is, in so many ways, written on our hearts. It is what we long for in every good movie, every good song, and every good novel. It is the ageless story of the cross, and it is the gospel. We are all searching for it, this good, seemingly impossible news, that despite all of our warts and wrinkles, we might be found accepted, loved and wanted. J.R.R Tolkien once wrote, “It is the mark of the good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the ‘turn’ comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art.” Our culture is dying to experience the fairy-tale. Surrounded by counterfeits, many have settled for living the life the wished they had through others, rather than entering the fairy-tale God has already written. Jennifer Anniston’s marriage doesn’t have to work out to offer you hope. Lebron doesn’t have to win the championship game. The creator of the universe knows you by name, is more aware of your failings than you will ever know, and was willing to move heaven and earth to rescue you. No fairy-tale could ever compete with that truth. Hollywood could never write a better story.

Just a few months into my career as a pastor I found myself burying a friend who had committed suicide. He left behind a wife and children and a community who felt guilty for not recognizing the signs of his deep depression. Perhaps most shocking of all about the incident however were the details he shared in his suicide letter which outlined the situation that drove him to such a drastic, and final, solution. My friend claimed his suicide was not a way out of his depression, or financial struggles, or tied in any way to poor moral choices. Instead, he told us, in no uncertain terms that his suicide was the only way to free himself from his addiction to online gaming. Recently CNN produced an investigative piece on the growing issue of online gamming addiction in the country of Korea. The video is worth 10 minute

s. http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/08/tech/gaming.series/korea.html#cnn_gmsrsstoryntro One of the interesting lines from the video is a statement a psychologist makes about what drives so many Koreans into cyber world. In a word, he believes it is a search for “identity” (skip to 8:20 on the video for full discussion). In Korea’s strict class society youth feel that they are unable to break free from social expectations based on education and wealth, and chose to live, as much as 18 hours a day, in a virtual reality instead where their identity can be re-created without social pressures to conform. The search for identity is hardly unique to Korean youth. I have watched countless students (largely, males) during my years of college ministry, with great potential, squander their lives by staring blankly into a lit screen for the majority of their day in an attempt to escape reality, and responsibility. But online gamming is only one of the potential vices people reach for when trying to establish a sense of identity. Recent reports on the man, Wade Page, who opened fire at a Sikh temple this week in Wisconsin, revealed that he was a white supremacists and a member of a popular hate-rock group. Writing about the impact that music such as Page’s has had on the movement Devin Burghart, author of "Soundtracks to the White Revolution," noted that, “Bands like Page's are instrumental to bringing disaffected teens into the movement. They're isolated individuals, often with behavioral problems, perhaps problems at home who are looking for a new familial bond as well as a sense of identity and belonging." Identity. It drives the clothes we wear, the movies we watch, the friends we gather with, the cars we drive, the people we love, the people we ignore, the people we hate. And many people today feel that their personal identity is not theirs to choose. It is being dictated to them from every website, billboard, magazine, Facebook post and advertisement. Every moment in every day we are being told, “buy this and be free”…”wear this and be loved”…”drink this and be accepted.” For many, all too many, there are only two choices, submit or rebel. Increasingly, whether it is through online gaming, pornography, gangs, drugs, or suicide, many are choosing to escape and to rebel. But there are also many who have discovered, and who are discovering, that there is a third option, letting your identity to be shaped by the one who made you. The only one who truly knows you. In his letter to the Corinthian church the apostle Paul once wrote, “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” (NLT) Paul’s words indicate that being known by God is in the present tense. We are already fully known people. Even when we are uncertain about ourselves, we are known, and known fully by the one who breathed life into us and wants to rescue us from all of our empty pursuits to rescue ourselves and our vain attempts to submit, escape or rebel against the hollow definitions of purpose and success that the world offers. If you are on a search to “find yourself,” let yourself be found by the one who made you.