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. 

Nov 2 - If you love Me, keep My commandments —John 14:15

Our Lord never insists on obedience. He stresses very definitely what we ought to do, but He never forces us to do it. We have to obey Him out of a oneness of spirit with Him.
Obedience.  This is my biggest issue with my boys: it's not so much what they do that upsets me, it's their disobedience to what they've been told.  Their "crimes" are pretty petty in the big picture: sneaking candy, watching TV without permission, sneaking games on the computer, etc.  But while those issues are trivial, the consistent disobedience behind them is not--THAT is what wears me down year after year with no end in sight.  When I consider all the disobedience God has to put up with . . . now there's an example of divine patience!!  And am I the obedient son that I should be?  Far from it.  This again is one of those short, simple phrases that Jesus uses which sounds easy but carries a whole world of weight behind it.  Obedience sounds great and seems simple till we actually try it. 

That is why whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He prefaced it with an “If,” meaning, “You do not need to do this unless you desire to do so.” “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself . . .” (Luke 9:23).
He should have said "IF you know what's good for you . . . you'll obey me!"  That takes us all the way back to Eden, doesn't it?  And then, several thousand years later, the Son comes along telling us the exact same thing that His Father did; should that be a clue that we should take notice and obey?!?!  If you wanted to be pessimistic, you might say that nothing's changed since the creation:  God's still asking us to obey and we're still ignoring Him.  Again, I am amazed at His patience:  I can't put up with my own two while He has to contend with everyone He's ever created! 

The Lord does not give me rules, but He makes His standard very clear. If my relationship to Him is that of love, I will do what He says without hesitation. If I hesitate, it is because I love someone I have placed in competition with Him, namely, myself.
One of my favorite sayings (which I came up with myself) is:  authority is not imposed from the top down, it is granted from the bottom up.  I can lead all I want, but if nobody follows me . . . then am I really leading?  I can tell my children what I want them to do but if they refuse to do it, am I really parenting them?  We can continue to lock up criminals over and over again but if they refuse to obey the civil authorities and stop breaking laws, are we really exercising any authority over them or just punishing them after the fact?  All this is true of our human experience down here on earth with each other, but not true of our relationship with God.  He does have top-down authority and He's given us the choice to recognize it or not; a choice that bears eternal ramifications.  We can be our own little petty gods down here and think that we don't have to answer to anyone for it.  This will be true until it's not, and then it's too late. 

Oct 29 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him —2 Corinthians 5:21

The modern view of the death of Jesus is that He died for our sins out of sympathy for us.

I can't say as I ever had that view, or maybe only as a young child.  I think that if one pays attention in church or Sunday school they should clearly learn that Christ's sacrifice wasn't about sympathy, it was about substitution. But, since Chambers says "the modern view," maybe that was in fact the case in Scotland of his day.

Our sins are removed because of the death of Jesus, and the only explanation for His death is His obedience to His Father, not His sympathy for us. We are acceptable to God not because we have obeyed, . . . 

Jesus' obedience is easy to overlook, I think, for someone who doesn't pay much attention in church or never developed faith beyond what children's Bible stories teach.  Because we are so hardwired to do everything in our own strength, it is easy to think that it's our obedience that pleases God.  And there is truth in this, but it's not the full picture.  The Israelites tried for centuries to obey God, but the Mosaic Law was too heavy a yoke to bear (Acts 15:10).  The agony in the garden, as reported by Luke, is probably the best illustration of Jesus' obedience to the Father: obedience that required death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). 

That Christ died for me, and therefore I am completely free from penalty, is never taught in the New Testament. What is taught in the New Testament is that “He died for all” (2 Corinthians 5:15)— not, “He died my death”— and that through identification with His death I can be freed from sin, . . . 

Hmm, I don't know that I'd say that that was never taught in the New Testament.  See Ephesians 2: 1-10, where Paul tells believers that they have died and risen with Christ. It's not the exact wording that Chambers uses, but it expresses the same concept.

Chambers frequently annoys me with his use of "always" and "never."  There are certainly lots of "always" and "never" taught in scripture, but Chambers--when making his point--seems to like to shoot down the antithesis of his thesis.  Soteriology wears man faces in the New Testament and develops over time.  Consider as a quick example Peter's declaration at Pentacost (Acts 2:22-24).  Peter implies that Christ was not immortal until after God raise him from the dead; this is a very different soteriology than John teaches at the beginning of his gospel (John 1:1-5). 

As much as I'd like to stay and discuss this further, I have a history paper to write!!  :) 

Oct 21 - Death to self. Matt 16:24-26

²⁴ Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ²⁵ For whoever wants to save their life^[a] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. ²⁶ What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

This is one of my favorite passages of scripture for several reasons.  First, I like the ones that so simply and easily express the teachings of Jesus which are the most difficult for us to do.  It's almost a rhetorical question: who would give up their soul to gain the whole world?  To a Christian, at least, it's a ridiculous question because our obvious answer is "nothing!"  Yet, how indescribably hard is it for us to actually give up our lives--our whole lives, favorite sins and all--and take up a cross?  Many of us can get a percentage of the way there but not all the way.  As such, this passage is one of those that we can point to as expressing "what christian life is all about" as we ourselves struggle to achieve it.  It's one of those analogies which we spend our life seeking rather than living our life after attaining it. 

I like this passage for another reason, that being the anachronism of Jesus inviting his disciples to "take up their cross."  This analogy works great in our modern times because Jesus set the ultimate example of giving up self and bearing a cross for others.  However, when Jesus is saying this to his disciples, He hadn't yet been crucified.  Given that, how would they understand "taking up their cross" as an analogy for self-sacrificing love?  While crucifixion was a common punishment in Jesus' lifetime, did anyone besides Him endure it as a sacrifice for others?  And if not, then why is He using an analogy that really only makes sense after the crucifixion?  I think the answer is that the author of Matthew inadvertently includes this anachronism because, by the time he's writing his gospel, the analogy of taking up one's cross for others was well established, well known and needed no explanation among a christian audience reading his gospel. 
So does that make it "wrong?"  I don't think so, it's just one of those little details that academic geeks like me like to ruminate on.  :) 

Finally, I like this passage because it's one of those teachings of Jesus where He takes life as we know it and flips it on its head to show us how earthly life differs from life lived in the Kingdom.  This teaching fits right in with the "you have heard it said . . . but I tell you . . ." ones. 

Oct 21 - But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith . . . —Jude 20

But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus.
This comes into sharp focus for us when we read the lives of the saints.  While no particular example comes to mind at the moment, I recall hearing of many female saints who spent most of their lives as a scullery maid in a convent, being humble and faithful to the Lord.  It's sort of the opposite of what our modern culture does: it lifts up as heroes those who do exceptional (in our eyes) things, be they athletes, celebrities, etc.  Conversely, quiet humility rarely makes the evening news yet we still find in such people heroic qualities.  Maybe that's because we find it so hard ourselves to live in quiet humility among the crashing din of modern culture all around us. 


It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God—but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people—and this is not learned in five minutes.
To this I would add: so long as we are trying to do exceptional things for God in our own strength, we prevent God from doing His exceptional things through us in His strength. 

Oct 18 - Prayer Month

October must be prayer month.  I get Charles Stanley’s monthly magazine/devotional and this month the theme is prayer.  That in itself is not very amazing, there’s a theme every month and the theme of prayer for a monthly christian publication is not jaw dropping.  But then there’s this other devotional I have.  It’s called “Experiencing God Day by Day” and is a yearly devotional, i.e. contains a daily devotion for each day of the year.  It’s more like my weekly devotional because that’s how often I seem to find the time to pick it up.  So last week when I picked it up and turned to that day’s devotional the theme was prayer.  Pretty ironic, given the theme of my other devotional.  

Then two weeks ago Pastor James’ message included a discussion about the need for personal quiet time and prayer.  Hmm, starting to sense a common theme?  On top of that, we local churches are praying for our city this month.  So after all these little cues it’s hard to miss that God is trying to get my attention and is asking me to come spend some quiet time with Him.  

As I recently blogged, quiet time is the one thing which always eludes me.  If I ever get any it seems to get eaten up by chores or some other busy-ness of life.  So what do you do when God drops all these little hints in your lap?  “Hey God, I’m trying, maybe a little divine intervention to grease the skids, maybe?”  

I was pleasantly surprised this past Saturday when the 15 minute prayer slot I’d signed up for went by so quickly.  I even helped Aaron & Caitlynn with their 15 minute slots.  So I prayed for nearly 45 minutes on Saturday!!  It’s not all that hard when you have a list of topics in front of you.  I’m pretty comfortable talking to God; it’s the listening part that I need to work on (which will be the topic of an upcoming blog).