I wanted to give you a sample of my new book Crazy Kingdom!  I hope you enjoy!

Introduction To Crazy Kingdom!

I found myself surrounded by a large group of drug dealers who were looking to make an example out of me. Armed with new ax handles from the local hardware store, they were threatening to beat me down in the parking lot of my high school. 

A few weeks earlier, one of my classmates had died in a car accident. He was a central figure in the school’s not-so-underground drug culture. In my zeal for Christ, but also in the insensitivity of immaturity, I had used this student’s death as a platform to proclaim Jesus and the gospel of salvation. “If you were this student, would you be in heaven or hell?” This infuriated his friends—many of whom were gun-carrying drug dealers. 

So, in their grief and anger they plotted against me. They had gotten word that I was staying later after school to take an Algebra II test. I left the school to walk to my truck that was neatly parked in an unusually empty student parking area. As I approached my vehicle, four other trucks filled with teens and fellow students suddenly drove up and surrounded my truck on all four sides. I was trapped! The students in the rear of each truck hopped out armed with handles from hammers, axes, and hatchets. I thought my heart would stop. 

The ringleader confronted me with fury regarding the things I said about his deceased friend. Enraged with the idea that his friend could be in hell, he swung the ax handle back to hit me in the head. At that very moment, a girl shouted out that their deceased friend “wouldn’t want it this way.” She also reminded him that the school “has cameras.” This sparked a debate of whether they should “kill me now or kill me later?” I was praying silently: kill me later! As the debate wrapped up, the ringleader put the ax handle two inches from my nose and said, “By the end of this week, you’re going to be dead.” This was really distressing to me because it was already Wednesday, but at least I wasn’t going to die that afternoon! 

I don’t know if they were just attempting to give me the scare of my life or if they meant business. If it was just an attempt to scare me, then they were successful. Either way, I was afraid for my life. I knew they had the potential to be violent. The school was filled with rumors of wrecks by students who claimed these students had run them off the road or had threatened them with guns. This is not what one would expect in a high school filled with upper-middle-class students, but in the center of American prosperity, I was confronted with a number of jarring spiritual truths that solidified my faith. 

The first reality I faced was that serving Christ with complete abandonment meant I had to put an end to survival thinking. To follow Christ meant my safety was no longer the predominate concern for my life. I had to crucify the survival instinct. I had to destroy my fear. The culmination of this idea emerged in a confrontation where my life was at stake, and I faced a reality that many Christians in other parts of world experience daily. Self-preservation is not the priority in God’s kingdom. What Paul said is true: I must “daily die” to myself in order to truly live. 

The second reality was the understanding of how radically different and antithetical the worldview is between believers and unbelievers. Our paradigms in this situation were in complete contrast to one another. I wanted everyone in the high school to know Christ … be saved … go to heaven. I thought I was doing the most loving thing in the world by using this tragedy as a platform to share the gospel. Yet their paradigm was vastly different. They thought I was tarnishing his legacy and running down his name. In their view, I was the antithesis of love. Not many times since then has this contrast been so concrete, and it usually doesn’t involve life or death. The majority of the time it’s just the subtle difference between one small decision or another, but the cumulative effect of these little differences in our choices makes for a completely different life. 

The third reality is that there are two kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. These kingdoms are at war, and this war is raging everywhere. Sometimes this war is waged in high school parking lots. Other times, the battlefront may arise during a county commissioner meeting or in the lobby of a hotel when traveling for business and an attractive member of the opposite sex walks into the lobby and makes eye contact. Most of the time the war is waged in our head day by day, moment by moment. The conflict is real. 

When we accept the kingdom of Christ, we must unlearn every instinct. We must transform our thinking into a lens of understanding that most people will perceive as backward and crazy. The reality is this kingdom, this Crazy Kingdom, turns everything that’s upside down to right-side up. 

In the following chapters, we will delve into these truths by looking directly at the teaching of Jesus. We’ll understand the need to execute our survival instinct. Then we’ll compare and contrast these different worldviews. We will see that life and thought in the kingdom of God cuts violently through the paradigms and lies of this world. We must choose which kingdom will govern our thoughts, actions, and lives. We will discover what life looks like right-side up from God’s perspective and why it’s so difficult for us to grab this view. 

When you truly give yourself to the kingdom, some people will believe you are crazy. The reality is you’re just bringing the Crazy Kingdom. 

Purchase Your Copy of Crazy Kingdom

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