Jarrod Jones

I’m a loner. Maybe that’s why I liked the picture of the lonely blue chair you see flashing at the top of my site. It kind of explains me. So, by virtue of this reality, this blog will be strongly narcissistic.

My wife knows this loner thing about me well. It was quite an adjustment for us when we first got married. I blame it on my selfish genes and my single days. I was single until I was 31 years old. I ate almost every meal by myself in those days… willingly. It’s a miracle that I’m married. I wasn’t a monk (although close). I still hung out with friends here and there but kept to myself most of the time. Now that I have a family, I enjoy eating out with them more, of course. I love having that time with Christie to casually chat, and laugh, goof around with the boys, and eat their leftovers. Still I enjoy being alone– going to the mall, bookstores, coffee shops, restaurants, even the movies alone.

I spent three-and-a-half years in seminary living in an 11×14 room. I rarely ate in the cafeteria. I couldn’t afford it. Even if I could have afforded it, I would have opted to eat alone in my room anyway.  I’m not saying spending so much time alone was completely profitable but to some extent it was for me. I survived on Honey Nut Cheerios, kidney beans, sardines, an occasional Chinese buffet, and coffee. Yes, I had constant heartburn. But being social gave me heartburn too.  Still does to a degree.

I’ve done the last 10 years of ministry alone (humanly speaking)–airplanes, rental cars, hotel rooms, camp dorms, restaurants, and so forth. But I rarely felt lonely.  Some people refuel being around people, hanging out, talking about sports, drinking coffee, eating lunch, debating theology, praying together, and such. Not me. My tank is filled by being alone. Not alone for alone’s sake, but sacred-time-with-Jesus-alone in which I don’t feel rushed, busy, or anxious about what has to be done. It also relieves me from having to be on my social A-game, or B-game, or D-game. A rarity for a minister….

Right now, I’m in Des Moines, Iowa. The conference host flew me in a day early to avoid my potential tardiness or absence due to weather related flight delays or cancellations. I confess that it has been incredibly refreshing. The conference will be blessed greatly I just know it. They unknowingly granted me alone time to be focused and filled by the Holy Spirit.

On that note, being alone in a hotel room grants me personal space to allow the Spirit of God to examine and expose anything in my soul I’ve denied or avoided. It forces me to deal with sin in my life. It makes me wrestle with what kind of husband, father, leader, and pastor I’ve been. I keep the TV turned off the majority of the time so that I can’t run from “stuff.”  I read a lot. I journal a lot. I repent a lot.

Right now, I miss my family, and my family misses me. The tremendous payoff though is that I nearly always come back a bit refreshed in spirit. In other words, I come back a slightly better husband and dad.  I believe this is the upside of my travels to Christie.

In addition, I am burdened I won’t be with the Grace family to preach Sunday morn. I love them deeply, and they love me and my family deeply. But the upside is that I will come back spiritually, emotionally, and mentally, and ministerially recalibrated.  As a matter of fact, I spent 12 hours on a sermon that I was going to preach next Sunday at Grace.  Yesterday, I tossed the sermon in the digital and hotel room trash bin. The Lord has revealed a whole other direction for me to go Scripturally, not only next Sunday, but for the next 8 weeks. Without this brief time alone would I have known?

Amazing what 3 days alone can do. Yes, I’ll be speaking 4 different times this weekend, but it’s a conference with over a thousand people so no pressure for me to be social. And that means after speaking for 40 minutes, a few hellos, and a couple of conversations, my hotel room, restaurant booth, Bible, journal, and a good book await me like a cozy blanket to the soul. Being a loner has tremendous benefits.  And not only do I reap the benefits, but those closest to me do too.

Do you ever get bored with Jesus? Do you slip into the place where church is boring, reading Scripture is boring, praying is boring… Jesus is boring?

Here’s a better question: Is Jesus bored with you?

Sometimes I feel that radical Christianity has become mostly about getting Christian tattoos, not cursing, handing out bottled water while saying “Jesus loves you” at red lights, and “bold” t-shirts like, “God doesn’t believe in atheists.” I don’t particularly have a problem with these (okay, maybe the t-shirt), but Jesus never emphasized special Christian markings, outings, and clothing. As a matter of fact, in John 13, Jesus said “By this the world will know that you are my disciples in that you love one another.” They’ll know we’re disciples by our love, not by our tattoos and t-shirts.

Jesus called for a way of life… Deny self, carry cross, follow HIm. Obey. Share the gospel. Love each other. Love the unloved, unlovable, and unlovely through word and deed.

I’m in this with you. Is Jesus bored with me? I’ve been asking this question to myself while leaning into 2010. Is Jesus bored with me because I’m not living radically for Him, trusting Him, depending on Him, obeying Him, serving Him by serving others, even if it costs me?

Is Jesus bored with us?

I’ve been keeping a running list of goals and commitments I seek to hold as a Lead Pastor. I reviewed the list while on the plane ride from NY to OK. I haven’t looked at it or added to it in a while. I was encouraged, and convicted. I’m at 60 goals/commitments and counting. So, I thought I’d share a few in this post and in the next. I see it as a form of accountability to myself. But for what it’s worth to you… Hope maybe you can apply this to your own life, or ministry, where it fits.

By God’s grace:
1. Pray deeply and constantly.
2. Preach Christ and His Word. This is central.
3. My behavior better match my preaching and teaching. (Integrity).
4. Never sacrifice solitude with Christ in His Word and prayer for ministry and sermon preparation.
5. Church growth in faith, community, and mission. Souls saved, lives changed, Christ impassioned, God glorifying, and world impacting. This is the big win.
6. Love people.
7. Seek creativity always—constant creativity and creatively constant (Ed Young).
8. Just be me.
9. Be a leader people want to follow and not have to follow.
10. Read minimum of 30 minutes a day. Sharpen the axe.
11. Take Sabbath once per week.
12. Family before Church & ministry. Fight for it. 50 years from now my family will be the ones changing my Depends, and standing at my bedside, not anyone else.

So, it’s day 3, not 2.5.  Just clearing that up.

Played basketball yesterday for the first time in a year.  I still had a remnant of skill, but just a remnant. Ran hard up the floor twice and nearly had to lay down.  Surprisingly, I can still dunk!  Even I couldn’t believe it.  As always, because I’m 6′7, students just think I can dunk. I didn’t want to disappoint.  It wasn’t pretty though. And it may have been a supernatural moment that might never again be repeated.

To God be the glory for keeping this 37 year old body in working order.  And thanks to my chiro and jump roping too. On another note, I’m hunched over this morning a bit because my body is still in a state of shock from yesterday. This body has 8 weeks and 4 days to go.

Great night last night.  The SL theme is “Flip.”  So I “flipped” where we were in the morning session to a great revelation in the evening session.  Yesterday morning was a dark and depressing morning to be honest—-doomed to an empty life, doomed under sin, doomed by the wrath of God.  Then last night came the flip—–Jesus died to save us from ourselves, save us from sin, and save us from God (wrath).

Isaiah 53:5ff—– He [Jesus] was pierced, stricken, smitten, crushed for our transgressions… by His wounds we are healed!

Eph. 2: 4ff—– “BUT GOD!” Being great in love, rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ. By Grace we are saved.

1 John 4:10—-”This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sin.

Many responded to the gospel last night and were saved. It’s a beautiful sight to see students file out of seats to go speak with counselors about embracing Christ and becoming followers.

Due to the theme, “Flip” (which basically means living a life of repentance—–turning your life around from self and sin—–and radically following Jesus), I was deterred fromy my original teaching this morn.  Suffice it to say, I’d rather go with God’s plan than my plan. I pulled material from my Backward Life book. The Backward Life message is almost identical to the camp theme.

I wanted us to wrestle with how we are to respond to God’s great mercy.  Enter Romans 12:1-2: The gist of the message was that in light of God’s mercy our gut-felt/heart-felt response should be life-worship—–to have holy minds and live holy lives to the glory of God.

Having lunch w/ our worship leader–Chuck Hooten–his wife, and the band today. Then off for more basketball with students.

The message tonight is about living in God’s grace.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve been spending some time in graveyards lately.  I actually have a favorite one. I drive my motorcycle down the gravel road of the cemetery and park it right behind a bench that overlooks the graves of a family.

Morbid, I know. But something touches my soul there. I sit on the bench, think, meditate, and listen to the silence.

I wander around occasionally. I take pause at graves of children, and graves of young men my age.  Mortality colliding with my immortal soul is sobering. I consider those whose gravestone professes them as Christians. I take note of their names and the Scriptures engraved.  It’s surreal to think that in that very moment their questions are answered. Never again will they have tears, backaches, or broken hearts.  And they now know who the author of Hebrews is!

While there I always come around to thinking about the resurrection.  “And the dead in Christ shall rise first.  Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:16b-17).

(Just a side note: If I’m in the graveyard when the dead in Christ are raised first, then I hope a clean pair of underwear will be raptured with me.)

The dead in Christ shall rise first. In his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, author Phillip Yancey tells of a woman whose grandmother is buried under 150 year old oak trees in a church cemetery in rural Lousiana.  In agreement with her grandmother’s instructions, on the gravestone is carved a single word: “Waiting.”

The gravestone of Ruth Graham, the wife of late of Billy Graham, reads, “End of construction… thank you for your patience.”

Go to a graveyard sometime this weekend (I recommend going in daylight :).  Walk around, sit under a tree or on a bench, look at the names, dates, and so forth. Pray. Journal. Reflect on what in your life hurts, what things in your life rusts, who in your life you miss, and what in life really matters.

One day there will be a gravestone by your head.  What you did, who you served, who you loved, and who loved you, will be what mattered.  So are you doing, serving, loving, who and what matters?

On a grander scale, Who you knew, Who loved you, and the Who you loved—Jesus—will be What & Who matters most of all. God gave His Son Jesus to die to show the depth of His love. And just in case we missed it He raised His Son from the grave to show the power of His love.  One day we will feel both forever.

Indeed, the resurrected Jesus is why a devastated Christian husband can fall on his knees, blink through the tears at his wife’s grave, and smile.

Her construction is complete.  And his home awaits.