Dec. 27 - Looking forward, looking back

The end of the old year, the beginning of the new:  that season when we take time to look back with the eyes of hindsight and look forward with the eyes of hope.  Looking back, I see a year that in many ways is like most of my years spent here in Oregon:  a life passively lived, reacting to events as they come along.  I have again been busier than I'd like to be, bemoaned my lack of quiet time, hoped for change without doing anything to make it happen.  The greatest lesson learned this year is the need for intentionality in my life and my family's life.

One of my favorite saying is "if nothing changes, then nothing changes."  I was quick to grasp the irony and truth in this statement when I first heard it, and easily applied it to situations I've seen in the lives of others.  I have been negligent in applying it to my own life, however, despite seeing its obvious need for application.  That's about to change.

I was convicted by the following passages from Dennis Bickers' "The Healthy Small Church":

Without a vision, a church will usually spend its time responding to situations rather than proactively shaping its future.  Church leadership will be reduced to constantly fighting fires in the church while never finding time to lead its people in ministry.
. . . most families don't have a vision for their family.  They usually prefer to live day-to-day unless something unusual occurs.  Very seldom will a family sit down and write out their dreams for the coming year.

While I haven't been one to sit down and write out goals or dreams, I have always been intentional with what I wanted to do and where I wanted that to take me.  This is true of my life until I moved to Oregon, got married and started family life.  I didn't consciously give up living my life intentionally, but I certainly shifted from living for myself to now having to include a family in my plans.  This was a HUGE change for me, certainly a challenging one, and I would not have made it to this point without my wonderful wife Ann teaching me how to do family. 

As a Christian husband and father, I am charged with being the spiritual leader of my family.  I have to answer to God for this, so, no pressure.  ;-)   Ann has been a wonderful encouragement to me on this, but like other areas of life, I talked about plans but never implemented them, complained about having no time but did nothing to change it.  Thanks to being a student at Pacific Evangelical School of Ministry, I now have someone to mentor me in my Christian walk.  It is a relief to finally have some accountability, because without it I don't get much done. 

My mentoring program requires me to evaluate spiritual disciplines in my life and formulate a plan for enhancing them.  This has come along at the exact same time when I realized that I need to intentionally schedule study time during the week or I'm not going to get my assignments for school done on time.  After years of floundering around, so many things are coming together all at the same time.  Being the tech-loving guy I am, it's ironic that I've reverted to a printout of a weekly calendar to solve my scheduling issues.  But, if it works, I'll take it!

So now I'm being intentional about how I spend my time because I've got some important irons in the fire and I intend to be committed to them.  In addition to enhancing my spiritual disciplines and dedicating specific blocks of time to school work, I'm doing a Bible-in-a-year reading plan with my family.  While in the past I would have been stressed-out about having to keep multiple commitments, I'm actually excited about this because I feel like I've got a plan in place that is going to help me be successful and people to help keep me accountable in meeting my commitments. 

I feel the Spirit hard at work in me, which is huge for a guy who's been spiritually tone deaf all his life.  God is good and I am grateful. 

Nov 30 - By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain . . . —1 Corinthians 15:10

We say things such as, “Oh, I shouldn’t claim to be sanctified; I’m not a saint.” But to say that before God means, “No, Lord, it is impossible for You to save and sanctify me; there are opportunities I have not had and so many imperfections in my brain and body; no, Lord, it isn’t possible.” That may sound wonderfully humble to others, but before God it is an attitude of defiance.

Oddly enough, today’s Utmost and my devotional from In Touch Ministries nearly match.  In Touch’s message was that we need to see ourselves as saints, not as the sinners we were. Yes, we still sin, but we are now sanctified by God’s grace (1 Corinthians 1:2) and we need to live in that, not in memories of our past sinfulness.  As Chambers rightly points out, finding that line between humility and saintliness can sometimes be difficult. 

The solution to this identity crisis is to change the way we think about ourselves. If we don’t, we’ll rely on how we feel, and Satan will bombard us with reminders of our failures and sins.

It always strikes me how we seem to naturally correlate faith and feelings.  Some people become very emotional during corporate worship or prayer, reinforcing the connection between faith and feeling.  Similarly, who hasn’t heard a believer talk about the warm, tingly feeling they felt all over the minute they accepted Christ and were in-filled with the Holy Spirit?  It was the lack of such feelings that kept me skeptical about faith for years—every one of my efforst to "ask Jesus into my heart" were met with silence, not tingling. When I finally heard someone say “faith is not an emotion, it’s a choice” a huge puzzle piece fell into place for me.  I don’t have trouble choosing Christ; if I’m still right with Him despite the lack of a physical sensation when I chose Him, then I’m good with that.  I can’t say that I necessarily feel “born again” or that I feel that I’m “a new creature.” I pretty-much feel the same as I always did.  My choices, however, have changed as a result of choosing to follow Christ.  While it would be nice to experience some warm, fuzzy feeling every time I make a choice pleasing to Him, it’s critical to know that the lack of such a feeling is not an indicator of lack of faith or that “I did it wrong.”  Had I known this years ago I probably would have become a Christian much sooner.