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A razor blade. Cold steel. Sharp. And used. Sounds like the perfect gift, right? Not really.We all love gifts. If you look around your room or office you will likely see a few gifts that would not bring much on Craigslist, but you treasure greatly. In my office I have a few:

–A Barbie doll from Hannah, slipped in my suitcase one day years ago with a note asking me not to forget her on my travels (yes, I cried);

–A small hand made picture from a Ukrainian pastor. I gave him what was a large sum of money in his land my last day there, but he would not take it. Instead he bought a piece of local art. I treasure it;

–Pictures of my family and students.

You have these also. But I doubt you have a razor blade. But for a man named Jamie, a razor blade became a precious gift, and has ignited a movement that has touched the hearts of a generation. You may be unaware of this movement (many in the Christian subculture are), but in high schools across America it spreads…and it can teach us a lot about a Great Commission Resurgence in our time.

Much has been said and written in recent days about the idea of a Great Commission Resurgence. Far wiser men than I have given sage counsel about both the need and foundations for such a movement in our day. But I live in a world with a lot of teenagers and so many in the next generation who are interested less in a slogan and statements, profound and necessary as they may be. I spend time with young believers who want not only to believe well, but live well, as all of us do. So let me tell you Jamie’s story, which ironically is not his story, and you will see what I mean..

Jamie and a friend traveled to Los Angeles to watch the filming of a music video by MTV (okay I just lost some of you who are my age by saying MTV. but please keep reading). The director of the video was Joaquin Pheonix, the guy who played Johnny Cash in Walk the Line—a movie in no small part about addictions and overcoming them. What struck Jamie about Phoenix went beyond his zealous emotion. He noticed how Phoenix recorded notes: he wrote things on his arm. He had neither a legal pad nor an assistant. When an idea came, he took a sharpie and wrote it on his arm. This struck Jamie: “This isn’t normal stuff. If you’re going to write things on your arms, people are going to see. They’re going to see what’s on your mind and they’re going to think you’re weird. I liked the possibility that he didn’t care what people thought. I thought it would be cool to live like that, to be about things and to be bold about them.”

A couple of weeks later Jamie met a fan of Walk the Line dealing with her own demons of addiction. And that is where a sharpie and a razor blade converge. Her name is Renee. Here is her story in part from Jamie’s words.

“Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn’t slept in 36 hours and she won’t for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she’ll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn’t ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her. She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds.”

Renee is rejected from a treatment center, considering her too great a risk. Too great a risk? Can those of us who have experienced the reality of the gospel find ourselves saying wise things while rarely taking risks for those who need the same gospel?

Jamie decides he and his friends and family will become Renee’s treatment center for the next five days until she enters a center that will accept her. “For the next five days,” Jamie says, “She is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.”

For the next five days they love Renee like she has never known. The night before her time of treatment Jamie recalled:”Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We’re talking to God but I think as much, we’re talking to her, telling her she’s loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she’s inspired. After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff. She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She’s had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn’t have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.” 

But this is not the end. After the treatment, Jamie could observe the change Christ makes in a life like Renee’s, as he watched life come back to her again. But here is where Renee’s story says much about how the church can live out a Great Commission Resurgence in our world, away from the cloisters of our church buildings, among people for whom Christ died:

“We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love.” 

Then he gives a formula that is so simple, so like Jesus, that we may miss it completely. Here is a formula for a Great Commission Resurgence. Here it is:

Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess.

Tell her something true when all she’s known are lies.

Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom.

Tell he God loves her.

Then Jamie adds: “We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don’t get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won’t solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home. I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.” 

There are young people who will read this who know nothing about a “Great Commission Resurgence.” But they have a yearning to live large for God in lives that matter. There are adults who will read this who yearn for a renewed focus on the gospel, but are far from ready to stop a busy life to love a broken girl. But that is not really the point. The point is that all of us can act, we can connect our faith to our feet, or, as my president Danny Akin says, our heads, our hearts, and our hands. From the razor blade gashes on her arms to the sharpie notes on Phoenix’s a movement has begun to call attention to young people who cut themselves (they are everywhere, I meet them all the time). The twin slogans of “love is the movement,” and “to write love on her arms” have spread across the youth culture in America. This spring our daughter Hannah, a freshman in high school at the time, asked us if she could write ‘LOVE” on her arm for a week at school. Why, we asked. She explained it was to show love to young people who cut themselves, and I was introduced to the movement. We of course said yes.

Movements change the world. This movement has brought love to many depressed and troubled youth. Christianity is a movement, and the Great Commission is our theme as much as “love is the movement” is theirs. But we must act, not just talk, and sometimes it involves simple things:

–By taking time to give gifts to neighbors who do not know Christ’s love as my wife does each Christmas

–By going to places where people hurt, like the House of Hope in Raleigh where Hannah goes with our youth

–By taking time to notice the outcasts kids at events, like our son often does

–By having students invite unsaved friends over for a meal, as a class assignment by my colleagues David Nelson and Bruce Ashford does

–By spending a little less time at the church building and a little more time in the culture, as friends at North Wake Church in Wake Forest do (spending Sunday evenings in the spring mingling at a community event called “Six Sundays in Spring”)

–By taking in a homeless man until he meets Christ and gets a job and back on his feet, as my friends Jason and Rachel Kimak did

The examples are many, but they remain too rare. If we will see God move in our time, it will take more than words (see I Thessalonians 1:5). It will take us becoming a little more like Jesus and a little less like each other.It will take something like a razor blade and scars and turning it into a message of hope written on the arms of those whose lives have been changed by the One who had nails put in His for us.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 7:59 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.