The weight of discipline

I ask students, "How's your relationship with God going lately?" Most often, their answers come back to something like, "I need to get in the word some more." "I had my quiet time this week every day; its doing pretty well I guess." "I could pray some more." None of these really answer the question I asked. None of those things are bad, in and of themselves. In fact, we are called or 'prescribed' to them, but for a different purpose than just making sure we get them done. We have made our focus on the discipline instead of the God the discipline was intended to bring us nearer to.  Augustine wrote, "Grant my prayer, O Lord, and do not allow my soul to wilt under the discipline which you prescribe. Let me not tire of thanking you for your mercy in rescuing me...so that I may love you most intensely."

Disciplines are 'prescribed' to us by God. We are called to live a life of discipline; to celebrate it even. There is nothing wrong to be said of discipline, but it becomes dangerous once we begin celebrating the discipline instead of God. We can often get so caught up in the discipline that the most important thing is that we get the discipline accomplished on a daily, weekly, or regular basis. We are no longer actually connecting to the heart of God as was the intention of the discipline in the first place.

My digital bumper

The strength of uncertainty

"Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life." - Ozzie (Oswald Chambers) We are certain of God: we are uncertain of what will happen next. There is much to be said of faith and the spiritual life as it applies to certainty.

We are so obsessed with certainty. Is it really all that necessary? Well, its not if you are living a life of faith...the spiritual life. The spiritual life is not one of certainty. The moments I am so uncertain of what would happen next are the moments my faith is stretched and made stronger.

When you stretch your muscles they grow. They do not necessarily grow stronger and bigger, but they do grow more flexible, which allows them the ability to grow stronger in time.

So here I am a man in need of flexibility. I am a man in need of faith...because I am certainly uncertain. These are now the times of becoming more flexible, and that flexibility makes strength more available. That ability ultimately leads to strength.

Notes from the dogeared pages of #32

Today I retired journal #32. It is always good to look back on the thoughts and reflections. The quotes and jots. The drawings and scribbles. So here are a few random notes from the dogeared pages of #32. - A love letter from a stranger means nothing to us...but even a tiny note from my wife means the world...most of our not liking scripture is just not understanding or being in relationship with the one from who the letters were written

- Discipleship: action needs to be important, not just a Bible study...Application is a must throughout, but doctrine has to be important or at least clarifying of the essentials...contracts is necessary; this is a commitment you will only get what you put in...

-[vision casting] ENVISION a new culture SHARE vision with everyone GET ALIGNMENT with leadership MODEL the culture you want to create FORM URGENCY sense

- "Boredom is the natural byproduct of redundancy...and church ministry is redundant by nature." ... create new and fresh experiences with God instead of repeating the same stories over and over and over again..we tell the same old stories about God because we are having no new experiences with him...the pastor needs to teach and lead in a way that creates new opportunities and new experiences for the church family...but my teaching and leadership cannot be new, fresh, and alive if my personal experience of God is not new, fresh, and alive

- Pull away...look within...look around...Fill up...change it up

- "Greed is a sign of slavery; you have to hold on to something because you NEED it" - "Generosity is a sign of freedom." - Cody Cannon

- "People who don't know Christ do not get to OUT-SERVE Christians." -Cody Cannon

When I tell my students not to listen to their parents

As a college pastor, there are a few very common conversations I have always had with several students like it was the first time. One of those conversations walks students through following God's intent for their lives to the chagrin and often in the face of their parents' intent for them.

Acts 21:10-14 shows Paul being clear of God's intent for his life in the face of people who love him. They are people who deeply care for Paul, and he knows that is the reason it breaks his heart so much when he sees their advice and strong intent going against what he KNOWS God has told him to do.

This stress of the tension between disappointing those who care for you in order to follow God's intent for you is one I hear all the time.

There has to be a challenge here for all of us to answer God's call while realizing it is not what our loved ones will aways want for us.

You're Welcome: most highlighted quotes

A few days ago, I came across an Amazon page indicating the top highlighted quotes of all time on the Kindle. By no surprise, there were a ton of Hunger Games quotes. Either way, it was pretty interesting to see the things which stuck out to the most people reading ALL books found on the Kindle at this point. Here were some of my favorites:

#1 - "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them." - Catching Fire, Hunger Games 

#4 - "It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it takes to fall apart."  - Mocking Jay, Hunger Games

#8 - "Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." - Pride & Prejudice

#23 - "What is childlike humility? It’s not the lack of intelligence, but the lack of guile. The lack of an agenda. It’s that precious, fleeting time before we have accumulated enough pride or position to care what other people might think" - Heaven is for Real

#31 - “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.” - 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

#33 - "While the goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God." - Radical

#36 - "Those three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying." - Outliers

#38 - "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent." - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

#45 - "Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are." - Steve Jobs

Let this blest assurance control

"It Is Well With My Soul" has stricken me today, and I hope I can digest it further. One particular phrase sticks out: "Let this blest assurance control." Singing the song in its entirety, you may be able to boost your spirit a bit upon hearing the words, but when I write the entire song out, this phrase jumps off the page demanding my attention. It comes right after the phrase, "Though Satan should buffet, tho' trials should come..." The challenge comes when you read, "Let this blest assurance control." This phrase requires our action. I really need to learn how to LET this assurance of God's goodness and provision to control my thought and spirit. Easier said than done a lot of the times, but today I am begging for it it. I beg that God would let this assurance control my thoughts and heart. I beg my soul to LET this assurance control things. I hope to be controlled by God's blest assurance rather than my worry, my fears, my self-consciousness. I beg my soul within me to be controlled by God's blessed assurance.

Past encouragement for today: old journal entry

I had just lost my job, Tonya was in Zimbabwe, and a promised position was pulled from under me. So I left for a weekend to Bowman Lake up past the Yuba Gap. The only things I brought with me were a tent, a journal, a Bible, The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen, a bit of food, and a six pack of beer. I had no idea what was going on in my life. I found my last journal entry from that trip... Interesting how these things are perfect encouragement today as well.

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June 6 (Sunset…THE LAST BIG ONE…WHEN GOD SPEAKS)

I climbed up on the rock face behind my site to watch the sunset over the lake. Well, actually, the sun sets behind the mountain in front of my site, but I can still experience the sunset if I don’t see the sunset. I climbed up on top of the rock face and looked out over the lake at the mountains that spring up on the other side. I watched as the shadow cast from the mountains in front crept up the mountains behind my site. I just sat and watched for a while. It kind of reminded me of a canary being put to sleep. It was as if God were putting the mountains to sleep for the night.

You look at these mountains and they even LOOK old and tough. They look like they have put in a long day’s work. All day long I have watched these mountains in amazement. To amaze a guy in the 21st + century is a pretty daunting task. We need to be entertained by bigger and better things, and for years to this day, mountains have been bigger and better. Even now they are bigger and better than most things. They have succeeded in amazing me all day long, and that is no easy task. So they deserve the sleep and rest. So God put the mountains to sleep like a little canary.

You see the blanket draped over the cage, but you know there’s a bird in there. This is why after the shadow covers the mountains entirely, the moon will come up and cast its special light upon them to make them silhouettes. They just look like big black masses beyond the deep blue space of water, but you know there are mountains over there. They’re just sleeping!

While God was putting the mountains to sleep, he spoke to my heart words I needed to hear. I just sat and listened for a while. He sounded a bit like a conversation a friend of mine had with Brennan Manning a few years ago over cigarettes and coffee at the Anderson, IN Waffle House. My friend and I (along with others) had been digesting Brennan’s words for a couple years at that point. My friend had established a comedy/drama team based heavily on the writing of Brennan Manning and the songs of his ‘soul mate’, Rich Mullins. My friend asked Brennan for any advice to offer a group of young guys who wanted to serve God and spread his love through comedy and drama.

This man who we all were pretty convinced could walk on water with Jesus, whose words we had sucked all we could from said a rather unexpected thing. He said, “Get a job!”

God spoke a similar message into my heart tonight. A bit more tenderly, but the same idea! He said:

“I know you’re worried and you’re scared. I know you are questioning why you left a profession you love to follow a path that had not lead back to that profession. I know you are scared about what you are going to do, and that you feel like your passion has been removed. I know all of this, but I have a new and different plan for you. You are going to do bigger and better things for me, but you are not ready yet. You have some passions in your heart you have not paid attention to. You have passions you do not know about yet. I will show those to you when you are ready, but you are not ready right now. In the time being, while I am preparing you and raising you up, get a job. Get a job, pay your bills and support your family. This job does not need to be a career or even something you are passionate about; I am preparing you for that and remember you are not ready yet. You will find what that is in time, but go on looking hard after me. I have bigger and better things for you outside student life. You will reach more people for me. You will bring glory to me through new things in the future, but for now you need to work and support your family. You need to pay your bills and continue learning. Look further for those passions you have ignored and the ones I will reveal to you in time.

I love you PC!

About not being a Christian on account of the hypocrites

"I don't believe in Christianity because there are too many hypocrites." This is an objection to Christianity which I am tired of hearing. Essentially, this statement says that hypocrisy takes away the validity of Christianity. It says, "I will not become a Christian because of the hypocrites. I cannot believe Christianity because of the hypocrisy."

There are two reasons this statement and belief frustrate me;

1) Its true 2) It does not make any sense

First of all, to say Christians are hypocrites is absolutely true. In fact, most people are hypocrites. As long as you present an ideal lifestyle and belief system as the one you are to live to an imperfect humanity, we will always be hypocrites. Ideal lifestyles take work, and you generally have to work through our imperfect realities to make them happen. This means that mistakes will happen. This means that not everyone is prepared to be perfect, but we still more forward.

Second, I get frustrated with hearing the objection to Christianity on the grounds of Christians being hypocrites because it does not make sense. It literally does not make logical sense. In fact, this objection commits a logical fallacy (that of trivial objection); it focuses on the wrong thing. This statement focuses on insignificant things while ignoring the main point. The statement does not make sense, because to hear someone say, "I do not believe Christianity because there are too many hypocrites," needs only one response.

The main point is whether or not a person believes in Jesus. So you could say,

"Could it be possible that Jesus was from Nazareth? Could it be possible that God is a God of phenomenal love? Could it be possible that the cross was real and accomplished what it says it does? Could all of these things be possible EVEN IF Christians are hypocrites?"

Hypocritical Christians do not make Christianity false. Hypocritical and generally sinful Christians do not disprove the cross and what happened there. Sinful Christians do disprove Christianity; in fact, I would go on a limb to say it proves Christianity's gospel even more. This proves that imperfect people are still able to be Christians. That's pretty good news to me.

I love my family TOO much: father fiction part 2

We are told to "seek first His kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to us" (Matt. 6:33). We want to know our children will grow to love us and their hearts will turn toward us as they continue to grow, but too often we try to make our children our numer one priority. We make them our world, and then we wonder why our godly parenting has not yielded that closeness. Jesus was starkly clear when he said in Luke 14:26 "if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brother and sister, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."

Too many of us have made idols of our own children and spouses. We think we are loving them by doing this. We think we are raising and supporting good Christian families by doing that, but we are only idolaters. 

We are not going to build strong families by our own diligence, but only if we seek God and his kingdom first...and then all these things will be added to you.

The solution is seeing parents, and particularly men, seek to be Christ followers FIRST. It is seeing men love Jesus Christ more than their mothers, fathers, wives, and even their children.

Because when we do this, we have a fellowship and connection with the greatest love of all. When we make an idol out of our kids or family members, we lose connection and fellowship with the source of greatest love.

When we love Jesus MORE than anything and anyone, He gives us all we need. He returns children's hearts to their fathers and fathers to their children (Malachi 4:5-6).

Father Fiction

Though my dad never disowned me or walked away from me, I did do a lot of my growing up without my father around.  He never wished for this, and I absolutely do not BLAME anyone for this life.  Blaming anyone is a waste of time because I could be using that time and energy healing from the hole I had and have. I have done a lot of healing in my life, learning to be a man without having the constant input from a father.  As Donald Miller wrote in his book Father Fiction, "wounds don't heal until you feel them."  I began to feel the wounds years ago...probably in college.  I began to ask myself questions about how I saw the absence of my father affected me.

Now again, I have to clarify that my dad is not some deadbeat dad who I am just now blaming for anything.  He did his best to love me all he could from a distance.  Divorce is crappy, and he did his best to love me throughout my entire life.  That being said, truth still remains, I did a lot of growing up without a father, and of course that sucks...plain and simple.  In that growth, though, I have learned a lot about who I really am as a man, but that only happened once I allowed myself to feel my wounds and grow through them.

I mean look at me now.  I am a husband to my best friend, which is a fear [wound] I once thought I would never heal from. I am a father to 2 beautiful girls God has given to me, I am convinced, to wreck me each and every day. I am a man who desires to love my wife every single day with an integral outlook and dedication.  I am learning to accomplish myself as a wounded healer. I am always healing wounds as I discover them, but I am much more of a man even now than I ever dreamed when I was younger.  I can now resound with Miller:

"We are the ones who will wrestle with security who will overcome our fear of intimacy, who will learn the hard task of staying with woman and our children, who will mentor others through the difficult journey of life, perhaps rescuing them from what we have been rescued."