Handing Over Fear

This is my first post in a long time and I just have a few thoughts.

As Luca begins to talk, I begin to reflect on time. In September he will be 2 years old and closer to a different form of independence without me. A few months ago he wasn’t able to walk down the stairs without me, but now it is his new favorite game. It seems to me that the harder I try to clutch to the time…the faster it goes.

In prayer a few weeks ago I was asking the Lord to watch over and protect Luca from the harm this world brings…almost instantly I was rebuked and told, “Who do you think you are? He is My child…not yours. I know what is good for him and I see it clearer than you ever will. Put your faith in Me and I will calm your fears”.

How often do I put my worries, fears, and anxieties on my son because I think I know what is best for him…when I need to give those fears over to the Lord.

 

Unbridled Restlessness

Have you ever heard the cliché, “I am to busy to pray”. Although you might have never said it before; you have probably felt it. We busy our lives with all kinds of activities to make ourselves feel important, but the one thing that actually matters (e.g. listening to God) gets lost in the shuffle and ultimately pushed out. What is so important that we become negligent to pray? Is it work/success…family…internet/T.V.? Or is it something less obvious like church activities (e.g. small groups, Sunday service)? If you think doing more church activities gets you closer to God while neglecting to spend one-on-one time with Him, then those activities have only become your drug of choice…your crack… if you will.

John 2:1-4

¹On the third day there was a wedding at Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. ²Jesus also was invited with His disciples to the wedding. ³And when the wine was all gone, the mother of Jesus said to Him, They have no more wine! ⁴Jesus said to her, woman, what is that to you and to Me? My time (hour to act) has not yet come!

Jesus knew his time! Being a typical woman, His own mother in all her anxiousness was telling Him what to do and when to do it, but He knew His time. Jesus didn’t get stressed out because the wine was gone but instead said, “What is that to Me or to you”? But your Jesus…you should care about this because I care about this…right? Isn’t this how we go to God?…Only going to Him when it is something WE care about, although we never have time listen to God for our time to act.

“Praying is not you always talking, but instead a spiritual mind is a listening mind. The modern church talks (and never shuts up) because they are comfortable with themselves and are scared with what God will tell them.”

- Jack Johnson

How often do our mothers (spouses, bosses, friends, and even strangers) tell us what to do because they feel it is important? They are thus putting their own stress on us because they have their own insecurities about their relationship with God. Or more importantly…why do we do what we are told by these people? Is it because we feel like if we don’t, then it would hurt their feelings? THE HELL WITH THEIR FEELINGS! But we are supposed to be thoughtful, nice, and upright American citizens…aren’t we? I’ll tell you what…the next time someone imposes their anxiety filled demands on me (or my wife and son), they should know they are going down a dangerous path.

John 11:1-7

¹Now a certain man named Lazarus was ill. He was of Bethany, the village where Mary and her sister Martha lived.  ²This Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped His feet with her hair. It was her brother Lazarus who was sick.  ³So the sisters sent to Him, saying, Lord, he whom You love is sick. ⁴When Jesus received the message, He said, This sickness is not to end in death; but it is to honor God and to promote His glory, that the Son of God may be glorified through it. ⁵Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. ⁶Therefore when He heard that Lazarus was sick, He still stayed two days longer in the same place where He was. ⁷Then after that interval He said to His disciples, Let us go back again to Judea.

When Jesus heard Lazarus (someone he loved) was sick and dying, He didn’t go rushing to help or get all stressed because his friend was dying. Instead Jesus was so in tune with what God wanted from Him that He knew exactly when His time was to glorify His King. Jesus actually stayed put for two more days after hearing about Lazarus and didn’t even get there until Lazarus was already dead!

How do you know what God wants you to do in your life if you never listen to Him?

Maybe…just maybe…he doesn’t want you to do anything except listen to him. Jesus was 30 years old when he started his ministry! Is this because he was incompetent at 29 or was he waiting, listening, and praying for his time?

What if you started listening to God and he told you to wait 30 more years for your time? What if he told you to only listen, wait, and pray on Him while doing nothing else? What would you do? How would you take this call on your life? This is absurd…you have “stuff” to do!…right? You have to clean the house, pay the bills, make dinner for the family, go to church activities, go to work, watch T.V., play on the internet, raise the children, go out to eat, hang out with the family…in essence…you have to…live your life.

This type of unbridled restlessness dominates our culture. We always want bigger and better while never stopping until we get that next small morsel of pleasure. Once that morsel stops sufficing, then we go searching for more. All God wants from us is to listen and rest in him…How amazing and liberating does that sound. The only thing you are accomplishing when you try to get your “chores” completed is feeding your own pride and ego. You have been told your whole life that you need to “get things done”. My question is…What if you didn’t?

My challenge to you for the week is to listen to God first for an hour a day (no bible, no music, no talking)…just listening (it is harder than you think if you have never done it before).

Psalm 63:1

O God, You are my God; early will I seek You…

An Experience

Well…it has been a few months since my last post, so I thought I would update.

Have you ever left church and thought to yourself, “that music sucked” or “I didn’t get anything out of the sermon”? These were my thoughts for years after I left a Sunday morning service. I always thought I should be entertained or at least be able to learn something to use for the future! What is so wrong with that? We live in such a me-me-me society that we even need to run at 110% capacity at church…we can not even give the church service to God, because we are so focused on what we want!

It hasn’t been until recently that I have learned church service is not about me being taught a lesson or being entertained by music. I have learned that it is an experience I am able to partake in with other believers in Christ! How dare I criticize when I do not learn anything at church when I didn’t even pick my bible up or pray all week? By doing that I am saying, “God, you have this one hour window in my week to work your magic and if you don’t speak to me now than I am going to get upset”.  How dare I! Who do I think I am by trying to put God on my time table! If you do not spend time with God during the week, then how do you honestly expect to experience him from 9-10 a.m. on Sunday mornings?

Have you ever lied to yourself by saying, “the reason I left that church is because I didn’t like the music or the preaching”? What was the real reason you left? Was it that people (e.g. their problems, their needs, and their wants) were nudging their way into your weekly, daily, or hourly schedule? Or was it that you didn’t feel comfortable forming relationships with new people? Or was it that people at church did not fit to your socioeconomic liking? Or was it that God was actually speaking to you and you kept pushing him down and finally out.

I am at church only to worship God and to experience God. If you go to church for any other reason than that please check your heart…you might be going for the wrong reasons.

It really comes down to how hard your heart is towards God. By criticizing, I am deflecting my own insecurities and lack of a relationship with Christ off on a poor sermon or lackluster music. The one hour you spend worshiping God with other believers is an amazing opportunity that I (honestly) still do not comprehend.

If all you do is go to your church service and 1) do not talk to anybody, 2) criticize everything, and yet 3) expect everything for your benefit…I truly ask…why are you going to church?

I hope you think about this post and I hope to have another one up soon!

Community Life

Over the last several years I have prided myself on living a guarded life. This means not allowing others into my thoughts, feelings, and emotions. I became very good at joking around to mask any type of truth that I was feeling. I am sure everybody does this from time to time, but it became a way of life for me. I guess one way to try to break that cycle was to start this blog.

 Jill and I have been going to the Vineyard for only about 6 months now, but the type of community present is something I have never experienced. They welcome brokenness while demanding authenticity. I am not saying other churches that I have been apart of in the past didn’t do the same thing, but I just never connected with them on a spiritual level. It was either always a Sunday “thing” or a trying to clean myself up “thing”.

 I have really enjoyed the community life that Jill and I have been blessed with over the past few months and look forward to deepening our relationships with new friends. For me it is difficult to open my life and share what I am feeling, but I also know that we are called to live in community. The moment I find myself not being transparent with others is the moment I know my heart is becoming hard towards God.  I challenge you to invite a new friend over for dinner, a cold beer, or just a conversation…you’ll be surprised how God works in those simple situations.

DAILY Bread?

I have the same routine every morning:

1. Wake up
2. Bathroom
3. Brush teeth
4. Shower
5. Get dressed
6. Make my coffee and lunch for the day
7. Out the door

I am getting ready for the day. If I plan it right, then this will take about an hour. All of these things are crucial for me to function and I need to do them. If I didn’t shower, then I would feel gross all day. If I didn’t brush my teeth, then no one would talk to me. If I didn’t get dressed, then…well you get the idea. My morning ritual is very important to me.

 

When was the last time you prayed for an hour because it was very important to you? When was the last time you needed to spend time with God? We always try to “clean up” our physical body but “never have time” to work on our spiritual one. Jesus speaks a lot about praying and spending time with the father, but I think my favorite verse is in Matthew:

Matthew 26:40

“…He said to Peter, “Couldn’t you watch with me even one hour? Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak!”

Jesus is about to go to the cross and Peter can not even pray for one hour! One hour! In fact, Peter falls asleep! We all would like to think we would do the opposite, but we don’t even pray now! We need to spend time with God daily! This is not a “nice to have” or an “I’ll do that someday”. How much time do we all watch T.V., play on the internet, or fumble with our cell phones? Or maybe it is something less obvious…How much time are we spending with our families, working on the house, or walking the dog? All of these things are well intended, but if you are not spending time with God on a consistent daily basis, then you have a serious spiritual lump in your pit. Jesus told us to be ready and guarded…I can honestly say that I am not ready…are you ready?

Fault in Contemplation

October 2009 through March 2010…7 Months! Although I was extremely happy watching Luca grow and learn…I, as a child of God, was not growing myself. I would try to muster up the discipline to grow closer to God, but I would consistently fall under the weight of nothingness. During this period I would have actually liked to say that I fell under the weight of the cross, but in fact I had strayed from the cross and the narrow path. My walk with the Lord was a feeling of non-motivation, plainness, and (for lack of a better word) blahness. I, personally, consider this period of my life a fault in contemplation. All believers experience this at some time in their walk with the Lord. I could try to explain this season of my life, but I think author Ronald Rolheiser says it more eloquently.

 “John of the Cross once wrote that a silence of God can occur within experience because God can be “obscure” or because we can be “blind”…an object can be vague because it is too distant or because we have bad eyesight. Hence, God can positively withdraw his presence in order to purify our faith (“obscurity”), or we can have a weak experience of God because there is something wrong with us (“blindness”). The former he calls a dark night of the soul and the latter he calls a fault in contemplation.”

 

I experienced 7 months of blindness, laziness towards God, and inconsistent prayer. The whole time I knew God was present and sometimes I could truly feel His presence. Other times I couldn’t imagine or conjure up any existence of God or reasons to be disciplined enough to draw near to Him. These are very opposite thoughts and that is exactly what they are…thoughts. Does this mean some nights my faith was strong and on others that it was weak? Is faith a matter of being able to imagine God exists? Personally I think no! I believe this means that on some nights I had a strong imagination of God and on other nights I had a weak imagination. Faith is not the same thing as being able to imagine God exists or even being able to feel God affectively. I know my mind is unequal to the task of imagining God’s existence and my heart is just as inept at giving me any feeling of God’s existence. God doesn’t cease to exist for that reason, nor is my faith dead just because my imagination and heart have run dry. God exists independent of my perceptions. Faith is something deeper than my imaginations and feelings.

As I am entering a new season in my life, I can honestly say I have learned a few takeaways: 

*     God is always partially obscure because I am always partially blind.
*     God is always present, but I am not always present to God.
*     God is not alive or important enough in my everyday life.
*     One way to bridge the gap of blindness is to have an unwavering and steadfast prayer life.

 Although I know this will not be the only fault in contemplation or dark night or the soul season I will experience in my life, I do know that this is a normal part of struggling and yearning to draw closer to God. God allows these periods in our lives to refine us and purify our faith.

Not Called To Be Well Liked

Why do we always try to please people? Why do Christians think they need to be nice and PC? Why do Christians always seek the approval of others?

Were not all of the great men of the bible rejected? Job, Noah, Moses, David, Jesus, Paul, Stephen, Philip, etc. etc…

Through their rejections by men; their understanding of God grew. God allows rejection into our lives to give us an opportunity to enter into His Kingdom.

Don’t we always think the more we are like Jesus, the more people will like us? In reality, the more people that like us the less we are like Jesus.

Isaiah 53 – He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men

It seems like the goal of the American church is for everyone to speak well of you. It seems like our merit is built upon people thinking we have a nice job, house, witness, etc.

I know that is my goal. I want people to think I am nice, funny, successful, etc. What would happen if people thought I was the opposite? All of the self-worth I put in wanting their acceptance would be down the drain. Jack Johnson once said, “Being a Christian is not a damn popularity contest, but the church has made it that. Get out of the world and stop trying to make everybody like you. Get real with God and let the chips fall where they may.”

John 1 – He came to his own and his own rejected him

How often do we want the easy and cute, but not the hard and ugly? How often do we want nice church programs, but not a tough and authintic relationship with God?

Titus 2 – If we suffer with him, then we will reign with him.

We draw so much of our self-worth in putting honor in men. The more honor we put in men, then the more it hurts to be rejected.

I am not talking about rejection tests in our lives. I am speaking of life long rejection that we all need to endure to grow closer to God. Being rejected is one sign you know you are living and walking the narrow path. With this being said, we are called to love and live in community with others. I do not want to glorify rejection in this post, but merely state as you grow closer to God rejection will increase. If you want a true, authentic, hard, amazing, radical, life changing relationship with God…then just ask him.