Yesterday, I was in Oklahoma City. My friend Kent and I went to Hafer Park and walked around. As we were walking, we talked about different stories each of us had at the park. Conversations we had with other people, when God connected us to certain people at times, and times when someone really changed perspective. Kent says something that I couldn’t agree with more.

“Life’s greatest moments are not lived in coffeeshops. And you don’t remember the coffeeshop times.”

Seeing as this is a blog, I think I may have offended eighty to ninety percent of the readers with the line I just wrote. But give me a second. I”ll explain. Coffeeshops are safe havens in culture today. It is a laid back atmosphere where you can get to know someone, talk through some things that you’re going through, write, create, discover, and think. It is a place for deep conversations or for friends to hang out. But the one thing that I have done very little at a coffeeshop is do.

Coffeeshops provide a wonderful atmosphere for theoretical lives. There are so many buzzwords in Christian culture today. I have said many of them at different times, and quite often in describing something at a coffeeshop. Phrases like,

“Sharing life together.”

“Taking the journey together.”

“Pouring into each other.”

These are all very elegant phrases. I’m not sure who came up with them, but someone at some point did.  Coffeeshops are breeding grounds for “deep, philosophical, theological, anthropological conversations” but the question is, how many moments of all the times you’ve spent in coffeeshops do you remember? For me, I don’t remember a whole lot of them. I remember meeting with people, and a genuine excitement as we talked ideas, culture, and trying to make sense of it all. One day, I woke up to the realization that I was living a theoretical life. I knew the Christian quotes. The cliche stuff. The new sayings that people put out that people retweet, and almost wait for. I could talk in a lot of different fields of study. So some people would say I was deep or smart. But my life was lived mainly in one sense.

Theory.

Don Miller says that a character is what they do. In a movie for instance, a character has to do something. If Frodo doesn’t leave The Shire, the story is lame. If Luke doesn’t leave Tatooine, the story is lame. If William Wallace doesn’t revolt against the British, the story is lame. In fact, the story is never there if the characters don’t do something. If Ryan Gosling doesn’t make a move at the State Fair for Rachel McAdams in the Notebook, then nobody would have been crying at the end. A character has to do something.

Would you watch a movie where a character just went and talked about ideas all day? Probably not. Would you watch a movie where a character just did the same thing every day, going through the motions, and slaving away at something they don’t really like. Probably not. Would you watch a movie where a character faces conflict, and determines to do something different? Those are the movies we watch. And this isn’t just in movies. This is the books we read, and usually the most exciting people to be around. People who do something.

A character is what they do. And you remember what you do. The time I got lost with my family on a hike in the mountains. The time Drew and I hiked 20 miles in one day in the Appalachians, and then monsoon rains hit. The time Kyler and I did Garnett’s Youth Retreat back in college. The time we went down and fed the homeless.

You get the idea. The only way to really live a great story is to do something. If you talk about, if you cram your life with busyness, if you think about what you would do, you aren’t doing it. Because you won’t remember those stories. A character is what they do. In today’s culture, the theme is to watch other people live. To be entertained. Instead of thinking about what it would be like to do what the entertainment does, leave the theoretical life and go do it.

My life feels like this sometimes. I think about how big the world is, how many people there are. And I feel small. Like a raindrop in the ocean. I like this image. God says I am important to Him. Yet, I am not the most important person on the face of the earth (although sometimes I do act like it.) What I do with my life is important to me, and to those I love and those who love me. But in the grand scheme of things, I’m just a raindrop in the ocean. This is pleasant to my soul, because God has a very great kingdom, and I am a small part of it. God’s kingdom is like the ocean, and I can’t wrap my mind around it. Yet, God listens to me. God wants me to be in relationship with Him. And to pray great things. And to do great things. And to give me a great future. This is in the heart of God for each person, I believe.

My life feels like this sometimes. Like a walk in the woods. There are certain paths we walk down again and again in life. We think in certain ways that tread certain paths through our minds. After thinking one way for a while, it is easier to walk down that path. Or maybe it’s what we do. You do the same thing day after day, and it becomes a well worn path that you are very familiar with. My struggle is that all the paths that I’ve worn down are not all the paths I want to walk for this life. I have some paths of selfishness. Paths of lust. Paths of bitterness. It is easy to walk down those paths, because those are familiar paths. But then, there is this beautiful, refreshing poem from Robert Frost.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

If you want something different, you have to do something different. It is as simple as that. I am thankful to be doing something different today. Walking a path that is not easy, but it is worthwhile, and in it I find great satisfaction.

I used to think God worked like a textbook. Faith seemed as simple as solving an equation. 2 + 2 = 4. Basically, if you asked God to do something with faith, and you were following Him, then He was obliged to you to do what you want. 

A few months ago, I did a teaching called Entourage for 20 Park. It was built around friendships, and the importance of the friends you have. We used these questions and sentence as the framework for the series.

“Who’s in? Who’s out? You only go as far as they’ll go with you.”

One thing that has made my life a lot better over the past few years is that I have some friends who will tell me the truth. When I start thinking that I am a big deal, or when I act like I’ve got life figured out, they tell me. A few of them are even able to call me on my crap by the way I’m phrasing sentences. I know, it’s brutal. Brutally honest that leads to a much better life. I am so thankful for my friends who will tell me the truth.

When I talk about these people who will tell me the truth, part of the beauty is that they have known me long enough, and love me well enough that I am completely open to what they say. I trust them as they tell me the truth. While I weigh what everyone says, I really trust what these guys have to tell me when they something important. What I’m saying is that it is really important to have friends who love you and will be honest with you.

Today, I want to talk about a second part of telling the truth. You need people who will tell you the truth when you don’t want to hear it. When you feel like you’ve messed your life up too much. When you feel inadequate. When you feel worthless.

You need people to tell you the truth about you. How important you are in God’s eyes. How important you are to them. How much you mean to the people you spend time with. This is the truth that sometimes we deny in our hearts even more than the brutal honesty of how bad we are. Sometimes, we let so many beliefs that are really lies shape our lives, that we don’t feel like giving much of anything to anyone. And God created us in His image, but we have a hard time bearing His image when we are obsessed with every part of ourselves that we don’t like.

Tell somebody the truth today. Tell them that you love them. Tell them why you love them. Show them how you love them. Tell them they matter to you. Even more, show them this. Give them your words. Give them your actions. Show them your heart. Tell somebody the truth today. Because you matter. Because they matter. Because someone deserves to hear the truth today.

Who gets the invite into your space? It’s your life? You and only you get to choose where you’re going, and what you’re doing. Unless you give someone else permission to choose your life for you. Even then, you’re making the choices.

Today, let’s imagine your life as four settings, specific rooms of a house if you will. There is the front porch, the living room, the dining room, the back porch, and the bedroom. In your life, do they all receive the same symbolic value? If they receive the same value, then you will give equal access to people into these places of your life.

1. The Front Porch. This is the place of common conversation. As culture changes, the front porch looks different for many people. It used to be surface level conversations face to face. Now, it is surface level conversations via text or facebook. So, who do you invite on to your front porch. How crowded is your front porch? You can have so many people on your front porch, that you spend all your time on surface level conversations.

2. The Living Room. This is the place of conversation that may run a little deeper than just getting to know you. A living room is comfortable, and there are pictures throughout the living room of family. In the living room is an over-arching story, and the understanding of who you are and where you come from. The living room is an invitation. People don’t just walk into our living rooms unannounced. We invite them there. How many people are you inviting into the story of your life? If you keep everyone on the front porch, you may become unacquainted with your own story yourself. You may become so involved with the surface level relationships out front, that you forget that inviting others into your own life is important. However, it is difficult for everyone to fit in your living room. Your front porch has access to the yard, so people can walk around out there, and easily come and go. The living room though has the idea that people will be around a little bit longer than they will on the front porch. The living room invitation lets people know that you have welcomed them into your life.

3. The Dining Room. This is where you really get to know someone. Ever wonder why Jesus was always eating? This is the place where you are laughing, telling stories, and truly cultivating great relationships. Once again, who do you invite into the dining room? Does everyone get the invite? How crowded is it? If the dining room is always packed, you might just miss out on getting to know a few at the table because of the sheer size of the party. When the front porch has been invited directly to the dining room, it feels more like a party than a true getting to know you conversation. So who really get the invite into that place of your life.

4. The Back Porch. This is where conversations run deeper. Pull up a few nice chairs outside, and enjoy the evening. Your closest friends get to be there. This is the place of true relationship. Sharing struggles, laughter, and memories. The place where people who know you well will tell you the truth. Who do you invite to your back porch? Once again, everyone does not fit there.

5. The Bedroom. Maybe the most disturbing thing in America today is that the front porch and the bedroom seem to be the place where dating happens. The bedroom is the most sacred place, but a quick invitation to it tramples on the value of it. I think that’s why the writer of Hebrews says, “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.” Besides it being sin, inviting many people into your bedroom reduces the value of it. With a low sense of value on the bedroom, intimacy is lessened. As Andy Stanley says, “Purity paves the way to intimacy.” If you share the bedroom with everyone, you are saving it for no one.

Now, after writing about these five categories of rooms, let’s take a look at day to day life. It is difficult to manage all of these rooms. It is difficult to do something different when people you know to the television to the movies to the magazines may be doing the same thing. Living without a sense of boundaries. Some people don’t like boundaries. But I would say that we protect what we value. Nobody gets mad that their bank has boundaries. Nobody seems upset that their houses have boundaries known as doors which have locks on them, and sometimes security systems.

We’ve all had different struggles with different levels of the five rooms I’ve mentioned. So nobody start feeling high and holier than thou about how they’ve done with the rooms. This isn’t about that. This is about defining boundaries. Does everyone get equal access to your life? Does everyone get to know you how they want to? And maybe the biggest question is,  how good are you at saying no?

If no is hard, then you’ll have a difficult time of keeping people out of rooms you don’t want them to be in. And yes, no is often tough to say. I didn’t realize until a few months ago how hard of a time I have in saying no to people. Then I came to understand this had to do with a battle I had in loving and respecting myself.

No means that you value and respect yourself. No means other people don’t get to choose your life for you. No means you have already said yes to something else. Something like worth. Respect. Purity. Future love. Or it might just say, “I’ve already said yes to Jesus as Lord.”