Thirsty Fool

Please Empty Your Pockets

2011-12-12T19:01:00.002+02:00

I travel a fair bit. I can't begin to count the times I've emptied my pockets before being allowed through security. It's a ritual of air travel now. Perhaps that's why I was so so taken aback by a picture suddenly appearing to my mind's eye as I reflected on the miracle of Christmas this morning.

In my imagination, I saw the eternal Son of God, the Christ, emptying His pockets. As I continued to ponder the image, I let my myself imagine the conversation in heaven between the Father and the Son, just prior to the incarnation, and I watched as the scene unfolded in my mind.

The Father tenderly says, "It's time son."

The Son looks deep into the soul of the Father and says "I know...I am ready to go. This is a good plan, and yet...I am afraid of what will happen on this trip."

I understand my son. We have always been together, but for a little while it will be different. For a little while you must lay aside what you have known and truly be one of them.

Can I take my power? The power I used when we made the universe together.

No my son, you must leave that here.

Can I take my wisdom? The wisdom I have gained in our eternal relationship, the wisdom I have gained in the years I have watched our children upon the earth."

No, you must leave that here. You will grow in wisdom while you are there.

Can I take my knowledge? The knowledge of all things from the beginning of time.

No, you must learn. You must learn how to walk and how to speak. Imagine the eternal Word learning the language of our children.

Can I take my glory? The radiant glory that dazzles and shines.

No. That too you must leave here.

Can I take my all-sufficiency, my independence?

No. You will be entirely helpless. You will not even be able to feed or clothe yourself. You will drink your first meal from a human breast and be utterly dependent upon your earthly parents. You must leave all these things behind.

But how will I protect myself? We know how violent and unpredictable they can be! What if they try to kill me before our plan is complete?

You won't protect yourself. You will be utterly vulnerable. You will have to trust me. I will watch over you and no evil will harm you until the proper time.

So, what do I take with me then? Can I take nothing from heaven to earth?

Just yourself. Only you, your essence, your spirit poured into a frail human embryo in the womb of a teenage girl. You will start from there and show them Us through one of them. You will show them Us, our Spirit, our Character, by living just as they do. You will be Emmanuel. You will be Us with them.

Okay Father. I have emptied myself, I am ready to go...

I don't pretend to know what happened in heaven, but I can only imagine. Imagine what it must have been like for the perfect Son to contemplate leaving heaven. Imagine what it must have been like to empty Himself as He prepared to humble Himself and live in a human body. Imagine the miracle of the incarnation again this Christmas!

The immense, eternal, limitless Creator of the Universe poured into a tiny baby in a virgin's womb.

Just imagine!

Wandering

2011-12-06T17:10:00.001+02:00

She bounds over the stile and is off like a rocket.

I climb to the top and watch with joy as she enjoys the field stretched out before us.

My dog, Oreo, is not supposed to go into the fields without me. She knows she is supposed to wait at the bottom of the stile as I go ahead. I have trained her with many treats to wait for me to go first. Sometimes the fields are full of cows and they don't respond with joy when she goes rushing in among them. The horses don't care much for her exuberance either.

So, I go first to make sure that it is safe, then I release her with a quick "okay" and she flings herself into the freedom of the fields with reckless abandon. She races here and there investigating everything and simply enjoying the freedom the fields bring. She can run hundreds of meters in virtually any direction. No leash, no fences, no limitations to her curiosity, just the distant hedges marking the edge of her temporary paradise.

I love seeing her free. I love her just being herself. Running. Sniffing. Rolling. Leaping. Romping. It makes me smile to see her just being a happy dog. She comes back to check in every few minutes, and when she does she gets another treat.

We both look forward to our walks.

As we reach the bottom of the first field, I call her to me intending for her come, sit, and receive a treat while I go over the stile first. She pauses, looking back at me over her shoulder, but doesn't come back.

Instead...She bounds over the stile and is off like a rocket.

This time I'm not smiling as I hurry to the stile, whistling and calling her. As I peer over I see her off in the distance leaping over yet another stile. She's not paying any attention. She's no longer even trying to obey. She doesn't care about the treats. She is just gone.

As I hurry through the mud to close the distance between us, I see her cross into yet another field. A field where I know there are horses. Having seen her get kicked in the head once by a cow, I'm not eager to see her confronted by the horses.

I have now broken into a run and am yelling her name, not that she can hear me as she is easily 300 meters away and has disappeared over a hill in the adjacent field.

I continue running after her, concerned that she may get hurt, and wondering why oh why she would run away like this. We always have such a good time together! She has never run off like this before. It's not uncommon for her to go over a stile, but to run away entirely is a brand new behaviour.

As I go through yet another stile I come across some friends who have seen her. They point me in another direction; which is helpful as I no longer have any idea where she is headed or what she is doing. What has gotten in to her?!

Finally, I catch up with her and find her walking with another friend and his dog. I call out, and my friend and his dog turn and start toward me. Not my dog. Not Oreo.

No...Oreo, seems to have developed selective hearing. She doesn't even turn around. Then, she lies down and refuses to come to me. As I approach, she starts to squirm into the submissive position. She knows that she has run off, and she knows that nothing good will come of it. She has been away from me for at least 20 minutes while I ran through the fields pursuing her.

I put her on the lead and start for home, fuming!

What had started out as a wonderful shared experience was ruined for both of us because she decided to ignore me and run off. She doesn't understand or recognize the dangers, and even though she didn't get hurt this time, the dangers were very real. She knew there was freedom, joy, and treats with me, but she caught the sent of something she wanted more and was gone. She didn't care what I wanted. The end result was that she ended up on the lead and I ended up angry and late for a meeting. Neither one of us enjoyed the walk back.

But it was on the way back that God unfolded the parable to me.

As I fumed about the dog and grumbled under my breath about her behaviour, He gently called my attention to the previous evening.

I had heard his invitation the previous evening, but had run off. I felt His invitation to sit at His feet, open His Word, and spend some time together, but I didn't want to. I just wanted to play a silly computer game. I had worked hard and felt entitled to my own time, to do my own thing, so that is what I did. I ran off and did my own thing. I felt the tug several more times over the next couple of hours as I played my game, but kept ignoring His promptings, pretending not to hear and running off again. Finally, at 4AM I collapsed into bed exhausted and dissatisfied.

The funny thing is that I really enjoy my times with Him. My times with Him refresh my soul and stimulate my mind. I am more myself and more full of love and joy, peace and patience, during and after my times with Him. When we do life together, it's great! It is much better on every level than a computer game, but in a fit of sheer madness it somehow seemed like a good idea to run from my all loving Father.

By the time we made it home I was truly repentant and grateful for my Master. I can't say Oreo felt the same. I can tell you that she was ready and raring to go on a walk again the next day. I can also tell you that she hasn't run off since. Our relationship is restored and full of joy and freedom again. And my relationship with the dog isn't bad either.

Becoming Who I Am

2011-11-07T18:53:00.002+02:00

Have you ever wondered who you are? Have you ever wondered about your real identity, the part of you that is deeper than your profession, your education, your culture, or your family of origin? Who are you at your core?

I had two dreams the other night. Not the kind of dreams that simply rehash the day's events. These dreams had a different quality to them. They felt different even in the midst of them, and they felt very different as I awoke and pondered on them. They have stayed with me for days now and the more I reflect on them, the more convinced I am that they were God dreams.

The first dream was a long-forgotten incident from my past. A formative experience that gave me one of the labels that has hindered me in my process of becoming. I awoke from the dream wondering about it and was moved to prayer. I asked God about the significance of the event and why it came up at this time. I received no answer.

After falling back to sleep, I immediately had another dream. In this dream I was taking in immense power but was afraid to release the power. I was filled with incredible power by God, but didn't know what to do with it or how to use it in a way that wouldn't ultimately damage myself or others. Again, I awoke and turned to the Lord in prayer, asking for His guidance and interpretation.

It was then that He met me.

As I prayed I was filled with a sense of His presence and power. I was moved as I felt Him confirming that the vision in the second dream was me. The first dream revealed the source of pain and the genesis of a lie that has bound me for years. The truth is that God has filled me with immense power, but my fears and insecurities keep this power from being expressed for His Kingdom. At first I was hesitant to accept this as true because it seemed self-aggrandizing.

As I spoke this out to the Lord, I suddenly realized that it is not. To recognize this truth about myself is to acknowledge that all of God's kids are similarly powerful. Our power, our gifts, are all different, but we are all uniquely created by Him and invested with tremendous power, the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead. All of God's kids are immensely powerful, we are partakers of the divine nature!

But we are all living as less than we really are. We have been beaten down or tricked into believing that we are less than we are. We have been imprisoned by the lies we have believed about ourselves. The lies we drank down with our mother's milk. The lies specifically designed to keep us from realizing who we really are and becoming the powerful ministers we were designed to be.

As I lay there on my bed, wrestling with all of this, I felt like I was waking up for the first time, as if scales were falling from my eyes. I was beginning to grasp a new vision of myself, and all of God's children, through the eyes of God. I also saw all of the hurtful experiences falling into a pattern, a well designed scheme to ensnare and enslave me; experiences tailored to re-enforce the lies that kept me bound for years.

In my case, I believed that I was an embarrassment, not to be trusted, I was dangerous, and I was a failure. These lies have hindered me and kept me from seeing God as He really is and myself as I really am, and as I could be.

What are the lies keeping you from becoming who you are?

An Eternal Kind of Life

2011-11-02T12:35:00.000+02:00

One of the amazing and little experienced truths Jesus taught is this: He came to give us the abundant life.

It sounds pretty straight forward, but we rarely touch this true life, this eternal kind of life. We often settle for something less than true fellowship with the Spirit, true intimacy with the Father, true identification with the Son. We settle for the humdrum life of this world when infinitely more is offered to us.

Even in Christian circles we redefine the abundant life as something less than it really is. We make it roughly synonymous with the American Dream. We make it about relational harmony or financial security, or access to modern conveniences and creature comforts. The eternal kind of life is much deeper than just these superficial aspects of our lives.

Jesus gives us a glimpse of it when he invited all who are thirsty to come to Him and drink, and then issued the audacious promise that, if we do, the Holy Spirit will bubble up within us and flow out of us. We will be filled to overflowing with the power and presence of God. He said that we would do even greater things than He did.

Is that your experience?

It is rarely mine, but I have tasted it. I tasted it again on my last trip to Asia. I felt God's presence and was privileged to partner with Him. I watched in awe as He revealed Himself too me and then through me to others. I literally saw supernatural miracles happen. I lived for 10 days in the awareness of His presence and power.

Then I got on a plane and flew home. I feared that this trip would be an anomaly and that I had no choice but to return to my normal life. But the real beauty of this trip is that He has come home with me. He has continued to meet with me and to speak to me. He has continued to partner with me and has encouraged me to keep living like this.

So, I am choosing to cultivate the lifestyle that I had on the trip. Less extraneous noise. More time spent intentionally seeking Him. Recognizing my fears and insecurities that keep me from willingly submitting all to Him, and humbly laying these too at His feet.

I am finding that the "mountain top" isn't a place you go, but a presence you cultivate.

I have caught myself returning to old patterns of thinking and asking. I have been distracted by the inane and mundane that calls itself news. I have allowed myself to lose focus and live again as if this world is all there is. I have been drawn to escape or to binge, but my brief forays into the mundane leave me wondering. Why in the world would I choose that when so much more is available to me?

Why do we?

Ambushed Again!

2011-10-10T14:03:00.001+03:00

On Friday I was skyping with some friends. As we often do, we ended the call by praying for each other. One of the things they prayed for me was that God would fill me up for the up coming week of intense ministry by meeting me in worship. In the last few days, this prayer has been answered many times over, the most recent one was this morning, when God ambushed me again!

Perhaps that needs a little explaining...

When I was a kid, we took great delight on hiding in the house and jumping out at unsuspecting loved ones. Often, particularly with my dad, these childish ambushes were followed with tickles and fun. At any moment, your day could be interrupted by a loving ambush. When you least expected it, someone would jump out at you and you would be thrown into chaos for a moment as your adrenalin kicked in. The intensity of emotion heightening the connection with someone you were not looking for.

One of the really fun things for me in the last few years, has been the way God sneaks up behind me and taps me on the shoulder when I'm not looking. Sometimes it feels really playful, as if He was hiding behind the door with a sly smile on His face, listening to my approaching footsteps, anticipating the look on my face when He jumps out. Other times it is more sedate and deep like suddenly discovering an old friend sitting in your living room and inviting you to sit down and catch up. Still other times, the ambushes are more severe, like suddenly being caught in the act, suddenly knowing that you are caught, guilty, and there is no wiggling out of it.

One of the great joys of my life has been learning what it means to live in what Dallas Willard calls "a God bathed world". The fact is that our world is filled with God. He is available to us every moment. He is actually present everywhere at every moment but we can live our whole lives without being aware of Him. Cultivating sensitivity to Him and creating space in my life to respond to Him takes discipline and intentionality, but it is well worth it. He reveals Himself to those who seek Him.

This morning, He ambushed me as my wife was reading from "Jesus Calling". I'm not really a devotional reader kind of guy, but God totally ambushed me this morning! I am preparing to travel to Asia for a week of intense ministry. I went to bed last night trying to anticipate all that the week would hold and even playing through potential conversations in my head. This mornings reading opened with this line, "Trust me enough to let things happen without striving to predict or control them." I didn't really hear the rest of the reading.

I felt like God had just tapped me on the shoulder. My mind flooded with all the ways I had tried to do exactly that. I was suddenly deliciously aware of His presence and the absurdity of my façade of control, my desire to accurately anticipate the future. Instead, He reminded me that I can and should relax into His presence. I can be present in every moment and be anticipating Him, listening for His approaching footsteps.

I am eager to see what He has in store for me this week. I am eager to live with Him, to walk with Him. With an almost childlike giggling fear, I'm peering around each corner wondering when He will ambush me again.

Why do you do what you do?

2011-10-07T15:53:00.001+03:00

I have received two emails recently that have puzzled me, and that is a good thing. The confusion forces me to engage with the questions they raise. Essentially, two trusted friends have asked me why I am writing. Both have observed that I am not going to get famous or make any money writing what I do as I do. (Particularly because I have designated that all royalties go directly to charity.) At the core, their the question was, "Why bother writing?"

It is a fair question. Particularly when I look at the sales of the last book, which have not gone through the roof. When two trusted people ask you the same question, it is worth a good think.

As I have pondered this , I have come to this conclusion: I write because God has asked me to write. Several years ago God broke into my life and specifically encouraged me to write. As a part of a spiritual retreat, I asked Him, "What do you want me to prioritize in this next season of ministry?" And much to my surprise He answered me. I have found it dangerous to ask God questions! More than once I have been surprised when He has spoken up and answered what I had intended to be a rhetorical question in my prayer times.

Unfortunately, He did not tell me what to write, nor did He promise me that anyone would read what I write. He simply told me to make writing a part of what I do. I spent the next 4 years doing everything except writing. I argued with Him, telling Him that it was pretentious of me to write. After all...who am I to write? I'm no John Piper, Dallas Willard, or C.S. Lewis. I told Him that I didn't have time to write, I was too busy doing other things for the Kingdom. I filled my schedule with people and projects and steadfastly refused to write. Eventually, I started to write little things and that was how this blog got started.

However, I found that I could not encourage others to move forward in their relationship with God while steadfastly refusing to follow His direction in my own life. My fears and insecurities did not go away, but I finally chose to stop resisting and procrastinating. I did not know what was going to come out when I sat down and actually started writing. I still had no direction from on High. But, as I started writing, the book Pursuit of a Thirsty Fool took shape. It was during the process of writing and re-writing that the opportunity for publishing suddenly emerged, and that was how I "accidentally" became a published author.

I do not know that the next book will see the light of day. I know that the process of writing the last one, and this one, has propelled me into the arms of God. This process has forced me to face my own weakness, fears, and insecurities. I have grown and changed in the process of creating. God has used this process to draw me closer to Himself. God is re-creating me as I create.

I believe it is my job to write the best book I can. I work hard, I offer it as a gift to my King, and I trust that He will use it as He sees fit. If He uses it to impact one or a million, is up to Him. I like the way that Keith Green said it, "You do your best and pray that it's blessed, and He'll take care of the rest."

I don't write to be famous. I don't write to make money. I don't write to have an impact. I don't write because I think I have something profound to say. I write because I believe it is part of the work that God has prepared in advance for me to do. (Eph. 2:10)

Why do you do what you do?

At Play in the Fields

2011-09-07T13:29:00.002+03:00

As I was walking the other day through the fields, I realized again that my dog, Oreo, has become a part of my relationship with God. As we tramp through the fields around our town together, I notice things about her behaviour and occasionally God will nudge me to reflect on how that particular act might reflect something deeper.

It is such an amazing adventure to live in a God bathed world. The more I realize His actual presence the more the opportunity for connection with Him becomes a reality. I am looking for Him, expecting Him to speak up at any moment. I am slowly learning what it means to actually walk with God; not just follow His principles or obey His Word, but to actually walk with God.

Yesterday, I went on a walk with Oreo and God. They were both with me the whole time, even when I wasn't consciously aware of their presence. On these rambles across the countryside, I generally let my mind wander. I don't keep a tight rein on it, but let it go where it will following the contours of the land and sky or pondering tasks and relationships.

As I do so, particular items will come into focus and sometimes I turn toward God and start talking with Him about it; asking Him for His perspective, or a solution to a problem, or just sharing my heart about the topic. After talking for a bit, we lapse into a comfortable silence, like an old married couple.

But sometimes God breaks the silence and pipes up with something He wants me to consider. Ideas that are not my own intrude, or something unexpectedly catches my eye and draws my attention, sending me off on a different train of thought or initiating a prayerful dialogue with Him.

Yesterday, it was the shear joy of the dog. We were walking in the wind and rain through a field of high grass when she just took off. She was leaping and running in wild circles in a sort of ecstatic dance.. She would occasionally come back to check in or just look my direction. The look of wildness and excitement in her face could only be described as joy. She was loving it, the wildness of the weather, the freedom of her body, the stimulation of the environment. She kept looking in my direction as if to say, "Isn't this great! Come run with me!" I smiled and walked on, unhurried, but enjoying her joy.

Then came the nudge...I realized that my birthright as a child of God is that kind of joy and freedom. The fruit of the Spirit is joy! I too can run with reckless abandon, playing in the fields of the Lord, because He is with me. His rod and His staff, they comfort me.

Because He is with me and will not leave me or abandon me, because His eye is ever fixed on me, I can release my worry and hyper-vigilant self-protection. He is close, He will warn me if danger enters the field. He will call me back from my wild romp if need be. But he also walks on toward the destination that He knows, unhurried but not unmoved.

He shares in my joy and spurs me on to love and good deeds, to the eternal kind of life that I long for! He knows the end from the beginning and He is working it all out for my good. My only task then is to walk with Him through life, tuning my ear to His voice and remaining open to His direction. All the rest is play in the fields.

2011-09-02T14:51:00.000+03:00

My family likes to joke. We like a bit of good natured teasing about our idiosyncrasies and the funny things we do.

One of the sayings that we have adopted to poke fun at my general approach to life is: "If one is good, two is better. If two is better, then three is outstanding. If three is outstanding then four is just great!"

I am a person who always thirsts for more. It is deep in me. I see it in all areas of my life. It's not a choice I make, it is core to who I am to want more. There is a passion and extremeness inside of me that is just there. I didn't put it there, I don't know how it got there, but it's there. It's not always a bad thing as it has propelled me forward in my relationship with God and to attempt things that others might not.

The Enneagram has been a helpful tool for me to understand this aspect of my personality. I have found other personality/temperament tools helpful for other reasons, but this aspect of me was never adequately addressed through the DISC, the MBTI, or the Kolbe. Don't get me wrong, I have profited from all of these, but this core aspect of me was inadequately explained.

A few years ago a friend introduced me to the Enneagram and I began to wrestle with the definitions. The model has 9 core personality types. One of the key ways to identify your type is to look at all of them and identify the one that repulses you most. That is probably you, the one that includes your core sinful predisposition. The one you don't want to be. The negative traits of other types actually seem less negative than the one your left with.

This is hard, but Enneagram is a useful tool for spiritual formation in that it pushes you to identify your core disposition the good the bad and the ugly. Who wants to stand up and say, "Hi I'm an Eight and my core sin is lust!" Even worse is when some else says, "Oh yeah, you're an Eight all right. Lust is totally your thing...lust and confrontation!"

So, I'm an Eight. Now what!?

While the Enneagram identifies your weaknesses, it is essentially a tool for self-awareness and growth. By giving me awareness and understanding I can choose to grow. I can choose to stop acting in ways that re-enforce the negative aspects of me and to cultivate the opposite traits, while not losing the positive elements that accompany my type.

So why am I writing about this today. Because I have been puzzling over certain behaviours and wondering what drives me. Specifically, last night I stayed up until 4AM. No good reason. I just didn't feel tired. So, I read a little, researched some, watched some videos, and generally just puttered around until 4AM. I wasn't doing anything bad, just not going to bed because I wasn't "tired".

Today I'm tired. I sat down with the Lord this morning and my reading was in Matthew 11 where Jesus invites those who are weary to come to Him and rest. That sounded really good this morning, but why didn't it sound good last night? As I sat there pray-pondering it occurred to me that I have redefined tired as exhausted. I don't feel "tired" until I am well beyond actual tiredness and I'm at total exhaustion.

As I pondered this, I suddenly realized that this too is a part of being an Eight. I started to take stock of my life and realize that I tend to redefine everything in the extreme. At meals I push right past satiated to stuffed. I zoom past tired on the way to exhaustion. I don't go for a short walk, I walk for miles. I don't do a little gardening; once I'm started, I garden for hours.

So, today I am aware in a new way, and because I am aware I have choices to make. I can choose moderation. I can try to rediscover normal tiredness. I can choose not to push myself or others to extremes but can choose moderation and relaxation.

This seems to be the call of God for me today. I'm just glad he showed up this morning. He's good like that.

It's All About Relationship

2011-08-26T14:31:00.000+03:00

We are inherently relational creatures. We were made for relationship. We are not independent or anonymous. We have identity and individuality, but these are the precursors for relationship. They allow us to be ourselves and to offer ourselves to others. We have personality that distinguishes us from those around us but we are not designed to be isolated from people and things around us. We must be connected, interrelated or we perish.

This relational core to who we are is grounded in the root of our being. We were created in the image of God and God exists in eternal relationship within the three persons who make up the Godhead. We were created to enter into and relate to The Three-in-One God and this ability to relate is knit into our very being. We were literally created to relate.

We were also created to be connected to other people. We do not come into being alone, but are born into relationship with those around us. Some of us were born into nurturing families and others into dangerous and destructive families, but we cannot survive our infancy without someone taking an interest in us and sustaining our lives. We literally can not live without community.

As we grow up we learn to operate independently from those around us. We no longer need to be spoon-fed and diaper changed, but in this normal and healthy process of individuation and growing independence, we can begin to believe the lie that we don't need anyone else. Especially now, in an age of relative wealth and incredible technological innovation, we can live more isolated than ever. We stay continually connected with the world through our screens and keyboards, while actually living more isolated from real relationships.

We were created to connect. It is now and has always been about relationship. We were made in Their image. The image of the Trinitarian God. The Relational Community God of the scriptures. We cannot learn how to relate to God while remaining distant, isolated, or stunted in our interpersonal relationships. We must learn how to trust and to live in community with one another, or we are kidding ourselves about living with God. He has created us for community.

It's all about relationship. It always has been.

Instant Maturity

2011-08-16T17:45:00.000+03:00

I was talking to a friend today about growth. He is growing and it is my privilege to walk alongside him on this leg of the journey. As we were talking, he mentioned how discouraged he was that he was not further along.

I resonate with that. There have been many times in my life that I find myself wondering how long I will continue to struggle in the same area. How many times I will make the same mistakes?Many of us are not where we want to be, where we aspire to be. We want to be further on in our walk, more mature, and we want it yesterday. (On the other hand, I see many who have implicitly decided that more is not possible. They have fallen into apathy and self-satisfaction, but that is a topic for another day.)

As I talked to my friend this morning, our conversation meandered to the topic of trees. He told me that it takes seven to eight years for a fruit tree to reach maturity. It starts can start to bear fruit within 3 years but has a long way to go to maturity. We can create the right environment for growth and protect it from impediments to growth, but ultimately it just takes that long for it to grow to maturity. It is unrealistic to expect a tree to grow faster than it will grow. It would be silly to get frustrated at a tree for not growing faster.

I think that we are often frustrated with our growth because we have been given false expectations. We live in a post-industrial information age. We have grown used to mechanistic growth and the idea that a new and improved formula can produce greater, faster, and more efficient growth than ever before. We are accustomed to nearly instant everything. This mindset has crept into all areas of our life including our spiritual life and has warped our expectations.

This unrealistic cultural expectation is further exacerbated by an over simplistic understanding of the Gospel. We have reduced the gospel to merely the atonement, ie. getting saved. While it is true that the death and resurrection of Christ is the central historical fact of the Christianity, the Gospel is much more than simply that. The Good News is that we have been invited into a relationship with the Triune God. The atoning sacrifice of Christ makes this possible, but the Good News is more than just getting saved. We can enter into a vibrant, live giving relationship with God that begins here and now and lasts forever. This is the Gospel.

Like any relationship, it begins at some point, but the beginning is not the end. It is merely the launching point for a new kind of life, a life with God. It takes time for us to grow to maturity. It will be years, not days or weeks, or even months from spiritual birth to maturity. We must not be too hard on ourselves in the process, but neither should we give up the pressing on that is required of us. We must do all we can to eliminate the things that will impede our growth and to build into our lives the things that will promote it, but ultimately we grow organically at the rate of the Spirit. The Spirit is not slow as some understand slowness, and neither does He move too fast.

At just the right speed, He is creating the new and improved version of me. One day at a time, one small step of growth at a time, I am being made mature and complete. I am not there yet, but I am on the way.

Life as a computer game

2011-07-13T13:36:00.001+03:00

I think I learn more in the process of being a mentor than those I am serving. It is incredibly challenging and enriching to listen carefully to another human soul and share in their journey, then to listen carefully to what God might be saying or doing in their life. I see my role primarily as drawing the two into dialogue, the Spirit and the person sitting across from me. I'm a sort of relationship counsellor seeking to strengthen and encourage their relationship rather than inserting myself into it, or making the discussion about me. After the sessions, I continue to dialogue with God about what I have heard and their journey informs my own.

Yesterday, I had a wonderful conversation with a young man. As we talked about things in his life, an analogy came to mind...perhaps from the Spirit. It has stuck with me, haunting me for the last day or so. I found the metaphor of a computer game helped to create useful categories for the young man and for me.

Some computer games can be played in a single player mode or multi-player mode. In single player mode, you are the only sentient being in the whole world. All the other characters in your digital world are computer generated, they are Non-Player Characters, NPC's. NPC's exist only for you to interact with in one way or another, to people your world and make it more interesting in some way. There is little or no actually morality involved in how you interact with them as they are not people, they don't have feelings, they don't really exist, they are only bits of code written for the sole purpose of their relationship to you.

In multi-player gaming their are other actual people involved. You share the digital world with other real people, player characters, PC's. PC's are also represented digitally, but behind the graphics is an actual person with feelings and desires. They may look exactly like a NPC, but the morality of it seems different. The fact that another real soul is involved makes the interactions more meaningful and interesting as well as less predictable. They are more real.

As the young man and I talked, we agreed that we often find ourselves playing the game of life as if it is a single player game. We ascribe value to people based on their usefulness to ourselves. We interact with people around us as if they were NPC's performing functions, poplulating our world, but not as real souls. As I have continued to reflect on this, I have realized the strength of my natural tendency to go through my life as if it really were my life, my personal domain, as if others exist only in reference to me.

The fact is that we live in a multi-player world. We are surrounded not with NPC's but with real people, real souls with their own stories. They are not minor players in our own story, but each person is a lead player in the story that God is writing in and through all our lives. We reduce people to stereotypes and two dimensional sprites and in doing so we treat them as something less than a real person. This depersonalization fundamentally fails to recognize the image of God in each person around us.

There is something comfortable about a single player game. The rules are more simple and easier to understand. Once you figure out the predictable patterns, you can manipulate the world and master it, control it. Real people are wild cards. They can not be easily manipulated or controlled. No matter how well you understand them, they remain free-agents, unpredictable. They do the unexpected and can wreak havoc on your carefully constructed world. I understand the allure of single player games and enjoy them, but God did not design us, or the world, for single player gaming. He designed us for community and relationship with Him and with others.

We must shake ourselves out of this "single player" mentality! We must choose to live in the real world and recognize the multi-player nature of the world around us. It is a question of perception. We must choose to renew our minds day by day, to recognize the souls around us, across the kitchen table and across the checkout counter. In doing so, we open ourselves up to rich and meaningful interactions with them and with the One who created us all for life with Him and with one another. When we do this, we begin to enter into the real world, to live the eternal kind of life, the abundant life. The Kingdom of God really is within you.

Swimming and Gliding

2011-07-06T11:08:00.000+03:00

With just a flick of his tail he glides so effortlessly through the water! A huge carp lazily swims around in a pool on the edge of our town. He moves with such grace and ease as he weaves through the plants and among the swarm of other fish. He is clearly in his element, comfortable and confident.

As I watch I feel a tug from deep in my soul, a memory climbing toward my conciousness. The Spirit nudging me toward Him. "In Him we live and move and have our being." As I walk this earth I am in Him. I am right now surround by and lifted up by Him. He is genuinely present with me at all times. When I wave my hand through empty space, I am waving it through and in God. God is ever present and ever personal.

This God who is beyond my understanding, this God who created stars and galaxies, this God who penetrates every fibre of my being, every place in the universe and beyond, makes Himself personally available to me. He speaks to me. He works all things out for my good. He is working in and around me at all times, writing the story of my life, of all our lives.

I forget. I live as if I am on my own. I live as if it all depends on me, as if I am alone and vulnerable to the whims of impersonal fate or the chaos of human action. But this is unreality. The reality is that I am surrounded and cared for by the most powerful and loving Being in existence. He loves me and has demonstrated this love in sacrificial and enormously costly action. I know His love and care from history and from my own life. But still I forget.

I thrash around trying to stay afloat, afraid of drowning in the threatening world around me; when I could relax into His love. I could glide along in His Spirit in the beauty of this world and the knowledge of His care. The circumstances remain the same, but as I stand next to the pool my perception has subtly shifted and the peace that surpasses all understanding comes to me. I am aware of Him and it is good.

God's Terrible Inefficiency

2011-07-01T15:18:00.000+03:00

I realized again today how much my perspective is shaped by who I am. I am driven by efficiency and productivity. I am always asking how to improve something or how to derive more from less, how to work smarter not harder. This drive is partially a result of my basic personality type, but has been continuously reinforced by my culture and education.

Today I was bemoaning a particular ineffeciency. I was telling my wife that the return on my investment in a particular project was inadequate. I was arguing against doing something like it again. She listened to my rant patiently then gently asked a question, "Did you do what God asked you to do?"

"Yes!" I answered, "I did, but God is so terribly inefficient!" Suddenly I realized that Jesus had really mishandled his ministry, had botched his opportunity to make the kind of big impact that he could have made. First, there is a question of timing. He was born in a time and place where his voice could not be heard globally. Certainly, it would have made more sense for him to be born now with ubiquitous global media available to spread his message and broadcast his miracles. There was no recording equipment, no TV, no radio, no internet. He could reach more people in one day with a webpage and a twitter account than he could in 33 years of wandering around preaching to people in person back then. What was He thinking?!

Second, there is a question of social and economic clout. Even if we grant that it was a good idea to be born then, He should have picked a better situation for himself. He was born into a poor peasant family in a backwards province far from the centres of power. He made no effort to use the established systems of influence in government or religious circles. Instead, he recruited a bunch of misfit hicks to follow him around, and wasted his time blessing children and even going so far as to tell people NOT to tell others about what he had done for them. Certainly the lessons of guerilla marketing and viral marketing were lost on him. Again, I have to ask myself, What was He thinking?!

I could totally have done a better job. I could really have helped Jesus to be more efficient and productive. Jesus needed a strategic plan and a marketing team. (Perhaps even a glossy brochure.) He wasted so much of his time talking to people like the woman at the well, or the woman caught in adultery. He should have been focusing on those with more clout. He should have spent more time networking and developing contacts with the decision makers, the influential people. He could have really accomplished so much more! When he died, even the few followers he had were scattered. All power in heaven and earth had been entrusted to him! He used this power to wash feet?! What was He thinking?

As I allowed this train of thinking to flow from my unconscious to my conscious thoughts, it became so clear. God's economy is simply not mine. He chooses to work in ways that appear to be terribly inefficient, and I find that personally frustrating. Often, it seems like He is wasting my time and energy. I want to improve on His plan.

But there is a freedom that comes from seeking to know and do His will. If I choose to live in light of His actual presence and sovereignty, I can actually relax. When I release my imaginary brillance, the fiction of my control, I can find rest for my soul. Isn't this where Job ends up. He wrestles with God (and God commends Him for his honest arguing) but the answer was not what Job expected. God didn't answer the specifics of Job's questions, instead He offered Himself to Job. He reminded Job of His true nature and character. He showed Job His greatness and Job felt appropriately small before Him. Job repented and found rest for His soul.

I am after the peace that surpasses all understanding. It is interesting that prayer is the doorway to this peace. In prayer we acknowledge our smallness and dependency. We come to God and lay our requests before him with a heart of gratitude then the peace of Christ guards our hearts and our minds. We can find our rest in Him and let Him do what really is best. Only He knows what is really best, only He knows the end from the beginning. So, the terrible inefficiency serves a perfect purpose, but only He is capable of working it all together for the good, for my good and the good of His Kingdom.

Diversity

2011-06-25T15:07:00.005+03:00

Every one of us is unique. Every one of us is different. We are so diverse in personality, background, gifts, talents, education, experience, family of origin, culture of origin; not to mention gender, hair, eyes, and skin. Our diversity is profound! It is much deeper than we generally acknowledge.

And yet, there are so many things that we share. So, many commonalities, so many shared experiences. So many things that unite us. But very few (if any) of these experiences are direct, most are filtered through our perception of them. So, even the common experiences are opportunities for misunderstanding and miscommunication. Really, it is amazing that we manage to understand one another at all!

Skylarks and Writing

2011-05-25T14:05:00.001+03:00

Yesterday I took a long walk through the fields. I spent some of the time praying for people I love and some of it laughing at my dog and her ridiculous enjoyment of her romp.

It was a gusty blustery day. The wind came howling off the water, up and over the cliffs. Sea spray was whisked off the waves and strewn across the meadows near the edge. It was a wild and wonderful day to be out in nature. I was even more alone than usual as most people had sense enough to stay indoors, but I loved it. Drinking in the wildness and the power, I was reminded that this is but a pale reminder of the power of God.

I rarely pause and sit on days like this, but as I came to a place that was partially sheltered from the wind, I decided to sit and take it all in. I found a springy bit of turf and long grass and settled into a little hollow. As I did, I noticed bird song wafting through the air. Over the din of wind and waves, a beautiful song sailing along. A single song from the throat of a creature I couldn't see. I could tell is was coming from far above me. I strained my eyes to find the source.

It took me a bit of searching to locate the tiny bird high in the sky. A single tiny bird struggling to gain altitude and singing his heart out. It was a skylark. He had ventured up into the sky on a violently windy day to sing his song in the hope that a female might be wooed by the beauty of his song and join him in the nest he had made in the meadow below. I watched for nearly 10 minutes as his song varied and changed, repeating themes. All the while his little body was being battered and flung about by the wind; his wings beating furiously, his song unwavering.

Then, suddenly, he dropped from the sky as if he had been shot. He dropped straight down probably 100 meters. Just above the ground his free fall morphed into an elegant swoop and with a flutter, he was gone; back into the nest he had created. His song stilled, his exhaustion complete.

I sat silently marvelling at the scene I hat witnessed. Wondering... Was I the only one who heard his song? It seemed like a lot of fruitless effort. Such hard work, for what return? He utterly spent himself flinging his song into the universe, pouring all his effort into its creation, only to drop exhausted to the earth.

As I lay there in the grass pondering this, I felt the gentle call to self-reflection and conversation with the Father. I realized that my writing is much like the skylark. I have laboured long and hard to create, to express the song within me. I have striven to put my heart on a page and have flung it into the world, inviting others to learn from my lessons to profit from my pain. I am hopeful that it is not in vain, but in the end, I drop exhausted from the effort and wondering if any have heard my song.

What makes the skylark sing? What makes me write? He is compelled by instinct; an instinct placed within him by the all loving Father. I am compelled by the love of God and something in me cries out to be expressed in words. I believe that this too has been placed there by the Father. And so, he sings and I write all to the glory of God; not knowing what comes next, only playing our role as best we know how.

Fear and Love

2011-05-16T14:04:00.001+03:00

John tells us that true love casts out fear. He goes on to say that in perfect love there is no fear. (1 Jn. 4:18) I guess my love is not perfect, because I find myself struggling with fear today.

This is a pretty rare experience for me. I am a generally confident guy who goes through life with a glass half full perspective, but there are a few things in my life at the moment that have brought up fear in me. It is so unfamiliar to me, that I couldn't have named it until today.

I was walking through the fields today, talking with God. I was asking Him to help me understand what has been driving me toward the old cisterns lately. Suddenly, it was crystal clear. I realized that I am afraid. I have been trying to escape from the pain of fear. The revelation seemed to come from outside of me, but I knew immediately that it was correct. Naming it allowed me to feel it and I suddenly had tears in my eyes.

The things I am fearing are not fantasies, they are based in real circumstances I am facing. But that does not make them real. I have been more and more convinced lately that the future has no actual existence, and when I attempt to live in the imagined future, I can not really meet God there. God lives in the NOW. He is the I AM. He is always NOW! So, here in the present is where I must meet Him and where my love for Him must be perfected. His love for me is already perfect and total.

All of this is complicated by the fact that I no longer believe that God promises to deliver us in the triumphalist way that I was taught as a child. God does not promise to deliver us from suffering. He does not unfailingly rescue His children from poverty, disease, war, abuse, etc... I have seen too much pain and loss to believe there is a prayer, incantation, ritual, or service, which compels God to act in a particular way. Such beliefs are more akin to magic and shamanism, where the supernatural world can be manipulated or bent to our will, than to the Biblical picture of a fiercely free, all powerful, and independent God who does whatever He wills.

I do love and trust this God, but I do not know what He will do. He may not deliver me from the things I fear. He hasn't always in the past. Does this make Him untrustworthy? No, but it forces me to redefine my trust and face my fears. Do I trust God or trust that He will deliver a particular outcome. Do I trust His person and character? I feel like I am losing my faith in prayer as a productive force, but growing deeper in my love and dependence on the God who actually answers prayer.

He met me today in the fields. He showed me my heart. We talked. He did not promise to deliver me, in fact, He did not directly address the questions I asked. But He was there. That's worth something. My fear is still with me, but it is diminished somewhat by His presence. Perhaps my love is being perfected even through this.

We read in Hebrews that Jesus was made perfect through suffering. (Heb. 2:10) What makes me think that my path will be more comfortable than His?

Freedom or the Chain

2011-04-21T12:41:00.000+03:00

Our family loves our dog. We have so much fun with her. The kids love to play with her in the garden and to wrestle and cuddle her in the house. She is well fed and well loved. We have let her know that she is a welcomed and loved addition to our family. We have "treat trained" her from the beginning. She has learned that we are the givers of all good things. She knows that the result of obedience is a treat, praise, and love. She knows that we are where she wants to be. She has demonstrated her desire to be close to us. Often, when the gate has been left open accidentally, even over night, she has refused to wander. We have even seen people outside of the gate call her and her refuse to leave the property.

So what is up with my dog these days?! She has run off 10 times in the last 12 days! Sometimes twice a day. When she first started the new behaviour, I did some research to see what could be driving it. She has been "fixed" and so she can't be wandering to find a mate. She is not unloved or failed to bond with our family. She is not neglected and is far from under fed. So, what is it that seems to compel her to disobey?

We have given more attention and have tried all the training tricks we know, our friends know, or we have been able to glean from the internet. Nothing has worked. So we have had to resort to the the chain. Only the chain will keep her from running off at a moments notice. We don't want to chain her. We want her to have the run of the garden as she has for the last 18 months. We enjoy the fluidity of the relationship when she comes in and out of the house and can freely roam about the property with us.

She has now lost the freedom found in a caring relationship because she has refused to accept the loving parameters. She has chosen the chain through her behaviour.

Yesterday, I was out in the garden with her. I was hanging laundry and "giving her lots of fuss" as the British say. I played fetch with her and gave her treats. I had her off the chain and we were having fun together. I went into the house to grab a bite to eat and check on the next load of laundry. 3 minutes later the phone rang. Someone was calling from their mobile phone to let me know they had my dog. They happened to be walking by and had caught her less than 50 feet from our house. She had just been experiencing all the best parts about life with our family, and had chosen to run off as soon as my back was turned. Crazy!

Then I remember my last week.

My wife left for a week of ministry in Asia a week ago Saturday. I had purposed with a friend whose wife was also going to be travelling to the event, that we would make good use of the time with our kids and our God while our wives were away. We agreed that we would have extra uninterrupted time in the evenings for solitude and silence with God. We would have more time to spend focused uninterrupted time with Him. I as looking forward to the week for the special times with my kids and my God.

I had a great week with the kids. Although they were under the weather for much of the week, we had many special times together and made some neat memories together.

My week with God started out well. I had a wonderful extended time with Him on Sunday afternoon. Then, I flipped on the TV in the evening. It's not that I watched anything bad on TV, but I was just channel surfing. I watch 15 minutes of this and 30 minutes of that. I watched nothing at all but I watched it until 2AM.

My week was an odd sort of wandering. I had some really sweet times with God, seeing Him throughout my day, praying for my wife, talking with some friends. But each evening I would forget the sweetness of fellowship and simply go wandering on the TV, through the internet, just wandering. Looking for I don't know what. I just went wandering into the wee hours of the morning.

God is the giver of all good things, and I experienced this last week, but I also experienced the wandering. I am so grateful that He protected me. I could have been wounded on my late night wanderings. There certainly is a lot of crap, a lot of dangerous stuff for my soul that I could have pursued. Even when I stumbled across it, He gave me the insight and the power to turn away. But, I should not have been lingering in those dangerous places.

Why did I wander? I don't know all the answers. I think part of it was loneliness. I was missing the interactions with my wife, but instead of turning to my ever present Friend and Confidant, I filled the lonely place with noise and information that does not satisfy. There were moments of such sweet fellowship with God throughout the week, but there was also so much mindless wandering!

I don't want to wander. Neither do I want to be like my stubbornly rebellious dog who refuses to be trained. I don't want to be chained. I have experienced the slavery of addiction as well as the chain of the law. The law can help to harness, but it cannot bring true freedom.

True freedom is fount in trust and birthed through relationship. If I will learn to trust that the parameters the Father has given me come from love, if I will learn to heed His still small voice, I will find the freedom that comes from submission to my Good God. I am finding it, bit by bit, one day at a time.

Houdini the dog

2011-04-14T13:20:00.000+03:00

When we first brought Oreo, our dog, home, she would find amazing ways to get out of the garden. I took to calling her Houdini, after the famous the escape artist.

I came up with several different plans and adaptations to her environment to try to keep her in, only to get a call from a neighbour to come and pick her up, yet again. We trained her and eventually, she stopped escaping.

She is now full grown and has no problem leaping onto and over the wall, but she doesn't. In fact, we often find her peering over the wall at us from on top of her dog house as we return home. Even when the gate is left wide open, she won't leave. Over the last 18 months she has decided that she likes it here and isn't interested in leaving.

Suddenly, this seems to have changed. My dog is doing her best impression of Houdini again.

She has run off 3 times in the last 2 days. Twice people in town have found her and called the number on the tag for us to come retrieve her. The third time was this morning when we found her patiently waiting outside the gate to be let back in for breakfast. We have no idea how long she had been roaming the neighbourhood.

Our theory is that the dog is searching for my wife. They have formed quite a bond. My wife is in Asia for a week, and Oreo seems to be pining for her. On one level this is very sweet, but whatever the reason for the wandering, we have to stop it for her own good.

What the dog doesn't understand, is that it is dangerous for her to be wandering around out there. She could be very easily hit by a car, or get into some other dangerous situation. She is not particularly dumb, for a dog, but she simply doesn't understand the ramifications of her choices. That is why we have to protect her with walls and gates. That is why we have to put her on the chain when we bring her back. That is why we have to manufacture small consequences to protect her from the unthinkably bad consequences.

Once again, I find myself thinking about God.

Why do I run off? Why do I feel the need to wander when everything I need, everything I really want is freely offered to me by my Master? If I'm honest, it can be fun to roam, but that's only because I haven't tripped over the consequences yet. So, God puts parameters around us. He says, "Your life will be better if you stay close to me and if you live within the fences I put around you." But somehow the fences beg to be jumped. Something in me wants to leap over and see if it really is as dangerous as all that.

God graciously, kindly metes out the discipline that I need to train me. He doesn't want me to pay the price for my sin. He has already done that. He doesn't punish His children, but He does train us for our own good. He gives us small consequences to prevent us from bringing the larger consequences on ourselves. He has already paid the ultimate price and received the consequences in Himself. Now, He offers abundant life, a life within limits...good limits.

I hope that my dog will remember that she likes it here. I hope that she will stop wandering. I hope I'll stop wandering too.

Words and Meaning

2011-03-21T19:11:00.001+02:00

I like words.

I like the way they capture ideas and convey imagination. I have always been fascinated with words and communication. Communication is such a mystery. How is it that the thoughts and intentions of a human soul can find expression in words, spoken and written, and be transmitted to another soul? It amazes me not that there are misunderstandings, but rather that there is any real understanding at all. With the wild diversity in humanity, I am surprised that any real communication, real understanding, ever happens.

I am also intrigued by the way that words can fail us. Words alone, on the screen or the printed page for example, are stripped of their intonation and delivery. They say that only 5 percent of verbal communication is the actual words spoken. The other 95% is the simultaneous non-verbal communication. With the written word, we are left without the visual cues and cultural modifiers that make the intent more transparent. Written words are more open to interpretation and misinterpretation. This raises serious issues for writers as well as those of us who value the written word, or Word.

As a word lover, I have another issue that has been bothering me lately. Words can also take on different meaning over time. Words or phrases can mean one thing to us at a particular time in our lives, and can mean something entirely different to us in a different context. For example, the word "submission". For some this word brings a shudder and dark overtones of subjugation and coercion, for others it might take on sweet overtones of love and proper humility. The way that we read and experience a word varies wildly based on our own experiences of life and the memories we associate with the word.

One word that has taken on particular importance for me is "relationship". I have come to understand that we are inherently relational beings, and this is am important aspect of the image of God in us. God is inherently relational. It is impossible to talk about the Triune God without implicitly acknowledging the relationship at the center of the Godhead. God is three and one. These three personalities are now and have always been in relationship with one another. He created us in Their image.

In John we are told that the Word became flesh. One of the three eternally existent personalities that make up the Godhead took on human flesh and lived a human life. The Word, the idea behind all ideas, emptied Himself of His divine power and humbled Himself. This is a profound mystery. But this mystery makes the possiblity of a real relationship with God possible. God understands humanity because He has literally walked a mile in our shoes. He bridged the divide between us. His commitment to broaden the circle of relationship beyond the Trinity, to invite us in to the eternal kind of life, went to this unthinkable extent.

We still struggle with words to describe this reality, even those of us who have tasted and seen that God is good. T.S. Elliot said that words, "crack and sometimes break, under the burden, under the tension, slip, slide, perish, decay with imprecision." But there is a meaning that is deeper than the words. A Word that is deeper than the meanings.

Just One More

2011-03-01T23:22:00.000+02:00

I just got back from a long walk through the country side, across the cliff tops, and along the beach. I am pondering some of the things that I learned along the way. There is probably more than can be reasonably put into one blog... So I'll start with this: I always need to do just one more thing.

Today, I walked farther than I intended. The thing about walking is that the farther you go, the longer it will take to get back. Every step forward to see what is around the next point or over the next hill, is a step you will have travel again on the way back. As my curiosity carried me farther and farther from home, I learned (again) that I have a hard time stopping. I set out with a specific goal in mind, a castle on the coast that is just a little farther than I usually walk. An hour later, as I drew near to the castle, I was eyeing the point on the coast beyond the castle. As I rounded that point, I saw an interesting rock formation calling out for investigation and another point beyond that. I just kept going.

In our family, we joke about my proclivity for more. We say, "If 1 is good then 2 is better. If 2 is good then 3 is outstanding. If 3 is good then 4 is tremendous." I remember one of the earliest commercials for MTV featured Billy Idol saying, "Too much is never enough!" I probably remember that ad because it so captures my approach to life.

I saw it again today. I went farther than I should have and so other things I needed to do were left undone. Nothing major, but it was another reminder of the difference between my intentions and my actions.

Today on the quietness of the deserted beach I found myself wondering about why I do this. Why do I always want to see what is around the next point? Why do I always want to do one last email? Why do I always want to play one more turn of a game, read one more chapter, watch one more episode of a sitcom, or watch one more movie? I am so grateful that the "more" things are not as damaging as the things that I once hungered for, but what is up with my seemingly insatiable desire for "just one more"?

Music Moves Me

2011-03-01T00:00:00.000+02:00

I know that I am not the only one who is moved by music. It seems that we have an almost limitless ability to create and enjoy music. It seems odd to me that this nearly universal truth serves as yet another way that we categorize each other and divide amongst ourselves. But that's another blog.

Today something reminded me of Johnny Cash and his cover of Trent Reznor's song, "Hurt". I watched the powerful video and marveled at Johnny singing the song with feeling and authenticity as images of his life play across the screen. It is a sort of confession, an admission of guilt, perhaps an apology for those that He has hurt through the years.

Later in the day I was reminded of a song "I will arise and go to Jesus". I remember first hearing this song on a Julie Miller album when I was at university. I remember walking to class with my headphones on, marvelling at the simplicity and mystery of a relationship with God.

Both songs are haunting and minor. Both acknowledge our brokenness as people. I am genuinely moved by both of them. There is something very powerful about sharing the dark parts of our journey as well as the lighter portions. It is good to know that we are not alone in our hurts and our fears, that there are others who have walked a similar path.

In the end, I find the "I will arise" carries me further down the road. It acknowledges the hurt but doesn't leave me there. It goes beyond hopelessness and issues an invitation to look beyond the pain. While acknowledging our helplessness, it also points to the One who can help.

I am moved by songs that help me to embrace my brokenness (Hurt by Trent Reznor, I'm So Sick by Flyleaf) by songs that acknowledge the questions and the longings, but also those that offer hope. I just remembered that Flyleaf has a song "Again" that seems to hit all these points. I have been moved to tears listening to that song more than once.

Music seems to slip past my defences. I feel like God uses music to touch my heart and open me to myself and to Him in ways that other mediums just can't touch.

It is hard to stop tinkering

2011-02-21T15:56:00.000+02:00

I have recently completed a book that is in the final stages awaiting publication. While I have written for years, I have never written a book before. I found the entire process to be very personal and challenging. One of my wife's favourite quotes is from Augustine. He said, "I count myself one of the number of those who write as they learn and learn as they write." That has definitely been my experience.

The creative process was hard, but invigorating. I didn't even know what I was going to write until I started writing. I knew that I felt compelled to write, but I was intimidated to start. I delayed the start of writing for literally years because I kept thinking, "Who am I to write?!" In the end, I sat down, opened the laptop, and started writing. The first thing that came out became the prologue for the book. It all flowed from there. I generally felt carried along during the creative phase.

The editing phase was much more difficult and was brand new to me. I had to invite people to critique what I had so painstakingly created. It was a test of courage to actually put it out there. I emailed it to a few people I respected as brothers and as writers. I cringed each time I checked email for the next few weeks. I wrestled with my fears and insecurities. What if I really sucked? What if my writing was of the kind only a mother could love?!

As the input started coming back, it was hard to process. My friends offered encouragement as well as advice and suggestions. Which suggestions should I incorporate? Was my desire to reject some suggestions founded on pride and defensiveness? Through this process I refined my voice and by allowing my friends to honestly critique my work, the book was vastly improved. Even when I rejected specific suggestions, the process of wrestling with each editorial decision strengthened my voice and I hope my writing.

But, there comes a point when I had to release the text to the publisher. That was more difficult than I could have imagined. I kept delaying it so that I would have more time to tinker with the text. Should I add a chapter about....? Should I delete the section about...? Is that really the way I want to say this?

It was hard to stop tinkering.

A friend of mine who writes music told me, "A song is never really done. You just stop working on it." I feel that way about this book. The publisher is happy with it. My friends are happy with it. I may never be completely finished with it, but I am done working on it.

Being Present

2011-02-15T15:45:00.000+02:00

What could be easier than to be exactly where we are? It seems so elementary, and yet I am finding this to be an incredible challenge! I am discovering how rarely I am truly present in the now, in the moment.

I tend to spend so much of my time in the past or the future. I am generally a post-worrier. I don't worry much about the future, but I can spend a lot of time replaying things and worrying about the past. On the other hand, I can also spend a lot of time thinking about the future, trying to predict what will happen if... Or trying to control the outcome of things that haven't even happened yet.

This morning, I took some time to just sit and be present. I wanted to be present to the Lord, but the starting point was just to be present to myself. I had to sit still and just notice the things that I was feeling, the thoughts racing through my head, the motivations of my heart. I had to quiet myself and then present these things to Him in the quietness of that moment.

I wrote down the things that were troubling me. I wrote down my worries and my fears. I wrote down the things I was dreaming about and the future I was striving to create for myself. Then, I sat in silence.

A few minutes later the real dialogue began as a felt His response welling up with in me. I wrote down the words that I attached to these impressions: "Relax. Enter in. I am here. Stay in the now. It's okay. Come away with me. Take it one step at a time. Don't try to predict or control the future, that's my job."

As I sat, I compared the two lists, and suddenly the things that had seemed so overwhelming didn't overwhelm quite as much. I still was facing the same things, but the facts were emptied of the fear that had made them so fearsome. Instead, I felt peaceful. I recognized that I would still need to do something, but I knew, experientially knew, that my Father was in them with me. His presence made all the difference.

Olympic Training for Listening?

2010-11-15T16:05:00.002+02:00

The Bible is such an interesting book. No matter how many times I read it, there will always be something new waiting to jump off the page. The Spirit draws my attention, or I suddenly feel the distance between my mindset and what I am reading.

This happened to me the other day as I was reading Hebrews chapter five. At the end of the chapter we find a description of those who are mature and immature. The recipients of the letter are mildly rebuked for being immature and not being able to understand. It seems a bit harsh to reprimand them in this way. Why would God rebuke someone for failing to understand?

In the final verse of the chapter, we find the reason for the rebuke. We read that the mature have become so through practicing. They have learned to discern by exercising their senses. The word used for exercise is an active word. It carries the sense of training for the Olympic Games.

They are rebuked not because they don't understand but because they had failed to train themselves. Their lack of discernment, their immaturity was a result of their choice. They chose not to train like an athlete preparing for the Olympics, and therefore lacked discernment. They had not learned to listen.

More times than I care to remember, I have griped about the silence of God. Why doesn't God tell me this or that? I wonder how many times I have not discerned God's voice because I have not seriously trained. Like athletes with various levels of natural skill, discernment may come easier for some, but we can all grow in it through intentional training.

I do not mean to say that God will always answer. There are times of silence, even in the most intimate relationships. But, I wonder if we don't often mistake our inability to listen with His unwillingness to speak.

Wandering

2010-11-03T19:43:00.000+02:00

As I was out walking today, my dog kept wandering off the path. That wouldn't normally be a problem, but we were walking alongside a freshly planted field. The crop was just sprouting. I want to be a blessing to our community, and damaging a farmer's crop wouldn't be a blessing.

So, I called the dog. She quickly turned around, came out of the field, and returned to me. I praised her and patted her for returning to me so quickly. Then I pointed toward the path ahead and released her to run. She went about ten feet down the path and then veered into the crop again. I called her and she turned and cocked her head as if to say, "Now, what's the problem!?"

As she returned to me, I fought back frustration. I gave her a treat and again pointed down the path. She ran off, and after fifteen feet or so was headed back into the field. That's when it occurred to me that she couldn't tell the difference between the muddy path and the muddy field.

There are times when she intentionally does the opposite of what I want her to do. I have written about that before. This was different. It wasn't rebellion. She wanted to please me. She just didn't understand when she was on the path, and when she was not. She lacked discernment.

Then it hit me. How many times do I simply wander off the path. I am walking with God. I am enjoying the walk. I am enjoying the freedom that He gives me. We're having a ball together. When, unbeknownst to me, I start trampling on something. I have wandered off the path without intending to. I think the key is being in tune enough to hear his voice and get back on track in those moments.

How many times each day do I get distracted? How many times do I start chasing down some piece of trivia on the internet? How many times do I let my thoughts wander? It's not intentional disobedience, it may not be inherently wrong, but I start to wander. I can't necessarily tell when I'm starting to drift off track, but I suddenly find myself standing in the middle of a field with only a ague recollection of how I got there.

I don't think that this means that I need to worry about wandering. God has given us tremendous freedom to explore and enjoy the world. I don't feel like I need to second guess every step I take. Rather, I need to tune my heart to His voice. I need to learn to listen for Him as I run and play in the world He has created. If I learn to hear discern His voice, I have more freedom, not less! I can run and play in the fields knowing that He is close and that He will call me if I'm wandering.

The key is the relationship. The key is learning to hearken to His voice.

A Poem

2010-10-05T19:03:00.002+03:00

I can't remember the last time I wrote a poem, but I think it has to be more than a decade ago. The first few lines spontaneously sprang to mind on a wild and wet coastal walk. So, without further ado...

I Worship You

Wind whipped white caps on a sea of muddy slate
Sideways rain sweeps over the land, stinging my face
All this power is nothing at all compared to you
I’m in awe of all that you are, I worship you
As I stand in this place, I am awed by your grace
I throw open my arm, I’m enthralled by your charms
And I worship you

We visit the doctor searching for reasons for the pain
He says it’s cancer and that’s not the answer we hoped he’d explain
My child is sick and I can’t make sense of the suffering
I know you’re here but I can’t help wondering what to think
As I take it in, my head starts to spin
In this desperate hour, I’m in need of your power
And I worship you

Hate filled cries ring overhead screaming “God is great”
Rocks are thrown and bullets reply there is no restraint
Peace refuses to break out and calm declines to reign
As the blood flows, the guilt grows there’s no end of pain
In times like this, there’s an absence of bliss
Your voice seems so distant; I want you in this instant
And I worship you

Picking blackberries

2010-09-13T16:27:00.001+03:00

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pick blackberries."
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I was out walking through the hedgerows and over the fields today. As I walked I was lost in thought and in prayer. I was hardly aware of my surroundings. Then, I spotted a thorny blackberry branch sticking out into my path. It was covered with ripening blackberries. I thanked God for this small gift and decided to have a little snack.

I did not grow up in a berry picking area. Last year my children and I took small buckets and went berry picking, sharing this first with one another. It was really fun! Very few of the berries found there way to the buckets as our purple fingers and tongues testified to our indulgence. As we picked, we discovered that a truly ripe blackberry needs only a slight tug to come off. If it doesn't come of easily in your hand, you leave it, knowing that it is not ripe yet.

Today, I walked along, spotting and enjoying the blackberries springing out of the hedgerows and lining my path. I tried to select just the right berries. I thought about the fun that the kids and I will have as the berry bonanza continues over the next few weeks. As I walked, I spotted a particularly delicious looking berry. It was full and dark. It looked perfect.

As I reached for it, I was careful to spot the thorns around it and to thread my hand through to it safely. I gently grasped it between my fingers and gave it a little tug. It did not come off as I expected. I looked at it again, convinced that it was right for the picking. I pulled a little harder. Nothing happened. A little frustrated, I gave it a firm jerk. As I did so, the branch bent and the surrounding thorns found my hand and arm.

I retrieved my wounded arm, examining the scratches as well as the berry I was now holding. It looked great! My mouth was watering as I popped it in. My taste buds were in for a rude shock, as the berry was sour and woody rather than tender and sweet. It looked so good, but it was not ripe. I shook my head at my folly.

As I spat the sour fruit of my impatience out on the ground, I found myself wondering what that was all about. I realized that this small incident was an illustration of my approach to life and ministry. I survey the world around me, see opportunities, analyze the cost benefit ratio, and grab for what seems best to me. It all happens so fast that I find myself scratched and frustrated before I know what has happened.

I wonder what it would be like...If I would only slow down. If I would be more patient. If I would reach out a bit more tentatively and less grasping. If I would be less insistent and more responsive. If I would trust God to produce the ripeness and allow the unripe fruit to remain unpicked until He has made it ready. What would my ministry look like? What sourness and scratches might I avoid?

Ministering to the Lord

2010-09-09T13:33:00.000+03:00

As I read this morning, I was struck by this phrase, "bless the Lord". It sounds strange in my ears. "The Lord is the source of blessing," I thought. "He does not need to be blessed." Then I remembered the phrase "ministering to the Lord." I looked it up and found that it occurs several places in the Scriptures.

As I pondered this, I wondered why it sounds strange to me. ministering to the Lord and blessing the Lord were important, even central, aspects of the life of faith in the Old and New Testament periods. Why do they sound so strange to me?

Then I realized that we have exchanged "ministering to the Lord" with "ministry for the Lord." We have subtly moved God out of the center and moved the focus of our lives onto the work. This new perspective puts us at the center. It is a way of subtly exalting ourselves and what we can do for Him. It puts the focus on us, or perhaps on "the lost". We wrap our idolatry up in spiritual sounding language.

He invites us to minister to Him, to bless Him, to enter into real relationship with Him. Then, He does the work. He does the saving. He does the ministering. From that place of humility and dependence He sets us aside for the work that He has for us (Acts 13). We tend to identify what we think we should be done and to ask Him to empower our plans, our methodologies, and our efforts. Then, as our plans succeed, we praise the Lord while siphoning of some of the glory for ourselves because we were the ones doing the ministering.

We need to recover the centrality of God. We need to place Him at the center. We need to focus our lives on ministering to Him rather than for Him. I choose this again today. I choose to wait on the Lord. I choose to bless the Lord. I choose to minister to the Lord.

Another Dog Blog

2010-09-03T14:18:00.000+03:00

My dog just ate more of her bed.

I knew that something was wrong because she looked guilty and pseudo repentant as soon as she saw me. I went toward her and she immediately threw herself on the ground and turned over. As I approached I could see the fluff all over the floor and knew what had happened.

The irony of this is that scattered all around her bed are a dizzying array of chew toys: rope ones, plastic ones, bone ones, wooden ones. She enjoys those toys. They all show signs of her oral affection, but now they are neglected as she grovels before me. She is repenting for chewing the only thing in the room that she knows is off limits.Why does she do this?

Why does she choose the forbidden thing when perfectly legitimate things are all around her? She obviously understands that there will be negative consequences for her choice. That doesn't prevent her from doing it though. She chooses the thing that she knows is bad rather than the any of the many things that are good.

Why do we do this?

My Brother

2010-09-02T13:43:00.001+03:00

I have a brother. I've never seen him face to face, but I know him. He died many years before I was born. I have read the story of his life. I have read his words and have grown to love him. I knew him first by reputation. I heard people talking about him. Then, one day, I met him.

I just talked with him again this morning. We talk frequently these days. I have gotten to know him pretty well through the years, but as we plumb the depths of our relationship I realize that I am nowhere near the bottom.

Today I am wondering about what it was for him when he was growing up. I know that he had a mom and dad as well as brothers and sisters. He was the first born and the circumstances around his birth were somewhat scandalous. There were questions about his legitimacy, his mother's honor and fidelity, his real parentage.

What was it like for him to learn to walk? What was it like for him to learn to speak? How did he learn to obey? I know that he had a body and a brain very much like mine. He was filled with sweat, spit, and blood. He was full of curiosity and questions. He felt sadness, frustration, and anger as well as happiness and joy. He had a great since of humor as well.

He lived a real human life with all of the temptations and trials that we all experience. He lived and learned, making mistakes along the way, but he did it all without sinning. He did it all without breaking fellowship with his Heavenly Father. He showed us that it could be done. He showed us how it could be done.

I have long known that Jesus was God, that Jesus was my King. Now, I long to know him as a man, as my brother.

Stones in the Rain

2010-08-20T22:17:00.001+03:00

We have had a lot of pain lately. It has fallen from the sky in great quantities. Sometimes you see it coming. The distant clouds on the horizon warn of the coming storm. But lately it has come as a sudden gale. Striking without warning and drenching to the bone.

I looked at the news and found a picture of a friend smiling back from me the CNN home page. Confusion gave way to disbelief as I realized that she had been murdered.

I answered the phone and heard the voice of a friend on the other end. Joy gave way to despair as she told me of the abuse of a child.

I checked email and found out that the child of a friend has leukemia.

I sit here weeping as I write this. The tears don't come often, but they are there. They lurk beneath the surface of my smile.

As I look out the window I see the gravel. I have walked across the gravel parking area several times. It is a grey non-descript amalgamation of stones. But not today.

The rain has been falling for hours. As I look out now, my casual glance is arrested. The gravel has turned black from the rain. There among the darkness there are bright white stones. They are stand out in dazzling contrast to the slick blackness around them. They were invisible before. They blended in too well with their surroundings.

Today they shine bright in the rain.

Awakening to an Invitation

2010-07-24T16:14:00.001+03:00

I woke up early this morning. As I lay there in bed trying to get back to sleep, I felt something. At first it was just a sort of vague curiosity. A sort of wondering feeling. It was so subtle that I only became aware of it as it begin to coalesce into a longing, a longing still quite vague. There was no distinct object of my longing, my desire. Then it morphed again from a longing to an invitation. That was when I began to awake to the source of the longing and the invitation. God was at it again.

I got up and headed downstairs with my journal and Bible in hand. I knew that I was hungry for God, that the hunger was from God. I knew that I wanted to meet with Him. As I opened my journal I saw that it had been many days since my last entry. I silently repented of my neglect of this, my most important relationship. It's not that I had not been praying, or even experiencing God in worship, contemplation, nature, or His children, but it had been weeks since I had taken the time to sit quietly with Him.

In that moment I realized that I was in danger of talking more about God than with Him. I was subtly sliding into a life about God but not with God. As I sat on the couch I was desperate for His presence. I sat quietly for a time and then began to write and pray. I wrote about my heart and shared with Him my thoughts and invited His input. I didn't feel anything except alone. The quietness of the sleeping house broken only by the ticking of the clock.

Gradually I began to be filled with memories and with gratitude. I remembered how far He had carried me. A growing wonder dawned on me as I realized anew the miracle of knowing Him. I tried to remember why the sins of my youth had seemed like a good idea. I praised Him for rescuing me and for healing the pain in my soul. I needlessly apologized yet again for spending so many years fleeing from Him, the Lover of my Soul.

Then I was filled by a desire to love. I felt a deep desire to be an agent of His love, for others to be healed, for others to experience the fullness of joy, the abundance of life, that I have found. I prayed for and wondered about those in my life. How could I love them better? How could I help them to find the blissful surrender to the Lover whose unrequited love for them never diminishes or fades. Then I was moved again to wonder and to praise at the fact of His presence in my life and the love that He has lavished on me.

As I closed my journal and reached for my Bible, I wondered where to read. I did not want to study the scriptures, I wanted to meet with my lover, the one who speaks through them. As the Book fell open on my lap my eyes fell upon Isaiah 35. From the first verse I knew that this too was a gift from my Lover, my Father, my Brother. He spoke to me through the passage about redemption and healing.

He met with me. He loves me still. He speaks to me still in the silence and in the scriptures. He awakens me. He woos me. He draws me to Him again and again.

Everyone wants to go to heaven...

2010-07-01T18:46:00.002+03:00

The gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel that endures the cross for the joy that is hidden on the other side. The cross precedes the resurrection. There is a death between old life and new life. I am reminded of a song by David Crowder, The chorus says, "Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. "How can we invite people to believe in a gospel that we don't believe in ourselves?

Every Christian I know wants the joy of the Lord, the fruit of the Spirit, the power of the resurrection in their lives. The irony is that as we long for these realities to manifest in our lives we do our best to avoid the pain, the suffering, the cross. The problem is that suffering is an unavoidable part of the journey. So, we veer off the path that would bring us to our desired destination. Death is interwoven with life and process of growth.

This was brought to my attention recently through my garden. I have never been a gardener. I mowed the lawn when I was a kid, but that's about as close as I have ever come to tending a garden. When we moved into our current house, we inherited a wonderful garden. It had been thoughtfully planted and arranged so that in every season there is something new blooming and sprouting throughout. It has been a wonder for me to observe, and a steep curve for me to learn how to care for it.

It is a very low maintenance garden, but still it requires some work from time to time. The most nerve wracking part for me is the transition between seasons. That is when the cutting happens. I am a far cry from a horticulturalist and have a hard time telling flowers and weeds apart. I can pick out the familiar ones but do get confused. Some of the weeds here actually have pretty flowers, and some of the flowering plants look suspiciously uninviting until they bloom. Then there is the real danger that I will kill a bush or plant when I am trying to help it. I might prune too much or too little and actually cause more harm then good.

We have now been here a year and I am please to see the results of the pruning that I did a year ago. It appears that I have only significantly damaged one bush, the rest of the garden is really healthy. Last summer when I was brutally hacking away at the garden I was pretty sure that I was doing irreparable damage, despite the guidance and advice of my expert gardening neighbors. When I finished with some of the bushes they were all knobs and bare branches. They continued to look ugly and bare for most of the year, but in the last month they exploded with life and are now full and beautiful. The new growth more covers for the old wounds and would never have happened without the cutting. The new blossoms push the cutting and death of the pruning to the distant recesses of my memory.

There was real cutting. There was real death. There were wounds and barrenness for a season. These painful realities where not only unavoidable, they were preferable. So it is with us. It is not by accident that scripture is full of agricultural metaphors. The life of the Spirit, in the Spirit, is organic. We must choose to enter into and endure the pruning, the suffering, the seasons of death in order to experience the joy that comes only on the other side. This requires an unnatural and patient faith. A faith that trusts the gardener and that looks beyond the season of ugliness, trusting that there is a purpose to the pruning and that beauty will follow brutality.

Gifts and Brussel Sprouts

2010-04-30T19:06:00.001+03:00

One of the interesting things about serving the Lord is the seeming delight He takes in surprising us. Sometimes these are sweet surprises, unexpected blessings or gifts that we are eager to unwrap. However, there are times when these “gifts” don’t feel quite as much like presents, but more like someone stuck some brussel sprouts onto our plate when we weren’t looking. I remember as a kid sometimes reaching over and skewering an olive or other attractive morsel from my brother’s plate when he was distracted, but I’m certain I never swiped a brussel sprout.

It is interesting how quick we are to name gifts and trials, blessings and curses. I know that I label them based on my most immediate experience of them. If the thing feels good or I experience it as fun then it must be a gift, a blessing, God is smiling down on me. If the thing is painful or I feel anxious or afraid then it is a trial or even a curse, God is distant or frowning at me. Of course, hindsight often changes our perspective on things. After the immediate has passed, we can view the results with more objectivity. Sometimes in those moments we have a sort of epiphany and realize that the thing we called as curse was really a blessing in disguise. A gift wrapped in pain or frustration.

I wonder what my experience of life would be if I really believed that everything, absolutely everything, was really under the control, the absolute control, of a being that loves me and cares for me even more and better than I love and care for my kids? I am not saying that pain and suffering would cease. These things will be with us until the end of the world. But if I really believed that God was in charge of pain and suffering, perhaps I could endure them as a necessary part of my training. I remember a coach in high school who pushed us to run until it hurt and then to run some more. He knew that we were capable of more than we thought we were able to do. He pushed us past the end of ourselves and we discovered something beyond the last frontier of endurance.

If everything really comes from my loving Father God, then perhaps the suffering is not simply meaningless pain, but is redemptive. Perhaps there is a redeeming value, a redeeming purpose in it. Perhaps God, like the coach, knows something that I don't know. One of the miracles of the incarnation is that God actually knows our pain. He learned through His own suffering. So, when He sovereignly surprises us with suffering He knows what it means; He has been there and done that. Somehow viewing it from this perspective makes it more bearable even if it is still unpalatable. I won't be looking for pain any more than I'll be surreptitiously skewering brussel sprouts, but perhaps I can stop muttering against the chef.

What's up with Saul!?

2010-04-29T14:38:00.000+03:00

Today, as I was reading, I found myself asking this question. "What is up with Saul!?" Don't you find yourself asking that sort of question of biblical characters from time to time? "What could have been going through his head when he did some of the things that he did!?!" Today, for me, it was Saul. But then I went back and re-read the story. I put myself in Saul's place. As I did that, I found myself giving him a much more sympathetic reading.

Saul faced real problems. Things often didn't go the way that he planned. God repeatedly spoke to him and worked in and around him, but he was often in way over his head. He was thrust forward into an incredibly challenging leadership situation that he neither desired nor sought. He actually started out pretty well. He led with humility and obeyed the Lord. He felt God's anointing on Him and was empowered by God. He refused to avenge himself unrighteously on those who mocked his leadership. Not a bad start.

Then, Samuel was late. Samuel had promised to show up and didn't. The enemy, however, did show up on time. Saul's men were deserting him, the enemy host was swelling, and Samuel was nowhere to be seen. Saul waited as long as he dared. He knew that the battle would be starting soon, with or without Samuel. He knew that he dare not go into battle without seeking the Lord's blessing. So, he looked as his situation, planned a strategy, and executed a perfectly reasonable leadership decision. He was compelled to do something! Just then, Samuel arrived and brought a stinging rebuke with him.

It is easy for me to sit comfortably in my office and render judgment on an Iron Age king. I am so far removed from armies and battles, the pressures and daily realities of Saul's life. I also have the benefit of supernatural hindsight. I can see Saul's whole life neatly summed up in a few chapters f divinely inspired text. Saul had none of my distant objectivity. Saul was living the life that God had given him as best as he knew how. His life was made up of one natural and reasonable decision after another.He started out well, but ended badly. The real problem with Saul was that he made each decision without calculating God into the equation. He was a real man, but a man who failed to involve God in the details of his life. He relied on common sense but failed to heed the uncommon graces and revelations of God.

Now that is something I can understand. How often do I fail to view my life through heaven's eyes? How often do I examine situations and analyze solutions without taking the wisdom and power of God into account? How often do I feel compelled to do something, the thing that comes most naturally perhaps, when God's will is clearly something else? Or how often do I find myself sailing through a whole day as a practical atheist, simply failing to invite His input? I can't be too hard on Saul because Saul looks an awful lot like the man in the mirror. On the other hand, I can choose to learn the lessons the Saul had to learn the hard way. May God have mercy and draw me near to Himself!

Digital vs. Analog

2010-04-26T17:28:00.001+03:00

In the digital world every thing is pixels. The pictures on the screen are composed of tiny dots. When you zoom in far enough everything is just dots. In the real world, the analog world, things are solid, tangible, and connected. The real things are much more complicated and connected than the simplified and imperfect digital representation.

I find myself reflecting on other differences between the real world and the digital one. Electronic technology is integrated into virtually every aspect of our lives. This brings myriad advantages, but perhaps there are some drawbacks as well. For example, I enjoy playing FIFA on my Playstation, but when comparing playing soccer alone in a room with a console and a controller to getting together with a group of friends to kick the ball around, the inadequacies of the digital version become readily apparent.

Much has been made of the ability of digital technologies to keep us connected. But I wonder if perhaps the digital world doesn't bring us together as much as it claims to. I don't deny that in the context of a real relationship digital tools can help. For example, my kids can talk with my grandparents for free using video and audio like something out of the Jetsons. I admit that technologies like twitter, blogs, and facebook make us feel more connected, but are we really? These tools create pixilated relationships rather than real relationships. On facebook you see certain image of my life, but you are only getting the pixels that I choose to reveal. You're not seeing the whole picture, just the disconnected dots that I choose to post. We get the digital version of the person, not the real thing, a digital version of relationship, not the real thing.

In a real, analog, relationship, there is no photoshop. There is no airbrushing or retouching, no perfecting the image before you post it. We are who we are, warts and all. We are much more complicated than the digital versions of ourselves. In a face to face conversation the words only make up 7% of the communication that is happening. The other 93% of communication is non-verbal everything from tone and volume to facial expressions and posture. Obviously, real communication can take place through writing, but real relationships take more than the communication of information. I wonder if we settle for digital communication because it allows for the illusion of relationship while allowing us to keep a safe distance to create feelings of connectedness while remaining isolated.

We were designed by our creator for real relationship; specifically for a real relationship with Him. I wonder if we settle for a digital relationship with God rather than a real one? God desires a real relationship. He did not just give us a book about Himself. He wanted to give us more than mere information. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He dwells among us still. He stands at the door and knocks. If anyone will open the door He will come in and eat with us. He is inviting Himself to dinner at your place. He wants to interact with us in more analog ways, solid, tangible, and even complicated ways.

Of Sheep and Obedience

2010-03-05T16:44:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I was out with the dog, crossing a field filled with sheep. As it is Spring, there were many bleating lambs in the field with the flock. As we entered the field I could see the dog's muscles grow taut beneath her shiny coat. She was excited and ready for the chase. But these are not my sheep, not my lambs. I cannot let her run wild, as fun as it might be for her or for me to watch. She could well injure one of them, or worse yet, develop a taste for them. I have heard more than once of a domestic dog in the area chasing down and killing sheep or even injuring cattle.

So, I need for the dog to obey me. I have been training her to obey my voice. I have been giving her treats and rewarding her for choosing to obey rather than just running off and doing whatever she feels like doing at any given moment. It is clear that obedience doesn't come naturally. She is pretty sure that she understands what would be best for her, or most fun for her, in any given moment. Only she really is a dumb animal. She doesn't recognize the subtle threats of disease or long term consequences for disobedience; heck, she doesn't even see an approaching car as dangerous. She just doesn't get it. So, I need her to obey for her own good.

As we enter the field I debate whether to put her on a lead. I reflect on how well she has been obeying on the walk thus far. I wonder if she can handle the freedom of being off lead, or if she would be best served by having the experience of freedom and the rewards I will lavish on her when she obeys. I decide to give her a chance to choose obedience. I pull the lead out of my pocket to provide a visual reminder of consequences for disobedience. I can see from her submissive posture that she recognizes the possibility of consequence. Ten, I give her a treat to remind her that I am the giver of all good things. We start across the field as I call her to heel.

I can see the tension within her as she starts to quicken her pace and move toward the sheep. I call her back. She looks back over her shoulder...and returns to me. I give her a treat. As we start walking on, I can see that she has her eyes fixed on a little lamb nearby. She is watching it move and drifting towards it. I call her. She does not look back. I call her again, but it is as if she doesn't even hear me. Then, quick as a flash, she is racing across the grass toward her prey. Now I am shouting her name and running after her. I can imagine the consequences that have never entered her mind. The lamb hears the commotion and turns to flee, but this only encourages the dog to pursue. Instinct has taken over now, like something out of "The Call of the Wild" she is a primeval hunter returning to her roots.

I keep calling to her and, just as she is about to close on her quarry, she looks back. I am shouting, gesticulating wildly, and fervently insisting that she return. After her quick glance back she continues on, careening into the flock. The lamb disappears into the mass of hooves and wool and so she takes one of the sheep down. She stands over her prize, unsure what to do with it now that she has knocked it over. Then, she looks up at me rapidly approaching and slowly starts to return. Moments later I am relieved to see that the sheep is back on it's feet and rejoining the skittish flock. No harm done.

She comes back, groveling all the way. She knows she has disobeyed and she sees the lead in my hand. She knows she deserves the lash. She is right. I give her one swat across the bottom with the leather lead and give her a tongue lashing that I only wish she could understand. She makes a big show of submission and obedience, but I can see that even then, in her moment of punishment, her attention was divided between me, her master, and the tempting flock still close at hand. Even in the midst of the consequence she was thinking about how she might be able to slip away again.

Lord have mercy!

Chasing Bubbles

2010-02-26T14:24:00.000+02:00

Today was a wild day at the beach. The wind was howling and I was able to walk along the sandy expanse of the ocean floor exposed by the retreating tide. The sun was still low in the sky and cast a shimmering glow over everything. The water was choppy and the waves rough as they pounded the beach with foamy repetition. The bubbly foam pushed up and down the beach by the waves. As the waves retreated bits of foam and some bubbles were stranded on the wet strand. These were blown sideways across the beach.

As I enjoyed the wild expanse and watched the oncoming rush of clouds my dog, Oreo, ran wild. We had the beach to ourselves and she ran here and there snapping at the wind and rushing at the waves. But today her favorite game was chasing bubbles. As she ran along, she would catch the movement of a bubble running across the top of the wet sand and would immediately change directions and attempt to grab the bubble. As she pounced on or closed her jaws over the bubble, it would immediately burst and disappear. She would pause for just a moment as if puzzled. Then another bubble would catch her eye and she was off again.

As I watched this I began to wonder how much of our lives we spend chasing bubbles. How many times does something catch our eye and we are off in a flash to get it? We chase down our quarry and just as we close our fists on the object of our desire we find that it is not as substantial as we imagined. We lay hold of it only to find that it does not deliver what we anticipated. But, rather than learn the lesson we are almost immediately distracted by another opportunity, another thing that we can pursue. Surely this one will be different! Surely this time it will be the thing that makes us happy, eases our pain, gives us enduring pleasure, or fills our soul! But again we find that it fails to satisfy. Rather than stopping to wonder about the futility of the game, we frenetic pursue the empty spheres.

We find that all around us others play the same game with subtle variations. We have different preferences in our pursuits. The bubbles we chase may be slightly different in size or color, but our perpetual idolatry is continually encouraged by our hungry flesh, the world around us, and the enemy of our souls. God calls us to something different. He calls us to walk with Him. He calls us to rest in Him, to trust in Him. He calls us to engage with Him. He will fill our souls and leave us strangely longing for more at the same time. He will give us substantial pleasures to enjoy as we walk with Him. He is a wild and free Father and loves to give good gifts to His children. Real gifts that we can sink our teeth into, the most important of which is God Himself.

Where do I get my magic sword?

2010-02-19T12:25:00.003+02:00

A battle of epic proportions is raging around us. A life or death struggle. People have left their families behind, have suffered privation as they dedicate themselves to the fight. Every day people are paying the ultimate price in the struggle for victory against an ancient foe, laying down their very lives. We listen for the orders from our commanders to plug this hole in the line, free those prisoners, or to take that distant hill. We throw ourselves into the fight. Some are the commandos dropped in behind enemy lines. Some are the infantry slogging it out in the trenches. Some are the stretcher bearers and healers. Some provide air support or strategic planning. But, all of us have a role in the battle.

My role these days is mostly air support or, more clearly, prayer support. I believe that God has called me to devote myself to intercession. It is difficult for me to watch the battle raging and to see the enemy taking shots at our people. I once was down in the trenches and I miss the gritty day to day fighting. These days I fight differently, in the quietness of my secret place of prayer. Even so, I am filled with emotions: anger, distress, sadness, and rage as I see the enemy of our souls fighting against my compatriots. I see his lies. I see the way he tricks us into friendly fire, or ambushes us with the sins that so easily entangle. I wish that I could grab him by the throat and throttle him. I find the intangible nature of this warfare terribly frustrating.

In the stories, when a huge and nefarious beast appears on the battlefield, the hero reaches for his magic sword, strides forward into battle and slays the hell spawned creature. I desperately wish that the spiritual battle was that easily won. I want my magic sword. I want to destroy the schemes of the enemy, to free the prisoners, to heal the sick, to raise the dead. I want to see the banner of the Lord lifted high over the battlefield and to hear the righteous battle throng sing the victory hymn to Our Father, Our King. Paul says that we do not fight as the world fights, but that we have been given divine weapons that demolish strongholds. The problem is that I don't know how to wield these divine weapons. I believe that I am learning, but oh how I want to learn more quickly and to wield the weapons more effectively! I need the King, the Captain of the Host to train my hands for battle!

What to do

2010-02-18T01:52:00.004+02:00

I find myself wondering what to do. I have been burdened, terribly burdened lately. Most of the burdens I have been bearing are not my own, but those of people that I love. As a minister, I am involved in the lives of people, and most people, myself included, are broken. Most of us are not tremendously broken, we manage to go on day to day just fine, we're just a little cracked. But a few situations lately have led me into the valley of suffering with some friends. They have been mourning and I have been mourning with them. I also have tremendous opportunities to rejoice with those who rejoice, but recently there has been more mourning.

But lately I have been bearing another burden, a burden with not one name but with many names. A burden about organizational sin rather than individual sin. I have seen a creeping evil, an insidious foe arise. It looks good, it feels familiar, and yet it is wrong. I struggle how to name the it...institutionalism, deception, selfish ambition, quenching the spirit? I'm not sure exactly how to name it, but it is clear as day when you see it. It is like eating horse meat. It looks pretty similar to beef. I can't really describe the difference between beef and horse, but you know the difference when it's in front of you. It is so similar, but it looks a little different, it smells a little different, it tastes a little different.

So here is my dillema...what do I do about what I see. I have asked God to do something about it. I asked Him to have others speak up. They have...but it continues. I asked Him to expose it, to let others see it. They have...but it continues. I asked Him to put a stop to it. He did not...and so it continues. Now I am wondering what I am supposed to do. I know I am supposed to pray, and I am doing that. I am wondering if I am to do something else, something more active. Is there not a time to stand up and do something? Is this such a time for me? Would it matter if I did? It's not that I have much to lose, but I don't see much point in investing myself in this fight if it won't do any good. It is so draining to invest so much energy in intercession, only to see the cogs of soul numbing, God diminishing, machinery continue to chug along. But how does the machine get stopped if no one stops it? Is this my fight?

The more I pray about this, the more I feel like my role is more Moses than Joshua. When the Israelites fought the Amalekites Joshua went into the valley while Moses went up on a hill overlooking the valley. While Joshua unsheathed his sword and went into battle, Moses stood on the hill interceding for the armies of the Lord. As much as I want to be down in the valley in the thick of the fight I feel like His call for me is stay up on the hill with my arms lifted in prayer. So, here I stand, even as my arms grow tired.

Emotions and prayer

2010-02-14T00:12:00.000+02:00

In the last few months I have felt particularly burdened. I am involved in the lives several people, and it seems that recently there has a been a lot of crisis lately. I have found myself really heavy as I pray for my friends and for the situations. At times, more often than I would like to admit, I have been moved to tears. Not just the gentle tears rolling down my cheeks, but real weeping, wracked with sobs. This is definitely not normal for me.

At first I was concerned, but as I have processed this and talked with good friends, I am beginning to wonder if I am not moving toward the heart of intercession. My wife read me a quote that said something like, "real prayer starts when words stop." In Romans 8, Paul tells us, "We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." I am not sure that my weeping is exactly that, but I am starting to think that it is related. I wonder if God is letting me feel a little of His heart for those I am praying for, or letting me bear some of their burdens.

There is a troubling aspect to this, because it seems to go against the peaceful feeling that prayer is "supposed" to produce. I have often been encouraged to tone down my emotions, my passion. I have been encouraged to be more like the meek and mild Christ, but now I am starting to reevaluate and to rediscover the emotional range available to us in scripture. And let me tell you, when you start to read scripture with an eye for the emotions, there is a lot in there.

The circles I run in seem to be concerned about your mental stability if you cry in church, or if you express anything beyond mild frustration at any time. I wonder what they would make of Moses, Samuel, Elijah, David, Jeremiah, Hosea, or Paul, not to mention Jesus. Jesus was sad. Jesus wept. Jesus was angry. Jesus was so mad that he resorted to violence in the temple. Yes, Jesus was also peaceful, joyful, and meek, but he experienced and expressed the whole range of emotions. These were men following hard after God who also expressed a lot of emotion.

I spent a lot of time praying through the Psalms today and I was amazed at the whole range of emotions contained and expressed as prayer. It was wonderful to be able to pray the emotionally charged words of scripture back to God. I just prayed my heart out today. I am no longer going to try to censor my prayers to make sure that they fit into my, or anyone elses, preconceived notions of propriety. Today I prayed with reckless abandon. Interestingly enough, there was plenty of burden but no tears today. Go figure.

Production and Patience

2010-02-12T19:26:00.011+02:00

I find myself torn between two poles. On the one hand I feel strongly that we are engaged in a battle and that we must be zealous and active in the fight. On the other hand, I know that God is sovereign and is in control of all things. I was thinking and praying about this as I walked on the beach the morning. I was feeling SO burdened by some specific situations. I was moved by the immediacy of the problems and was interceding. I was begging God to bare His arm and win the victory. I was on the verge of despair that He could do anything, or would do anything, when I noticed the action of the waves. The tide was going out, so the waves were not crashing, but instead gently rolling up and down between the rocks and over the sand. I noticed that the rocks were well worn; some had taken on impossible shapes beneath the steady motion of the waves. I saw the sand being pushed up and down the beach by the surf. I saw small pebbles rolling around beneath the water, on their way to becoming sand themselves. It was then I was reminded of the inexorable coming of the Kingdom of God.

God is moving and His Kingdom is coming, but all in His own mysterious time and paradoxical ways. I feel such an urgency an impatience for God to move! I want His Kingdom to come and His will to be done NOW! I don't think this is all bad, but I see that our sense of urgency and activity often leads us to make subtle choices that lead us away from dependence on God. It seems that what we want is results, people saved, children fed, schools built, churches planted, families transformed, or cultures redeemed. Being heirs to the industrial and information revolutions, we then set out to design and build systems that will efficiently and effectively produce the results that we need, that we believe God wants to see happen.

Unfortunately, our reliance on these systems and our efforts to perfect them often causes us to lose our way. Ultimately our goal is not the production of particular results, good though they may be, but rather, as Jesus taught, God's Kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. The reign of God is massive! It is much bigger and more complex than we can imagine. We understand very little about the universe we live in, and even less about the God who created it all. His Kingdom is mysterious and even paradoxical. It has so many aspects, contains so many interactions, and has so many simultaneously moving parts! It is organic and dynamic, it cannot be placed under a microscope and dissected to unlock the secrets. When we attempt to do this, we reduce the movement of the Spirit to the distillation and application of principles. We lose the life of the Spirit, but we gain the illusion of control and efficiency.

Oh, but we are an impatient people! The movement of God sometimes takes much longer than we would expect. The waves are an ineffecient way to shape stones and to make sand. So, we devise machines. We research, discover, and apply the laws of physics and harness what powers we can to accomplish our goals. We are efficient and effective as we improve upon God's methods. We never equal His grace and beauty, but no matter because we can do it faster. Unfortunately, there is more to what God is doing with the waves than just making sand, more than we can possibly understand.

When we skip the process to achieve the end we end up missing both. We can produce sand and gravel from stones, but that is only a small part of what God is doing; one small part of His grand design. The marvelous interactions of all that is happening on the beach are part of an intricate dance that we can pick apart but never duplicate. Behind it all is the hidden hand of God. He calls us to enter in with Him and to take an active role, but also not to overestimate our own prowess or importance. We are each like one wave on the beach. We matter, we have a role, but it is all so much bigger than us. So, we must take our part in the line of waves accomplishing the will of God by measures and asking Him to give us both the patience and the endurance to keep going.

Praying and cycling

2010-02-12T00:00:00.000+02:00

I am starting to realize just how little I know about prayer. It's not that I haven't read about prayer, or study the topic in the scriptures. I admit that I have a lot left to learn cognitively about prayer, and even more left to understand. But my need for knowledge goes beyond the cognitive. What I am realizing is that I am only now beginning my journey in the area of prayer.

I feel like a man who years ago became interested in cycling. I read books about the history of cycling. I go to bike shops and talk to cyclists. I read about the lives and experiences of great cyclists. I even attend the odd cycling event from time to time. But until very recently I never really got on to a bike, or at least never rode much. I occasionally rode my bike down the street or around town, but never really trained, never devoted myself to it. So, despite years of learning I am still a novice.

The real knowledge comes in the doing. Years ago I had a mentor tell me that you learn about praying by praying. I nodded sagely and asked him if he could recommend a book about that. Recently I have redoubled my efforts at serious prayer. I find that it is tremendously hard work. It really is true that the learning is in the doing. I devote myself to prayer and am left tired and drained, not unlike a novice bicycler who has not built up his stamina. I am amazed at how exhausted I am after a time of intercession. I feel like I have been carrying real physical burdens, a deep bone tiredness. It is hard to push myself to continue to pray when I feel like I have "hit the wall".I have to remind myself that I have much to learn. I want to keep learning and to find what is beyond the wall.

This is war

2010-01-22T18:15:00.001+02:00

I stand on a battlefield. Around me I see my friends, my brothers, my comrades-in-arms. We stand together against a foe that we can't quite see. An enemy that seems to materialize where we least expect him and then fade back into the darkness, lurking always lurking, looking for a weakness, probing for an opportunity to strike.

I see the wounded bodies of my comrades. Bloodied and broken in the fight they pile up around me. As I move among them, some wounds seem self-inflicted but others bear the cruel markings of the enemy. Vicious attacks that tore them from their places in the firing line. Unprovoked, unjust, and unrelenting assaults against those who would dare to stand against the encroaching evil and even to throw it back. To bring light into the darkness, to bring hope to the hopeless, to set the prisoners free.

This is a rescue mission. We have joined up to free the captives. But the captives have been captive so long that they can no longer imagine real freedom. Instead, they often willingly, even gladly, join in resisting "the invaders" who would set them free. They view their liberators as the enemy while their true enemy eggs them on from within and smiles at their tortuous acts of self-destruction. All the while creeping among our ranks to find a weakness in one of more of us to exploit.

My role is primarily to encourage the troops. I move among them whispering words of hope and exhortation. I administer first aid to those who have been wounded and sometimes aid in getting them more help. I counsel with the leaders, and seek counsel from the Leader. Sometimes I take an active role in the battle calling in air support or slogging through the trenches, but most days I find myself among the wounded. I offer them compassion and pray for healing. I understand their plight because I have been wounded to.

I hate our enemy. I love our Lord. I often puzzle as to why He doesn't simply end this war once and for all. It seems sometimes that the darkness is gaining ground, but I trust our Commander. I know that He has things well in hand through all appearances to the contrary. I have seen Him turn the tide in battle before. I have seen prisoners set free against all odds. I have been on successful rescue missions. I remember being rescued myself.

And so, I stand on the battlefield still.

Getting Ahead

2009-12-30T17:56:00.000+02:00

I hesitate to write this blog because it is yet another blog about a dog. Although I am reading scripture, praying, journaling, involved in community, and have weekly accountability meetings with a couple of men, the Lord seems to be speaking to me most clearly, at this time, during my walks across the countryside with my dog. I am not sure why that's the case, or how long it will continue, but I am afraid that my blog may have a few more "dog entries" before long.

The dog, Oreo, is growing so fast these days and is now able to climb over most of the stiles herself. It has been fun to watch her grow in size and in confidence. She is no longer completely terrified when we meet a larger dog and approaches the horses and cows we meet on her own. She even went so far as to chase a flock of sheep the other day, which she thought was great fun.

A couple of days ago I was out again with Oreo. As we walked the now familiar paths she ranged farther afield. At times she was 50-100 feet ahead of me. I smiled at her confidence, and watched as she climbed up and over a stile at the far side of the field. She looked back at me just before she dissappeared over the other side, as if to say, "Are you coming!?" When I came to the stile and looked over, she had wandered on ahead even further down the path we often take. What she didn't know is that I was going a different direction that day.

I had a different destination in mind. The beginning stages of our path were the same, but I decided to take a different path through some fields that we had never walked before. Oreo was running ahead. I enjoyed her exuberance and laughed to myself as I watched her explore. I was less amused when I was calling her to follow me but she kept to her own path.

Later on the way home, I was reminded of the danger of getting ahead of God. How often do I run on ahead assuming that the path today is the same as yesterdays? How many times to I get confused when He turns left when I thought we were going right? How many times am I impatiently looking back at Him asking, "Are you coming with me or what?!" I need to learn to fix my eyes on Him. I need to wait upon the Lord instead of assuming that the natural or familiar path is the one that He has marked for me.

As I approach the new year I am wondering about the future and what it will hold. I am hoping that this year I will not get ahead of God.

The Giver of All Good Things

2009-12-18T16:12:00.001+02:00

It is funny the way that the Spirit will just tap you on the shoulder sometimes and point out a lesson that is right in front of your face. It happened again on my walk this morning. It involved the dog again. I have been training her to respond to my command to "come" by rewarding her with a tasty treat when she does so. This has been working wonders. She has started to realize that when she obeys there is a really positive payoff. She is starting to identify me as the giver of treats, and to come when I call. I reward her for staying close to me with words and pats and with the occasional surprise from a pocket full of canine culinary delights.

I watched her this morning as she wandered father and farther away across a field. Her nose was glued to the ground. I called her. She popped her head up and looked at me. I called her again. It was as if I could see the debate in her little doggy head. Then, she took off like a rocket toward me. She was about halfway towards me when she suddenly changed directions. She shot off on a new trajectory. Soon, she had her nose down in a pile of cow manure and was munching away. I called her again, but she wasn't budging. Again, and she popped her head up and looked at me inquisitively, as if surprised that I was still there. Then, she bolted straight towards me. She received her tasty treat when she arrived, albiet more carefully than usual as I didn't want a hand smeared with cow manure from her muzzle.

I was laughing about this scene when I felt a gentle poke. I am just like the brute beast. I know that God is the giver of all good things. His pockets are bulging with things that delight me. When I draw near to Him, He is quick with a word of affirmation and is so kind to me. I love to be close to Him. But then I catch of whiff of something. I forget that He is there. I wander off in curiosity. I wonder about what this new smell might hold in store. He lets me meander and perhaps a smile drifts across His face at my inquisitiveness or my enjoyment of the field where He has led me.

Then He calls me. I become aware of Him again. I remember what it is like to be near Him and I am off like a rocket towards Him. Then, I catch a whiff of something else, and my pace towards him slakens, my concentration on Him is broken. Quicker than I know it, I am off in a different direction, forgetting the gifts that He is holding for me. He patiently, and sometimes urgently, calls me again. Oh yeah, that's where I was going! As I refocus on His face, I can hardly remember how I forgot, or how I failed to reach Him, and I am off again in pursuit of the One who loves me, the giver of all good things.

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

2009-12-07T13:52:00.001+02:00

I love to walk across the countryside. I enjoy being out in nature with just my thoughts and my God. As I walk, I pray, and my prayers are sometimes shaped and triggered by the things that strike me as I walk. It could be a flower, the weather, something in the sky, or some kind of animal behavior. The countryside is mostly rolling farmland that gently slopes down toward the cliffs at the sea. There are well worn paths cutting through the fields and across the hedgerows. In order to cross the boundaries you have to climb over stiles. Most are made of stone and are quiet old. It has been fun to explore the various paths through the fields and along the coast.

Lately, I have had additional company in the form of our new puppy. She minds pretty well these days and has been an interesting addition. I have been training her to go over the stiles. Over the last week or so she has really be catching on. It's been amusing to have her clamor up to the top only to be stymied by the last big step. She has to wait for me to help her over the last bit. This is all well and good for now, but she will soon be too heavy for me to do this easily over the tallest stiles. However, there is a solution near at hand. There are conveniently located gates through which the livestock can be driven near these tall stiles. So, today I decided to have her go under the gates and wait for me on the otherside while I went over the stile. She already knows how to sit and to stay so I led her under the gate and told her to sit and stay while I backtracked and made my way over the stile.

Before I had made my way down the stile, there was a little face peering over the top of the stile inquisitively from the field I had just left. Instead of trusting that I was not going to leave her, she had quickly and quietly followed me back to the stile to cross over the way we always had. She repeated this behavior at the next stile as well. It seems it was just too much for her to believe that I really meant the instructions I had given her, that I wanted her to do something different than she had done before. Shea already "knew" what I wanted her to do from previous experience.

As I laughingly reflected on this talking about it alternatively with my dog and with my God, I was suddenly struck by the lesson. How often do I assume what God wants me to do instead of fixing my eyes on Him and waiting for His direction? How often do I assume that the way I have always done it is the right way, even when He seems to be directing me to do something different? Going over the stiles was the best way for the puppy when we started our walks together, but it is time for her to start learning how to do it differently. She is growing, and is ready for a new way. It will take time for her to unlearn the old way and for the new way to feel right, to become the new normal. It should be relatively easy as she is a young dog who is full of trust and a desire to please.

I wonder how easy it will be for this old dog to be trained by my Master. May I be filled with trust and a desire to please Him. May I learn to listen and not just to assume because I have "been down this path before". May I surrender my pride and self-reliance, my feeling that I know the right way. May I be willing and able to receive His direction and to follow His instructions even when they don't "feel right" as He leads me in paths of righteousness for His Name's sake.

Another fine mess...

2009-11-20T16:12:00.001+02:00

How did I get into this mess?! I have chosen a profession that requires me to engage wholeheartedly in striving to accomplish something that is ultimately beyond my ability to do. I have chosen to spend my life reaching for goals that are impossible. I am a minister.

My job is work for His Kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. My tasks are people. My vocation is to seek the transformation of souls. No one can accomplish this except God Himself. So, every day I pray and I work, I talk and I preach, I write and create, I strategize and struggle for revival and renewal. I can write a sermon or organize a meeting, but that is nothing. The real purpose for the sermon or the meeting are beyond me. There's the rub. I cannot revive a single soul. It is not up to me to change a life. I can feed a man, house a child, love a woman, but I cannot touch their hearts. Only God can do that. What kind of fool am I to struggle and agonize to accomplish something I know is impossible.

I wrestled with this as I stood on the cliffs near my home yesterday. As the wind howled, the ocean roared, and the clouds skidded across the sky I was simultaneously filled with faith and frustration. I know that God is Almighty. He can do anything that He wills. He can change lives. He can transform churches. He can save nations. He can fall upon a person, a church, a town, a city, a nation, and make Himself known. He has done it before. So, I stood there on the cliff telling Him about what is wrong with me and the world and begging Him to pour out His Spirit. I looked at the sky filled with dark clouds and I wondered why He wouldn't break through. Why doesn't He do what only He can do and burn through the clouds of darkness that engulf our world!?

Then I saw something I have never seen before. I noticed another thing happening in the sky. I saw another layer of clouds beyond the dark storm clouds above me. The storm was rushing toward me and over me, but all the while there were bright white wispy clouds moving the opposite direction above and beyond the darkness. In that moment I wondered. I remembered. God too is always moving, always working. His work is often shrouded and is more subtle than the darkness. It can go without notice and get lost in the noisy evil of our world. It doesn't make the news, but it is there. It is ever flowing, ever moving, inexorably proceeding forward.

So, I choose to attempt the impossible. I preach and I pray knowing that if God doesn't "show up" then it is all in vain. I launch myself into the abyss of failure and shame knowing that if He doesn't catch me I am lost, a fool indeed. I have no hope in life or death apart from Jesus Christ. I expect to swing out into eternity on that.

God is with us

2009-11-06T14:37:00.000+02:00

I have been reading Genesis lately, trying to keep up with my son. We decided to read the New Testament this year, and when we got through Revelation, my son just flipped back to the beginning and started in on Genesis. So, I decided to read along with him, but that boy is a voracious reader and it's been a challenge to keep up with him. Today, I covered a bunch of ground in the middle of Genesis to catch up with him as He's almost done with Joseph's story. (By the way, I have to wonder what a 7 year old boy does with the story of Dinah and Shechem, or Lot and his daughters!?)

I love reading larger sections of scripture at once. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy focusing in on a word or a verse as well, but there is something about taking in the whole scope of a story or a series of stories that illuminates the broader themes. I was struck by the phrase "God was with him" and how many times in occurs. It is a theme in each of the patriarchs lives and is also clearly a theme with Joseph. God was with them. This is usually either preceeded or followed by a list of the blessings they received, the wealth they accumulated, or the sons that were born. Clearly God being with them is a tremendous source of blessing. So much so that even their neighbors and erstwhile enemies could recognize it as the hand of God and sought treaties with them.

As I read the story of Joseph in particular I found myself pondering the blessing of God being with Joseph. It is clear that He was with Joseph, but that God being with him did not prevent him from being abused and almost killed by his brothers, being sold into slavery, being accosted and falsely accused by his bosses wife, being imprisoned, or being forgotten by those he helped. God was with him and was blessing him in the midst of these difficulties and injustices. God's presence did not prevent them or allow Joseph to circumvent them.

God did not rescue Joseph from the harsh realities of a radically dysfunctional family, work place discrimination, or the miscarriage of justice when falsely imprisoned. God was with Joseph in the middle of these things. Oh! How Joseph must have wondered where God was in the middle of his sufferings!? I can only imagine how he might have felt as others were released from prison while he remained. The one chosen and blessed by God seemed to be the only one who was not being blessed. There was simply no way for Joseph to know what God was up to and God never told him. God was with him the whole time, blessing him, but not releasing Him.

Emmanuel, God is with us.

The Battle

2009-10-30T14:49:00.002+02:00

I believe that God has created me to be a warrior. I feel most engaged, most alive, when I am conquering something. I love a challenge. I have often struggled to understand this part of myself, or to tame this part of myself, but I believe that the Lord has created me this way. I believe that He is pleased with this part of me. He calls me to follow Him, and then leads me into battle.

The problem is that the battlefields He leads me to these days are internal and spiritual. He leads me to battle my flesh and Satan, the enemy of our souls. He leads me to battle in prayer. But, these battles are not easily won. They are never really over. No sooner do I see a victory in one area, then He calls me to march on. I want to stand astride the battlefield as the conqueror savoring the victory, but instead I find that the fiendish enemy is not vanquished, but rather has retreated to another field of battle. So, I march on, but I don't find the sense of conquest or closure that I seek.

Yes, there are moments of victory. There are quiet celebrations as strongholds fall, but these are tempered by the realization that the grim foe remains and the fight is not over. I see glimmers of light and shimmering victory against the backdrop of the darkness. I see how far I have come, and yet more clearly how far I have yet to travel. My struggle for holiness continues. This is true in the battle for my own sanctification as well as the battles I fight in prayer for others.

My struggle in prayer is also clouded by my inability to quantify the victories. I can see lives change, people come to faith, relationships reconciled, churches planted, strongholds fall, but it is hard for me to see these as a result of my prayers. I sit in a room thousands of miles removed from those who are in the thick of the fight and wonder if what I am doing is of any real value. They are the ones on the front lines, perhaps I should be out there with them, where the "real" work is done. Or, perhaps the real work is prayer.

I was puzzling over this today and was drawn to Exodus 17. Moses tells Joshua to get ready for battle and to go fight the Amalekites, while Moses heads up on a hill to pray. Joshua goes out to battle and Moses holds up his arms and prays. Whenever Moses' arms are up, Joshua and the army of Israel are winning, whenever Moses drops his arms they are losing. So, who really wins the battle for the Lord that day?

I am tempted to say that Moses did, but verse 13 says that "Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword." The victory was Joshua's. Moses had a role to play, a key role, a pivotal role, but the victory was Joshua's. Or was it? Perhaps the victory was really the Lord's and Joshua and Moses both played their role. It was the Lord who brought the victory and both Joshua and Moses fought the "real" battle, but fought in different ways, on different planes.

I'm not really sure how it works. Some tell us that the "real" battle is spiritual, others that the "real" world is the one we perceive with our senses. I think that both are equally real, both were created by God. I find battle in the physical world so much easier to engage in and to understand. It is hard for me to stay motivated to battle in the spiritual realm. I have so much to learn. But, this I know: prayer is important. God invites us to pray. He urges us to pray. He teaches us to pray. He commands us to pray. He tells us that our prayers can be powerful and effective. He gives us examples of prayers that make a real difference through the lives of Moses, Elijah, Jesus, Peter, Paul, and so many others. Clearly prayer is important. Clearly we have been given divine weapons to demolish strongholds.

So, today, I wade into the battle again. I little know or understand the significance or effectiveness of my attempts, but I believe He has called me to this. Perhaps my childish attempts at battle make Him smile and He empowers them to demolish the unseen enemy. I hope so.

The Invitation

2009-10-27T15:22:00.000+02:00

The invitation is to follow Christ. He makes no promises about the destination or even what will happen on the journey. Sure, there is the promise of the ultimate destination when the journey is all over, and there is the promise that He will always be with us on the journey. Not to minimize these, but what about the everyday promises? What about food on the table and a roof over your head? What about healthy kids and good friends? What about the respect of those you admire or those you lead? What about all the things that we have been led to expect from life, from God? Does He promise these?

If I believe what the Christian bookstores sell, then yes, He does, but I don't believe them. I don't believe that "every day with Jesus is sweeter than the one before." I don't believe that He promises that we will be healthy, wealthy, and wise. I don't believe that following Him will always lead to light and bliss. I don't believe that we'll always come out on top (in this world) or that we will be rewarded for doing the right thing. Sometimes doing the right thing means being executed, or slowly being starved to death. Sometimes following Jesus leads us into trouble not away from it. A quick examination of the lives of the prophets, or the lives of the vast majority of Christians in our time and the ages before us, shows us that it is an anomaly to have a nice life and also follow Christ.

So, I reject the "face value wisdom and happy lies" that promise something that Jesus never actually promised. He did promise that He would be with us. He promised that He would send us the Spirit to comfort us and to lead us. He promised that He would complete the good work that He began in us. Ah, there's the rub. To complete the good work of redeeming my soul and making me more like Himself, He has to lance the painful, infected, places in my soul. He has to take me to face the hurt, the darkness, the pain in my own soul. It's not just that there is sin "out there", that the world is sick and infected and therefore not as it should be and so we suffer in this world. It's that I am sick and infected and not as I should be.

So, I choose again today to follow Him. Not because it will be easy, or will lead to all the worldly happiness that I crave, but because He is God and He is good. He is good even when He takes me by the hand and leads me down in to valley of the shadow of death. For dying to myself is a real death with real suffering. I believe that He inflicts this pain because it is the only way for me to be healed. I hate the pain, but I love the soul surgeon who inflicts it.

Who else?

2009-10-15T13:11:00.001+03:00

There are times in my journey when I am filled with love for God. There are times when I just delight in Him and desire nothing more than sitting in His presence. There are other times when our relationship is less filled with inexpressible joy, and more difficult. There are times when I really resonate with Peter. Peter was passionate. Peter was eager. Peter often spoke impetuously. Peter was also honest, as honest as he could be. I love Peter's words in John 6.

Quite a few followers were leaving and abandoning Jesus. Those who were not leaving were grumbling. Jesus turns to the twelve and asks them if they are also going to leave. I love Peter's response. You might expect that He would declare his undying loyalty. You might expect that he would declare his love and his faithfulness. Instead he responds, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

No bombastic declarations. No prideful self assurance. No, those would come later, in a different season. This time he responded with a simple statement about what is true. They knew that Jesus was the One. If we read between the lines we see Peter's implication, that if they had another real option, they might well take it. But, because they knew that Jesus was the Messiah and the only way to eternal life, they had no choice but to follow Him. Who else could they follow?

That is a bit where I find myself in my journey these days. I am wrestling with God. I am frustrated. I am bothered. But to whom else can I go? I know too much to leave. I know that He is and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him. So I seek Him still, even though He says some strange things, even though He asks for difficult sacrifices. Where else could I go? Who else has the words of eternal life? Who else is the Eternal Word? So, with Peter, I will stay the course and trust that this season too will pass and another one will follow.

Playing with God

2009-10-05T14:15:00.003+03:00

This morning I find myself wondering about how to more fully integrate God into the playful side of my life. I am a pretty playful person by nature. I like to tease and joke. I like to play cards and boardgames. I enjoy video games and computer games. I generally just enjoy playing. I know how God's standards inform my choices about leisure activity, that I should only let my mind dwell on things that are true, noble, right, lovely, admirable, and worthy of praise. It's the actual playing that puzzles me.

I am not struggling with picturing God as happy or joyful, or even laughing, but I am having a hard time picturing Jesus engaging in the kind of frivolous pastimes that I enjoy. I can picture Him enjoying creation, or enjoying the joy of His creatures, but I have a hard time picturing Jesus playing football, Playstation, or even checkers. I can picture Him preaching and praying. I can picture him serving and healing. I can picture Him eating and sleeping. I just can't quite see him playing, and this puzzles me and makes me sad. Did Jesus ever just take some "down time"? What did He do for fun?

Over the weekend, my son and I spent hours playing a variety of games together, everything from checkers, to Playstation, to Civilization on the PC. I can picture God enjoying us enjoying each other, but what about when I just play a game by myself? Does God smile on that? Does He enjoy me enjoying the game? Does He enjoy me enjoying the challenge, the problem solving? Or does He think it's all a waste of time and that I should be doing something productive, of eternal value? I know that I need a certain amount of just plain fun in my life, but I find myself feeling guilty about it. I can't believe that the guilt is from God, but I can't quite dismiss it either.

The Natural and the Supernatural

2009-10-02T13:23:00.001+03:00

Being Christ like does not come naturally to me. I am bent. I have a predisposition to sin. Not only that, but I have spent years doing what comes naturally. I have programmed by body and my soul to respond to certain situations or stimuli in strictly natural ways. Like one of Pavlov's dogs I hear the "bell" of stress and turn to escape. I hear the bell of difficulty and turn to procrastination. I have a natural tendency to turn away from God, and to seek my own way, and I have further strengthened these natural tendencies by developing sinful habits of heart, mind, and body.

Everyone of us has turned away from God. We turn away from the Fountain of Living Water and dig cisterns for ourselves, broken cisterns that can't even hold water. I have returned to my cisterns so often that there are now deep ruts leading to them. It is hard to pull in another direction when my nature and my habitual way of living lead me down the well worn path. My culture in another accomplice to my crimes. Our cultures normalize and enshrine our cisterns. We are surrounded by others not only doing the same things but also giving approval to our choices. They actively recruit people to drink from the cisterns, and profit off of the enslavement to the natural.

God offers us freedom. He offers us His very Spirit to live inside of us and lead us to new ways of living. If we say that we don't need Him we lie. If we say we don't sin, we lie. But, if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. From that place of humble surrender and gracious forgiveness He leads us, as often as we need it, back to the Fountain of Living Water.

As we try to forget what is behind and press on for the prize, He is at work within us to will and to work His good pleasure for us. The ruts are still there, but He calls us to abandon them, He empowers us to choose the supernatural life over the natural. We are not alone. He will never leave us or forsake us. It may always be more natural for me to sin than to live like Jesus, but it is getting a little easier than it used to be. The road is long, the temptations are great, but greater is He who is in us than He who is in the World.

Significance

2009-09-23T15:59:00.001+03:00

This week I have to make some decisions. I am faced with an array of opportunities, relationships, and events, and I can't do all of them. I'm not even sure that I am supposed to do any of them. Silence and simplicity are a clear part of my calling, but resist these parts as I strive for significance. On some level I have bought into the lie that the more I do the more significant I am.

The very fact that I am still striving, seeking, searching for significance shows that I have missed it. The desire itself betrays me. It shows me that I am still measuring myself against something. I am still looking for something or someone to tell me I am significant. The real problem is not just that I am looking in the wrong direction, it is that I am looking at all.

God has already declared that I am significant. According to God I am His Child, a member of a holy nation, a royal priesthood. I am an heir with Christ, seated in the heavenly realms. I am one of the foolish and despised things of the world, that He has declared to be something significant. I am one of the things that was not, but is now because He spoke it into being. The same God who spoke and their was light has spoken words of blessing and affirmation over me.

The same God who created the universe by declaring it into existence, has declared that I am His child. He made me, and is remaking me. He is the center of all things. He is the One from which all things derive their meaning and existence. Things are at their heart whatever He declares them to be. Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. If He says that I am significant, then I am. It is a fact. A fact that I loose sight of all to easily. I know I have lost sight of it when I am living my life trying to become something less than I already am.

Silence

2009-09-21T12:03:00.002+03:00

Last night I watched a movie with my wife, "A River Runs Through It". Afterwards, she was tired and went to bed while I sat on the couch reflecting on the themes of the movie. After a while, she called down and asked me what I was doing. I responded, "Nothing. Just sitting here." It struck me as a little odd. I wasn't really doing "nothing". I was reflecting. I was thinking.

Another piece to the story is that after the movie was over, and before my wife called down, I turned off the DVD player and the TV popped back to regular programming. A movie was on that I didn't recognize. Even though I was enjoying the silence and wanted to continue to reflect I was immediately drawn in. My curiosity was piqued. It was a few minutes before I realized that I was losing the thoughts, the reflections, and the rest, that I had been entering into just moments before. It was a real struggle to choose silence with interesting noise so readily available.

I am so addicted to noise and activity! I feel strange sitting still. I know that it is in stillness and silence that I get in tune with my soul and with my God. So, why do I feel almost guilty when I am doing nothing? I am nearly always doing something, many times attempting to do multiple things simultaneously. Busy-ness is familiar and comfortable. If I find myself between tasks I feel somewhat uneasy and I start to immediately search for the next thing to do; the next activity to engage in, the next media to consume, the next problem to solve. The problem is that noise is constantly available and even intrudes on our lives unbidden. The hard part is to choose silence. Silence seems unnatural. It is hard to find or create silence, but it is necessary. It is worth pursuing.

Learn to Discern

2009-09-18T17:20:00.001+03:00

I desperately want to know God. I want to know Him personally and to interact with Him. It isn't that I don't know God's Name. I know His Name and I know Him personally, but I want to know Him more. I have talked with Him and on a few occasions I have heard His reply to my question or my cry. It's not that He is fully unknown.

I want to know Him like I want to know my wife. I want to know the way she is thinking. I want to understand her emotions. I want to know what makes her smile and what makes her mad; but it's not just the information I want, it's the connection. I want to know her and I want to be known by her. I want to belong to her and for her to belong to me. Of course all of this is already true on one level, but I want more.

I read His Word. I pray and I worship in song. I feel His presence, but not with the kind of regularity that I want, that I believe is possible. I want to hear His voice and to be able to tell the difference between His voice and the other voices echoing in my head. I want to be able to know when it is Him speaking and when it is just me, my parents, or my culture. I want to learn to rightly discern His voice.

This is not just idle curiosity. As a Christian I believe that Christ is my Saviour as well as my model for life and ministry. I want to live like Christ. Jesus always only did what He saw His Father doing. I can't do that right now, because more often than not I have no idea what God is doing. I am sure that He is at work, but only rarely can I trace His fingerprints on a situation until after the fact. So, I need to train my senses, my mind, and my heart to be alert to Him and His movements. I believe that discernment is both a gift and a skill, or rather a gift that God gives to all His children that can be increased with practice. I want to learn to discern.

It's all about me

2009-09-14T14:10:00.002+03:00

It is funny how easy it is for me to slip into a narcissistic perspective. I all too easily become consumed with myself and lose my grasp on reality. The more I focus on my fears and failures, or even my victories and virtues, the more warped my perspective becomes.

The fact is that the story of my life is a small part of a much grander story. God is writing an epic story filled with love and hate, faithfulness and betrayal, a great adventure. I have a part in the story, as we all do, but when I start thinking that it's all about me, I have lost the plot. I make too much of myself. I make to much of my gifts, my reputation, my sin, my insignificance, and my importance. None of these things are the central truths of reality. God alone stands at the center. He is the hero of the story, not me. He has written me into the story and I am valuable because He made me and loves me, but that doesn't make the story about me.

As I wrote my last post, I was wallowing in self-pity. I was focusing only on myself and my experience. Then, a surprising thing happened. Someone reminded me that what I need to do is to make much of God, to focus on Him. I cannot worry about the critics or the price that I might pay for obedience. I must only draw near to God, and do what He would have me do. I wonder if great things are only possible when undertaken with self-forgetfulness? Great battles are not won without sacrifice and there will be scars to bear. If I trust that God really is working everything out for my good as well as the good of the Kingdom, then I can walk whatever path He lays before me.

I am so quick to forget! I need to be reminded of the gospel. I need to be reminded that it is all about God. I need to be reminded that while I am a unique and valued child of the King, I am only one of many valued children. He has a role for me to play, a part for me to fulfill, work for me to do. I must do my part for the Kingdom to advance and for the King to get the glory that is due to His Name. He'll take care of the rest, and as I lose myself in Him and the work He has for me to do, I become who I was created to be.

Fear and Writing

2009-09-11T17:47:00.001+03:00

I am afraid. I am afraid to write honestly about my experience of God. I am afraid to share my doubts and misgivings as well as my certainties. I am afraid to share about my sinful past, and my besetting sins that are with me even now. I am afraid that if I really write, really share who I am, if I commit it to the page, then I will be judged, ridiculed and mocked.

I don’t think that my fears are unfounded as it doesn’t take too much poking around on the internet to find a raft of websites that mock and defame any number of ministers and ministries. It is not that I am afraid of being wrong. I know that I’m wrong a lot of the time and that even some things that I once was confident about, I now shudder to think that I espoused. I am sure that I am wrong and I am open to correction. I don’t want to be wrong, I don’t like it, but it seems I can’t help it. I think the only way to become less wrong is to be honest about who you are and what you think, so that others can speak into your life. I want to be able to search for truth without being shouted at too much, and without being mocked. I don’t mind confessing my ignorance if I can receive knowledge in return rather than disdain.

So, I hesitate. I procrastinate. I believe that God has asked me to write, but I will do anything other than that. I will do research. I will adjust the layout of my blog. I will update and reboot my computer. I will do just about anything other than lay myself bare before the reading world.

The irony of all this is that virtually no one is reading what I write anyway.

Stealing His Glory

2009-09-11T13:05:00.000+03:00

One of the things that I appreciate about scripture is the way that it records the real lives of people who have followed God, warts and all. There is no putting a nice spin on sleeping with your daughter in law, or giving your wife to another man to avoid a potential threat to your own safety. The stories of the men and women in scripture are not written to glorify them, but rather to point to the nature and character of God.

The stories are meant to glorify God. By recording for posterity not just the victories, but also the struggles and outright failures of these men and women God receives glory and we receive hope. If even a man after God's own heart can commit murder and adultery, then there is hope for a man like me.

I find modern biographies to be more sanitized, and at times even discouraging. By lionizing the leaders of churches and ministries are we not glorifying the man or woman at the expense of the glory of God. I find myself wondering at the saintliness and giftedness of the leaders and wondering if I measure up. I find myself impressed with them and their ministries rather than inspired to step out into ministry myself.

But, if I am honest, I have to acknowledge my own propensity to hide the warts and trumpet "my achievements". In my own heart, I am guilty of trying to steal some of God's glory all too often. I want people to like me. I want people to think that I am gifted and to respect me, to speak well of me. The fact that this comes so naturally to me does not mean that it's not wrong. All kinds of sin comes naturally to me, all too naturally.

I don't mean that we need to share everything with everyone, but when we seek to glorify ourselves even subtly, are we not seeking to keep a bit of the praise that we should be reflecting to the Father for ourselves; sort of skimming off the top before we pass it along. Is it not a form of spiritual embezzlement? I don't want to steal even a portion of His glory. So, I resolve to live with integrity and to share the whole story so that He can get the whole glory.

Walking Through the Corn

2009-08-26T15:22:00.003+03:00

I took a walk recently with my children through the countryside near our house. We were trying a new path that a friend told us about. About an hour into our walk we found ourselves on the edge of a corn field. We could see the woods on the far side of the corn so we knew we were heading in the right direction. We could also see the path leading into the corn and towards the woods. So, we set off. It wasn't long before the path intersected others and branched off in myriad directions, it even became difficult to tell the difference between the path and the spaces between the corn rows. We were in the middle of the field with the corn stalks high over our heads when my kids asked me to stop. That was the easy question, the next one was harder, "Daddy, are you sure we are heading the right direction?"

I had to admit that I really wasn't sure, but that I felt pretty confident that if we kept moving in the direction we were heading that we would come out roughly where we wanted to be, if not exactly on the edge of the woods. So, we plunged ahead, careful to stick to what we thought was the path and avoiding damage to the ripening crop. Before long we suddenly stepped out of the field and found ourselves near the wood. There was a collective sigh of relief and we continued on our walk. On the way back, we avoided the cornfield altogether.

In my life I find that the long-term objectives are clear, but in the doing of the tasks and the living of life I feel like I'm in over my head. I know where I want to get to ultimately, but the goal that seemed so within reach is now out of sight. Am I heading in the right direction? Am I lost? My general response is to plunge ahead hoping that I'm on the right track. How often do I lower my head and keep walking rather than stopping to ask my Father if I am on the right path? I love that my kids asked me. I didn't know the answer, but Our Father who art in heaven always knows the path. He is never lost. I don't have to plunge on in ignorance hoping that my foolish confidence will take me the right way. I can ask my Father for help. I can walk with Him throughout the day. So, today I choose to place my hand in His and let Him lead me in the right path for me...even through the corn field.

Choices

2009-08-24T14:16:00.002+03:00

Everyday we make choices. When to get up? What to eat for breakfast? How many cups of coffee to drink? How to spend our time? How to spend our money? We make all kinds of choices everyday.

Today I am struck by the choices that I make and how most of life is made up of seemingly trivial choices. While it is true that many of our choices are indeed trivial, there are other choices that may be life changing. The hard part is that there is no way of knowing which choices will be life changing before you make them. I saw a report this morning that a girl was swept off a rock by an unexpectedly enormous wave and died. The news is filled with stories of people who are "in the wrong place at the wrong time" and their lives are ended or forever changed. Mundane choices sometimes lead us to unexpected places.

I can't worry about the seemingly random events like freak waves. I have to trust that if I am making reasonable decisions that God will take care of the "random" stuff. That is His purview. On the other hand, I also saw a friends facebook page today that clearly demonstrated that my friend, who once walked with Jesus is doing so no longer. We journeyed together for a time, but now the path that I walk and that of his have now widly diverted. How did that happen? I find myself reflecting on this as I consider how I spend my time, and wondering where the general trajectory of my choices is taking me. At some point my friend started to make choices that eventually led him away from the Lord. Perhaps is it was lies that he chose to believe. Perhaps it was a temptation he chose to indulge. I don't know where it started, but I can clearly see where it has led.

So, what are the choices that I am making. Am I choosing to draw near to God? I know that He will draw near to me if I draw near to Him. He is faithful to keep His promises. I know that if I hear His knock and open the door, He will come in and dine with me. I know that I often ignore the knock or the invitation to intimacy, choosing to delay or defer my response, in essence to deny his request to rest with the Redeemer. All too often this is because I am driven by my own internal drives to produce and to accomplish things for Him. I call these things good, but to the extent that they keep me from "the one needful thing" they are not at all good. I must choose each day to sit at his feet and to draw near. I must choose to quiet my self like a weaned child with his mother and not to concern myself with things that are too great for me. Then, I can live and choose from a place of peace and trust.

Information Junkie

2009-06-16T23:22:00.003+03:00

I am an information junkie. I want to know things. I want to understand what is happening in the world around me. I want to understand the past. I want to track the present. I am almost constantly seeking out knowledge, researching something. It's not all bad, but I believe that part of what drives me in this is my desire for control. On some level I believe that it is up to me to make sure I don't miss the good, or that I will be responsible if something preventable and bad happens.

It may sound crazy, but I think that if I understand the past and the present that I will be able to predict the future; not in a mystical sort of way, but by connecting the dots and seeing the big picture, seeing the trajectory of events. I still don't completely understand where this started in my heart or why I am compelled in this way, but I feel it deep in my soul. I don't want to be caught unaware, or flat footed. I want to be able to see threats and opportunities. I want to be competent. I want to be "on top of things". I want to make good decisions.

I believe that some of this is from God, a part of the way that He made me; however I think that it can also be twisted. I think part of it is fear based. Fear that I (or those I love) will be hurt if I fail to be vigilant. I'm afraid that something will happen that I could have, should have, foreseen. I am afraid that if I let down my guard, I will be taken advantage of, or I will become a victim of something that "I should have seen coming". On some level I seek to be God, and fail to trust Him. Even as I write this, I remember.

I remember being victimized. I remember a leader, a friend, who took advantage of me as a boy and who wounded me deeply. He was a leader in the church. I remember kicking myself (not literally) and condemning myself and my failure to see it coming. I remember vowing that I wouldn't be taken in again. I wouldn't be fooled again. It started back then. The tendency to try to peer past the surface of things, try to discern what is going on at a deeper level so that I can protect myself. Is even this a gift from God?

God says that He is working all things together for good. Is my propensity for research and reflection a gift from God? I think it is, but it is also, at least in part, a result of the abuse I suffered as a boy. Because of what happened there is a wounded part of me. A part that fails to believe that He really is in control or that He really is going to take good care of me. I wonder what it would look like for me to really trust Him. How might my ability to take in and analyze data be used by Him rather than being a tool of my fears or desires. What would this gift from Him look like if fully redeemed and set free?

A Cup

2009-05-27T21:00:00.004+03:00

What a privilege it is to be used by God. We are rarely aware of the way that God is using us, and that is probably a good thing...at least for me. I think that it would serve to puff up my already considerable ego. I am sure that even when I am being used by God, there is some of me mixed in and I cannot always tell the difference. I can't always sort out, which bit is divine and which is an expression of my mixed bag of emotions.

This weekend I believe I was used by God. I say this with some trepidation, but I believe it to be true, not because I feel a particular way, but because of the reactions of others. I was given the opportunity to preach on Sunday at a church. The pastor was traveling and they invited me to fill the pulpit. To be honest, I'm in the middle of a bunch of stuff right now, and I didn't really want to do it, but they asked and I felt compelled to say "yes". So, over the last few weeks I have been praying, studying, and preparing. Then, on Sunday I got to preach.

After the service and even into this week people have been contacting me to let me know how God spoke to them particularly through the sermon. It is not uncommon to get the occasional, "Good sermon pastor!" kind of comments from people, but these are different. One man called me and told me how his heart was touched and his life will forever be different in some very practical ways because of decisions he made in response the sermon. I have been preaching for a long time and rarely, if ever, have I seen this kind of response.

I don't think it is because I was better prepared, had a snappier outline, or better alliterations. I don't think it had to do with me much at all. As I have been reflecting on this, I think my role is like a cup. When you are drinking something, you rarely think about the cup. The size, shape, color, or design of the cup make little if any difference. The cup is not the point, the beverage is the point. The cup is not insignificant, it is useful and necessary to the process, but it is a means and not the end. Imagine going to a fine restaurant and ordering a really nice glass of wine. As you enjoy the wine, you won't really be thinking about the glass. The wine is what you enjoy, the cup is merely the utensil to get the wine into your mouth.

For whatever reason, God chose to use this vessel, this cup, to get the wine of communion into the mouths of His people on Sunday. What a an awesome privilege and tremendous joy to be a cup in God's hand and for His purposes. I am humbled and thrilled that He would use me. When I preach I feel His pleasure. It was also so sweet and kind of Him to allow me to see some of the fruit. I feel like that was a personal touch, a little side gift, to me in this. He is so good.

Technique and Methodology

2009-05-18T21:05:00.004+03:00

I find myself wondering about our fascination with technique and methodology this morning. It seems that every problem from a difficult marriage to church planting among the unreached has been, or is being, reduced to technique. The reason that your marriage isn't going well is that you haven't discovered or applied the "5 secrets of a happy marriage". The reason that your sex life isn't satisfying or intimate is that you haven't read the most recent issue of Cosmopolitan or Men's Health to discover the "6 steps to sexual satisfaction". The reason that the billions of unreached people haven't embraced Christ is that we've been doing it wrong all these years and this NEW and IMPROVED method of evangelism and church planting will do the trick; just buy this book and follow these "10 principles to lead Muslims to Jesus".

Is it all really that simple? Can our relationships be reduced to arithmetic and formulas? Can the interactions between souls, human or divine, be quantified and mechanized? Can we study ourselves into love, can we strategize ourselves into intimacy? Do we really believe that we are so far superior to those who have gone before us? Do we really believe that we have finally found the method(s) that will solve our problems? Or perhaps there is something else going on here. Perhaps this is all just a way of creating or sustaining the illusion of control.

If the answers to perennial problems, spiritual or relational, can be reduced to techniques or formulas then if we learn the right methods we will be in control of the outcomes. All we have to do is learn the right parenting techniques and our kids will be healthy and happy, the right marriage techniques and we'll have a problem free marriage. But all of this misses the point. We are not in control. We were never designed to be in control. We are not the Controller, the Creator and the Sustainer of the Universe. God is. We are invited to walk with Him and to talk with Him. We are invited to work alongside Him.

The emphasis on method and formulas flows from the Enlightenment. This period of history gave us modern science and the scientific method. I am grateful for science and all that we have today as a result of the pursuit of understanding how the universe works. I could not right this blog if someone had not figured out how to push electrons around. My point is not that techniques and methods are bad, but that they are limited. When we are dealing with material objects they are extremely useful, but we have allowed this way of thinking to creep into our thinking about all aspects of our lives.

Science is great as a far as science can go, but science alone cannot answer the really important questions: Where did we come from? Why are we here? What is the point of all this? Science is helpful for understanding and manipulating the physical world, but there are other realities, more important ones. We are not just chemicals and reactions. We are souls. After all you can't put love in a test tube, and you can't quantify a snuggle with your kids. When we try to reduce our interactions with each other and God down to technique, we dehumanize those that we are using our methods on. We treat them as objects in our experiment rather than human souls to be interacted with, or in the case of God, a divine soul to be pursued, loved, and known.

In our pursuit of technical perfection we miss real relationship. We miss real intimacy. We miss real love. We miss the the real heart of the matter.

The Nature of Faith

2009-05-13T20:47:00.005+03:00

This morning I read Romans 14 and was struck by the last line of the last verse: 'Whatever is not from faith is sin." As I meditated on this verse trying to grasp the practical implications of this for my life, I was drawn back to reflecting on the nature of faith. If faith is a set of doctrines that I believe or my belief in itself, then I'm not sure what to do with this verse. How do I interpret and "Whatever is not flowing from my belief is sin" or perhaps "Whatever is not in accordance with the doctrines of the church or biblical principles is sin"?

I remember earlier in my journeyt falling into a paralysis of analysis as I constantly checked and double checked my motives to see that they were from faith. As if I could even rightly discern my heart motivations or could seperate the various mixed motives and eliminate the less noble ones through some sort of mental exercise! I remember also a time in my journey when I thought of my "faith" primarily in terms of biblical principles and ideas to be understood and applied. If only I could read, grasp, understand, and apply all the biblical mandates and principles then everything would be "from faith". This too is an impossible task in daily life, and would create an unbearable burden of analysis of every situation to determine which principle(s) apply and how to apply them before doing anything.

But, what if faith is not primarily about content or about the quality or quantity of my trust or belief? What if faith is primarily relational? In Hebrews we are told that "without faith it is impossible to please Him for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. In John 5 we are warned that there are those who diligently seek the scriptures because they believe that by them they will have eternal life, but they refused to come to Jesus who was life. In John 17 we are told that eternal life is to know God and to know Jesus whom He sent. It is all about relationship.

So, that means that whatever is not done in relationship with God is sin. This makes more sense to me, and I believe fits better with the rest of Scripture. There are so many decisions I make that do not include Christ. There are so many unexamined parts of my life. Clearly God has made known to us the broader parameters, the fences beyond which we dare not tread; The Ten Commandments are a good summary of those, and the Sermon on the Mount provides greater clarity on how to interpret those, but the key is not to memorize and analyze. That is not the eternal kind of life.

Eternal life is to walk and talk with God. To involve Him in every aspect of our lives. To not just begin by the Spirit, but to walk with the Spirit day by day. (Gal. 5) As I go through my life, I can dialogue with my ever present God about my circumstances, relationships, ideas, emotions, and decisions. Whatever is not done in communion or in communication with the Spirit of God is sin. This is not undoable, or overburdensom; it's not easy either. I will have to adjust my mindset and to learn new disciplines, but perhaps this is what Paul meant by praying without ceasing 1 Thes. 5:17). I may be wrong and foolish about some of this, but I am still thirsty and this leads me to Jesus, the fountain of living water.

Bent

2009-05-05T20:27:00.005+03:00

In Paralandra, C. S. Lewis uses fiction to explore the nature of man. He creates a cavalcade of characters that embody various perspectives and ways of living. I think one of the marks of good literature is that it makes you think. A good book will continue to bounce around in my head for weeks after reading, or at least the ideas will resurface and become a part of my mental landscape.

Just this morning I found myself reflecting on my own nature and gravitating back to Lewis' description of one particular character. He describes the character as bent. As I reflect on my soul, my good intentions, my choices, my desires, I find that this word, "bent", is an apt descriptor. I am not shattered or broken, not irredeemable or un-fixable. But I am deeply bent.

As I ruminated on this it suddenly occurred to me that the way a blacksmith straightens something that is bent is by heating and hammering. This thought rose in my mind as I was asking the Lord to straighten my bent soul. I believe that He has me in the fire right now and that the hammer is falling even as I write this. He is not doing this to be cruel. He is doing this in answer to my prayers, and for my own good. The heat and the pressure are indespensible parts of my re-formation. He is working on my bent soul. I want to be re-formed in the image of Christ, but I can't say that I always enjoy the process. So, I choose to trust and wait for the next straightening blow to fall.

The One Fixed Point

2009-04-22T22:48:00.004+03:00

I have never had any desire to be a nomad. Nomads have no fixed home, instead they move from place to place taking whatever they can carry with them as they travel. Most nomads are pastoralists, driving their herds to the places where they can be find food and water and shelter from whatever weather is threatening them. My family and I are nomads, but we're not the ones doing the driving or choosing the next location, or even the time to move. We are nomads being driven along by God.

During the exodus, the Israelites left their homes and the only life they had ever known to follow God out of slavery and into the Promised Land. But, before He took them to the promised land, He trained them to follow Him and to trust Him. He appeared to them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Whenever the pillar would move on, they would follow. Whenever the pillar would stop, they would stop. This has been something like my experience. Sometimes we have lived someplace for years, the longest has been 6 years, and sometimes for just days.

For the last 10 months we have been particularly nomadic. It is really wearing on us. Even after more than 10 years of a generally nomadic existence we still long for stability. We long for a little patch of earth with some kind of structure on it to be "our home". When we don't have this we feel unstable in our souls. I wasn't raised to be a nomad. It just doesn't feel right to me. I want a stable place that belongs to me; my own personal castle and private domain. Ah, there's the rub! God wants all of me, and He wants to be the Lord of every part of me, which leaves me know personal domain, no private fiefdom.

In the second book of C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, Paralandra, the one command that God gives to the perfect couple is that they live on the ever moving islands of paradise and never spend the night on the fixed land. As the protagonist struggles to understand the command he realizes that it is because God wants to remain their one fixed point. As long as they are on the moving islands they have to totally trust in Him. Their obedience demonstrates their trust in Him.

God is training me like the Israelites of old to trust in Him, to follow Him, o rely on Him. And like the Israelites of old I resist the training. I fail to trust, I fail to rely, but I can not fail to follow.

Losing Focus

2009-04-20T20:43:00.004+03:00

Yesterday I was humbled by worship yet again. I was standing at a church service when God ambushed me again through the words of a song. He has a tendency to sneak past my defenses as I worship in song. This time it was the line "there is one great love" from David Crowder's version of "O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing". All of a sudden, as I was singing those words, I was convicted and comforted all at the same time.

I was struck by my adulterous heart and how prone it is to wander from the God I love. (And even as I type I recognize that those last few words are from "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing", the residual effects of a previous worship ambush). I lose focus SO easily. There in that moment, I was reminded that there is one great love, one consuming passion, that drives me, or at least should drive me. I was reminded of how I had spent the last 2 nights staying up WAY too late playing a video game. The video game was not the problem as there is nothing particular objectionable in the game I was playing, but rather as I was playing in the wee hours of the morning I was aware of the time and that I should really turn it off. There was a voice in my head saying something like, "Is this really that important? You'll be sorry tomorrow. You'll be tired and cranky. How will you love your kids well? How will you love your wife well? How will you be able to spend time with me?" I am not confident enough to say that it was the voice of God clearly speaking those words in my head, rather an impression in my soul that when verbalized takes on those words.

The interesting thing was my response in that moment. I simply blocked out the impression. I choose to ignore the wisdom of God. Sure enough, the next morning I was tired and cranky and sorry I had stayed up so late. But, here's the irony, I did the same thing again the next night. And again, the next night, I blocked out the voice, like a child putting his fingers in his ears and shouting, "LA LA LA LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!" I decided to do what I wanted to do, what felt good at the moment, regardless of the consequences. I praise God that my addictions are relatively less damaging than the ones I used to indulge, but the problem of my heart is just the same. I lose focus much too easily and have a proclivity for willfulness. I say I want to pursue God and to learn to hear His voice and obey, and yet I am prone to wander.

So, during worship, when I was singing, God reminded me that there is "one great love: Jesus" and that He loves me, even when I am a willful knucklehead. He really is worth listening too. He really is worth pursuing. He really is my one great love. I just forget to remember.

Easter Reflections

2009-04-13T21:33:00.004+03:00

I watched a man in a wheel chair take communion on Good Friday. As this man with severe disabilities (I assume he had cerebral palsy) passed me with his care givers on his way toward the communion elements I thought, "Man! He is going to enjoy heaven! There are no wheel chairs in heaven!"

Then as I sat there reflecting on what Christ endured on the cross and on the state of our world today it was like a penny dropping and a pattern emerged from the random thoughts and experiences of the last few weeks. The disparate and seemingly unrelated events and ideas were suddenly revealed to be an intricate pattern of information that can only be understood as communication. Like one of those dot pictures that you stare out waiting for the moment when it "pops" and you can see the 3D picture within. The dots don't change, the picture doesn't change, it was there the whole time. It's just that one minute it's a mass of confusion and the next minute it's a carefully crafted work of art.

Our world was created perfect. Man was created perfect in body and soul. We had perfect capacity for understanding and communicating with each other, the world around us, and God. Then, the world was marred. We ruined it. Now the world, and all of us are twisted. The vestiges of residual glory are still all around us, but we are not what we were or what we will be. Like the man in the wheel chair. He was clearly a man with hands and feet, face and hair, but nothing was working quite right. He is a glorious ruin, a shadow of what we were meant to be. But he will not always be that way. One day He will be free. One day he will be perfect.

Jesus was perfect. He was perfect in body and soul. The world He lived in was the same twisted one that we inhabit, but He was not twisted. Then, in the passion on Good Friday, He was twisted and marred. His perfect body was torn, rent by the various instruments of cruel torture. He who knew no sin was made sin for us. The perfect sinless One was made imperfect and sin-full for us. On the cross Jesus was made sin. He was forsaken by God. He experienced the hellishness of separation from God that the rest of us experience our whole lives.

We no longer recognize the horror of it, because we have known nothing else. We can not imagine what it must have been like for Him. We are a world full of blind men. He could see, but was suddenly struck blind. Because we are all blind, we can hardly imagine what it would be to have sight. Then, the Seeing One came, and He explained the things we could not see. He offered to heal us so that we could see as well. But, we loved the darkness and so we sought to kill Him, to eliminate the One who exposed our blindness. That was good Friday.

But the beautiful surprise is that the story didn't stop on Good Friday. It continues and finds it's fruition on Resurrection Sunday. The Seeing One did not stay dead or blind. He conquered death and even now gives sight to the blind. His marring is our healing. By His stripes we are healed. He has conquered sin and death and has opened to us the way of the eternal kind of life. Man! We are all going to enjoy heaven!

Spiritual Retreat

2009-04-09T21:39:00.002+03:00

I just got back from a 48 hour spiritual retreat. I have been trying to schedule these personal, generally silent, retreats for several years now. I find it really hard to carve out the time to do them, but I'm never sorry when I do. This retreat was no exception.

For this retreat, my wife and I went together, but decided not to talk with each other for the first 24 hours and then limited our conversation to what we were hearing and learning. Soon after I arrived I found myself simply enjoying the silence and the beauty of the rose garden. Then I noticed a rabbit sitting among the roses staring back at me. I don't know how long he had been sitting there, or how long I had been staring at him before I noticed him. I was immediately struck by the immediacy of God and the fact that every moment of every day is pregnant with the possibility of meeting with God. My problem is that I rarely slow down enough to be attentive. This was to be the theme for the retreat, as again and again, God popped up as I sat in silence, walked the grounds, read scripture, read good books, and spent time in prayer and contemplation.

I spent most of the weekend camped in Mark 10. I was drawn to it a few weeks prior when the phrase "What do you want me to do for you?" jumped of the page and became a very personal question. Jesus asks the question twice in the passage, once to James and John (who selfishly ask for glory) and once of blind Bartimaeus (who asks to see). I was struck by the parallels of the question and the divergence of response. Then, I had to answer the question. What is it that I want God to do for me? Not theoretically, but actually. The Lord of the Universe is actually present, standing before me always asking this question and waiting to give me everything that is really good for me.

This is the problem. God is not a vending machine, He is a good Father. He is not manipulated or controlled by us. He is wild and free...and good. He doesn't appear to me when I demand, but He is never distant. He denies James and John's request to sit at His right and His left, but He grants sight to the blind man. He is constantly available and is longing for the dialogue. The dialogue is the purist expression of faith. Even when He says "no" the beauty is that we can hear His voice. We can learn to speak His language and to hear His voice more readily if we will but take the time to be attentive and to believe that He wants to communicate with us.

The Opposite of Faith

2009-03-31T20:20:00.005+03:00

I recently had dinner with some old friends. I have known them for more than 10 years. As we talked it became clear that they no longer believe in Jesus. At one point they were involved in church, reading and praying daily, and doing all the things that we would normally expect to see in a growing Christian. Today they are wondering if it was all self-deception, if they just imagined that they experienced God. In short, they have lost their faith.

We talked for hours sharing our journey and listening to theirs. They shared about their frustrations with the church, the hypocrisy of their Christian friends, their doubts about the reliability of Scripture, and their apparent lack of loss and new found freedom as they have abandoned their faith. It is not that they are living lasciviously, or are abandoning their morality. It is simply that they do not have faith.

All of this has me reflecting on the nature of faith, and specifically wondering about the opposite of faith. My friends' journey away from God began with doubt. When they expressed their doubts to other Christians they were admonished to "have faith", to "believe and not to doubt". I am wondering if the opposite of faith is really doubt, and if the cure to doubt is to just believe. It seems to me that the opposite of faith might be apathy or inaction. My friends are now living lives apart from Christ because of their doubts. They have rightly identified real problems and as these difficult realities sowed doubts in their minds, they pulled back to investigate and to find out what was true. However, as they pulled back they didn't really plunge into the investigation, or devote themselves to the search, they simply stopped pursuing to see what would happen. When nothing "bad" happened, they figured it was all a sham.

As I reflect on my own journey I am struck that it is filled with periods of doubt and turmoil. I think that the difference is one of relationship and perhaps of activity. When I am struck by doubts and difficulties I tend to talk about these things with God and with those closest to me. This reaffirms my important relationships including my relationship with God, even as the doubts remain real and the difficulties may not dissipate. I don't think that my life will ever be free of doubts and puzzling paradoxes, but it seems that my faith is expressed when I choose to engage the doubts and wrestle with God about them. The talking with Him, the wrestling with Him, even the shouting at Him, are all actions that express faith. Withdrawing from Him and simply ignoring Him these are un-faith.

The Voice of God

2009-03-25T20:51:00.003+02:00

I'm pretty sure I've written about this before, but I can't help writing about it again. I am reading in the Gospel of John right now and am repeatedly struck by Jesus relationship with the Father, and with all the references to voice and speaking.

Jesus clearly demonstrated an intimacy with the Father that far surpasses that of my own. My early training assured me that this was because He is God and that I should not expect that I will have personal communication with the Father. Just recently I heard a report that a respected teacher at my church publicly reaffirmed the position, namely that God does not speak to us personally now because He has given us the Scriptures. According to this position, that I thought was historical rather than current, God speaks to us today exclusively through His written Word.

This was a very comfortable position for me because it normalized my personal experience, or rather the lack there of, with God. I felt fine about not personally hearing from or interacting with God other than through the intellectual pursuit of knowledge through the Bible. I was not challenged to break through to an interactive, conversational relationship with God. Instead I was warned about people who pursued this path as fanatics, dreamers, and potential heretics. I did not object because I found the teaching to be reasonable and I trusted the teachers.

While I still respect my teachers and value the solid Biblical grounding that underpins my faith, I have found that my journey has led me to radically different conclusions. The more time I spend in the Gospels, the more it seems to me that God intends to interact with each of His children very personally. Is not this what we mean when we say that "Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship"? I cannot tell you how many times I heard these words in the church growing up, but only now recognize the irony. We said the words, but denied the possiblity of any real relationship.

A relationship is a living and active thing. It is not enough to read about the interactions that God had with people to know Him personally. It is not enough to read the words He spoke to them, the ways that He interacted with them. I want to interact with Him. i want to hear His voice and do His will. I am pretty sure that is what Jesus promises to us.

What does it all mean?

2008-11-18T21:24:00.005+02:00

Today, as I was reading in Luke, I was struck by a passage that my eyes have glazed over countless times. You may not believe it, but I was arrested by the genealogy of Jesus. Not by the names that we know like David, Jessie, Abraham, or Adam, but by all the other names. Names of men that we know nothing else about.

As I sat reflecting on the passage I was struck by the fact that these men lived entire lives about which we know absolutely nothing. They were born into families that we know nothing about. They went through formative experiences as they were growing up that we know nothing about. They fell in love with women that we know nothing about. They had weddings that we know nothing about. They had children that we know nothing about. They suffered diseases and hardships that we know nothing about, and they died in ways that we know nothing about. Their entire lives are lost to us, but we do know that they were an indispensable link in the chain of life that produced the Savior of the world.

These men had no idea about the real significance of their lives. They lived and died without an inkling of how their lives fit into the grand narrative of history. We too have no real idea of why we are here and what our lives mean. We seldom understand the past, only occasionally grasp the significance of the present, and have no capacity to predict, let alone understand, the future. We live all our lives like men shooting in the dark, barely comprehending what we are shooting at and rarely knowing if we even hit it.

The beauty of knowing God is that He knows the future. He knows why we are here, each of us individually. He knows the work that He has prepared for us to do. He knows the gifts He has given us. He knows what it all means, and He promises to be with us in the midst of it and work it all together for good. All this is just to rephrase something my father used to say: "I don't know the future, but I know the one who knows the future."

Hide and Seek

2008-11-10T19:19:00.003+02:00

I find myself engaged in a sort of game of hide and seek with God. In one sense I have always been playing the game where I am hiding from Him, like Adam in the garden, and He is patiently seeking me. I hid from Him for many years and used many strategies to avoid discovery. I was afraid of his soul penetrating gaze. I was afraid I would be caught and uncovered. I was certain that I could not stand naked and unashamed before Him. So, I hid.

To my surprise, I found much joy and relief when He finally caught me. I finally surrendered myself and purposed to not hide from Him, or from myself, any longer. The ruthless self assessment and the stripping that has followed, have revealed that I was even worse off than I thought, but that He was even better than I dreamed. He has patiently been pursuing me and healing me all these years.

That, however, is not the game of hide and seek that I am pondering this morning. Today, I find myself reflecting on the divine hider. I feel like we have switched roles. Now, I am the one who is seeking and He is the one who is hiding; not in a mean spirited way, but rather in a playful way.

It is a sort of romantic hide and seek. He is beckoning me on, and is playfully hiding, all the while leaving clues as to where we will have our next hidden rendezvous. He hides to see if I will pursue. When I find that I can not help but pursue I discover that He has become and is becoming the desire of my heart. This is a welcome discovery and, I believe, is at least part of His reason for playing this game with me. He is demonstrating to me that I really do love Him. Through my doubts, through my fears, through the places that still need healing, I have grown to love Him. I am growing and changing after all!

So, I will seek my God though I only see Him now through a glass darkly. Someday I will know Him as He knows me. I will see Him fully and completely as He sees me. Then, I suppose He will teach me other games to play.

Oh Me of Little Faith

2008-10-14T22:13:00.002+03:00

I have had several situations recently that have revealed to me how weak my faith really is. Recently, I have experienced a number of disappointing, frustrating, and downright painful things in my life. As these things have happened, I find myself struggling to really trust God. The details of the situations are not important, but what they have shown me about myself and about God is vitally important. It's not that I'm in danger of walking away from Christ, but rather that I am realizing how superficial my trust is.

When things are going well and seem to be progressing as I had imagined, or hoped, then my faith seems steady and unassailable, but when things take an unexpected and disappointing turn I find myself slipping. I find anger welling up inside. I find myself wanting to escape from reality and to deny my feelings. I find myself not actually trusting.

It's easy for me to talk about faith when none is required, but it is harder when I pray and the things I ask for don't happen. I find it hard to trust that God is for me and is working all things together for my good and for the good of the Kingdom when what I want and what He wants don't seem to be the same thing. On some level I want what He wants, but on another level I really want what I want. I'm pretty sure that I know best. I don't trust Him when He doesn't do what I want.

Like a petulant child I find myself pouty and grumpy when I ask for something that I think should be granted. Imagine the temerity of God not to listen to me and do what I ask. How dare He!?! The fact is, that something very like this happens in my heart. It seem heretical to write it or to acknowledge it, but that's where I am in my journey. I suppose it is good to have the state of my heart revealed and to find out that my faith really is considerably smaller than a mustard seed. It does not feel good, but it is good.

I take comfort in the fact that there are many of little faith who have gone before me and who have shown that faith can in fact grow. More than that, I take comfort in the promise that faith is a gift of God, not a result of works. So, I can (and do) ask God to give me more faith so that I might trust Him better and bring Him more glory. I'm sure this is a request that He will not deny.

The Stations of the Cross

2008-08-21T23:21:00.001+03:00

I walked the stations of the cross today. I am staying at a monastery for a couple of days of spiritual retreat. This morning I took a prayer walk along a path that was puncuated periodically with stations to remind one of the various things that Christ endured surrounding the cross. The first one is his judgement by Pontious Pilot and the last one is being laid in the grave.

As I walked this dusty dirt path I found my mind being drawn into the story. I found myself asking Jesus what it was like. What was it like for you, the Righeous King of the Universe to be judged and falsely condemned by a governor of a small provence in a small empire on a tiny planet on the fringe of a small galaxy? What was it like for you to be abandoned by your friends. How did you do it? How did you endure the scorn, the shame, the unrighteous judgement, the beatings, the mocking, the hatred the scourgings, the crown of thorns, the weight of the cross, the nails, the debasement of the cross, the objectification, the vilification.

As I reflected on these questions it occured to me that Jesus endured it all because He trusted His Father. Even in the midst of the chaotic evil that surrounded Him, He trusted the Father. We know that He didn't want to go to the cross and that He begged His Father to take it away, but then He submitted to the will of the Father. He believed that He is and that He is the rewarder of those that earnestly seek Him.

The cross was not just a victory over sin and death, but also the victory of faith over flesh. Jesus, fully man, was obedient to death, even death on a cross. He fought the fight against His flesh and His fears and He showed us that it is possible. He showed us the way of victory over the flesh. Then, the Father showed us that it was worth it. After Jesus endured the cross scorning it's shame he was exalted and seated at the right hand of the Father. Absolute surrender and trust does not mean a glorious or peaceful life in thie world, but it does mean glory for God and life with Him eternally. At His right hand are pleasures forever more. He will not fail to reward those who earnestly seek Him. Jesus showed us the way.

On The Road

2008-07-20T14:12:00.003+03:00

I have been traveling for the last couple of weeks, thus the lack of blogging. Actually I am not just traveling, I am in the process of moving. I have packed up my household and have entered into a type of nebulous and nomadic existence. I feel like the Lord has asked me to leave where we were living and working and to follow Him to the place where He will show us. At this point we have no solid idea of where that will be, but we have left our home behind in an attempt to follow. We are trusting that He will guide and direct us in His good time and that He will not abandon us along the road.

This is definitely a faith journey as well as a physical one. If I am honest there is a niggling fear at the back of my mind that having pulled up stakes we might find ourselves wandering in a desert without a guide. I hear the desperation in Moses prayer, "If you do not go with us, please don't make us go!" There is the fear that perhaps He has led us out into this wilderness and will not lead us to the other side. There is also a real fear that perhaps we have misheard or misunderstood. I want to know the destination and how to get there, but He refuses to tell me. I find myself longing for a road map more than for a pillar of fire and smoke. Instead He is with me on the journey and assures me of His presence. He asks me to trust Him and to simply walk with Him day by day.

I am comforted by the fact that He has never abandoned us. He has been faithful to guide us and direct us every step of the way. It is true that this guidance was not always with manifest presence, but it is clear in hindsight. Looking back I can see that He has been ever present and has been guiding me in paths of righteousness for His Name's sake. He will not abandon me because He promises never to leave me or forsake me. He promises to be with me always, even to the end of the age. His honor and glory are at stake.

So, we have ventured out into the unknown, not knowing what is before us and trusting that He truly has spoken to us and beckoned us to follow Him into this wilderness. I trust that He has many lessons to teach us on this journey as He taught the Israelites in the deserts of Sinai.

Submission

2008-06-30T22:34:00.002+03:00

Submission is not something that we generally emphasize in the West. We emphasize initiative, action, planning, creative solutions, etc... All of these are good things, but I am realizing how hard, and how unnatural, it is for me to submit. Perhaps this is just human nature, but it seems to me that submission is particularly difficult for those of us raised in the West. In America in particular, we are raised to be strong individuals who look out for ourselves. In the scandalous era in which we live, we have learned cynicism and distrust rather than submission. Authority is something to be questioned, power is something to be balanced, kings are to be overthrown. In this context how can we look on submission with anything short of incredulity and skepticism.

I am very much a product of my culture. Living and working overseas for roughly a decade has stretched my horizons, but has also shown me how much my own culture has influenced me in ways that are subtle and often hard to identify. I find myself struggling with submission. I praise God that He has taken me through a training school of hard knocks to teach me to submit to the leaders that He has placed over me, and yet, deep in my heart there lies a lack of submission to God specifically. I am finding submission especially difficult lately because it seems that He has assigned me a particularly odious task.

It seems like God's marching order for me these days is to wait. He continually draws me to passages with this emphasis and the quiet witness of the Spirit in my heart is to wait, to be still. Just this evening I was reminded of Is. 30. The people of Israel would not wait for the Lord and His plan for them. Instead they made plans to save themselves. The Lord responds in verse 15: “In repentance and rest is your salvation,in quietness and trust is your strength,but you would have none of it." I find so much of my own journey reflected in the attitudes and actions of the Israelites.

I am a man of action. I need something to do, a mountain to climb, a challenge to overcome, a task to accomplish. I want to move things along, to drive things. Sometimes I think I would rather move in the wrong direction rather than just sit still. So, the Lord is asking me to wait, to be still and know that He is God, to rest in quietness and trust. This is among the toughest assignments He could give me. Waiting on Him is contrary to my heart, my culture, my personality, my training. Everything in me screams to get moving, to plan the next steps, to think my way out of the doldrums; but He tells me to wait, to be still, to trust. So, here I am waiting, praying that He will speak and release me from the prison of stillness, learning to submit to the King of the Universe.

The Journey of Faith

2008-06-27T17:36:00.003+03:00

I am hungry for God and want more than anything to know Him and walk with Him, but I find the journey toward Him to be excruciating. I believe that I am on the right path, but I am SO impatient for my own growth. I find it hard to enjoy the journey, and instead find myself frustrated with myself and with others along the way. I find the process to be roughly analogous to physical training. It is hard work and the good that it achieves may not be readily felt of ever fully known; and yet over time the change can be perceived, if not by the eye then in the experience of living in the improved body. I agree with Paul that physical training is of some value, and trust that he is right when he says that training in godliness is of great value for the present life as well as the one to come.

God is refining me and that requires humility. But, the way to humility is through humiliation. Perhaps not for everyone, but it certainly seems to be for me. Yet again I find myself smarting after an interaction. I find myself longing to be understood and valued for who I am. I know that the reason it feels so bad is because I have not reached the holy indifference to the opinion of man that is the mark of true humility. I am wondering if this is even possible short of heaven. And yet, I see progress. I can see some progress in my own life and as I talk with and read those who are farther along I believe that much more is attainable than I have yet laid hold of. So, I press on.

And yet, I’m tired. Tired of being judged. Tired of being misunderstood. Tired of trying to fit into some mold of what a man should be, a Christian should be, a leader should be. I long to be free to be completely who I am. I do not long to stop changing or growing, it is that I long to be free to grow along the path that is uniquely mine, rather than the paths that others would mark out for me. There are a few true companions who know me, who give me the freedom to be who I am, and love me enough to push me to be a better version of myself. These are precious gifts to me that sustain and encourage me on the journey. Perhaps God alone should be enough for me, but I am grateful for these boons, these treasures, these friends.

I recognize that I not only lack humility, but I also lack faith. I can be a little self-congratulatory about my ability to step out into the unknown, but true faith is trust, not tolerance for ambiguity. I am reminded about a story I once read about a knight who served a lord. One day, the lord asked him to extend his sword arm. As he did so his lord raised his sword and poised to strike the blow that would sever his hand from his arm and end his fighting career. The knight was faced with a crucial test of his trust in his superior. I feel like God has asked me to extend my hand. Do I trust Him enough to leave my hand extended, to draw near enough to Him to be within striking distance? Or, do I withdraw it because I don’t trust that it will be worth it. I know that there will be pain and loss, but do I trust that the purpose will be worth the pain. Do I trust my commander, my Lord, enough to be expendable, to be expended on the battlefield? We may dream of marching victoriously with the conqueror, but who dreams being counted among the dead and maimed on the battlefield? Do I trust Him enough to let Him wound me?

After all, He is not tame. There are those who would assure me that my vision of God is too grim, too bloody, but I wonder if they have not emasculated God in their desire to make Him more amiable. The God of the scriptures is fierce and bold. He slays His enemies, and sometimes His friends. He is not random nor capricious, but neither is He tame and domesticated. He never acts out of character, but he chastises those who would reduce Him to formulas and platitudes; Job’s friends and the Pharisees are the most obvious examples of this. So, do I trust this wild God? Do I trust Him enough to be crushed by Him? What if I am not Joseph, or David, who endured the trials and depredations for a time, and were later exalted? What if I am Jonathan, or the thousands of unnamed warriors who were faithful and obedient and died in the struggle? Can I trust Him then? I cry out with Peter, “Where else can I go Lord? Who else has the words of eternal life?” And with Job, “I know that my redeemer lives” and “though He slay me, yet I will trust in Him.”

The book I'm reading

2008-06-20T21:03:00.004+03:00

I find myself both challenged and encouraged by the book I'm reading, "The Voice of Jesus" by Gordon T. Smith. It is the latest in a series of books I've been reading about prayer and developing my relationship with God. Smith starts by looking at three Christian thinkers who wrestled with how God speaks with us. What is interesting is that he has selected Ignatius Loyola (the founder of the Jesuits), John Wesley (the founder of Methodism), and Jonathan Edwards (the profound American Reformed pastor and theologian).

Although these three men are from three different traditions they agree that God speaks to us personally. I long to hear from God with greater frequency and clarity and this book has been an encouragement to me that this is not a futile pursuit. I believe that there is much more potential to hear from Him than is generally acknowledged. I believe that I can train myself to hear His voice if I will but invest my time and energy in that direction. I believe that we give up too easily and settle for so much less than is available to us.

The Power of Prayer

2008-06-18T11:25:00.003+03:00

I find myself struggling with the value of prayer. I see that it has transformational value for myself. It also has clear value in developing a more intimate relationship with the Lord. My struggle is about the practical value of prayer. Is it true that "the prayers of a righteous man accomplish much"? (James 5:16)

I have often heard the emphasis placed on prayer and on the "prayer of faith", but I find myself loosing faith in prayer. I think that I have misplaced my faith when I place it in prayer, as if prayer is a powerful force in an of itself. I believe that as I loose my faith in prayer, I am gaining more faith, more trust, in God. God is the mover. God is the source of power.

He is not an impersonal force like electricity that can be switched on or off through a "prayer of faith". He is a person who has a will and plans of His own. Is it true to say that prayer is powerful and effective, or would it be better to say that God is powerful and that prayer is the sum of our interactions with Him. When we are acting rightly, as His regents, His priests, in His Name, He delights to grant us our requests. Therefore, the prayers of a righteous man are powerful and effective, in that they are the means by which God releases His power and gains glory for Himself.

Meeting with God

2008-06-17T12:04:00.004+03:00

Every day is filled with opportunities to meet with God. Every day is laden with the possibility for a divine ambush. To meet with God is an honor and a privilege that is available to everyone, but one that is fraught with danger, for you never know what God will do, or say.

God does not exist for us, but rather the other way around. In Him we live and move and have our being. He created all things, and all things were created by and for Him. He owns all things, myself included. So, to meet with Him is to meet with the awesome and terrifying King of the Universe. It is an audience with Immensity. It is a conversation with unbridled Power, Wisdom, and Glory.

It is a gift beyond measure that we can waltz into the Holy of Holies with reckless abandon. We can meet with the Immutable God without fear. For God Himself has made a way for us. He laid down His life so that we can have real life. The veil has been torn, and we now have direct access to the Father. We assume this tremendous privilege because we have always had this level of intimacy available to us, as has everyone that we have ever known, but it was not always this way. The saints and prophets of old longed for this, but died longing for what we take for granted.

So, today, I set aside time again to meet with Him. He does not always meet with me in special ways, but I set the time aside and dedicate it to seeking His face. Sometimes He visits me in special ways, and sometimes I spend the time in study and prayer with no special visitation. I have grown to enjoy both kinds of times. To be honest the times of studying His Word and intercessory prayer are often more peaceful and less painful. For when He comes, He pursues me with an intentionality and intensity that often leaves me sore from the probing of my heart.

Today was one of those times when He spoke to me. He probed my heart again and showed me that many of my decisions are made from my own desires. He graciously pressed down on some tender spots and directed me toward the place of growth for me. Unfortunately, or so it feels, that place is the crucible of isolation and obscurity. There is much more winnowing to be done in my heart. It is for my own good, and I am grateful for it, but the threshing sledge falls with terrible force to crack the husks and release the grain trapped inside. I am grateful for the meeting, if still a little sore. But it's a good sore, like the tenderness of muscles after a long, hard work out. A tenderness that speaks not of brokenness alone, but of a strength that is growing; the pain in the price of growth.

Humility

2008-06-10T23:12:00.004+03:00

Humility is not a virtue that is attained easily, and one that is pursued with little gusto. I speak from personal experience; not as one who has attained it, but as one who has little stomach for the journey towards it.

I know that to be humble is to be like Christ. I want to be like Christ. I am just not sure that I want to go through the formative processes to become like Him. The process of sanctification is not a process of sinning less and less, but rather a process of being conformed more and more to the image of our Saviour. He learned obedience through suffering. (Heb. 5:8) I am coming to believe that the only way for me to learn humility is through humiliation. That is a form of suffering that I studiously try to avoid.

I am struggling to simultaneously embrace both my beauty, power, and strength as a child of God, and my brokenness as a son of Adam. I suspect that somewhere along this road is true humility. I am a creature, and not the creator. Andrew Murray says that is the basis for humility, not my sinfulness or even brokenness. I wonder how many times God will have to graciously remind me of my lack of divinity before I will remember and allow the truth of that to penetrate my heart and infuse my life with true humility. Life giving, freedom granting, humility.

The Wrestling Match

2008-06-07T08:47:00.003+03:00

Well, my fast is over and my heart has been tenderized. Last night the Lord met me in a most unexpected way. I was praying for intimacy and blessing, and He answered, but in a way that leaves me grateful but a aching a bit.

I was reading "the Voice of Jesus" by Gordon T. Smith. I was reading about the various ways that the Holy Spirit meets with us. As I was reading and reflecting on the role of the Spirit I was suddenly aware of some really ugly spiritual pride that I have allowed to grow unchecked in my heart in the last few months. I have been judging others harshly, in my own mind, in an effort to protect myself by invalidating their perspectives and defending myself and my ideas. I have subtly been exalting myself and devaluing others. I have even gone as far as using sarcasm and scorn to recruit others to my low opinion of others.

I was crushed. I was sickened when I realized how long this has been going on and how insidious this sin was. I am once again impressed with my ability to deceive myself and rationalize my sin.

I am SO grateful that He met me and exposed my heart. He has graciously peeled back another layer and exposed the infection to the cleansing light of His love. As I was reflecting on whether this was the end of the wrestling match, or if I should continue the fast, I was reminded of the end of the original wrestling match between Jacob and God. It ended when God touched Jacob's hip and wounded him. So, I have decided that this match is over and God won. The beauty of it is, that when God wins I win because He is for me.

Expectations

2008-06-06T13:40:00.002+03:00

I am in the first day of my fasting and prayer in pursuit of God. I want to quiet myself before Him, and to not let go of Him until He blesses me.

On the other hand, I'm wondering what my expectations should be. I don't know if I'm desiring a level of intimacy and connection that will only be available to me in heaven. I don't know if I'm being selfish and demanding. I want Him to meet with me. I want to hear from Him. I have had that experience before, but I feel like this time I am more desperate. I wonder if I'm pushing myself too hard in seeking something that is unrealistic. I know that I haven't pushed myself much at all.

This morning as I was wondering about this I was reminded of 1 Tim. 4:7b-8. "...train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come." I know that I have spent precious little effort training myself to be godly. So, while I don't know where this will lead, I feel like it's time for me to take this training seriously.

Desperate for God

2008-06-05T21:18:00.003+03:00

Today I spent a couple of hours on my face before God. I read scripture, journaled, and sat in silence before Him. I told Him that I was desperate for Him to meet with me, to manifest Himself to me, to show Himself to me. I am desperate for answers to questions, but more than that, I'm desperate to meet with Him. I felt this SO keenly today. I do not feel like He is hiding, nor silent, but neither is He speaking to me as I have experienced Him in the past.

As I lay before Him today I wrestled with my desire for Him. I feel like my desperation needs to be expressed in more than just words. I hunger and thirst for Him. I will be the importunate widow who will knock and ask, and ask again, until He grants my request...until He meets with me and tells me His will for me. And so, I will fast and pray. I will quiet myself and fast from media as well as food. I will seek Him with all that I am. Surely He will meet with me. It's time for more than words.

Fits and Starts

2008-06-04T12:53:00.003+03:00

I have noticed that I live my life in fits and spurts. I tend to focus on something really well for a time, but eventually I get distracted. Unfortunately, this happens often in my pursuit of God. Something will remind me of the centrality of Christ, and for a time I will be intentional in my pursuit of Him. These spurts of spiritual pursuit are not bad in and of themselves, but I long for a more steady and sustained pursuit of Him over time. Eugene Peterson calls discipleship "a long obedience in the same direction". I can look back over many years now and see that the general trajectory of my life, for quite some time now, has been upwards towards Christ, but the path is more sporadic than I would like. I am too easily distracted by "lovers less wild". Oh my heart is prone to wander. May God bind my wandering heart to Him!

Knowledge

2008-05-31T14:48:00.001+03:00

Knowledge is an odd thing. In most contexts we talk about things that we know and don't know with a degree of certainty that should make us blush.

My First Blog Entry

2008-05-31T11:14:00.000+03:00

For years now I have been reading about blogging and have enjoyed other's blogs. I have never taken the time to start my own...until now.

For the last couple of years I have also been wanting to do more writing. I have done a few small projects, articles and stuff, but have not been writing consistently. I am hoping that having a blog may help me to be a little more consistent in developing this discipline. We'll see...

The Boy and The World

2008-05-08T16:58:00.001+03:00

There once was a boy who thought he could change the world. It was natural for him to think so as he had been assured of that for as long as he could remember. He was raised in a good family in a land of opportunity. He was told that he was special, that he was gifted, and that he had a strange and wonderful thing called potential.

He wasn’t sure exactly what potential meant, but it must be important because people kept mentioning it and assuring him that he had it. Sometimes it was a compliment, but other times it was barbed more like a criticism. He wasn’t sure he wanted to have potential, but it didn’t seem like he had much of a choice in the matter.

As he grew he began to realize that perhaps he really did have gifts. Perhaps he really was special and it wasn’t just the bias of his mother and father. What parent doesn’t think their child is special after all? Doesn’t every parent tell their child that they are the most beautiful and wonderful child in the world? And so the compliments of parents are always suspect. But as he grew and went to school he started to see that when graded on objective standards he really did have some gifts. He got good grades without really trying, and people seemed to look to him for leadership. He was a leader even when he tried not to lead. He was captain of the team and president of the school. It all came so easily, so effortlessly. Maybe, just maybe he really could change the world.

It was around this time that he started to notice the darker undercurrents, the subtle (and sometimes open) attacks. He was called names and ostracized by his peers. Perhaps they were just trying to drag him down to their level, perhaps it was because he was different. He also noticed that leaders, teachers, people in authority sometimes treated him badly for reasons beyond his comprehension. He didn’t like being the target of attacks and he wondered how to overcome, how to stop them, how to get away from them. He started to become angry and hard inside. He had to learn how to keep the attacks from hurting him.

Occasionally he would find leaders or others in authority who would notice him and be kind to him. They didn’t attack him. But then he started to realize that they too wanted something from him. They wanted to use him. Some even wanted to abuse him. They invited him in to their world. They honored him. They recruited him. They wanted him. Then, they used him for their own selfish ends and discarded him when they were done, or when he would no longer submit to being used. He tried to hide his potential, to not be noticed.

What about changing the world he wondered. What about the gifts and the abilities. What about his potential. Potential is a terrible burden to carry. You only have potential until you realize it. Potential is one of those things that is consumed in the use of it. Like a catalyst in a chemical reaction. Once it is used, it is gone. Those who change the world don’t have potential, they have realized their potential and it is no more.

And so the boy started to look for ways to use his potential. He looked for a master who would train him, who would help him to use his potential. He wanted to learn. He wanted to realize his potential. He wanted to change the world and to be a good steward of the resources that had been entrusted to him. He would gladly be consumed in the process if he could just be free to be who he was created to be.
He still knew somewhere inside that he was special, but over the years doubts had been sown in his heart, and bitter fruit was now ripening. He decided to try again. He knew there must be a good master, someone who could be trusted to lead and not to use, to free and not control, to empower and not wound. Finally, he found someone.

He found a man who talked the talk and by all appearances walked the walk. He decided to trust against trust. He decided to believe the unbelievable, that here at last was the good master one who would help him to realize his potential. They talked, they dreamed, and he was set free.

Then one day, they talked again. From the beginning of the conversation he could tell that something was wrong. Something in the tone of his voice was different. He tried to understand. He tried to submit. As the blows began to fall again, he didn’t even defend himself. He just let them come.

When it was over he picked himself up, wiped the blood from his face and tried to ignore the pain in his heart. He now understood. He was alone. There are no good masters. There are no trustworthy leaders. They all have their own agendas. Even those who recognized that he was special, that he had “potential” only wanted to use him. If he was ever going to change the world, if he was ever going to realize his potential, he would have to steer clear of those who would be his master.

Some have defined insanity as repeating the same action but expecting a different outcome every time. He realized now that he had been insane. He had repeatedly sought out leaders, masters to whom he could apprentice, and every one had wounded him. Perhaps the most painful thing was that they often blamed him for his own wounding and justified their actions with scripture, or by pointing to his weaknesses; weaknesses of which he was all too well aware. He was sick of being used and abused and then blamed for it. He was sick of being despised and rejected after having been used.

So, the boy was faced with a dilemma. “What to do? What to do?” If there were no good masters, then how do you move forward, how do you change the world? Was the answer to become a master himself? The question scared him because he had seen masters who used and abused and if that is what it means to lead then he wanted no part of it.

So, he walked out of town. He had to get away. He had to isolate himself, even if just for a moment. He couldn’t take the thought of another attack while he was so bruised and battered from the last one. He walked the bridge on the edge of town. It was over a deep chasm and he walked to the edge and stared into the abyss. Was this the answer? Was this the end of the line? Was there no chance to change the world? Was he wrong all along? Were they just delusions of grandeur? Is it possible then to be a leader, to be a master who serves? How could he be a master like that? Where could he find a master like that to learn from?

Then, he knew the answer. Jesus. Jesus is the master who was despised and rejected. Jesus stood like a sheep before His shearers and did not defend himself. Jesus accepted the authority that His Father gave Him and was unconcerned about the authority structures of His day. Jesus was the very model, the perfect model, maybe the only model, of a servant leader, a good shepherd. All others had let him down. All others would let him down. Only Jesus can be trusted. Only Jesus is the good shepherd.

As he stood on the bridge he heard footsteps behind him. He cringed at the thought of another attack. He stood still hoping that the approaching person would leave him alone. He grew apprehensive when rather than passing him by, he heard the intruder approaching him from behind. He nearly jumped out of his skin as he felt a hand close on his shoulder. As he turned to face his accuser he found that before him stood the one good master. Jesus had come to meet him on the bridge. Jesus had tears in His eyes as he searched the face of the boy. They stood facing each other for some time. Neither spoke. After a while Jesus simply beckoned for the boy to follow Him. And so the boy followed the Master back towards town.

Maintaining Perspective

2008-04-03T13:27:00.001+03:00

I find that one of the key struggles for me is to maintain perspective. As I read the news or interact with family or engage with the world around me in a myriad of ways, I find that I often lose perspective. I tend to view the events around me from my own personal, and generally self-absorbed, point of view rather than framing them as part of a larger narrative. Also, when I do manage to frame them as part of a larger narrative, I do so from a strictly naturalist or human perspective. I naturally tend to organize my thoughts about the world and my place in it without figuring God into the picture. It’s not that I lose touch with reality, but I do lose touch with the ground of all true reality.

God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He is the creator of all things and nothing was created except through Him. He is the all-knowing, all-seeing, all powerful, almighty God of the universe. In Him we live and move and have our being. He is the un-moved mover. He is the one trustworthy and unshakeable thing. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is for us. He is with us. He will never leave us or forsake us. He will comfort us and protect us. He will guide us and direct our steps. He is in us and all around us. He is the Reality under, around, in, through, behind, and beyond all reality.

I know this to be true, but I forget so easily! When I forget, I lose perspective. It happens so subtly that I don’t usually even notice when I have lost it. It’s like putting my keys in my pocket without remembering that there is a hole in the pocket. The keys slip out unnoticed and it isn’t until I have some need of them that I even realize that they are gone. I don’t notice that I have lost perspective and lost touch with Him until something, or someone, in the world rubs me the wrong way. Then it quickly becomes apparent to me that something is missing. I have lost the key that unlocks the mysteries of life and that provides the peace to carry me across the stormy seas of life. In that moment the lack, the loss, is almost tangible; and yet, even then I don’t always recognize what is awry. I often try to solve the problem apart from Him and apart from the right perspective, like trying to jam some foreign object, anything I find at hand, into a lock to make it open when I’ve lost the key. Often, it’s only later that I realize what I have done and why.

But God is not only great, He is also good, gracious, and merciful. He meets me again if I will but turn to Him. He truly does draw near to those who draw near to Him. As I open His Word and seek His face, I find myself renewed and refreshed. I find my perspective is realigned as I am reminded of the Truth. I find myself relaxing into His sovereignty and His love for me. After all, we are more than conquerors in Him. If He is for us, who can be against us?! He quiets me with His love and rejoices over me with singing. He is with me, His rod and His staff they comfort me.

So, I return to His Word day after day, not just to study principles or to gain knowledge of the Scriptures, but to get to know God. He meets me in and through His Word. His Spirit illuminates the Word and speaks to me through it. He guides me in paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake. He draws near to me and empowers me anew for the challenges of the day. He puts the key back in my hand and reminds me about the hole in my pocket. He shows me the way and tells me to walk in it. Maybe today I’ll remember. If not, I can trust He’ll meet me again tomorrow, but I do hope to remember.

He Speaks So Personally

2008-03-06T09:56:00.001+02:00

A friend and mentor sent something to me yesterday. He has been wrestling with the silence of God and he had done some reflecting and writing on the subject. It was very interesting for me to read his thoughts on the matter as they were quite different from my own. He even went so far as to record what he thought God was saying to him about the silence and why it was there. I was puzzled at first because the voice he was quoting didn’t sound like God to me. It’s not that what he was recording was unbiblical, or in any way contrary to the revealed nature and character of God. The difference was one of tone and vocabulary.

It was as if my friend tape recorded a conversation with someone we both knew well and then played it back to me and asking me to name the person on the recording, and I was unable to correctly identify him. Something in the intonation or the manner of speaking was unfamiliar, but not inconsistent with what I know about my friend. Then, when I’m told who is on the recording I slap my head and say, “Of course, that’s right, I just couldn’t put my finger on it!”

I am in awe of the way that the God of the universe meets with each of us so personally. His immutable nature is exactly that, unchangeable. He does not turn or change like shifting shadows. He is the Rock, the only unmoved mover, the foundation of all creation. He is the only fixed point in our constantly changing environment. I do not mean to intimate that He is shifting or shifty, that He is tricky or fickle; rather, He is so kind as to meet us where we are and to speak our language, the language of our minds and of our hearts.

When God speaks to me he does it in English. Modern, or perhaps post-modern, American English is the medium through which we communicate with one another. He uses vocabulary and imagery that resonates with my soul. He knows all the formative experiences of my life for He has planned everyone of my days before one of them came into being. He knows how to speak my language; He even uses idioms. He speaks everyone’s language. That’s the beauty of it!

The incarnation was the clearest expression of God’s ability to enter into a particular place in time and space to reveal Himself. He took on the very form of a man, but not the form of every man. He took on a unique form, the form of a first century Jewish carpenter living in Roman occupied Palestine. He spoke Aramaic and probably Greek. He certainly did not speak English, German, Chinese, or Swahili. He entered in to that milieu completely. He became one of them and therefore one of us. He connected with them as a peer, He spoke their language, and in doing so demonstrated his ability to connect directly and personally with everyman in every language.

God still meets with us. He still comes to us speaking the language of our hearts. According to the Bible, God is the creater of all languages. The Bible is the most translated book in history because God is constantly translating heaven to earth and earth to heaven. He is the God who wants to be known, the God of revelation, the God of speech.

So, my mentor and friend hears the voice of God, and even the silence of God, differently than I do. That is as it should be, for God is speaking to him personally and intimately. When God speaks to me, He speaks my language. When God speaks to you, He will speak your language. There is so much beauty and diversity in the way that the unchanging and unchangeable God of the universe interacts with His children. May we ascribe to Him the glory that is rightfully His and to each other the freedom that is our inheritance as His dearly loved children.

The Family of God

2008-03-05T11:55:00.001+02:00

The call to follow God has always been a call to community. Since Adam and Eve, God has been calling individuals to Himself. We each individually choose to answer that call, or to reject it, but when we choose to answer His call and to draw near to Him, we are not just answering the call to an individual relationship with God, but we are also answering the call to join the community of God, the family of God.

This image of the Family of God is used repeatedly throughout the scriptures. In the earliest times it was a literal family, the family of Adam and Eve, the family of Noah, the families of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These early families are both literal, historical, families, and also “types” for the broader family of God that would be revealed more fully only much later. These early families demonstrate the unity and the complexity of following God in community. They serve as both encouraging symbols and as illustrations of the problems that come with living in community.

We must resist the temptation to romanticize the family. Living in community has many benefits but it also brings with it many burdens. G. K. Chesterton, in answering those who generally attacked the family as being bad because it is uncongenial, or difficult, replied:

“Of course the family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy. It is exactly because our brother George is not interested in our religious difficulties, but is interested in the Trocadero restaurant, that the family has some of the bracing qualities of the commonwealth. It is precisely because our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity. The men and women who for, good reasons and bad, revolt against the family are, for good reasons and bad, simply revolting against mankind. Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind. Our younger brother is mischievous like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid like the world; he is old, like the world.”

Chesterton is hitting on a point that is of great value to those of us who are called into the family of God. When we entered into the family of God, it is not as an only child in exclusive relationship to our Father, but rather we were adopted into a family with many brothers and sisters. Jesus is the firstborn among many brothers. We are adopted into a family and we must learn to live with our brothers and sisters in the faith. Chesterton strips away the romantic notion that living in community, in family, will be easy or comfortable. We are wildly divergent in our gifts and temperaments, our likes and dislikes, our callings and our character; and yet, we are called to live and work together.

The process of living in this kind of environment, learning to love one another, to esteem others more highly than ourselves, to serve those whom we may not even like, is a kind of living sacrifice. It requires that we die to ourselves a bit more every day. The beauty of the Cross is that while death is never comfortable, it can be transformational. Death is no longer defeat, but is now the point of redemption. If we are willing to fill up in our own bodies what remains of the sufferings of Christ for His Church, we will find that we are transformed in the process. To live in community is to experience some of the greatest joys available to us on earth, and also to place ourselves in the flaming crucible of transformation. The fires of community both warm our souls and burn away the dross. May we never draw back from all that He wants to do in us and through us in community!

Silent? Perhaps.

2008-02-26T12:54:00.001+02:00

I have often heard it said that God is silent. That there are times in our lives when we will be desperate to hear His voice, to experience His presence, but He will not speak and will not manifest His presence to us. I have been taught that is anthropocentric and presumptuous to expect that God will speak to us or to expect to meet with Him at any given time. The corollary to this seems to be that humility on my part requires me to be content to know about God and to trust God in these times of silence. When God doesn’t speak, He can still be trusted.

I am sure that this is true. God is trustworthy regardless of my experience. God is the LORD, the creator of heaven and earth, the Almighty God who does whatever He pleases. All true. And yet, He is the self-revealing God. He is the God who seeks relationship. He hearkens unto our cry. He fixes His eye on His children and bends His ear to listen for and to our prayers. He is not mute like the idols, He can and does speak to His children. I don’t think it is presumptuous to expect Him to speak or to be genuinely surprised by His silence… if He is indeed silent.

I cannot speak for others, but I am wondering how often God is truly silent. Is it that He isn’t speaking, or that we are not hearing Him? It maybe that God truly is silent at times, that He may refuse to manifest Himself to His children for reasons that only He fully knows. I do not mean to rule out this possibility, but I am realizing that often He is speaking; my failure to hear Him doesn’t necessarily mean that He is distant or silent.

Recently I have been going through a trial. Not just an inward trial, but also an outward trial, a conflict with another person. I have been asking God to solve this problem, and have been frustrated by His silence. Then, just this morning I realized that God has not been silent or distant. He has been present and speaking. He hasn’t chosen to solve my problem, and so I interpreted His “failure” to solve the problem, or to answer me according to my questions and concerns as silence. In fact, as I reflect on it, God has not only been speaking to me in general about my heart or about other things in my life, but He has even been talking to me about this conflict. I just didn’t like what He had to say, so I wasn’t really paying attention. I was “blowing off” the advice and counsel He was offering because it didn’t fit my paradigm or my desires. None of what I was hearing from Him was helping to solve the problem so I simply paid it no mind.

As I reflect on this I think back to other times in my life, other times where God seemed to be silent. As I do so, I find that He has been consistently speaking to me. God is revealing Himself, is in fact speaking, everyday. He speaks to us through His creation. He speaks to us through His Word. He speaks to us through His people. Sometimes He also meets us during worship, or in dreams, or impresses things upon our hearts or minds directly, whispering to our very souls. So, why do I fail to hear Him? I have already addressed my current malady of simply not wanting to hear what He has to say, but there are other reasons as well.

Sometimes I have failed to hear Him because I have filled up my life with noise and activity. I have “drowned out” the voice of God in my life by keeping myself too busy, and my mind to full of other information, to hear the whisper of His voice. My inner senses have been overwhelmed with input and the cacophony of voices has made it nearly impossible to pick out the voice of my Good Shepherd. Solitude and silence have been the answer for these times. I must take time to still my body and soul, to block out all the other voices, so that I might hear the steady and quiet call of my Lover to come away with Him. My heart is like a pool of water that has been all stirred up and I can’t see clearly through the turbid, silt laden water to see beneath the surface. But, if I wait in stillness the waters calm, the silt settles and I can see with crystal clarity through to the bottom of things.

Sometimes I have failed to hear Him because I have simply not pursued Him. His Word is available to me every day, His “pre-recorded” messages are there for me listen to whenever I would take the time, or make the time, to do so. Often when I do make the time, a miracle happens and the Word comes alive through the agency of the Spirit and these “pre-recorded” words turn out to the very Logos of God alive and active speaking to my very soul. But, if I do not choose to turn my attention to His Word, I miss the opportunity to meet with Him. Sparks do not fly every time I open the Word to seek His voice, but if I never sit down and read I miss the opportunity for the electric chemistry of our meeting. Even when sparks do not fly and the meeting is less electric, opening the Word is like reading old love letters or old correspondence from a friend or mentor and I hear His voice in that way, as an echo, a reminder of the connection that we share, the history of our relationship.

I don’t believe that God is nearly as silent as we sometimes make Him out to be; rather, I believe that I have much to learn about becoming a better listener. I cannot presume to know what He will say, but it is not presumptuous to expect Him so say something.

The Invitation to the Valley

2008-02-19T13:53:00.001+02:00

I have been on an interesting journey recently. Lately I have felt the draw, the urge, to deal with some deep issues in my life. I believe it is the Lord beckoning me to return to the depths of my soul. These are the deep places, the oft dark places, the places from which my motivations and desires spring. These are the places that go unexamined most of the time, and that is not a bad thing in and of itself. To visit these wild regions of the heart is a perilous and consuming thing. You could not live in this place forever, but to reject the invitation to this part of the journey would be to reject the invitation to growth, to healing. It would be to reject the invitation of God.

Accepting this invitation is like entering a deep gorge. At first there is some excitement as you marvel at the view, the vista is grand, the scenery interesting. The sense of adventure is almost palpable. The canyon gapes before you and you see the path winding downward, and you can hardly wait for the adventure to begin. As you follow the path downward the walls grow ever higher on either side of you. Their immensity is awe inspiring. The shadows start to grow deeper and fall more and more across your path. As you move deeper into the defile you start to grow somewhat apprehensive. What will be around the next bend? Where is this road leading you? You start to slow down. The path feels familiar under your feet. It is as if you have been here before, but it is not a comfortable kind of familiarity. It is simultaneously familiar and frightening. You start to feel anxious. The hair stands up on the back of your neck. The canyon walls are no longer beautiful or interesting to your eyes. They now seem more ominous as they tower over you. They seem to close in on you as you move ever onward, ever downward.

You start to feel like turning back. Now the canyon is so dark that you are really afraid. You can’t see the way forward clearly, but you are beckoned onward. The walls are so close now that you are bumped and bruised. You remember this feeling. You remember this fear. This is what you ran from years ago. This is what you spent so many years avoiding. These are the feelings you have been denying and protecting yourself from for so long. Now the canyon has narrowed so far that you have to turn sideways and push yourself through the crevice before you. The only way forward will be painful, but to turn back is unthinkable. You have come this far. He beckons you on. He assures you it will be alright. But can you trust Him? He has allowed you to be hurt before. Can you trust Him?! Where else can you go? Who else has the words of eternal life? And so, you plunge yourself in the crevice, getting scraped and scratched, battered and bloodied, trusting that He will not mislead you, that He has not lead you here to abandon you. You cannot see where He is leading, but you choose to trust.

As you struggle on fear grips your heart. You have been down here a long time. You are not sure how much more of this you can take. You start to doubt. What if you were wrong? What if you have deceived yourself and He didn’t really ask you to take on this journey? After all, you it doesn’t seem like anyone else is taking a journey like this. How come you have to do this while others seem to do just fine without having to endure the darkness, this dark night of the soul? And then you see a glimmer of light ahead. At first you’re not sure you didn’t imagine it. No, there it is! There is a light ahead. Just a bit further on and you’ll be through. You push yourself around the last bend, through the narrow passage and suddenly a new vista breaks forth before you and you are free!

As I have answered His call and followed this path, I have been brought to deep places of hurt and of healing. I have had old wounds exposed and received new healing. I have found that He is trustworthy after all. So, here I raise my “ebenezer” and say, “thus far He has carried me”. I have yet another experience of His faithfulness to look back on. I hope I will not be much longer in the valley, as it is the valley of death, of self-mortification; and yet, I would not avoid this painful part of the journey. I know myself and Him better for having accepted His invitation. I have a new level of freedom. I will have to stand firm to remember and to live in this freedom. I will have to struggle to remember the lessons learned in the valley as I return to the highlands. I will have to resist the temptation to return to life as it once was, as I lived before. But I trust as He was with me in the valley, He will be with me on the highlands as well.

Wisdom or Folly

2007-10-09T18:52:00.001+03:00

Life is made up of a myriad of big and little decisions. Everyday there are a thousand small turning points, most of which pass by without notice. There is simply no way that we can predict how even the smallest decision will impact the course of our lives or the lives of others. There is no point in obsessing about these minute decisions or fretting over whether or not a small misstep will change our destiny. We are cared for and carried along by the Sovereign King of Glory. He controls the destiny of each man and of all men. He guides the high and mighty and the meek and lowly. We each have a role to play in His designs and we need not fear that we will miss it because we decided to go to the bank or took a day off to go to the beach.

On the other hand, there are some choices that are of consequence. Adam and Eve chose to eat the apple. Abraham chose to sacrifice his son. Moses chose to go to Egypt. Jesus chose to come to earth and to go to the cross. These are turning points of history, and yet they are also just choices in the lives of individuals. Each day we are faced with choices to follow Wisdom or Folly. Wisdom invites us to fear God and to walk the path that leads us closer to Him. Folly calls to us and invites us to join her in her frivolous amusements. These amusements may seem harmless at first, but as we walk her path we find it slowly but consistently diverging from the path of life. Each day we are faced with the path of Wisdom and life, or Folly and death.

The path of Folly is well worn. It is a wide highway boasting pleasures and entertainments to slake every thirst. The invitations to walk this path are many and varied. Sometimes they come from friends or acquaintances that have ventured down the path and assure us it is safe. Sometimes it is in the form of media or advertisements the voice of the present age beating a steady drumbeat for Folly and their own selfish corporate interests. These voices have a vested interest in the success of Folly; their stock prices rise or fall on the success of their invitation to deaden our souls. Sometimes the call comes from within, from a part ourselves.

At times I feel the call rising from my own being. Folly calls me by name and bids me to join her on the road to hell. She reminds me of the times we spent together, when time flew by and the fleeting pleasures were indeed enjoyable. There is a part of me that remembers those times fondly. The physical sensations, the abandonment of restraint resonated with a part of me. Yes, my flesh is still with me and harkens back to those days. In those moments the darkness that is still within me whispers that it will be great, that no one ever needs to know, that a quick trip down memory lane will not hurt anyone.

But then I remember the pain. I remember the pain of my own soul, the pain of others that I dragged down into my degradations. It is true that some went willingly, but we hurt each other none the less. I remember the damage, the damage to my heart and the damage done to others. My heart is still scarred by these self-inflicted wounds. I remember the warping, the way my thoughts were twisted; so much so that I am still trying to disentangle my mind from their nefarious web today. I remember that it is not worth it. Sin is sweet in the mouth, but it is an insidious and powerful poison that eats away a our inmost being.

Every day we are faced with choices to follow Wisdom or Folly, to listen to the Spirit or the Flesh. We can sow to the Spirit and reap eternal life, the eternal kind of life that starts now and lasts forever, a life of love, joy, and peace; or we can sow to the Flesh and reap a dead life, a life of guilt, dread, and anxiety, a life that will lead us to physical and spiritual death. These choices are fraught with consequence for ourselves and for others. These choices matter. Today I choose Wisdom, I choose Life, I choose Christ.

Compassion and Anger

2007-09-19T23:51:00.001+03:00

As I read the news and reflect on the nature of man and on the current state of the world I alternate between two perspectives and prayers. As I look at the wickedness of the world and the way that God’s laws are smugly flaunted I am moved to cry out for justice and wrath. I want God to strike the jaw of the wicked and smash their teeth. I want Him to smite them in His anger and wrath. I want Him to unveil His vengeance and to wreak havoc on His enemies. I want His power and justice to be revealed and for all to fall on their knees before Him.

Then I remember that such was I before He mercifully and gracefully drew me to Himself. I too not only did evil but approved of others who did likewise. I recruited people to participate in my perversions and debaucheries because misery loves company and because if “everyone is doing it” it can’t be wrong; or at least I didn’t feel as wrong. I recognize in the depraved celebrities of our age my own wickedness magnified and on display for all to see. I see the twisted delight that we take in the fall of the famous and I recognize my own sarcasm and mockery. The sins of my generation are my own.

When I recognize this, I am moved to cry out for mercy! I want healing for the wounded hearts I see. I know the hurt that drives them to seek numbness and release for I too was wounded and am finding healing. I cry out for God to pour out His mercy and grace! I know that none can be saved apart from His drawing. I know that it is by faith that I was saved, but that this faith did not come from my background, my family, or myself; it was a gift of God and not a result of works so that none, least so I, could boast. So, I cry out for God to continue to have mercy and patience and to draw them with His persistent and severe mercy to Himself. I ask for Him to save those who have given up hope and who have become not only participants but the very purveyors of the filth that pollutes our world.

I feel myself torn between compassion and righteous anger. I cannot reconcile these tensions in myself. Sometimes I feel guilty for the anger. I feel that compassion is the way of God, but then I remember Jesus scourging those in the temple and His angry rebukes of the Pharisees and I see that righteous anger is indeed righteous. Certainly the Psalms are full of prayers for God to smite His enemies and I know that this is part of the nature of God. But then, lest I become an angry and judgmental man, I am reminded again of the woundedness that propels men toward wickedness. Men are responsible for their sinful choices regardless of their woundedness, but remembering the woundedness that drives them and relating that to my own woundedness allows me to view them with compassion. I can see the as harassed and helpless, as sheep without a shepherd, I can see them as I once was before the Good Shepherd rescued me.

Only God knows those who will be redeemed and those who will not. I cannot know who will be an object of God’s mercy and grace and who will be an object of His justice and wrath. Both will glorify God by revealing a portion of His nature and confirming that He is both the lion and the lamb, the one who judges and the one who justifies. I cannot resolve the tension, but I can praise God that He has saved me. I can choose to walk with Him each day. Some days, most days, He chooses to use me to communicate His love and compassion to those who are dying all around me without hope, but some days He uses me to warn of His anger and wrath, He will not always be slow to anger. One day He will judge the world. May God have mercy on us all!

Forget to Remember

2007-09-18T23:50:00.001+03:00

Why is it so easy to forget and so hard to remember. What is it about the nature of man, that we can learn lessons, but that we have to relearn them so often. As I read the Old Testament accounts of the people of Israel, I am shocked and appalled by how often they have to relearn the same principle or experience the same kind consequences for the same poor choice, or in some cases increasingly difficult consequences, repeatedly until they finally learn their lesson and stop making the poor choice. In their narrative I see something that is true not only for them but for all of us, not only for all of us but for me in particular.

I know that God is the Lord of the Universe, the Lord God almighty. This is an indisputable fact of history and of my own experience; and yet, I forget to remember. If I am really a servant of the King then my life should be marked by humble dependence, and from time to time it is. However, more often than I care to admit, my life is marked by selfish ambition and independence. God is faithful and just. He never leaves me or forsakes me, and so He allows me to experience the consequences of my sinful independence and He points out my skewed perspective and draws me back to Himself.

One of the ways that my skewed perspective manifests itself is through an increasing emphasis on methodology and performance rather than on prayerful submission and dependence. I find myself seeking the right formula to produce the results in my work, marriage, children, or life in general, that I am seeking. Rather than asking my Almighty Father what He would have me do and obeying Him, I try to strike out on my own and to do things that I think will please Him, or at least please me.

It’s not that there are not methodologies that work. It’s the heart that is important. I believe that there are strategies and approaches that will yield results because they line up with the way that He has designed the universe to function and/or they are in accordance with His mysterious will. The issue is one of the heart, what am I seeking? Scripture tells us to seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness and that the other things will be added to us. It’s the “seek first” part that is of primary importance. Once I have sought Him and declared my dependence upon Him in word and in deed (most often through time spent in the Word, prayer, and quiet reflection) I have to do something with the rest of my day. I am after all called to serve Him.

I find that when I am disciplined to start my day, or to make it a habit to spend a portion of my day, in specific pursuit of Him, that it changes my perspective and aligns me with His will and work. Often this means that I add or delete things from my to do list during my times with Him. I keep a separate piece of paper with me during my times with Him specifically to jot down these ideas as they come to me. I can’t say that all of these items are from Him specifically. I believe that some of them are, but that some are the result of the peace and stillness in my heart during those times of silence and solitude that allow me to see more clearly. My heart is like a pool in a stream that has been stirred up by a stick or other activity and the silt from the bottom has clouded the water. It takes a time of undisturbed stillness for the dust to settle at the bottom again before you can see clearly through the water to what lies beneath.

It is far too easy for me to forget to remember. I am grateful for the Father’s gentle but persistent reminders to come away with Him and to renew my commitment and help me to remember.

Rationalization and Relationship

2007-06-28T23:50:00.001+03:00

As I was reading this morning in Proverbs 28 I came across a verse that I had highlighted, underlined, and circled, but still had the ability to shock and convict me as the Spirit used it once again to probe my heart and bring me to my knees in humble worship. It is verse 13 which reads, “He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”

My first response was just to praise God for this clear Old Testament expression of a core teaching of our faith. Here is the difference between Christianity and all other religions. The parallel and only slightly more clear New Testament passage is found in First John 1:9 which says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” I love the simplicity and am in awe of the power of these passages. I love that God doesn’t expect us to be perfect but that forgiveness and mercy are available if we confess our sins.

As I re-read the verse in Proverbs again, I was faced with the question, am I concealing my sin? As I paused and reflected I was struck by the fact that there was something that I had concealed. I was faced again with my ability to rationalize and deceive even myself, but again was moved to praise by God’s gentle but severe mercy in probing my heart to reveal those places where I was hiding this darkness. I find that most of my concealment is in the form of rationalization. It’s not that I have some obviously evil thing that I am doing or have done that I am hiding from the world. It’s that I can yield to temptation in small ways during the course of my day, all the while pretending that it isn’t sin at all.

One of the primary forms of rationalization is when I compare my conduct to what it might have been. I tell myself that at least I didn’t do “that” , sure it probably wasn’t great that I did “this” but it’s actually good because I didn’t push farther into the darkness. So actually this is a sort of victory. Yeah, that’s it! How great that I didn’t go farther down the road that I started down! So, instead of confessing the failure, throwing myself on the mercy of God and receiving the full forgiveness and cleansing that He promises. I now have this familiar pathway toward sin that is allowed because it isn’t as bad as other sins farther down the road. The fact is that I must be ruthless in stamping out the sin in my life, in my heart. The question isn’t how far down the road I got, but rather that turning down the road at all is a yielding to temptation as the more comfortable I get in yielding, even in “small ways” the more easy it is to grieve the Spirit and to harden my heart.

I am reminded of Psalm 95:8b-9a, “Today if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah…” The people heard the voice of God, but they hardened their hearts and would not listen to Him. What I am after, what I believe God has for me is a conversational relationship with Him, a real relationship of Father to son, as friend to friend. This is what was lost in the garden and this is what Jesus came do demonstrate and to restore. When I rationalize my sin or conceal my sin in other ways I am false to myself and to Him. Deception of myself or others is always an obstacle to true relationship and intimacy.

I am so grateful for the Word of God and for the Spirit of God which again today probed my heart and moved me to repentance. In that moment, uncomfortable as it was, I experienced what my heart longs for, a real conversation with God.