Clear — Sold Out in the first year

Thanks to everyone who purchased Clear. Also, thanks for all the texts, emails, DMs and Facebook quotes. I'm honored that GOD has used my verbiage to minister to so many people. We are in our second order of product, and the orders keep coming in.


Plans for 2010 are to complete the audio version of the book. I am also about 3/4 finished with a new believers study guide to accompany the relationship aspects of the book. I hope to release this sometime in the spring.


Please continue to recommend the book to your family and friends. There are many individuals who are searching for more in GOD, true transparency is the key.


GOD bless, and have a great Christmas and New Year!

Audio Clear

Started pre-production today on the audio version of Clear. Hope to have the first few chapters completed by the end of next week, with the rest completed by the end of September. The audio book will be available online at clearimitation.com and through iTunes.

I'll keep you posted as to the progress as we make progress (that's from the department of repetative redundancy department).

Clear - Chapter Two

The second pericope of seven from Clear.

Chapter Two — Confession

Where did we get the idea that we have to be perfect to lead?

Have you ever taken the time to examine the lives of the people that God used in the Text? A mötley crüe if ever there was one. In fact, the man that was designated after God’s own heart had a fetish for virgin flesh. So much so that on his death bed his physicians attempted to revive him by having young virgins go to bed with him. He was also a murderer, an adulter and much more.

Noah was a drunk. Moses disobeyed God and had an attitude about it, dashing his chance to enter into the promised land. Rahab was a prostitute. Samson was a womanizer. Job felt sorry for himself. Solomon—the wisest man in the world—had some sort of sick addiction to women and just couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I do.” Jonah went AWOL, then got ticked off at God for forgiving Ninavah anyway. Jeremiah was a cry-baby. Hosea married a whore.

Matthew held orgies at his house and—according to some scholars—even had the audacity to invite Jesus to the party. John the Baptist was offended by Jesus’ not rescuing him from prison. Martha doubted Jesus. Her sister Mary was lazy and also doubted Jesus. Peter doubted Jesus and only threw one net out when Jesus told him to throw out several. Judas had a horrible attitude and questioned Jesus’ motives, then planned His arrest, but he was still one of the twelve closest people to Jesus.

Back to Peter, who first attacked a man, inflicting bodily harm, then—in his willingness to give his all for Jesus—he denied Him three times. He took the Lord’s name in vain; yet he was still chosen to preach the inaugural sermon for the 1^st Century Community at the Feast of Pentecost. Later in his life, Peter didn’t want to reach beyond the Hebrew race, then—after he finally accepted the fact that God could save non-Jews—he wanted Gentiles to convert to Judaism in order to demonstrate that they were true followers of Christ. Paul, the writer of the majority of the New Testament, orchestrated the mass murder of the followers of Jesus. He tried to preach when he was a bit full of himself and failed miserably. He even argued with Peter about Peter’s apparent spiritual racism. And don’t forget his thorn.

The Bible is filled with these vivid stories of imperfection and many more. Are you starting to get the picture?

From this glowing list of candidates we could determine that the only qualification that God is really looking for in a person is availability and a pulse. It is men acting with human ideals that require these pristine oracles of God’s goodness. God doesn’t want perfection and neither do His followers.

So why do we keep hiding?

Special Thanks

A good friend of mine purchased a copy of Clear last night at the SoCal Campmeeting. When I say good friend, I should probably clarify that this man is one of the elders in my life, Pastor Bryan Claborn, who is a good 15-20 years my senior. The mere fact that he was willing to read my ramblings made my night.

I bumped into him tonight at service and the first words out of his mouth were, "I read your book. I stayed in my hotel all morning… I couldn't put it down." I was blown away, and deeply honored.

Thank you Pastor Claborn for your kind words, and the encouragement that you gave me to stay the course in this Call that God has placed on me.

Clear - Chapter One

Several people have asked me to post some excerpts from Clear, so here's the first of seven posts with a pericope from each of the chapters.

Chapter One — Clear

LET ME BE CLEAR… MONTE YOUNG IS A LIAR.

I have told so many whoppers in my life that if—for some reason—I would be required to correct the lies, I would have no idea where to start, nor with whom to begin the confession.

I figured I’d get your attention right off the bat with that acknowledgement. While some readers may be laughing, others are slamming their fists into their hands saying, “I knew it!” Still others of you are a bit intrigued by this open confession so early in the narrative.

Standards of writing compel me to softly entice you into my web of prose, then—when you’re completely surrounded by the verbiage—deliver the crushing blow of syntax and jargon. Well, I’ve never been one for standards, as they tend to mutate the individual into a faceless drone of conformity that is devoid of passionate personality and God-inspired expression. So I’ll dispense with the status quo and drop the bomb first then work backwards from there.

Yes, I am a liar by nature, but this is not about me, it is about the God Who lives in me. While I’m am a sinner extraordinaire, my God is pure and holy, and beautiful. If at any point you see me rather than Him, then I’ve become less clear. The purpose of this tome is to tell a bit of a life’s story and to share the illumination that came from hitting the very bottom. My prayer is that this may in some way help people who are struggling with their identity in God by showing them the power of transparency.

I want to tell some of the story of my life, primarily focusing on the last seven years or so. While there may be other details of my past that would make great book fodder, I’ll save those for possible future endeavors. The reason the past seven years hold such great import for me is that these are years in which I have been learning to be a true Christ-Imitator.

While I’ve known about Jesus basically my entire life, it has only been in the recent past that I have truly attempted to get to know Him on a personal level. For the better part of my life I’ve relied on the experiences and commitments of other people to establish my walk with God. My parents are great people, and I come from a long history of spiritual patriarchs on both sides of the family, so it was easy to pick someone from whom to leech.

Sadly, despite my stellar heritage, I had no idea who I was or what God wanted me to be. In fact, I had no personal knowledge of God whatsoever. My entire teen life and all through my twenties I waged an inward war with myself over whether God really had a purpose for my life. I didn’t feel worthy of the calling that weighed so heavily on my soul, nor did I have any idea how to change who or what I was. I was completely and totally lost.

My life was empty and meaningless. I felt dirty. I was dirty. If God was looking for a vessel to use, He definitely would look past me. I was like the misshapen mass that is not unlike the fledgling attempt by a child in art class, required to fashion a bowl from some form of low-quality modeling clay. I was not something nor someone God could—or would even want to—use.

Or so I thought.

I know that I am not alone in these sentiments. There are many people in our congregations who feel completely worthless, yet they remain, sitting stoically in their seats at every gathering. They go through the motions devoid of passion, all the while their spirit is screaming for release.

Let me tell you what I’ve learned.

It helped me.

Maybe it can help you too.

It all begins with a jar.

In his letter to the Body at Corinth, Paul tells us about God shining the light of the knowledge of Jesus Christ into our hearts. He describes the recipient of this illumination as jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.¹

This metaphor is interesting because of the contradiction between God’s glory being housed in something so temporal and sans value. What Paul was trying to get across to these 1^st Century believers—and subsequently us—is that while we may hold God’s glory within our fleshly and carnal jars, we can never allow the jar to become the focus. Our focus must always be on Who and What we are containing, never on the fleshly Tupperware® with the seal-in-the-freshness pop-top. When the jar—or container—becomes the most important thing, then we are putting the creation before the Creator. God has never tolerated this. Sometimes we place the jar before the Substance filling the jar, but we have to remember its not us that has the power to change our world; it is God in us.

Jesus’ cousin, John, said it best, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”² John understood the power of being clear, transparent, translucent—pick your poison. The point at which our identities as jars become more important than the One we are housing, our clearness lessens and we become the focal point. This ties directly in with Jesus’ teaching on spiritual works. Jesus said to His disciples, “…Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”³ It’s important to understand that Jesus is not referring to good religious or spiritual works; He is not talking about outreach, door knocking, etc. He is talking about His people doing good for the world in which we live. It’s not enough to have the Truth; we have to shine Jesus to our world through our actions.

1. 2 Corinthinans 4:6-8 (ESV), my personal Sword of choice. This passage of Scripture is dissected masterfully in Petrus J. Gräbe’s, The Power of God in Paul’s Letters .

2. This is a quotation of John the Baptist found in John 3:29-31, again quoted from the ESV.

3. Extracted from Matthew 5:14-16 (ESV).

Clear

I want to thank all of you who have read Clear and have sent me emails in response. Your kind words mean a lot, but the most moving thing is the fact that God is using the book to minister to you. I hope and pray that the ministry continues.

Spread the word. We'll ship the book anywhere to anyone who is hurting.

The Writings of Matthew

The writings of Matthew are quickly becoming one of my favorite parts of the entire Text. Matthew's use of wordplay in the first two chapters to identify Jesus as the Messiah is brilliant. Of the entire book, the genealogy in the first chapter is one of my all-time favorite passages. In this chapter Matthew uses the Hebraic philosophy of Gematria to prove to his primarily Hebrew readers that—in his view—Jesus was the Messiah, a descendant of David.

I love this kind of writing. This is the stuff that makes me want to dig deeper into the Text to see what else is there.

Another aspect of this Text that really grabs me is the fact that Jesus first called Matthew to be one of His closest disciples. Matthew was hated by the Jewish population because he was a tax collector. Not to mention that he—along with all the other selected twelve—had been previously rejected by the religious establishment and denied the privilege of rabbinic study. Yet, Jesus—a rabbi Himself—thought that Matthew was completely qualified to follow Him and learn His yoke.

This demonstrates to me that my past and my present sins are merely the foundations upon which God will begin a work in my life that will catapult me into the future that He has purposed for me. If God could use Matthew, He can use me.

Clear

"Clear" is finally ready to ship and should start going out to next week.

For those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about, I've just finished my first book. I've very excited about what God has already started doing through the book. I sent it out to a few people for review before it was published and the response has been fantastic.

If you want to order a copy go to http://clearimitation.com.