Good morning! May you know the joy that comes from a job well done today. #MorningBlessings #MorningMug
ONE WHO RECEIVES GRACE
Psalm 25:1-10; Daniel 9:1-14; 1 John 1:3-10
I love that passage from 1 John that almost feels contradictory.
On the one hand, if we claim to be in the light but still bounce around in darkness we are liars. One the other hand, if we claim to be without sin then we are also liars.
It almost seems hopeless, doesn't it?
How can someone be in the light and still be struggling with sin? Aren't we supposed to be perfect and holy? Aren't we supposed to be free from the darkness?
This to me is the beauty of the Way of Christ. There is a standard that we are called to, a standard of holiness in the light. Yet, there is a reality that we will not be perfect and we will struggle with things. The Way of Christ simply says, “Own it. Embrace the reality that you need grace, forgiveness, and mercy.”
To be in the light is not to be perfect. To be in the light is to be honest. To live with integrity. To be one who acknowledges one's own imperfection.
To be one who receives grace.
What an overwhelming thought! To be in the way of Christ is to be one who receives grace. To be in the way of Christ is not to be perfect, it is not to have it all together, it is recognize that I don't have it all together and nobody else does either.
So, grace abounds!
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One Who Receives Grace
Psalm 25:1-10; Daniel 9:1-14; 1 John 1:3-10
This passage from 1 John almost feels contradictory.
On the one hand, if we claim to be in the light but still bounce around in darkness we are liars. One the other hand, if we claim to be without sin then we are also liars.
It almost seems hopeless, doesn’t it?
How can someone be in the light and still be struggling with sin? Aren’t we supposed to be perfect and holy? Aren’t we supposed to be free from the darkness?
This to me is the beauty of the Way of Christ. There is a standard that we are called to, a standard of holiness in the light. Yet, there is a reality that we will not be perfect and we will struggle with things. The Way of Christ simply says, “Own it. Embrace the reality that you need grace, forgiveness, and mercy."
To be in the light is not to be perfect. To be in the light is to be honest. To live with integrity. To be one who acknowledges one’s own imperfection.
To be one who receives grace.
What an overwhelming thought! To be in the way of Christ is to be one who receives grace. To be in the way of Christ is not to be perfect, it is not to have it all together, it is recognize that I don’t have it all together and nobody else does either.
So, grace abounds!
Good morning! May you extend kindness to someone whom you just don’t think deserves it today. #MorningMug #MorningBlessing
I’m grateful she still likes me.
PUSH COMES TO SHOVE
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 51:1-17; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Today is Ash Wednesday the beginning of Lent. For the next 40 days Christians around the world will fast in various ways to prepare for the coming of Resurrection Sunday. This is the high holy day where we celebrate the resurrection of Christ. It was this moment that sets Jesus apart from all other would-be messiahs. The empty tomb is the key moment of our faith.
Ash Wednesday is the stark reminder that get to the resurrection Christ first had to go to the cross.
Many will wear ashes on their foreheads today to remind them of their mortality. The ashes signify that from dust we came, to dust we return. Just as Christ died, so too will we die.
The passages for today's readings point us in the direction of why there was a cross. There was a cross because we through our hypocrisy had separated ourselves from God.
Even though we might act like we honor God, in our hearts there is something else going on.
What is it? What else is going on?
It is this desire to honor ourselves. It is humanity playing out the temptations in the wilderness between Jesus and The Accuser in each of our own lives. Sadly, if we're honest, many times when push comes to shove we fail the test. When we do, we create separation between us and God.
In our humanity we are frail. In our humanity we are often given to the path of least resistance, whatever is easiest or makes us “happy” in the moment. In our humanity we often care more about looking the part than being the part.
We are reminded on this Ash Wednesday that though there was separation there is no more. Resurrection is coming. Death has been defeated. Reconciliation is ours because of the victory won on the cross and displayed in the resurrection.
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Good morning! May you know in the midst of your humanity that within you resides the image of the divine. #MorningMug #MorningBlessing
Do you agree with Eckhart Tolle here? I am curious what people think about this. Is there always a lesson?
Whenever something negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it.
— Eckhart Tolle
I love this place. Every time we come here, I never want to leave. #grateful 📷
This made me chuckle a bit too hard.
I’m so thankful to have been able to share our “happy place” with my mom this week. Dennis and Jeanne, Amy’s folks, are such kind and gracious hosts.
Mom wanted to do one thing for while she was here, to put her toes in the ocean. So we took care of that this afternoon under a beautiful Panama City Beach sky.
THE MYSTERY OF FOLLOWING
Psalm 110:1-4; Job 19:23-27; 1 Timothy 3:14-16
I hope to visit you soon, but just in case I’m delayed, I’m writing this >letter so you’ll know how things ought to go in God’s household, this >God-alive church, bastion of truth. This Christian life is a great >mystery, far exceeding our understanding, but some things are clear >enough: *He appeared in a human body, *was proved right by the invisible Spirit, *was seen by angels. *He was proclaimed among all kinds of peoples, *believed in all over the world, taken up into heavenly glory.
I am always and consistently struck by the both-and of Jesus. Both a human and taken up to glory.
As I consider again this great reality of the dual nature of Christ, fully man and fully God, I am left in awe.
What leaves in even greater awe is what the author of 1 Timothy says right before the creedal statement, “some things are clear enough.”
The nature of Christ is clear enough. I think it's because it is grounded in the humanity of Jesus. We don't consider the humanity of Jesus well enough. The reality of him being alive and living in this world is something that we just don't let our minds and hearts consider. We are so deeply caught up in the cosmic Christ, this divine being that does all the miracles and conquered death.
But, the humanity of Jesus is what grounds him in reality. He gets hungry, tired, annoyed, angry, has conflict with family, is accused of being a drunk and a glutton. He has friends who he teases. He gets betrayed.
This Jesus of history and time is the Jesus that I can look at and say to myself, “Yep, I know what he's going through.”
Isn't it interesting that the mystery is the life of following Jesus. The mystery is not Jesus himself.
This makes so much sense if we take the Christian life seriously. If we actually try to live the things of the Sermon on the Mount, we are left wondering if this even possible.
This way of Jesus is a great mystery. There is grace upon grace. The rules are left under the auspices of love. This often leaves us wondering, “what do I do now?” The way of Jesus responds, “what is the way of love? of grace? of mercy?”
So, we are left to ponder afresh the Jesus of time and history and to wade into the mystery of how to follow him.
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Good morning! May you not miss the forest for the trees today. #MorningBlessing #MorningMug
Whew! This is a quote…
The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.
— Blaise Pascal
The sunsets here in Panama City Beach are just something else!
DEAD END DRIFT
Psalm 110:1-4; Exodus 19:7-25; Hebrews 2:1-4
It’s crucial that we keep a firm grip on what we’ve heard so that we don’t drift off.
In high school there as a class that I took called, Math Analysis. It was pre-Calculus. The teacher taught us through projects. We did a project with satellites and orbits that was super hard and really interesting.
I couldn't tell you any of the math. I don't even really remember much beyond what I've told already.
What I do remember is that if our calculations were off by even a fraction of a percent then our satellite would crash. You see, when you drift off course, even slightly, over thousands of miles the results are a significant deviation.
We experience this on a lesser scale all the time, don't we? I mean, how many banners have you made in your life where your kerning was off just a bit and you ran out of room? Oh, just about every single one? Me too!
The author of Hebrews reminds us that the same thing can happen with the gospel. We can begin to drift off and lose our way. We can end up down a dead end that leaves us confused and lost.
I'm reading The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey right now. He wrote this, “Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up.”
As I look around our world today it seems that we Christians have perhaps lost the grip on the message of the Gospel. We clamor for a top down, externally imposed goodness. This loss has left us graceless, merciless, compassionless, and simply unkind.
I am reminded this morning that I must hold tight to the gospel message lest I drift. The drift though small can leave me lost in a dead end.
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DEAD END DRIFT
Psalm 110:1-4; Exodus 19:7-25; Hebrews 2:1-4
It’s crucial that we keep a firm grip on what we’ve heard so that we don’t drift off.
In high school there as a class that I took called, Math Analysis. It was pre-Calculus. The teacher taught us through projects. We did a project with satellites and orbits that was super hard and really interesting.
I couldn't tell you any of the math. I don't even really remember much beyond what I've told already.
What I do remember is that if our calculations were off by even a fraction of a percent then our satellite would crash. You see, when you drift off course, even slightly, over thousands of miles the results are a significant deviation.
We experience this on a lesser scale all the time, don't we? I mean, how many banners have you made in your life where your kerning was off just a bit and you ran out of room? Oh, just about every single one? Me too!
The author of Hebrews reminds us that the same thing can happen with the gospel. We can begin to drift off and lose our way. We can end up down a dead end that leaves us confused and lost.
I'm reading The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey right now. He wrote this, “Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up.”
As I look around our world today it seems that we Christians have perhaps lost the grip on the message of the Gospel. We clamor for a top down, externally imposed goodness. This loss has left us graceless, merciless, compassionless, and simply unkind.
I am reminded this morning that I must hold tight to the gospel message lest I drift. The drift though small can leave me lost in a dead end.
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TWO DITCHES
Psalm 50:1-6; 1 Kings 14:1-18; 1 Timothy 1:12-20
I’m so grateful to Christ Jesus for making me adequate to do this work. He went out on a limb, you know, in trusting me with this ministry. The only credentials I brought to it were violence and witch hunts and arrogance. But I was treated mercifully because I didn’t know what I was doing—didn’t know Who I was doing it against! Grace mixed with faith and love poured over me and into me. And all because of Jesus.
For some of us pastors this is something we need to be reminded of regularly. I know I do.
There are two ditches that I find on either side of me as I consider my calling. On the one side is whining. Often, when I meet with colleagues there is a corporate time of whining about our calling and congregations. It's like Mr. Costanza's Festivus comes to church. There is a temptation to fall into a bit of despondency because our callings are related to people. People are never finished and people are always messy. When you never have closure you can get frustrated. This is part of the reason that Eugene Peterson would read The Brothers Karamazov every year. He needed a reminder that people's lives are fascinating.
The other ditch is one of arrogant power. We pastors can develop a bit of a god-complex. There is this sense that we speak for God to God's people and therefore the people ought to obey us. This, unchecked, will of course lead us to a place of spiritual abuse. We often hold our authority over people. When this happens it is ugly and causes serious harm.
Paul had the answer to staying between these two ditches. That is, in a word, gratitude.
Pastors, in my opinion, have the greatest job in the world. We get the opportunity to be part of the life of people. There is a presence we get to have as they learn to live the life of faith. We walk alongside them during the overwhelming joys of weddings and births. We also get to hold people's hands and put our arms around their shoulders during the painful times of their lives. We are always there in the background of their lives.
A simple presence during the good, the bad, and the mundane.
This is a beautiful thing that we are called to.
This calling is all grace.
None of us deserve it.
Each of us called to serve as ministers of the gospel do so by the gracious working of God through Christ.
What an honor! What a responsibility! What an absolute joy!
All by grace.
Oh, that I would consistently see my calling through the lens of gratitude. I need to continue learn this valuable lesson that Paul teaches Timothy here.
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DO YOU STINK?
Psalm 50:1-6; 1 Kings 11:26-40; 2 Corinthians 2:12-17
Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. >Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is >recognized by those on the way of salvation—an aroma redolent with >life.
I often wonder if this is true of me.
There are few things in this life that I desperately want. When I die, oh how I would love it to be said of me that because of Christ I gave off “an aroma redolent with life.”
So often I find myself staring into the mirror seeing my shortcomings and failings to love well. The lack of love is so easily apparent. Thankfully, there is a grace that knows no bounds that has been offered to me through this Christ whom I seek to follow.
This little passage is such a good reminder that words matter. How we live matters.
It's also a reminder that when we seek to live this way there will be people who won't respond well. They will see the pursuit of love and will find is distasteful, a stench.
But those on the way to destruction treat us more like the stench from a rotting corpse.
How can I be sure that I'm speaking life? How can I know that the words and way I live are honoring and pleasing to Christ?
This is a terrific responsibility. Is anyone competent to take it on? No—but at least we don’t take God’s Word, water it down, and then take it to the streets to sell it cheap. We stand in Christ’s presence when we speak; God looks us in the face. We get what we say straight from God and say it as honestly as we can.
It's that last little bit that jumps at me, “say it as honestly as we can.”
There's no “but” tagged onto the words of Jesus. There's no attempt to package him or mitigate him for our comfort. No, when we are speaking the truth in love it is not going to be a cheap, watered down, Christ. It is going to be the message of the cross and resurrection that is laden with grace, mercy, compassion, empathy, and love.
I suppose this is the means by which I can evaluate myself. Is the way I live and the words I speak bookended with grace and love?
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A VENDING MACHINE OR GOD?
Psalm 102:12-28; Job 6:1-13; Mark 3:7-12
Each morning I share a little morning blessing in my social streams. Nothing big, just a little something that runs through my mind. This morning I shared, “may you choose to be content despite your circumstances.” With this being a Wednesday we can often find ourselves buried by details and tasks. It can be really hard to be content.
But, there's also a bigger picture beyond the small every day stuff. Some of us find ourselves in these difficult situations where it feels like the whole world is closing in on us. Some of it is due to our own decision making and some of it is due to things beyond our control.
Often times when we find ourselves in these situations we turn to God out of desperation.
Like Job we wonder why hasn't God done the things we want him to do on our behalf.
The arrows of God Almighty are in me, poison arrows—and I’m poisoned all through! God has dumped the whole works on me. Donkeys bray and cows moo when they run out of pasture— so don’t expect me to keep quiet in this. Do you see what God has dished out for me? It’s enough to turn anyone’s stomach! Everything in me is repulsed by it— it makes me sick.
Yet, more often than not I wonder if we are really more like the crowds chasing Jesus around. The people who have experienced God's provision and then demand more.
He had healed many people, and now everyone who had something >wrong was pushing and shoving to get near and touch him.
God is not a vending machine that we can drop a quarter into and get something in return. It's just not how things work. No, God relates to us. God engages with us. God is calling and drawing us in deeper beyond our wants and desires.
There are times when we will walk through difficult things. It's parf of living in this imperfect world amongst imperfect people. There is sickness, mental and physical, there are natural disasters, there are things well out of our control.
Sometimes we have to face the consequences of our decisions.
Sometimes we experience the consequences of other people's decisions.
Sometimes we find immediate healing and relief.
Sometimes we have to learn contentment in the midst of our circumstances.
If you're anything like me when I'm facing the hard stuff I want to know why God doesn't answer my fervent prayer to fix it and fix it now. Then, sometime later I see how the plan worked itself out and see God's hand in it.
As C.S. Lews writes about Aslan in the The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,
“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion.” “ Ooh” said Susan. “I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall >feel rather nervous about meeting a lion”... “Safe?” said Mr Beaver ...“Who said anything about safe? 'Course he >isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”
I love this picture of Aslan. He isn't safe but he is good. In our home we talk often of God being sovereign and good. We can trust God because God is in control and is good. This helps us find contentment in the midst of circumstances.
No, God is not a vending machine. God works in God's ways on God's own timing. I'm learning to be content with that.
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THAT TIME THEY FOUGHT
Psalm 102:12-28; 2 Kings 8:1-6; Acts 15:36-41
What do you do when conflict arises? This little passage in Acts 15 is always fascinating to me because it gives us a snapshot of the less than perfect leaders in the early church. It turns out that they were as human and normal as we are. They had disagreements and tempers and personalities. (Side note, I'm thankful that the Bible preserves the imperfections because it helps us know and understand these people were just like us.)
Paul and Barnabas disagreed on taking young Mark along on the journey. So, they parted ways. Their disagreement on this man lead them to breaking off their partnership. This doesn't sound like the kind of thing that the writer of two thirds of the New Testament should do, does it? This was a guy who had visions of the risen Christ. He was a guy who would go on to write, possibly, the greatest passage on love in human history. Yet, here he is unable to continue in relationship with someone who was his mentor and friend over a disagreement.
There's no moral judgment in the passage about the argument. There's just a statement of the facts of the matter.
I think one of the things that comes out of this brief story is that it's OK to agree to disagree. Some times we come to a place where we simply have to say, “We aren't going to see eye to eye and for the greater good we ought to part ways.”
It also brings to mind a conversation that I've a number of times about the nature of forgiveness. I think that when we talk about forgiveness we need to distinguish between forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration. Forgiveness is a one way street. It's what the offended person does so as to not develop bitterness in their own soul. Reconciliation is a two way street when the two people can be present with one another. This is a two way street where the offender acknowledges their hurtful action and the offended is willing to remain in relationship. Restoration is when the hurt has been moved past and the relationship has been returned to a previous or deeper state.
I imagine that Paul and Barnabas forgave one another. Perhaps in their separating there was even reconciliation in that they were not estranged from one another. We see later in the book of Acts a restoration when Mark joins Paul on the journey.
When we enter into conflict the minimum outcome we hope for is forgiveness from our own point of view. When it comes to reconciliation and restoration, that is something that requires two people to move towards one another. We don't really control the reconciliation and restoration aspect. And sometimes, those are not healthy outcomes (particularly in cases of abuse, restoration is not something that we need to pursue).
This morning I am processing whom I may need to forgive or whom I need to ask forgiveness of.
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YOU ARE NOT DISMISSED
Psalm 102:12-28; 2 Kings 4:8-17, 32-37; Acts 14:1-7
One of the things that I like about the Psalms is that they make me feel normal.
I don't know about you but when it comes to my experience with the divine it's up and down and left and right. It's a mixed bag to put it simply. There are days when I'm really angry with God. Then there are days where it feels like God is right in front of me and I feel God like never before. There are also days where I'm totally indifferent to God.
Maybe I'm an odd duck (well, I know I'm an odd duck, who in their right mind chooses to be a pastor...)?
Perhaps this isn't your experience at all. It sure is mine.
For a long time I tried to pretend that it wasn't like that. For my adult life I have been a professional Christian. I was a missionary to the college campus and now a pastor. I am supposed to have a dynamic relationship with God. One that is constantly on the upswing and never dips. That simply isn't true.
Over the years, I have learned that being honest about relationship with God has become the most important thing in having a relationship with God. It is amazing as I share struggles with others that they too have them and we are able to find encouragement from one another. When I pretend or lie about my relationship with God I inevitably isolate myself. During these seasons of isolation it can feel like I'm in a hole that I can't dig out of.
Thankfully, I have found myself in a community of people who love me without condition. I can share all of myself with them and as a result, I find that my relationship with God is more honest and real.
I resonated with verse 17 in Psalm 102,
“When he attends to the prayer of the wretched. He won’t dismiss their prayer.”
When I feel wretched, God won't dismiss me. When you feel wretched, God won't dismiss you either.
How amazing is that?
When we are at our most unloveable God still embraces us. Why? Because God is compassionate and loving and merciful and gracious.
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FEBRUARY 2, 2024
Psalm 147:1-11, 20c; Job 36:1-23; 1 Corinthians 9:1-16
Our decision all along has been to put up with anything rather than >to get in the way or detract from the Message of Christ. 1 Corinthians >9:12b, The Message
I love and hate this line from Paul.
In this chapter he's writing about his rights as an apostle. He is reminding the Corinthians that it's OK for him to be supported by the people of and to make a living as a minister of the gospel.
But, he has chosen not to exert those rights.
Why?
Because they can get in the way of the message of Christ.
Imagine, not using a right that is yours because it might detract from the message of Christ.
Am I willing to do such a thing? What are the rights that I demand that hinder the message of Christ?
So much to wrestle with.
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DISENTANGLING FAITH FROM CORPORATISM
Introduction
For a long time I was enthralled with “leadership.” I read everything I could on leadership. It was one of those intellectual itches that needed to be scratched. During this season of my life I was leading a team of people with a large parachurch organization and I found much of it to be helpful.
In the midst of that time I was also a member of a church where the pastor, who would become my mentor, was decidedly not pursuing the kinds of leadership stuff that I was. There was a cognitive dissonance that created deep frustration. Didn't he know that if would leverage the leadership strategies that I was learning about that he could grow the church faster and more efficiently?
When I became a pastor in a local church I participated in the research for another pastor who was doing his doctoral work in leadership. As we worked through the calls and discussions I grew more and more frustrated as it became clearer to me that the kind of leadership that we were seeing more in the church was rooted in the gospel.
What was going on?
Pastor as CEO
The consumerism of the American church necessitated that the pastor become a CEO concerned only with building their own platform so as to grow the numbers of people in the church.
There was a line in a leadership book that still haunts me. I'm paraphrasing but it went something like this: It said that the pastor was God's man leading the congregation toward the vision that God had instilled. Once the pastor knew God's vision then it was the pastor's responsibility to shepherd the sheep. Any sheep that disagreed with the pastor's vision was really a wolf. And you know what shepherds do to wolves? They shoot them.
We have bought into the idea that the church is a business. And yes, I'm using the word “bought” intentionally. We have turned what is to be the gathering of the family of God into big business. The main success criteria for most churches is bucks, butts, and buildings. The three “Bs”.
In a large number of churches around the country the conversations amongst leadership teams boil down to those three success criteria. How do we get more people to get more money to make a better building to get more people... and so the cycle goes.
Do we as pastors religiously coat everything? Absolutely. I don't think there's a single pastor that would say that they are focused on the 3Bs. We would all say that what matters to us is people hearing and responding to the gospel of Jesus. Every single one of us would say that we want people to grow in their faith.
Sadly, in practice for many of us we have lost the plot.
When the leadership of the church goes corporate and the focus becomes “growing the church (by the 3Bs)” then you end up with the same kinds of things that happen in the corporate world. Pastors become insulated from the congregation. They get placed on a pedestal. Issues within the church get covered up, handled, and swept away because you can't have anything hurt the “momentum.”
Power becomes the currency of the leaders. Spiritual abuse begins to run rampant. Members of the church are nothing more than customers. Political games get played. People get used for the sake of the “vision.”
We have bought so deeply into the “leadership” cult of the secular business world that in many of our fastest growing churches you could strip away the Jesus aspects most wouldn't even notice.
Conclusion
Is it any surprise that when people see behind the curtain of the leadership of many churches that they walk away from the faith? I don't think so. These men and women that they thought were pursuing God are merely pursuing their own power and glory. The people that they thought were humble servants are actually power hungry control freaks. No, we shouldn't be surprised.
We must disentangle the faith from this corporatism.
What if we pastors instead of being CEOs simply sought to love well, being servants of those entrusted to us, and were simply present? What if we were actually open and authentic with those in our care? What if instead of seeking deep relationships outside the congregation we pursued them inside? What if we were simply content with caring for those in our immediate neighborhood not worrying about “growing the church (3Bs)”? What if we simply sought to model Jesus self-sacrificial love?
What if?
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DISENTANGLING FAITH FROM CONSUMERISM
Introduction
It was the summer of 1998 and I was raising support at the beginning of my time on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ. I was in the car on my way to a church gathering with a potential donor. He was going to be connecting me with a number of people from his church at this gathering. During our hour drive across Metro Detroit he shared with me his take on the future of the church in America. It went something like this...
The future of the church is the mega-church. The small neighborhood churches are just not going to be able to compete. Mega churches have the means by which to give the people what they want. We have plans at our church to offer so many different things that people will be able to hang out at the church all the time. We are planning a recreation complex, a coffee shop, even a restaurant! Everything we do is to meet the wants of folks from our community. Small churches just don't have the resources. They are going to lose and eventually, every town will have one or two mega churches. Our resources will allow us to have dynamic worship experiences and we will be able to bring in the most dynamic speakers. Our band is planning on publishing and selling CD soon too. The production value that we put into our worship services is second to none. Truly, if someone can't find what they are looking for here it's because they aren't really trying.
The conversation lasted an hour or so, but this was the basic gist. (Let me be very clear, the issues of consumerism and the critiques following are as prevalent in small churches as they are in mega-churches.)
When I was on staff with Cru at Illinois State I remember a student from Chicago who attended a famous mega-church in the suburbs came to one of our weekly meetings. I was excited to talk with him because he was a committed Christian and I thought that it would be great to have him involved so he could grow in his faith. He informed that he would not be coming back. Why? The production value of the weekly meeting isn't good enough. I just didn't compare to church back home. None of the campus ministries did and none of the churches in this podunk town had good ones either.
Conversations with so many people over the years about a church didn't “feed me” or didn't offer a particular program that I wanted or how the coffee was sub par. These things and so many lead to “church shopping.”
The American Christian church has become driven by consumerism.
How do we become bigger and bigger? How do we get more people? What do we need to do grow faster and faster? What will it take to attract more people?
Conversely those being shaped by this kind of church ask a different set of questions. What does this church offer me? Does this church meet my needs and wants? Does this church agree with me? Does this church feed me?
Consumerism
Consumerism is defined as, “the protection or promotion of the interests of consumers.”
When we think about the post World War 2 American experience it seems to me that consumerism is part and parcel of that experience.
I was watching 1923, the prequel to the show Yellowstone, the other night. The Dutton family had gone into the town of Bozeman, Montana. While they were walking around downtown they happened upon a salesman for electronic appliances. He was selling washing machines and a variety of other electronic conveniences. There was a great line in that scene that really struck me, “Sir, if we buy this stuff from you we begin working for you and not ourselvs.”
What a succinct illustration of the problem of consumerism.
Our whole society has been touched by it.
I am not sure that there are very many places that we go where we aren't consumers.
Consuming, that is something we are good at. Consider the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday. It is a day when America consumes. We buy all the things, whether we need them or not.
When I consume food do you know what happens? My plate is empty. It's gone. Eventually, I will again get hungry. I won't be able to eat that same food. It's gone. I need new food. So I buy more. Food is of course a necessity. But it simply illustrates the point.
When Consumerism Comes to Church
The Church ought to be a place where we do not consume. When we read our Scriptures we see that worship is offered, it is given, it is not about “me.” At the very least once a week we should have this counter-cultural moment where our attnetion is focused on something other than the self.
By and large, that's not the case.
Now, we church shop like we are buying a house or some shoes.
Church is all about “me.”
When consumerism comes to church we lose the gospel.
This is part of the reason so many people are becoming fed up with American Christianity. They are rightly seeing it as an empty sham that is nothing more than candy. A Christianity that is consumer driven offers us nothing in the face of the pain and heartache that is life. A Consumeristic Christianity is one rife with hypocrisy lead by power hungry pastors looking to build their own platforms and kingdoms.
As the ancient Scriptures tell us, eventually all will be brought to light.
Consumer driven Christianity would have felt at home with the crowds who at the bread and fish and then chased Jesus around the lake. He chastised them saying that what they wanted was their bellies filled, they didn't want him.
Conclusion
I think in large part this shift began with Charles Finney in the Second Great Awakening. He tweaked the gospel message to be about personal salvation. Billy Graham in the 1950s and beyond made it even more pronounced. The various parachurch ministries also jumped on the personal salvation band wagon.
All of a sudden the gospel was a sales pitch to get individuals saved.
The gospel is not a decision point. It is a proclamation of the work that God has done through Christ in the crucifixion and resurrection. It is a call to follow the narrow way of self-sacrificial love that we demonstrated by Jesus and taught by the earliest followers of the Way in the Scriptures. The gospel is a summons to die to self so as to live free to express faith in love.
The gospel is not something to consume.
No, it is upside down from our American culture.
We have to disentangle our faith from consumerism. Following Jesus for what he can give me will always end up in failure and frustration. Following Jesus because living the way he did with compassion, mercy, and self-sacrificial love will open me up to something beyond myself. When we live this way we discover that there is no us vs them, there is simply “we-all”. If we can pursue this way of Christ contrary to the consumerism of our culture then we will become givers and in our giving we discover that we are cared for.
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FEBRUARY 1, 2024
Psalm 147:1-11, 20c; Proverbs 12:10-21; Galatians 5:2-15
I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you >attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from >Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying >relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion >nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far >more interior: faith expressed in love. – Galatians 5:4-6, The Message
How often do I seek to live by my own religious plans and projects?
All. The. Time.
I remember when I first began learning about the depths of grace in books like The Ragamuffin Gospel, What's So Amazing About Grace, and Putting Amazing Back Into Grace. It was like someone took the blinders off me. All of a sudden there was this overwhelming sense of freedom that I never knew existed in my faith life.
But, then something happened.
I became legalistic about freedom.
As Paul might have said, I stopped practicing conscientious religion for a disregard of religion.
My freedom had become license.
Both legalism and license are missing the mark.
Grace frees us to live a life of faith expressed in love.
What a remarkable idea to consider.
My life is too often not one of faith expressed in love. It is often faith expressed in rules, expectations, demands, or control. Too many times everything boils down to a simple recipe of “do this” and “don't do that.”
But Grace calls me deeper. It calls me to a place of love. Love means that I'm free to serve, to be present, to listen, to simply be.
Grace-Love it's not easy to put your arms around. You have to just do it, live it, practice it. And oh does it take practice!
The further into living a life of Grace-Love the more you find yourself in situations that you can't control. So, the temptation is ever present to grasp control back. I have to keep learning that the call, the deep call of Grace-Love is that of letting go.
It's neither license nor legalism. It something far deeper, indeed, a faith expressed in love.
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JANUARY 31, 2024
Psalm 35:1-10; Jeremiah 29:1-14; Mark 5:1-20
One of my favorite movies is Garden State. There is a marvelous scene where the two main characters are sitting in a pool and they are talking about, “home” and “family.”
Andrew Largeman: You know that point in your life when you realize the house >you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you >have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew Largeman: You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens >one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel >homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, >you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of >home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle >or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all >family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.
What resonates with me this morning is that line about how “home” is an idea that you create for yourself.
As I was reading these passages this morning this movie scene immediately popped into my head. In Jeremiah he's sending a letter to the people in exile and telling them create for themselves homes in Babylon. In Mark Jesus sends the healed demoniac back to his home country. Home is a theme that for whatever just jumped out of the text to me.
Home is not something that just happens. We cultivate it. We create it. Home can be anywhere! I'm watching my children create a sense of home at their respective universities. Sure, they love coming to my home for a visit, but there is a restlessness that is ever present because this house is no longer home for them.
I think there is something innate in us all to create a home. It's a reflection of the Divine. The first stories humanity told were about the Divine making a home for us. Now we reflect that every day.
In some sense we all find ourselves in exile. We await the eternal home. But until then, perhaps we would be wise to remember the letter of Jeremiah...
This is the Message from GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies, Israel’s God, to all the exiles >I’ve taken from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and make yourselves at home. “Put in gardens and eat what grows in that country. “Marry and have children. Encourage your children to marry and have children so >that you’ll thrive in that country and not waste away. “Make yourselves at home there and work for the country’s welfare. “Pray for Babylon’s well-being. If things go well for Babylon, things will go well for >you.”
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JANUARY 30, 2024
Psalm 35:1-10; Numbers 22:22-28; 1 Corinthians 7:32-40
One of the things that I really like doing is spending time reading in The Message. The reason for this is that it often opens my eyes to familiar passages in different ways. It gets me to think about them differently. I really need this because I have spent so much time thinking about the Scriptures from a theological angle that to have my normal perceptions jarred is so helpful.
Today's reading, for instance, 1 Corinthians 7:32-40 is all about Paul's teaching on singleness and celibacy. This passage has always lead me into a million questions about marriage, singleness, etc...
Reading today in The Message, there was this translation of verse 32:
I want you to live as free of complications as possible.
It jolted me.
I stared at the line and it dawned on me that perhaps Paul's heart in this section was just that, he was calling people to consider how live lives that are free of complications so as to limit the things that demand our attention.
Could it be that that is the principle here? Is it possible that is the core of what Paul is talking about and using marriage as an illustration, while also sharing his opinion?
I think it might be.
So this then leads me to what I'm thinking about today, “What are the complications in my life that are taking away my attention from what matters most?”
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JANUARY 29, 2024
Psalm 35:1-10 // Numbers 22:1-21 // Acts 21:17-26
But let me run loose and free, celebrating GOD’s great work, Every bone in my body laughing, singing, “GOD, there’s no one like you. You put the down-and-out on their feet and protect the unprotected from bullies!”
This morning as I was processing these passages it struck me that what I want is so often very shallow, very lame, and so much less than what God would have for me.
The stories told in Numbers and Acts each in their own ways point to the reality that there is more to what God is doing than what I often see. I get focused on immediate circumstances so easily. I lose the forest for the trees.
God, typically, has something so much more for me than what I think I want in the immediate moment.
I am reminded of the C.S. Lewis quote, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses.
Oh that I would pursue the infinite joy that is offered me!
And yet, where is that infinite joy put on display? It is put on display when when God puts the “down-and-out on their feet and protect(s) the unprotected from bullies!”
This is where I will find the infinite joy! When I get involved with what God is doing in the world then I will move beyond my weak and desires to those things that are much stronger.
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DISENTANGLING FAITH
Introduction
Every December when it comes time to put up the Christmas decorations I have one job that is harder than the rest. This job makes me feel frustrated and a bit annoyed. The job of disentangling the outdoor lights is no easy task. It requires an engineering degree, patience, and a keen spatial sense. None of which I have. Yet, I persevere and press on toward the goal of disentangling the lights.
When I do, the results are magic! That moment when they come on and the house glows with the warm soft light from the twinkle lights just looks like Christmas. It makes me smile. But, to get to the beauty I had to go through the pain of disentangling.
In the United States of America the Christian faith has become entangled with a myriad of things. When Christian bookstores were everywhere you could go in and see the entanglement with your own two eyes. From Testamints to Christian self-help books to t-shirts to leadership books to Bibles in every flavor imaginable. Yes, this radical faith that subverted the Roman Empire and changed the world has become entangled with an American culture that demands uniformity, convenience, and ease.
More insidious than the entanglement with consumerism is that it has become entangled into a quest for power.
The power to dominate its enemies. The power to control culture. The power to control the government. The power to control religious communities.
For many, the Christian faith in America has become so entangled with one political party that they are almost interchangeable terms.
In recent years many of us have begun to see the ramifications of such an entanglement and have begun the process of disentangling our faith from American-ism. As you pull on the string that seems to be dangling for each of us at different places you begin to see how deep the entanglement goes.
It's like the Christmas lights. Just when you think you have it disentangled, there is a little bit more. One more knot. One more tangle. You have to keep going until the job is finished.
When we begin this process of disentangling our faith there is a temptation to say that there's no right place to end up. That's just not true. The right place to end up is that place that Jesus talked about with the Samaritan woman at the well. The goal is to worship God in spirit and truth. It's not about figuring out which mountain is “right.” No, it's about getting to know this God for whom God is, apart from all that entangles.
As we begin the journey of disentangling what will inevitably happen is that those for whom the entanglement has become their identity will get very angry. Whether their identity is in being “Evangelical,” “Progressive,” “Republican,” “Democrat,” “Pro-life,” “Pro-Choice,” “American,” or any other adjective you can think of, when you begin to disentangle from these secondary identities those for whom they matter more than knowing Christ will feel threatened and may become very upset. This can lead to broken relationships and significant heartache.
Disentangling our faith from secondary identities is not easy, it's not a fad, and it's not new. The story of the Christian faith is the story of disentangling from secondary identities to living in the way of Christ. The story repeats itself over and over and over again. As each new secondary identity raises up, the story starts anew.
This is going to be the first in a series of posts about disentangling our faith from secondary identities in the hopes of moving towards a clearer understanding of what it means to follow in the way of Christ.
My organizing principle can be summarized in Philippians 3:10-11 where Paul of Tarsus wrote, “I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it.”
I hope you will come along with me. Over the last twelve years or so, I have seen the good that comes through the painful process of disentangling my faith from “that inferior stuff.” It has opened me up to a deeper love of God and others than I ever thought possible. The pain, the discomfort, the frustration, has all been worth it.
I resonate deeply with what Paul who wrote right after our organizing principle:
“I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.
So let’s keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us. If any of you have something else in mind, something less than total commitment, God will clear your blurred vision—you’ll see it yet! Now that we’re on the right track, let’s stay on it.”
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JANUARY 16, 2024
Psalm 86; 1 Samuel 15:10-31; Acts 5:1-11
Do you think all GOD wants are sacrifices— empty rituals just for show? He wants you to listen to him! Plain listening is the thing, not staging a lavish religious production.
“The ends justify the means.”
Right?
If the result is good then how we go about bringing that result doesn't matter, right? RIGHT!?
Not even close.
If we claim to be on the way of Christ then the means, the how, is more important than the ends.
That passage about Saul from 1 Samuel 15 is almost a parable for our time. So many followers of Jesus are willing to sell their souls for their political ends. If we are honest with ourselves many of us read that story about Saul and think, “What's the big deal? He won. That's mattered.” Yet, in the economy of God that isn't what matters. What matters is the way you do the things that you are doing. Living in the way is all that matters.
Why?
Why does the way matter more than the end?
Because God is sovereign and good. We are able to trust that this sovereign and good God will bring about the ends that God wants. Because of this we enter into the way realizing that the ends are not the goal but the journey.
What I'm wrestling with today, “Am I embracing the journey or am I simply pursuing an end?”
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JANUARY 8, 2023
Psalm 69:1-5, 30-36; Genesis 17:1-18; Romans 4:1-12
What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?”
The juxtaposition of Genesis 17 against Romans 4 (which is a discussion of Genesis 15) is remarkable.
Paul holds up Abraham in his letter to the Romans as a paragon of faith. Yet, as we read in Genesis 17 this faith of Abraham's was one that was rife with doubt. Abraham was no fool. He understood what was happening in the promises being offered him from the Divine. A 90 year old couldn't possibly have a child. So Abraham says this, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!” (Genesis 17:18)
The father of the faith was one who doubted.
The one whose belief was credited to him as righteousness didn't quite believe.
I mean, it's amazing isn't it? It's not like Abraham offered a plan to go adopt a child. No, Abraham was hoping that his (by our standards) illegitimate son by his wife's servant (slave and likely could not have said no to the demand to be impregnated by Abraham) could receive the blessing offered by God. This is all an absolute mess. Yet, Paul lifts this man up as the father of the faith and God says his faith is credited to him as righteousness.
There is nothing clean or perfect or easy about faith.
Faith is hard. Faith is ugly. Faith is doubt. Faith is failing. Faith is painful. Faith is grace. Faith is mercy. Faith is love.
Faith is a bare knuckled brawl to hold on to hope in the face of an apparent reality that doesn't make sense.
The faith that we see in the Scripture is not something that comes from ourselves. It is a faith that is really and truly wrapped up in the faithfulness of the Divine.
In the end, it is the faithfulness of the Divine that brings about all the good in the story. Both for Abraham and for us.
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JANUARY 5, 2024
Psalm 110; Proverbs 22:1-9; Luke 6:27-31
“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
Whoever sows injustice reaps calamity, and the rod they wield in fury will be broken.
It is fascinating to me that these two readings are side by side. I was pondering on the second from Proverbs 22:8 and wondering, “how does the rod of injustice get broken?” Then BOOM, Luke 6:27-28, love.
This then leads to the question that I am confronted with:
Am I listening?
Perhaps the better question is, “am I hearing?“
I think of the scene from the film White Men Can't Jump where they are riding in the car talking about listening to Jimi Hendrix as opposed to hearing Jimi. Wesley Snipes character is emphatic that you are supposed to “hear” not “listen” to Jimi. Later in pivotal point of change for Woody Harrelson's character Snipes says, “Now you hear Jimi.”
We think we need to listen to Jesus, but the reality is that we need to hear him. There is something deeper that happens when we are heard as opposed to listened to.
I think the difference is that hearing leads to a response.
To love the way Jesus calls me to love in Luke 6 is something that I can give lip service to if I am listening. But, if I am hearing then it demands a response. The way of Jesus is radical.
I am wrestling today with, “Am I hearing?”
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JANUARY 4, 2023
Psalm 110; Proverbs 3:1-12; James 4:11-17
My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.
I know that it's not cool to talk about “discipline.” Yet, I was really struck by the passage this morning from Proverbs. I mean, honestly, all the passages were punches in the gut today. But, this little verse really stood out.
It seems like we are living in a time where the idea of being disciplined by God is somehow counter God's divine love. Yet, when I think about my children and being a good dad, my disciplining of them was just as important as my grace toward them. It is in discipline that we grow. Just like a plant needs to be pruned to reach its full potential, so do we need discipline at times to reach ours.
Too often we think of God's discipline as some sort of fire and brimstone laden with wrath. But, the writer of Proverbs describes the LORD as a father who delights in his son. I delight in both my son and daughter. My discipline of them was rarely one fueled by anger. It was typically fueled by a desire to see them become the kind of people that I knew they could be.
If I, an imperfect earthly dad, can discipline in love for the good of my children, how much more so would the Divine?
God's discipline is not something that I need to run from. But, something that I can look toward as loving and compassionate so that I can become the best version of myself. It is the very renewal of the image of God in me.
What are your thoughts about the discipline of God?
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DECEMBER 14, 2023
Philippians 3:7-11
Advent, Day 12
“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”
I love this passage. It's one my favorite passages in all the Scriptures. It is one of those that just resonate deeply within my soul.
I remember hearing this passage preached by Sinclair Ferguson at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, MO. I will never forget his Scottish brogue booming out verse 11.
This desire to know Christ has become the driving force of my life. More than anything I want to truly know Christ. This knowledge that moves beyond facts and figures. I want to have an experiential knowledge of Christ.
The problem with this is that it means I have to experience a tension that never ends.
This tension of resurrection life and suffering.
Too often we want to believe that if we are walking closely with Christ then life will be easy and good. The fact of the matter is that as we know Christ we are going further up and further in to experiential relationship with him. This means experiencing resurrection life and suffering. The tension of the two is the means by which know Christ intimately.
During Advent we are reminded that in the midst of the suffering there is a longing for the resurrection life that will ultimately win out. So, we look toward his second Advent. The Advent of all things being made new and all suffering ceased.
Today I'm wrestling with, “Am I embracing the tension of resurrection life and suffering or am I just trying to avoid suffering?”
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DECEMBER 12, 2023
Isaiah 4:2-6
Advent, Day 10
“Then the Lord will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything the glory will be a canopy. It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.”
I've never thought about the glory of God being a shelter and a refuge.
This ties in a bit with yesterday's passage about knowing who God is and that providing confidence, I think.
The storms of life will come. That's a given. Nobody gets through this life unscathed. All of us are going to face pain, heartbreak, and grief. The question is what will we do when that pain, heartbreak, and grief become present in our lives?
We can fight. We can flee. We can freeze.
Or so the contemporary wisdom goes.
But, what if there was something else that we could do? What if we could rest? What if we could find rest in the knowledge that the glory of God offers refuge and shelter in the storm?
I typically fight when hard stuff comes. Anger is my default emotional response. I don't get sad, I don't get scared, I get angry.
Over the last few years though I have been learning from watching my friend die that there's a different path. There is this path of rest. This way of yielding to Divine love and in so doing grieve and also find joy. It's a tension of the already but not yet that gets played out in real time.
Today I'm wrestling with the question, “Can I choose to rest in the glorious divine love in the face of grief and pain?”
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DECEMBER 11, 2023
Psalm 27
Advent, Day 9
”...even then I will be confident.”
Psalm 27 was one of the readings today and it has this little line, “even the I will be confident.”
I am thinking a lot about what it means to be confident right now for a series of talks that I will be giving in March, so of course this popped off the page.
The Psalm opens with a declaration of the identity of who God is for the psalmist. God is described as the light, salvation, and stronghold. Because of this the psalmist declares that they have no fear.
How little fear does the psalmist have?
“Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident.”
I can't imagine what it would be like to have an army besiege me or war break out against me, but I'm pretty sure that I'd experience deep fear. If these bad things would befall me, would I still have confidence?
It turns out that confidence in this situation is rooted in the sure knowledge of the identity of the Divine. The psalmist doesn't wonder or doubt who the Divine is. There is no question in the psalmist's mind that the Divine offers light, salvation, and is a stronghold.
Having a sure sense of who God is what provides a foundation that offers confidence, even in the midst of great distress.
Today, I'm pondering: “Do I have a deep awareness of the grace, mercy, and lovingkindness of God so that when I face the storms of life I will have confidence?”
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DECEMBER 7, 2023
Hosea 6:1-6
Advent, Day 5
“Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears.”
This is one of those passages that grabs me consistently in so many different ways. I read it and sit, almost stunned by its beauty and its challenge to my soul.
This morning the line quoted above was like a 2x4 between the eyes.
How often is this true of me regarding God?
Whenever I don't get my way with God my love grows cold so quickly. Whenever I experience any disappointment with my wants and desires my love dissipates.
“Whenever” happens more than I'd like to admit.
I am sure glad that Amy's love for me is not like my love for God.
What's wild to me is that God has an amazing track record in my life. When things really matter, God has made God's presence felt in my life. God in God's grace has helped me gain perspective sooner rather than later in those seasons of significant pain.
God's love for me has been enduring. God's love for me has proven faithful.
Yet, my love for God is like the morning mist.
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DECEMBER 6, 2023
Luke 21:34-38
Advent, Day 4
““Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap.”
I've been meditating on today's passage for a few hours now and something has clicked in my heart as I have pondered on it.
A number of years ago God broke me of my legalism about all sorts of things. But, then God needed to break of my legalism about not being legalistic. That was a fun (yeah let's call it that) journey.
What got my mind spinning was the connection between carousing, drunkenness, and the anxieties of life. I can see how carousing and drunkenness aren't good things and are choices that I make. But, the “anxieties of life?” I felt like I was in a segment from Sesame Street's “one of these things is not like the other.” How could Jesus compare the first two to the third?
Well, it finally clicked when my mind was able to connect Jesus' prescription for the problems he listed. Namely, “watch and pray.”
Carousing is defined as, “the activity of drinking alcohol and enjoying oneself with others in a noisy, lively way.” Drunkenness is drinking alcohol to excess. Anxiety is, “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.”
Jesus prescribes us to watch and pray otherwise our hearts are weighed down by these things.
Enjoying time with friends and enjoying alcohol are not bad in and of themselves. It's when we take them to a place of excess that they become problematic. Planning for the future and counting the costs for tomorrow aren't bad things until they are taken to a place of excess.
Alcohol has not been an issue for me in my life. My drug of choice is food. Food is where I find control and seek emotional solace.
If Jesus were specifically speaking to me he would say that I need to be careful otherwise my heart will get weighed down with gluttony and the anxieties of life.
In this season of Advent we are in this time of waiting that begins in the darkness. When the world is dark we begin to feel out of control. So, we start grabbing for anything that makes us feel like we have control again. Food, drink, anxiety. If we are not careful these things will weigh our hearts down. We will find ourselves in a very real sense, out of our minds.
So, we watch and pray.
Isn't it interesting, there's not a single mention here of reading the Scriptures or meditating on God's word. No, the call is to watch and pray. That is, we are to seek to enter into the presence of the Divine through prayer.
I think Jesus calls us to this because if we can acknowledge that we are not God and if we can acknowledge that we can trust God to be in control, then we will find freedom from the anxieties of this life. We can enjoy a good meal without becoming gluttonous. We can enjoy a good party with friends without it becoming carousing.
When we have found peace, that wholeness of self and rest in God, then we will find freedom.
This is the hope of Advent.
It is a hope of freedom to joy rooted in the God that cares for all things.
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DECEMBER 5, 2023
Micah 4:6-13
Advent, Day 3
In that day,” declares the LORD, “I will gather the lame; I will assemble the exiles and those I have brought to grief. I will make the lame my remnant, those driven away a strong nation.”
This verse is fascinating to me.
Honestly, it challenges me and at the same time encourages me.
I am astounded by the God that self-identifies as the one who brought people to grief. There's no running from it. Through Micah's voice the God of the universe owns that fact that God has brought people to grief.
What do we do that?
How do we respond to it?
Let's be clear, this prophet is writing to a people in exile. A people that was indeed being judged by the divine. So, perhaps my (and maybe your) immediate response needs to be a bit tempered. The grief here is due to the experience of exile and judgement.
OK, fair enough.
Yet, the focus here is not on the judgement. But, it is on the other aspect of this, namely, that God will gather, assemble, and make strong.
In the midst of grief and exile God is at work doing something that will undo all of it.
This gives me hope.
I don't know about you, but when life gets messy I wonder, “where is God?” It turns out that God is working in the background and that I can hope that there will be a great undoing. If God does this for those whom were disobedient and under judgement, how much more so will God do this for those this side of the resurrection?
As I read and ponder these words and thinking about what the prophets said about exile and the remnant, I realize more and more how the message of resurrection and reconciliation in Christ carried such power.
Advent allows us to enter into the waiting through holy imagination that those before us lived through. They lived through the hope of the coming of the undoing. We get to experience the undoing every day.
Today I'm thinking about, “Will I recognize the undoing of grief all around me?”
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DECEMBER 4, 2023
Micah 4:1-5
Advent, Day 2
They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.
As we fully enter into the Advent season, I am looking forward to reading and meditating on the prophets. Each year most of the readings come from them during this season.
Advent is a time of preparation and fasting and waiting and hoping.
As I read Micah 4:1-5 today there was all kinds of good stuff in just a brief passage. But, the second half of verse three resonated deeply with me.
I don't know about you, but my heart is breaking because of the war and violence that seems to be everywhere. Israel and Hamas, Russia and Ukraine, the genocide of the Uighurs in China, the ongoing violence in Haiti, the never-ending wars on the continent of Africa, not to mention the violence that leads news broadcasts locally every day.
Of war and violence there seems to be no end.
All would seem hopeless if I didn't have the hopeful promise of a day coming when, “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
What is fascinating to me is the beginning of verse three, “He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.” This is not a pie in the sky kind of hope. This is a rugged and real hope. The days of peace will not be without disputes. It's just that the day I long for will have the disputes settled without violence because the Lord will settle them.
Oh how I long for this day!
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DECEMBER 1, 2023
Psalm 80:1-19
“Restore us, LORD God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.”
This repeated line in Psalm 80 rings out to me today.
This psalm opens by crying out for help and as the cry continues there seems to be a recognition that the people deserved a rebuke from God. The first time this line is uttered it is in reference to a perceived persecution but then the second time it is in light of the recognition of rebuke.
We live in a day and age where Christians, especially Evangelical Christians, feel like they are being persecuted. From much of my reading about culture and politics this feeling of persecution is what lead the majority of my brothers and sisters in Christ to support Donal Trump for the presidency. They are afraid and they want a strong man to protect them. As I look around I don't see any persecution. I see loads of persecution complexes but no real persecution.
I think what we are seeing is that many of us are confusing persecution with rebuke.
As I look on my own life, any time that someone calls me out for my failing to love well I initially receive it as persecution. It is often not until I have had time to reflect that it was a good an proper rebuke and I can confess, concur, and change.
On the whole, the American Christian church appears to be in the midst of a season of rebuke and we sure don't like it.
We have failed to love well.
I have failed to love well.
Today I'm wrestling with, “How can I grow in receiving rebuke not as persecution but as an opportunity to grow in love?”
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NOVEMBER 27, 2023
2 Timothy 2:19-26
“Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels.”
Do you know how to get something to go “viral” on the internet? Make a foolish and stupid argument.
It's easy. I've had a few.
Do you know what happens after a time though? Your soul begins to wither. You become cynical and jaded. Your heart hardens. Happiness is found in other people's distress and anger.
It's gross.
Over the last number of years I've begun to intentionally avoid such things on the internet. I will have hard conversations in person. Because when we sit face to face we can't forget that the other person in made in God's likeness. But, even then, I am constantly on guard about whether or not the conversation is beneficial or if it's just arguing for the sake of arguing.
Particularly, this is true about sports and politics.
It's becoming more true of just about anything.
I want to be a person that discusses difficult things. I want to be a person who speaks up against injustice. I want to be a person that speaks for the truth.
I do not want to be involved in foolish and stupid arguments.
The latter demands that I listen and be fully present in the hard conversations. It requires me to hear what the other person is saying and noticing when the discussion has jumped the shark.
Today, I'm wrestling with this, “Am I fully present in the midst of difficult conversations or am I only concerned with winning an argument?”
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NOVEMBER 20, 2023
Romans 2:1-11 (The Message)
“Those people are on a dark spiral downward. But if you think that leaves you on the high ground where you can point your finger at others, think again. Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors. But God isn’t so easily diverted. He sees right through all such smoke screens and holds you to what you’ve done.”
Do you ever read the Bible and think, “Well, that bit was written just for me!”?
That happened this morning. As I ponder on this passage I am reminded of that old saying, “When you point the finger that someone, there's three pointing back at you!”
Over the last week I have a multiple conversations with people about this idea of taking the log out of our own eye before trying to remove the speck from our neighbor's eye. It is amazing to me that I continue to have to wrestle with this in my own life. You would think that after kindergarten I'd have figured it out.
But, no.
Here I am still a judgemental jerk on so many levels.
I experience happiness when “those” people get it. I make excuses my people blow it.
What is it with me and this desire to judge others?
Well, this passage reminds me that it means there are likely issues in my own life that I'm seeking to distract myself and God from. Once again I find myself needing to do ever greater introspection to be sure that I'm seeking to love well.
I think I'm coming to learn that growing in my faith is like becoming stronger in the gym. As you get stronger you have increase the weight that you lift so that you can continue to grow stronger. As I go deeper into my faith I have to go deeper still into seeing the shadows of my own life to bring light to them.
Just because the shadow isn't as long as it used to be doesn't mean it's not there. I am learning that I can notice it most clearly as I judge others. That's the flashing light that says, “Hey bub, you to shine the light over here and deal with this!”
Today I am pondering, “Do I think that I can distract God from my shortfalls by pointing out the falling short of others?”
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WHEN RELIGION GOES BAD
God-washed power pollutes everything it touches but there is hope
Over the last year I've read three books that have caused me significant pause.
The first was, A Church Called Tov by Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer. The second was, Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez. The third was, The Flag and the Cross by Phillip Gorski and Samuel Perry.
All three of these books evaluate the state of the American Evangelical church from slightly different perspectives. A Church Called Tov offers a prescription and hope for how to be a church that is good. Jesus and John Wayne looks at the historical development for how the American Evangelical church became the church that we see all around us. The Flag and the Cross is a data driven book that takes a look at White Christian Nationalism.
These three books have helped me answer the question, “Why?”
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Why are we in the situation that we are in? What has happened to the American church? How did we get to a place where the many people are more aligned to political agendas than they are to the cause of Christ? Why are we seeing so many pastors falling morally? Why are so many people waking up to realize that they have been abused spiritually by the men and women that they have entrusted their souls to?
Why?
While all three of these have slightly different angles, I think they are all wrestling with the same fundamental question. How does religion deal with having power? Specifically how does Christianity handle power? Even more specifically, what happens when Evangelicalism ascends to a place of significant cultural and political power?
I would encourage you to read the books, They are accessible and have been helpful.
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As I have pondered what these authors have written I have come to realize that there is a significant rot in the heart of American Evangelical Christianity.
Christianity has always thrived when it was not in power. It is a faith that was formed in the crucible of persecution. As power has shifted to the West, Christianity came with it. Over the last 150 years or so we have seen Christianity come to the fore as a power in and of itself.
One would hope that a faith that is rooted in self-sacrifical love, love of neighbor, and love of enemy would handle power well.
Sadly, we have failed the test.
We have failed the test corporately and we have failed individually as well.
What I am seeing all around me is the reality that power corrupts and God-washed power corrupts infinitely more.
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C.S. Lewis wrote in his Reflections on the Psalms, “If the Divine call does not make us better, it will make us very much worse. Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. Of all created beings the wickedest is one who originally stood in the immediate presence of God.”
Christianity has been gutted from the inside out. In much of American Christianity there is little spiritual formation or moral formation. It is all about “getting people saved.”
“Pray this prayer and get saved.”
The desire to sell eternal fire insurance has created a culture that is a mile wide and an inch deep. We are reaping now what we have sown over the last seventy years or so.
Christianity is now a token to trade for positions of power. It is no longer a life transforming faith.
In those first decades of the Christian faith it was known as, “The Way.” There was a lived aspect to Christianity. The expectation was that following in the way of Jesus was of utter importance.
Today? Today we simply disregard the teachings and ways of Jesus if they get in our way of power.
We have seen the rise to power of the “religious bad men.”
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Is there any hope?
I think so.
If we can first acknowledge the reality that many of us hunger and thirst for power more than we do righteousness, that would be a good start. We need to own up to the fact that the grievances that many have toward the institution of the church are real and true.
We need to learn again the importance of spiritual formation for the one who is seeking to follow Jesus.
There must be a re-ordering of our lives. The way of Jesus must be first. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)” Jesus is arguing for a re-orienting of our lives.
Jesus' way is ultimately self-sacrificial rooted in love. When Jesus was offered power he said, “No.”
In the letter to the Philippians, Paul of Tarsus challenged the church there to relate to one another in light of the way of Christ. He wrote of Christ,
“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!”
There is hope. It is rooted not in the pursuit of power but in the pursuit of sharing the mind of Christ.
I desperately want this to be true of me. I so badly want to be a person for who is living the way of Jesus rooted in self-sacrificial love.
I can not change the world. I can change me and I can model this way for those whom have trusted themselves to my spiritual care.
It is high time for the rise of the religious good people.
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NOVEMBER 16, 2023
Judge 2:6-15
“After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.”
There may be no more enduring meme than the angry old guy yelling, “Get off my lawn!” It seems that every generation feels like the “youth” are terrible and only getting worse. They look at the world and say, “These darn kids are hopeless.”
The younger generation mocks the older as well. “OK Boomer,” is the refrain that rings out these days.
Perhaps it's human nature to dislike the young or the old.
What strikes me is that so often we complain about the “youth” without taking a moment to consider the reality that those of us in the previous generations are responsible for the emerging generations.
Do we really care?
The emerging generations don't appear out of nowhere. They parented and raised by someone. Who could it be? Oh, yeah, the previous generations.
As I read this passage it finally hit me that the people in the previous generations didn't continue to pass on the stories of the God-Who-Saves to the next. Eventually, the people found themselves alone in the wilderness so to speak. It isn't the fault of the emerging generation.
I am coming to think that every emerging generation is a reflection of the inner realities of the previous generation.
Think about that for a moment.
We take what is in us and implant those values and principles into those we raise. They then embody those things. If we don't like what we see, it's our fault, not theirs. People can only ultimately only know what they've been taught.
And more is caught than taught.
Wait, what?
How we live is the clearest display of what we really think and believe. That gets caught by the emerging generations.
What we see in them that we appreciate and despise are things that we as the previous generation implanted in them through our display of life and what we specifically taught. Some of it also a reaction against the things that they see as hypocritical and wrong (which it almost always is).
The question I'm pondering, “How am I displaying for the emerging generations the life of love, grace, and mercy?”
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NOVEMBER 15. 2023
Jeremiah 31:31-34
“I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
Self-centeredness has been on my mind lately due to the readings that have I been meditating on this week. As I come to this little passage where God unveils the next development in God's covenantal relationship with God's people, I am struck by the communal aspect of it.
In American Christianity we have often been enamored with the individual. We make all our heroes into John Wayne types. Strong, solitary, and not needing anyone. Yet, this is not what we actually see in the Scriptures. All of the heroes of the faith were deeply embedded in community.
Our fascination with the individual has bled over into our understanding of what God is up to in the world. We think of God as saving individuals. Yet, it appears that there is something more that God is doing. God is out here redeeming for God-self a people.
A community. A body. A congregation. A people.
I have heard so many messages about taking verses like this and individualizing it. This absolutely misses the point.
As I grow older and (I think) wiser, I am coming to the conclusion that it is not possible to walk with God alone. We walk with God in community.
The question I'm pondering today, “Am I opening myself to community or am I isolating myself?”
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NOVEMBER 14, 2023
Nehemiah 8:1-12
“Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them.”
Nehemiah is one of those books in the Bible that get used for “leadership” retreats and the like. It always amazes me how we can take these ancient texts and make them fit into whatever we want them to fit. Nevertheless, that's not the point.
As I meditated on this passage this morning I was struck by the closing verse about how the people went away to celebrate because they understood the Scriptures. It was striking because it challenges my understanding of my calling in the realm of preaching or communicating the Scriptures to God's people.
I have always thought of the task before me to be one of challenging God's people to consider the Scriptures in such a way that brings about life change. But, did I miss the boat? Have I missed something important in my calling?
I think perhaps I have.
Could it be that the result I ought to be hoping for is for people to experience joy?
As I grow in my faith I experience more joy. Why? Because I grasp more fully the depths of God's grace and love for me and others. Maturing in faith leads to greater love and greater love leads to greater joy.
It turns that I've not been thinking about the end of my pastoring the people who have trusted their spiritual life to me. I've only thought about the process. It's like in parenting, if I'm raising children I do things very differently than if I'm raising adults.
I want to be a pastor that is focused on building joy in the people who entrust themselves to my care.
Today I'm pondering, “Am I leading to people to joy and celebration or to something less?”
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NOVEMBER 13, 2023
Psalm 78
“They willfully put God to the test by demanding the food they craved.”
This psalm is one that constantly grabs my attention. It does so on multiple levels. Today, as I sit here meditating on it verse 18 almost levitated off the page.
It wasn't the putting God to the test bit that jumps out. It is the “demanding the food they craved,” bit.
I am such a selfish and self-centered person. So much of my feelings toward the Divine is related on whether or not my cravings are met. I don't think in my life I have ever experienced need. (At least not knowingly, I am sure that my mom would be able to tell me some behind the scenes times when things were really hard.)
During the first few years of our marriage finances were tight. We laugh about taking rolled coins to Hot 'N Now for date nights. But, even then, we had all our needs met. We had food and housing and clothes and vehicles and gasoline. There was no need that we had that wasn't taken care of.
There have been times that I have had some significant desires for material items and those were not able to be met. “Oddly”, it was during those when I felt like the Divine was farthest from me.
Golly gee why was that?
Because my wants and desires weren't being met.
Now, let's be very clear, I am not equating seasons of deep and abiding pain with what I'm wrestling with. I have friends who have lost children and spouses. Questioning the presence and care of the Divine in those times is not what I'm wrestling with today.
No, I'm wrestling with this sense of feeling like God has failed me because I haven't received my wants and desires like a spoiled child.
I think this is what the psalmist is getting at with this line about the “food they craved.” God was providing for the need of the people but they wanted more. They wanted their cravings met. Jesus fed the 5000 and they chased him around the lake, wanting more.
My belly, my cravings, my desires drive so much of how I move through the world.
Today I'm wrestling with the question, “Am I learning to be content or am I being overtaken by my cravings?”
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NOVEMBER 10, 2023
Psalm 78:1-8, The Message
“We’re not keeping this to ourselves, we’re passing it along to the next generation— GOD’s fame and fortune, the marvelous things he has done.“
This theme of passing things along to the next generation has been running through a lot of my reading lately. I wrote about it a bit on November 6 and the need to be intentional with relationships.
Today, I'm struck by this idea of passing along the stories of “the marvelous things he has done.”
It reminds me of a conversation that I had with my son a few years ago. He asked, “Dad, how do you do it?”
“How do I do what?”
“You coming alongside people in some of the hardest things in their life. How do you keep believing in God?”
“That's a really good question. I think what happens is that every time I walk through one of those seasons of life with people I learn something new and I learn something that I also need to let go of. But, I bring with me the things that I've learned in the past about God too. Nothing happens in a vacuum. So, I have this whole history with God that I bring with me and that history teaches me how to hold on in the midst of the hurt.”
“Oh. That's deep.”
“I'm a well.”
“Huh?”
“You'll get it some day.”
As I meditate on this verse today I am reminded how important it is to share with our children the stories of where we have seen God care for us and provide for us. The stories of God's faithfulness in the midst of our struggles.
It's the struggle that makes the provision beautiful.
The question I'm thinking about today is, “Do I remember how God has cared for, provided for, and done marvelous works in my life?”
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HOW DO YOU READ THE BIBLE?
What if meditation was the key to reading the Bible?
I was in high school and attending something called a Summer Institute at Eastern Michigan University. Rising high school seniors could attend the institute in a number of disciplines. I attended this two week experience for music. It was an amazing couple of weeks and I met some really fun people.
It was at this Summer Institute that I was first exposed to meditation. We sat on yoga mats and were told to clear our minds. Then we focused on breathing. It wasn't long before most of us were asleep, myself included. I didn't really get the whole meditation thing.
Over my years in ministry I have come to love Eugene Peterson. The translation of the Bible that he lead, The Message, has been salve to my weary soul. His books have inspired and challenged me to know end. He is, in so many ways my spiritual mentor. I want to be a pastor the way he was. I want to love well and write and preach and care for my neighbors.
As I was reading his beautiful little text, Eat This Book, I was shocked by the discovery that he was in many ways primarily writing a book about meditation. Eat This Book is a book about spiritual reading. The primary question that Peterson wrestles with is this, “How do we read the Bible?”
Many of us read the Bible as though it is a rule book or an encyclopedia. We mine it for information that we can then use. The thing is, that's not what the Bible is. The Bible isn't a textbook or a set of rules or a history text. No, the Bible is the collection of people's interactions with the Divine.
Does the Bible have rules? Yes. Does the Bible have information? Yes. Does the Bible have history? Yes.
But, the Bible is not really any of those things. It is qualitatively different. It is a collection of stories that are all used to tell one story. This is a magnificent story about a God whose engages people with “love-in-action”. So many other god stories are about capricious gods seeking to win the affection of their adherents. It's hard to tell the difference in those stories between the gods and the people. The stories of this God are similar but different. What I find different is that they are stories of a God who takes the initiative through love-in-action, ultimately becoming like the very ones God seeks to save.
As I was saying, Peterson is writing about how to read the Bible focuses his attention on meditation. This punched me between the eyes because ever since that day at EMU I have never been a fan of meditation. It always seemed to be nothing more than a good excuse to have a nap. (Now that I think about it, perhaps I should have leaned into it sooner!)
Peterson writes, “Meditation is the primary way in which we guard against the fragmentation of our Scripture reading into isolated oracles. Meditation enters into the coherent universe of God's revelation. Meditation is the prayerful employ of imagination in order to become friends with the text. It must not be confused with fancy or fantasy.”
Why does he write this?
He writes this because meditation of the Scripture breaks us free from our approach to it as a rule book or encyclopedia or history text. When we study it, we break it down into atomistic pieces and as a result can fragment the text beyond recognition. This, I think, is one of the reasons that we have seen such a spiritual degradation in our American evangelical context. We read certain verses in isolation from one another in such a way that we think they exist in a vacuum. But, the verses of the Bible exist in an organic connection to one another. We need to let them into our lives.
As Peterson writes, we need the Scriptures to become our friends.
You don't befriend a person by learning all their key facts.
Know, you befriend a person by being with them. You get to know them beyond their bare details.
Have you ever been to a bad funeral? I have. Bad funerals are the worst. A bad funeral is one where the officiant clearly doesn't know the person who has died. They simply relate some facts about the person and then read a few Bible verses and that's that.
I've also been to some really good funerals. These are funerals where those who speak knew the person. They tell stories and often there is laughter. But, they also communicate to those there what was most important to the person who passed away. These funerals are the good because there is a depth of friendship that permeates the whole experience.
Meditation on Scripture is the act of getting to know the text.
You read it. You meditate on it. You ponder it. You wrestle with it. You let your imagination run with it.
The primary Hebrew word in the Old Testament that we translate as “meditate,” is hagah. It carries the idea of murmuring, pondering, imagining. It can also have this idea of “make like” or “to compare.” It's interesting to consider these latter ideas.
When we meditate on the Scripture and we allow our holy imagination to become engaged perhaps it brings us to a place where we might be able to begin making this world like the kingdom of God? Perhaps we bring a little heaven on earth if we spent more time meditating on the Scriptures?
As I learn more about the practice of meditating on the Scripture I find that it shapes my view of the world. I become more hopeful. I become less cynical. More and more I see the world through a lens of grace and mercy and love.
Perhaps if pondered this text more and studied it a little less, we would become more loving?
May we ponder together this beautiful story of the loving-in-action God!
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NOVEMBER 9, 2023
Psalm 70
“Let those on the hunt for you sing and celebrate.”
Throughout my life of faith the hardest thing for me has always been the reality that I can not experience God with my senses. You would think that this would create in me a lack of belief, yet it has not. Why? Because I think I see all around me the effects of God.
I guess it's like that truism, “I can't see the wind but I can feel it's effect.”
I think about this a lot. How can I believe when I can not see?
Some would say, “This is where faith comes in.” I suppose that's true. But, it is not very satisfying.
As I read this psalm today this line, “Let those on the hunt for you sing and celebrate,” really grabbed my attention. I've been thinking about it all morning.
There is something called the Baarder-Meinhoff phenomenon. This is what we call that phenomenon that happens when you start noticing things that you never saw before. For instance, you buy a yellow car and all of a sudden you being “seeing” yellow cars all over the place. Were they never there before? Of course they were. But, for some reason you just didn't notice them. Now, you do.
In a very real sense, what you seek to see you will find.
I see God in so many things. I see God in God's creation. I see God through the creative process. I see God in technology and science and medicine.
Where I see God the most is in the self-sacrificial loving-kindness of people. I look around and am amazed by the way people love. So many, I'd say the vast majority of people that I know love so well. Sure, there are people that I experience as unkind, yet I also see them love other people well.
As I look for God and see God in the people around me it causes me to rejoice.
What I'm pondering today is, “Am I looking for God?”
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NOVEMBER 8, 2023
Matthew 15:1-9
“Why do you use your rules to play fast and loose with God’s commands?”
I am sure that someone with religious authority would never, and I mean never, create rules to “play and fast loose with God's commands.”
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is happens all the time.
If I'm really honest with myself I know that I have done this. I have used my authority as a religious leader to make rules so as to get people to do what I want them to do or to manipulate a situation for my benefit.
It's gross. I have elsewhere written about this. I have sought forgiveness from those people to whom I have done this and now I am hyper aware to ensure that I don't do this. It's one of the reasons that I don't post a lot about politics directly or specifically. When it comes to those things they are just my opinions and opinions are like arm pits, hairy, stinky, and you have two.
I think that those of us with religious authority are constantly at danger to do this very thing. We can create “interpretations” of Scripture to use it as we will. I see this in relation to morality and politics most often. What's really fascinating is when religious leaders do this to avoid many statements made by Jesus.
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Love your enemy.” “Pray for those who persecute.”
The list could go on.
We do a lot of work to explain those away or to make it so that “love” looks like us being in control or getting our way. Yet, this is not the way of love. The way of love calls for self-sacrifice. It is a determined effort to want the best for the other.
Today I'm wrestling with this, “Am I living in such a way where love rules or that I love rules?”
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NOVEMBER 7, 2023
Psalm 128
Blessed are all who fear the LORD, who walk in obedience to him.
I don't like the word, “obedience.” It makes me feel like God is some sort of task master. I do like the word, “blessed.” I like the idea that God is doing something special for me.
These double feelings are ones that I'm guessing I'm not alone in having. If we are really honest with ourselves we prefer “blessed” over “obedience.”
What am I supposed to do with my two sets of feelings?
Perhaps, I need to think about them a bit differently. What if blessed is related to obedience but not in the sense that blessed is a reward but as a state of being living an obedient life? Is that splitting hairs? Perhaps, but it resonates a bit with me.
Eugene Peterson in the Message translates this passage like this, “All you who fear GOD, how blessed you are! How happily you walk on his smooth straight road!”
Do you see the slight difference in how Peterson takes this from the NIV in the opening? He translates “obedience” as “happily you walk on his smooth straight road.” One might even say that as we walk on the way we experience blessing.
I want to live God's way. When I live God's way I am blessed. The blessing is not the result of obedience. The blessing is the reality, I experience this state of being through walking on God's smooth, straight road.
What I'm wrestling with today: “In whose way am I walking, mine or God's?”
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NOVEMBER 6, 2023
Joshua 4:1-24
And then he told the People of Israel, “In the days to come, when your children ask their fathers, ‘What are these stones doing here?’ tell your children this: ‘Israel crossed over this Jordan on dry ground.’
Maybe it is because I just spent significant time with my daughter at her college campus; perhaps it's seeing the little ones running around at missional community; but this story from Joshua 4 hit me particularly hard today.
This idea of passing along the stories of God to the generations to come is something so very beautiful.
Every Sunday I experience an extreme juxtaposition. In the morning I serve a congregation that is predominantly comprised of men and women who are older than I am. In the evening I serve a congregation of people who are younger or the same age as I am. Some of the younger families have little children. This stark contrast each week is something that is beginning to leave a mark on me.
As I think about this passage in Joshua 4 it strikes me that older people of faith need to be around younger people of faith. They need to be able to tell the stories of God's faithful work in their lives.
Younger people of faith need to be around older people of faith. They need to hear the stories of God's faithfulness in generations past.
When we don't have the cross-generational conversations then we are in danger of forgetting God's faithfulness.
Throughout the story of the people of God we are told to remember. Often there are these moments where physical reminders are crafted to force the question. Of course to remember demands that we are intentional to hold on to the good and the beautiful things that God has done. We are to reminisce and share the stories otherwise they will get forgotten.
It is these stories of God's faithful past that help us hold on to hope in the midst of the difficult present that we inevitably find ourselves in.
The question I'm pondering today is this, “Am I intentional in my relationships with those older and younger so that through them I might embrace hope?”
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NOVEMBER 2, 2023
Romans 2:17-29
“You can get by with almost anything if you front it with eloquent talk about God and his law.”
This passage in Romans is one that I think about often. I have come to the conclusion that for those of us Christians in the United States, particularly, should likely find our parallels with the Jewish people that Paul addresses more so than the Gentiles. Why? Because we are the people who have largely grown up with the Bible and religion and God-talk.
When I read myself as the religious person in Romans 2, I can almost hear the record scratch.
Over the years I have become an expert at God-talk. I read and study the Bible. I read and study theology. It is what I do. As a result, there is a constant temptation to simply God-wash anything I want.
Particularly in today's cultural milieu if I simply use the right words and phrases I could get away with just about anything.
Our Christian culture cares so much more about words than it does about the content of our character. I recently saw a quote from a famous pastor that said, in effect, all that matters is our words. Say the right words and how you live your life doesn't matter.
As I reflect today on my life I am struck by how flippantly I have used phrases that God-wash actions and ideas that I want to be true or OK.
Here's the question I'm meditating on today, “Is God's word changing me from the inside or am I using God's word to keep me from changing?”
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SILENCE IS SCARY
Entering into silence can spiritually form us
There's only a few sermons that I've heard that I remember. As I write that I want to make sure you understand what I'm not saying, I'm not saying that sermons are unimportant. I think they are very important. The sermons I remember are likely not sermons that someone else remembers. They are moments in time that God uses in the lives of people.
There was one sermon in particular that my friend, Doug, gave a number of years ago. He was talking about how noisy the world is and how quiet God's voice can be. All during the message he had an iPod playing very quietly and then at the end he had us all get quiet and all of a sudden you could hear the music.
This shook me.
I am a noisy person.
When I enter a space I do so loudly. In social settings you know where I'm at all times. It's not that I'm trying to be the center of attention, I'm just loud. My voice carries and so does my laugh.
It is not just my outward presence that is loud. My interior life is loud too. As I grew up I always had a TV on or music playing. When I sat down to do homework the TV had to be running. When I was in seminary I wrote and researched and studied in busy coffee shops, intentionally.
For most of my life I have not liked the quiet. When things get quiet my thoughts get loud. I am not necessarily a big fan of those thoughts all the time. It can be disconcerting for me to allow my thoughts to run rampant.
Silence is scary.
This past summer I took two nights to just get away for a silent retreat. I shut down my phone. I didn't listen to music (well, that's a whole story in and of itself). I did allow myself to listen to a baseball game while I ate dinner.
I was alone in a cabin.
I went hiking alone in the silence and solitude of nature.
Leading up to these two nights away I was in a state of high anxiety because I was worried about being silent and alone for those 48 hours. I had never been a lone, truly alone, for that length of time.
Silence is scary.
I wish I could say that I heard the audible voice of the divine during my retreat. I did not. I also wish I could say that there was some sort of profound awakening that I experienced. But, I did not.
What did happen is that I faced my fear of silence.
It took almost a solid 24 hours for my mind quiet down. To really and truly be able to focus my attention on something other than my own thoughts. When that happened it was the most remarkable thing.
My mind could finally focus.
I was reading in the book of Jeremiah and some other commentaries that I brought along with me. I devoured the text.
Even more interesting was during my time hiking I was meditating on the Lord's prayer a stanza at a time. As I did, in that silence, those lines came to life for me. I do not really know how to explain it, but it was like I had never experienced them before.
Ever since then, something has happened within me. I have begun to delight in silence.
In the mornings I awake around 6 am-ish and drink coffee in the quiet dark house. It's become my favorite part of the day. I used to have a compulsion to turn on SportsCenter or something else. But now, my day begins with about 90 minutes to 2 hours of almost total silence.
Silence isn't scary anymore.
Silence has become a gift.
It is in the silence where I am learning to meet God.
I suppose there's a reason that silence has been a significant part of spiritual formation for many in the Christian tradition. I need silence now like I need water to drink or air to breathe. I can tell when I haven't had enough silence. My mind runs and spins and sleep is hard to come by.
It is in the silence where freedom from the weight of the world is offered and received.
When was the last time you were silent? What's stopping you? What do you think might happen if you entered into silence?
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NOVEMBER 1, 2023
Psalm 34:1-10, The Message
“Look at him; give him your warmest smile. Never hide your feelings from him. When I was desperate, I called out, and GOD got me out of a tight spot.”
When I'm going through something heavy or hard I often think, “Why am I feeling this way? Compared to what so many others are going through this is nothing.”
Often, when I feel like this, I will not pray because I don't want to burden God or in some sense I think that these feelings are not worthy to be brought to God.
One of the first things that I learned in my young Christian life was that feelings don't matter. They are nothing more than the caboose of a train that is driven by the fact of God's word and faith. This left me in a state where I was constantly trying to hide, stuff, or in so many other ways ignore my feelings.
That was so misguided. The idea that our feelings are nothing and they don't matter to God is such an unhelpful and unbiblical idea. This might be one of the most destructive things that I have had to undo as I have matured in my journey of faith.
I love this line, “Never hide your feelings from him.” God cares about our feelings. God can handle all our emotions, big and small.
As I ponder these verses it strikes me that the psalmist probably saw or experienced God's hand getting him out of a tight spot because he had brought all his feelings to God. By not hiding, the psalmist was open to seeing how God was at work in the world.
The question I am going to be wrestling with today is this, “Am I hiding my feelings or my internal life from God?”
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OCTOBER 31, 2023
James 2:14-18
“Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?”
I have a friend whose favorite saying is, “acta non verba,” this translates to “actions not words.” He's one of those people who will do anything for you. His actions clearly demonstrate that the words he uses have meaning.
Many of us are good talkers.
We know the right things to say. But what about our actions? How often do you promise to do something but then don't follow through?
I want to say that never happens to me, but it does. It probably occurs more often than I'd like to admit. Oh sure, I have a good “reason,” but the reality is that it's just an excuse.
It is really hard for me to admit that.
There's a really helpful book about the rise of the church in the Roman Empire entitled, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church by Alan Kreider. In it he writes about how the verb, “look,” was central to the practice of the early church. Kreider argues, convincingly I think, that we have lost this idea of a new way of living in the world.
Perhaps, we could sum up much of the modern church as a lot of God-talk and not much God-acts.
Perhaps, I could sum up much of my own life this way.
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OCTOBER 30, 2023
Psalm 119:41-48
“Let your love, God, shape my life with salvation, exactly as you promised...”
Last night we were talking about Paul's call to go to Jerusalem and how he understood his obedience to that call would result in seeing God work. One of the things that came out of conversation was this desire that we would have as clear a call as Paul did. How nice would it be to really know what our calling is?
The fact of the matter is that we do know what our calling is.
It's clear.
Our calling is to love our neighbor as our self.
At the most fundamental of levels this is our calling.
Then this morning I read this little passage with this opening line, “Let your love, God, shape my life with salvation, exactly as you promised...”
Oh what a prayer!
I'm wrestling this morning with this simple and profound thought, “How does my life look differently if God's love has shaped it?”
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OCTOBER 28, 2023
John 5:39-47
“You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want.”
As I continue to read and study the Bible I am more convinced than ever that much of what Jesus said to the religious leaders of his day are the things that I need to hear.
John 5:39-40 is case in point.
I study the Bible, religiously (teehee). It is, quite literally, part of my job description. But, am I missing the forest for the trees? Am I seeing the reality that everything is about Jesus?
More than that, am I willing to receive from Jesus the life I say I want?
Ouch.
That is a punch in the gut.
That hits a bit too close to home.
The life I say I want is one of love, grace, mercy, and joy. It's one that is marked by the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. It is one where the burdens of life are eased by being deeply connected to Christ.
Do I really want that?
Because when I'm real honest about myself it sure doesn't seem to be true. I am given over to easy anger, rage, and frustration. Stress and snark are hand in hand.
Jesus is in a way standing right here in front of me. Will I receive the life he is offering or will I continue to just hold on as tightly as I can to the life that I say I don't want?
The question I'm wrestling with today is, “Am I willing to receive from Jesus the life I say I want?”
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OCTOBER 27, 2023
Psalm 90:1-6
“Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.”
This beautiful line is from Psalm 90:1. I grabbed my attention and I keep thinking about it. This concept of God being our dwelling place.
I too often think about God as someone far off or disconnected. Yet, here the Psalmist calls me to consider the reality that it is in God where we will dwell.
The dwelling place in the ancient world was important because it provided protection and security. In effect, the Psalmist is saying, “Lord, you have been our protection and security throughout all generations.
In my world, security and protection is something that I have to earn. It's not something that I consciously trust God to provide. Oh sure, the words will come out. But, at the end of the day I often think that security and protection is the result of my own effort.
I wonder if some of the rampant fear that is present in our world is the result of people no longer believing that God protects and secures? We need weapons and power and money to feel protected and secure these days.
But do we?
What if we set our minds and hearts on the God who is our dwelling place and has been throughout all generations?
The question I will be pondering tonight as I lay in bed is, “Do I trust that God will protect and provide for me?”
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PRAYER DOESN'T CHANGE GOD
Prayer is something so difficult for me to get my mind around. As I think about praying it raises so many, many questions.
If God is sovereign why pray? Why doesn't God answer my prayers? Why don't I hear God when I pray? What value is there to praying? Why did that person get healed and that one didn't? Why did that prayer have “results” and that one didn't? Does prayer do anything?
And so many, many more.
I often think of prayer in the context of utility. Quite simply, “does it work?”
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As far as I can tell Jesus' closest followers only asked to be taught one thing, how to pray.
How did Jesus respond?
“He said to them, “When you pray, say: “‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’” (Luke 11:2-4)
Short. Focused. To the point.
Elsewhere talking about prayer Jesus said,
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:5-8)
What are we to make of these things?
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Throughout the history of religious people prayer has always played a significant role. I remember in seminary reading about the desert fathers and mothers and how prayer was central. Or learning about the monastic movement and the important role of prayer for these people.
Every week I pray a “pastoral prayer” and a prayer of invocation and a prayer over the offering. I pray before I preach and after I preach. I pray before meals. I pray before I write. I pray before I spend time in the Scriptures. I prayer before I meet with people. I pray during my devotional times.
As I think about it, I pray quite a bit.
Yet, I wouldn't consider myself a pray-er.
—
My friend John, he was a pray-er. After he died his wife passed out index cards that he kept on hand that tracked what he was praying for for his friends.
Prayer was central to his spiritual life.
I know of many people for whom prayer is significant to their lives and spirituality.
My mentor, Bob, is a pray-er. He prays like his life depends on it. There is a qualitative difference between his prayer and my prayer.
I think I often pray as someone who has to pray as opposed to wanting to pray. I think this is because I can't quite figure out prayer. It doesn't fit my intellectual boxes.
Perhaps it's similar from the opening lines of Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller when he wrote, “I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve.”
—
He goes on to write, “But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked jazz music.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.”
When I see people like Bob or John pray, I want to love prayer the way they do. These guys have and do show me the way.
Yet, I struggle.
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I have found lately that simply praying the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples has helped me. Often I will find myself meditating on the words. Or the words will just come into my mind as I drive or walk.
When this happens I feel something in me.
I feel a connection to the divine. It's faint. But it's there.
I am coming to grips with an idea that I first heard about in the film Shadowlands. It's a film about C.S. Lewis and his relationship with his wife, Joy. Near the end of the film there is this line, “I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time – waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God- it changes me.”
The idea that I'm coming to grips with is this: I'm helpless.
That's not easy for me.
I think of myself as strong. I think of myself as someone who rarely needs anything. Yet, if I am honest, truly honest, I am helpless.
—
“Prayer doesn't change God—it changes me.”
As I continue to learn to pray, I am learning that this ethereal, surreal, intangible practice of seeking to be in the presence of the divine changes me.
It's not a utilitarian practice. It's something deeper than that. It's experiential.
I long to be able to speak that line from the film and mean it. I long to pray because the need flows out of me all the time – waking and sleeping.
—
Perhaps, as I grow in my desperation to desire to pray I will someday learn to pray.
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OCTOBER 26, 2023
Jeremiah 3
“I'm committed in love to you.”
I'm really grateful that my kids and I have never had a falling out. I can't really imagine the pain that would cause. Being estranged from my children is probably my greatest fear. I don't even want to think about it.
As a pastor, I have spent a lot of time talking through things with people who are estranged from their children or parents. The heartache of those broken relationships is indescribable. It is really trendy these days to talk about how your parents and sibilings are people you don't need in your life, yet nobody really means it. When our relationships with parent, children, or siblings are broken it is devastating. Some times those relationships need to be broken because of abuse, and while healthy, it is no less devastating.
That's the thing.
When it comes to these relationships, that are the closest to us and most intimate, the breaking of them, even when it is necessary, leaves a wound that is not easily healed.
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As I read through Jeremiah 3 this morning it struck me that the imagery that is used is one of a Father and children who have been estranged. There is a clear desire on both of their parts to reunite. Yet, the wound is so severe that there seems to be little hope.
This line, “I'm committed in love to you,” is a beacon of hope in an otherwise painful and horrific passage of Scripture.
There is no desire on God's part to punish. The desire is for restoration. The desire is for healing.
Why?
Because God is committed in love.
There's a section in verse 19 where God talks about how God has planned what God would say if the people came back. It demonstrates this desire for re-connection.
If my children and I were estranged, I think that I would feel exactly the same way.
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The question I'm wrestling with today is this, “How does it make me feel to know that God is committed in love to me?”
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OCTOBER 25, 2023
Jeremiah 2:29-37
“Day after day after day they never give me a thought.”
Typically when our family starts out on a road trip we say a prayer. We pray that God would get us to where we are going safely. We genuinely pray. We are earnest. There is a desire on our part to entrust the drive to God and we want to arrive safely.
As far as I can tell God has answered every one of these prayers by getting us to and fro safely.
I can only think of twice when we thanked God for getting us there safely. Both times were when we experienced really bad weather. The times that the trips were uneventful, I don't think we acknowledged God's hand at all.
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When we are going through difficult seasons we often wonder, “where is God?” One of the writers of the psalms cries out to God asking God to “wake up!” When things are going bad we think about God all the time.
It's odd, when things are going pretty well we don't think about God much at all.
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In Jeremiah 2:29-37 God calls out the people for not ever giving God a thought.
I find that strange because the people were practicing Temple worship. They were making sacrifices and celebrating the feasts. They were hearing the scrolls read. God-talk was everywhere and all the time.
Yet, God says, that they never thought about God.
As a pastor I use a lot of God-talk, all the time. I read the Scriptures. I pray the prayers. I preach the sermons.
But do I think about God?
Perhaps what God is saying here is not some sort of intellectual exercise regarding God but is talking about the way that I think about those people in my life whom I love.
I think about my wife and kids a lot. I wonder what they're doing right now? Are they having fun? What kinds of conversations are they having? I am *intrigued by the lives of those I love.
The question I'm wrestling with today is, “Am I intrigued by the life of God?”
—
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OCTOBER 24, 2023
Jeremiah 2:20-28
“How do you account for what is written in the desert dust...”
I had a dentist appointment yesterday. I despise going to the dentist. Every time they take my blood pressure and every time it's just above normal. They always ask if that's normal. My response, “only when I'm here.”
As a child my experience with the dentist was not very good. I suppose that's true of just about every Gen X kid. Our dentists were more akin to the dentist played by Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors than they were some kind person. So, I'm pretty sure that I have some deep-seated embodied dentist trauma that shows itself in my blood pressure at that god-forsaken place.
Whenever you go to the dentist they ask, “Are your teeth bothering you? Are you brushing? Are you flossing?”
I answer honestly, “No, they are fine. Yes I brush. I try to floss regularly but it's a habit I haven't developed yet.”
This time the dentist said, “Well, at least you're honest. You'd be surprised how many people try to lie about it.”
There's no point in lying about flossing. You can't hide whether or not you're doing it. The evidence is clear as the teeth in your mouth.
—
It strikes me this morning that the same is true in our relationship with God. This passage from Jeremiah is a hard read. The people of God are being chastised for following after the fertility deities of other nations. The language is, let's say, discomforting, at best.
Yet, there's this line, “How do you account for what is written in the desert dust...”
The people tried to lie about their pursuit of these foreign Gods but God says that there's no point because the evidence is written in the dust. Their tracks to and fro are obvious.
—
Our lives demonstrate what we are most focused on. We can hide or fake for a time but soon enough the truth will come out. Eventually everyone will see our tracks in the desert dust.
I'm wrestling with this question today, “What tracks am I leaving in the desert dust?”
—
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OCTOBER 23, 2023
Jeremiah 2:4-19
“But my people have traded my Glory for empty god-dreams and silly god-schemes.”
It was the late nineties and I was working hard at raising support to join the staff of a campus ministry. This particular man that I was connecting with took me to a gathering of people from his church to introduce me to them. As we were driving he was explaining to me that the day of small churches was over. He said that little churches would soon be swallowed up by the biggest churches in the area because the large churches had power and resources that small churches could only dream about.
It's more than twenty years later and it turns out that his prediction was wrong.
For a while, I thought that he was perhaps correct. But, then the mega-church paradigm began to implode. Scandal after scandal. Pastor after pastor has fallen.
Small churches are not immune from this either.
As I read about colleagues falling and ministries breaking down it appears to me that there is a common thread. Jeremiah might call it “empty god-dreams and silly god-schemes.”
The American church has entangled itself with power and consumerism. In so doing it has sold its soul, in a sense, to a modern day Baal.
As a pastor there is a constant and never ending pull towards bigger and better. I feel it in my soul. It's an illness.
But then I read about what has happened in the past when the people of God have sold their souls for empty god-dreams and silly god-schemes and I am reminded that I don't need to trust anything else. I can rest in the goodness of God. As Paul says in his farewell to the Ephesian Elders God is incredibly and extravagantly generous.
The question I will be meditating on today is this, “Will I scheme for success or will I rest in God's grace?”
—
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OCTOBER 20, 2023
Jeremiah 2:1-3
“I remember your youthful loyalty, our love as newlyweds.”
We road trip pretty much everywhere. Mostly because we like having our car available to us wherever it is we go. But, also because we are pretty cheap and renting a car is ridiculously expensive.
There is a pattern to our long road trips. We begin with great enthusiasm. There are abundant snacks, everyone is fresh, and everyone is excited to get to where we are going. About two hours in it gets quiet. Then at about four hours the grumbling begins from the driver's seat. Then legs start getting stiff. The snacks don't sound good. Everyone is bored. Everyone is beginning to think, “Flying would have been better.”
But, then we get to the destination!
When we arrive the joy is palpable! Not only to get out of the car but the hope for fun and relaxation.
I think that the spiritual journey is similar. When we get started in our spiritual lives there is joy and exuberance. It's almost like being a newlywed.
But, like any journey it gets long and difficult.
The fun wears out. It's not exciting any longer. It's just a long slog. There's no end in sight.
What do we do? How do we respond? Will we stick to God?
The question that I'm going to be pondering today, “What do I need to do to continually find refreshment in my spiritual journey?”
—
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OCTOBER 19, 2023
Jeremiah 1:11-19
“And God said, 'Good eyes! I'm sticking with you...'”
This passage is not what I would call comforting. God is telling Jeremiah what his message is going to be and that he needs to stand firm in speaking this message. The message is going to be hard. This is part of the pulling up and tearing down that was described to him earlier in his conversation with God.
I have to imagine that Jeremiah probably felt his stomach hurt a little bit.
As I was thinking about this passage memories of difficult conversations ran through my head. Conversations that I knew I needed to have but sure didn't want to have. I always get really nervous before those meetings. I can feel it in my body. My heart beats a little faster, my palms sweat a bit, it's a palpable anxiety.
I can't even begin to imagine the feeling that Jeremiah must have had.
But, then he hears from God, “I'm sticking with you.”
This idea of the God-With-Me-God is pervasive throughout Jeremiah's story and it starts right here.
God-With-Me-God, I think has to be one of the most encouraging ideas to come out of the story of the Bible.
When Jesus enters the scene he is called, Emmanuel, God-with-us.
As I consider the differences between the Old and New Testaments that is one of the significant shifts that I notice, the move from me to us after God-With. The story of the Old Testament is marked by an understanding of the God-With-Me-God and the story of the New Testament is marked by an understanding of the God-With-Us-God. God is not different. But in the New Testament we begin to understand that God is most fully known in community.
I am pondering this question today, “Do I believe that as I draw near to others, I am in effect, drawing near to God?”
—
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HOW DO YOU READ THE BIBLE?
A simple practice to help you grow in your faith.
When you open the Bible do you feel intimidated? I know I do.
You read that right, the professional Christian with a graduate degree that included the study of both Hebrew and Greek is intimidated by the Bible.
How can that be?
It's simple really. I have seen the Bible used to cause great harm. I am sure that in my years of ministry that I have caused great harm with my interpretations of the Bible. Every single day I see the Bible used and abused as a tool that hurts others. I desperately want to avoid doing that. I also find many parts of the Bible confusing and hard to understand. That's part of the reason that I loved pursuing my divinity degree. This gave me loads of tools to get behind the text of the Bible to try and untangle the sticky wickets of the text. I also get to spend inordinate amounts of time reading research about the Bible, which I find really helpful.
If I'm intimidated, I can only imagine the level of intimidation that many of you might experience. This is particularly true if we take the Bible seriously.
Most people can't pursue an advanced degree, nor do they need to.
—
For the vast majority of the history of Christianity people didn't even have personal access to a Bible text. They heard it in bits and pieces shared in the communal setting of the gatherings of believers. When we experience the Bible this way, there will be certain things that stick in our minds because they resonate with us. Other things will not be remembered.
It really wasn't until the creation fo the printing press that the idea of a personal Bible even became feasible.
Now, we find copies of the Bible in drawers of hotel night stands. I'd guess most homes have at least one Bible, even if it's just gathering dust.
—
There's nothing particular special about the Bible, per se.
It's a book.
It's not magical.
It's a collection of writings of Hebrew and early Christian believers.
It is beautiful, ugly, challenging, and inspirational.
In particular, it gives us insight into the life of Jesus. Jesus, the one after whom many of us are trying to pattern our lives. Because of this, the Bible is important to our spiritual lives.
—
So, how can we engage with this intimidating text?
Over the long history of the Christian faith there was a manner of reading that became known as “lectio divina” or “divine reading.”
That seems a bit intimidating too. Or at least a bit mystically creepy.
Over the last few years, after reading Eugene Peterson's book, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading, I have become convinced that this kind of reading is fundamental to our spiritual lives. I really like the idea of “Spiritual Reading.” I think it is a helpful re-framing for what we need when it comes to approaching the Bible.
This is not studying. This is something altogether different.
Peterson uses the metaphor of a dog with a bone. He compares spiritual reading to the way a dog takes a bone and just enjoys it. Turning over and around and savoring it.
What if we approached the Bible to savor it and turn it over and around? What if, in some sense, we let the Bible read us? What if we sought to intentionally engage the Bible with a sense of wonder and meditation?
—
Peterson describes the process as stop, read, ponder, pray, reflect, live.
When I sit down to practice my reading of Scripture this is the process that I use.
Stop: Before beginning I pray and ask God to meet me through the reading of the Scripture.
Read: I read and re-read the passage that I'm engaging with. So, it's not typically very long.
Ponder: I reflect and think or meditate on the things that “jumped” off the page to me. Why did they jump out to me? How did they make me feel? What do I like? What don't I like?
Pray: Often the time of pondering or meditation leads me to prayer. This is a time when I am responding to what I think God might be communicating through the text. Many times, I just stop and am quiet and allow the text to run around in my head and spirit.
Reflect: Meditating more on what is being surfaced in me. Typically this is ends up being a question that I am going to continue meditate on throughout the day or until the next time I read the Scriptures.
Live: I want to be attentive to how this needs to play out in my day to day life. How do I move forward by applying this to my life?
—
This process has been helpful for me. It has made the Bible less intimidating because I have a plan of how enter into the reading of the Scriptures. It moves it from an intellectual exercise into something of the heart and the spirit.
I would encourage you to give this a try. Perhaps with Psalm 19 or Matthew 5:1-12.
What do you think? Does this sound doable? Do you think this might be helpful to you?
—
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OCTOBER 18, 2023
Jeremiah 1:1-10
“Your job is to pull up and tear down, take apart and demolish, and then start over, building and planting.”
Jeremiah was given a task that nobody wanted. He was called to speak to the people and let them know about the judgment that was coming. There is no wonder that he is known as the weeping prophet.
I look around our day and age and see a lot of would-be Jeremiahs. It seems that many of us think that we have been called to judge and deliver news of exile to people.
It's so easy to pull up. It's so easy to tear down. It's so easy to take apart. It's so easy to demolish.
The negative is easy. All we need is a bit of power and then we can destroy. Destruction becomes addictive. Why? Because we will inevitably find people who rally to us and help us destroy.
Some people just love to watch the world burn.
It's much more difficult to embrace the second half of what Jeremiah was called to, that is, starting over.
I think that's where the weeping comes from.
Starting over, building, and planting demands a holy imagination and a faith to believe that this thing that is begun will find completion. Typically, we don't get to see the fruit.
I am convicted this morning of being too easily caught up in tearing down and not focused enough on the rebuilding.
I am going to be asking myself this question today: “Am I focusing on what is wrong or on what can be done?”
—
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THE JOURNEY – PERSEVERANCE OVER PERFECTION
What if we valued perseverance over being perfect?
Sophia was walking through the forest with her friend Avil. As they were walking and talking she stubbed her toe on a root that had broken through the path. She stumbled and exclaimed her shock and surprise. She regained her footing and they continued walking.
A little bit later, Avil stubbed his toe as well. He cried out and then found another root and stubbed his other toe. When he did, he tripped and skinned his knee. He was distraught and threw himself down the side of a hill where he broke his leg. As rolled down the hill he also skinned his knee. So, he took a rock and broke his other arm.
It didn’t take long before Sophia realized that the walk was over.
—
This parable is ridiculous! Avil (the Hebrew word for fool) is beyond foolish. Nobody would ever stub their toe and then go on to break their leg. Not to mention all the other ridiculous responses he made. Most of us likely see ourselves in Sophia, she stubs her toe and then continues on. That just makes sense, right?
Here’s the crazy thing, if I’m honest, Avil is a reflection of me.
Over the years I’ve tried all kinds of things to lose weight and to pursue physical health.
Without fail, I’ve fallen short of my “plan.” When I did, I would throw my hands up and say, “Well, I blew it. Might as well enjoy it!” So what would I do? I’d get the famous number two from McDonald’s, (two cheeseburgers, large fry, and a Coke) or I’d get a large pizza. I mean, why not? I have messed up the diet anyway.
You see, when it came to pursuing physical health my mindset has been, “perfection or nothing.” If I couldn’t be perfect, I might as well just indulge.
There was no in between.
All or nothing.
I can trace this all or nothing approach through my pursuit of emotional health, spiritual health, and relational health too.
Health has always been a goal, a pursuit, something that I sought to attain. So, if I wasn’t perfect then I was a failure. If I failed, then why press on?
I was all about perfection over perseverance.
—
The Apostle Paul wrote, “I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back. (Philippians 3:12-14, The Message)”
Paul was someone who was aware of the reality that life isn’t a zero sum game. Inherent in what he writes here is the reality that life is a process. Becoming mature in his faith was not something that he was necessarily going to succeed at. It was a journey that he was on.
Notice also, that there was failure baked into what Paul said. Paul seems to be saying, “I fail too! I fall short too! But I press on!”
Perseverance is more important than perfection.
—
I will never be perfect. I will never have a perfect streak of eating well or exercising or being a good friend or being emotionally fit. But, instead of quitting I need to embrace the way of Sophia and recover my footing and keep hiking.
Something that I think that has been an important lesson is to learn the subtle shift from thinking about health to thinking about fitness.
Mental fitness.
Physical fitness.
Spiritual fitness.
Emotional fitness.
Relational fitness.
Fitness doesn’t have an end. It’s a goal to strive toward but you never really attain it. You never arrive at the end of fitness. So, you keep on pressing on. Straining toward the goal.
No turning back!
If the journey is the goal and the goal is the journey then all we really have is perseverance.
Perfection is not something that we will ever find. If not being perfect derails the journey then I will never be able to move forward.
Because I am on a journey that has no end there is only the option of pressing on. Getting a little better each day. Even when there’s a step backward it’s not the end. I can regain my footing like Sophia and keep walking.
Perseverance over perfection.
THE JOURNEY – THE UNSEEN
What do we do when the goal is unseen?
It was Thanksgiving and we were heading to my brother Jay’s home outside Baltimore, Maryland. We were excited to spend time with his family and celebrate together. As we drove the weather grew worse and worse.
The snow and sleet were becoming overwhelming. Cars were pulling off and sliding off the road at an alarming rate. My hands gripped the steering wheel tighter than I knew I could. White knuckling was an understatement. I grew more and more tired. Tensions were rising in the car. I knew that Amy wouldn’t be comfortable getting behind the wheel and so I drove on.
This journey was not going well.
I desperately wanted to stop and sleep. Amy was desperately trying to find a hotel room.
The “good” hotels were all booked up with other travelers hiding from the storm.
We drove on.
We made it to Jay’s house.
Had we known how the journey would have played out, we might not have left. But, the hope of the joy of seeing my brother, sister-in-law, niece, nephew, and mom was more than enough to keep us going.
We couldn’t see, quite literally, our destination, yet there was hope of the joyful reunion that kept us going. The perseverance paid off! The joy was made that much more sweeter after the difficulty of the journey.
—
“So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18, The Message)”
—
At the beginning of any journey you can’t see the end. You can try to picture it in your mind’s eye but you don’t see it. You have to start out and just go. You hope that the going will be smooth and easy. You hope that there will not be any bad weather or traffic jams or delayed flights. But, at the end of the day, you just don’t know what the journey will be like nor can you see the destination.
Every journey demands faith.
Paul Tillich wrote, “Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.”
I’m realizing that this is exactly what has been at the center of my journey toward fitness. It is a journey of the finite being grasped by the infinite.
You see, there’s no end to the pursuit of fitness. It’s an ongoing journey with various stops along the way.
—
I am struck by something that the Apostle Paul says in that quote from 2 Corinthians, “The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.”
As I consider what is going on in my fitness journey, this really is the heart of the matter. It’s not about a particular number on the scale or the size of my waist. No, those things are here today and gone tomorrow. It’s truly about the pursuit of fitness. A pursuit of something that will last forever.
Being strong, feeling good, having energy, loving well. These are the things that the journey brings about.
So I journey on.
I am believing by faith that the journey will help me become fully myself.
We can’t truly see the end when we begin, but stepping out in faith on the journey opens the door to joy.
THE JOURNEY – THE CREW
We aren’t made to walk the path alone.
I began my journey toward physical fitness with a commitment to walk fifteen minutes per day. My thinking was that I could do anything for fifteen minutes. I was right. Rarely did I walk for less than twenty minutes. Almost always, I walked at least thirty.
I had, in my excitement over such a plan, decided to invite some close friends to hold me accountable. My walk needed to be done by 10 pm or they were free to give me all the grief!
At some point in my walking, I pulled a muscle. I could barely walk. But, I persevered. I can do anything for fifteen minutes.
During that time, it was all I could do to walk around the block. I had a dip in the hip but absolutely no glide in the stride. One evening, I had decided that after mowing the lawn I had had enough for the day.
I then made a fatal mistake. I told my close friends that I was counting the mowing as my walk.
In the words of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, “Big mistake, huge, BIG!”
“You made a commitment to walk. Your commitment was not to mow.”
I raged.
I argued.
I walked.
Never in my life had I been actually held accountable to anything.
These friends loved me enough to hold me accountable to the commitment I had made. I really didn’t like them when they did. Yet, they held their ground and pushed me to walk. They wanted me to succeed. In that moment they wanted me to hold to my commitment more than I did.
I walked!
—
There is a passage in the ancient text that goes like this,
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3)”
This is written right after the writer lists out a number of people who had lived and died in faith. They were the “who’s who” of the Old Testament. These people persevered in their faith and made up the “great cloud of witnesses,” along with countless others.
It is interesting to me that when he writes about persevering through the race he sets the call in the context of a “great cloud of witnesses.”
The community of faith, the cloud of witnesses, were the context from which the author calls people to press on and persevere.
—
We are not made to be alone. It is not good for us to be alone. We need community. We need a cloud of witnesses.
In my pursuit of fitness (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational) I have become keenly aware of my need for a cloud of witnesses. This cloud of witnesses I call my “crew.” These are the people that I have learned to trust with all of who I am. I have invited them into my life and given them the go ahead to hold me accountable.
When I don’t want to persevere, I reach out to these people and they encourage me to walk on.
A community of people who are truly involved in your life will eventually make you very angry because they will not let you get away with quitting. To quit, to stop walking, is the one thing that is unacceptable to them. This crew of mine reminds me of my commitments, to be sure, but more than that, they remind me of who I am and who I want to be.
My identity is not shaped in isolation. It is shaped in community. My crew reminds me of who I am and these reminders give me the hope to carry on.
The journey towards fitness necessitates a crew of people who walk with you.
Who is your crew? Will they ensure that you walk on?
—
*And love is not the easy thing
The only baggage that you can bring
And love is not the easy thing
The only baggage you can bring
Is all that you can’t leave behind
And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it’s a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for a second you turn back
Oh no, be strong
Walk on, walk on
What you got they can’t steal it
No, they can’t even feel it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight* – U2
THE JOURNEY – START WITH “WHY?”
Answering one question can start the journey.
I recently shared a before and after picture one year apart on my social feeds. It sparked congratulations and a lot of kind words. Over the last eighteen months I have lost over 100 lbs. My entire body has changed. I see old pictures and it doesn’t even seem like I’m the same person.
Do you want to know something interesting? When I look in the mirror I don’t really see much change at all. I will catch myself walking past a mirror and think, “wow! I’ve changed!” Then as I continue to look at myself I can almost see my body transform back to the “old me” in the mirror.
It’s weird.
Many of the comments and conversations I have around this journey are about how hard it must be to be on a diet and how hard it is to exercise regularly. Folks are impressed by the consistency and perseverance. Often people want the “playbook.” They want the nuts and bolts about how I got here. I gladly share it with them, but more times than not, their eyes glass over.
The thing is, this really is a journey. It’s my own personal hero journey. There are ups and downs. There are obstacles and pitfalls. There have been big successes and some big failures too.
A number of years ago after my second child, Libby, was born I lost a lot of weight. I wanted to to do it for “the kids.” Life was pretty easy and I dropped the weight.
A few years later, life got stressful. I gained all the weight back and kept it on for almost twenty years.
There were diets here and there and I lost some weight and I gained it back.
But, then something changed.
—
Over the last ten years I have become obsessed with trying to wrap my head and heart around two ideas. These two ideas are things that I come back to over and over again. I feel like they are all I talk about and think about.
Love and grace.
I suppose it shouldn’t be all that surprising that a pastor thinks about love and grace (well, these days with the state of American Christianity perhaps it is). For the longest time I was more interested in truth and righteousness.
I wanted to be right. I knew I had the truth. More than anything I wanted people to embrace the truth and see that I was right so that they would be able to know what I knew. You could say, I was a bit of tool, and you’d be right. I was arrogant and self-consumed. I was not all that kind.
In the background of all that there was a nagging question, “What’s so amazing about grace?” It had been posited to me by my friend and mentor, Bob. This question just floated around in the background like a little soundtrack that I tried to ignore.
Over the last ten years that question wouldn’t remain in the background. It exploded into the foreground and with it came the question, “What is unconditional love?”
—
“What does any of this have to do with a journey toward losing weight?”
Great question.
In some ways it doesn’t have anything to do with it and at the same time it has everything to do with it.
My journey hasn’t been a journey of weight loss. My journey, my hero journey, has been a journey of health. Physical health is but one aspect. And, it’s almost the least important aspect of the journey! It’s a consequence of a pursuit of love and grace. As I pursued these things I started becoming more aware of my need to be a healthy person. This meant a healthy spirituality, healthy emotionally, and healthy relationally along with the physical.
I titled this, Start with “Why?”, because when I finally got rolling on my journey it was when I had finally come to the realization that I loved me.
I loved me enough to exercise.
I loved me enough to change my eating habits.
I loved me enough to be intentional about relationships.
I loved me enough to doggedly pursue my spiritual life.
As I set out on this journey eighteen months ago it was not for my wife or for my children. It was not to get healthy.
I took the first step on the journey because I had finally come to the place where I loved me.
—
I had to confront my lack of love for myself.
Jesus said, “Love your neighbors as yourself”. It struck me that love of neighbor was limited by my ability to love myself. How I treated myself was in some way a reflection of how I loved my neighbor. I was becoming obsessed with the idea of “loving well”, which for me is the incorporation of love and grace. But, to really do that, to truly and thoroughly love well, I had to love me.
I’m convinced that the first step in the journey toward health has to start with, “Why?”
I am also convinced that if the why doesn’t include “because I love me” then the journey is likely derailed from the beginning. The journey toward health (spiritual, relational, emotional, physical) is the hardest thing that I’ve entered into. If it wasn’t rooted in love, I don’t think I would have continued.
Because the journey is rooted in love, grace is always nipping at the heels. Grace frees me from legalism. Grace in the midst of perseverance opens the door to stumble and fall and get back up knowing that I’m still embraced and accepted.
—
“How did you do it?”
Love and grace my friend, love and grace.
THE JOURNEY – WHO AM I?
A couple of years ago I read a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear. He tells the story of a friend who went on a weight loss journey. To begin this journey his friend started a habit of going to the gym. At this point you might be thinking, “Well, of course he did.” But here’s the kicker, he never went in. Every day he drove to the gym and parked in the parking lot.
What a strange thing to do, I thought. It surely didn’t make any sense to me when I initially read it. I stopped and pondered why would he do something so strange before continuing to read. I wanted to try and figure it out. For the life of me, I couldn’t. It just didn’t make any sense.
Eventually, as you would expect, his friend began going into the gym. But, he didn’t work out. He just went in. Then, he started exercising but only did one set of one movement. Then he left. But, then he started working out regularly and changed his physical state of health.
What was happening in this story?
This man was changing his identity.
When he started his journey he was not someone who exercised. To become someone who exercised he needed to become someone who went to the gym. He wasn’t that guy either. He had to become a person who went tot he gym before he could become a person who exercised. So, at the most basic of levels he became a person who went to the gym.
This story deeply resonated with me.
I had begun figuring out my why. I was beginning to learn what it meant to love me. But, there was a second question that I needed to wrestle with, “Who am I?”
What kind of person am I?
I began to work through a series of “I am…” statements related to health.
I am a spiritually healthy person. What does this mean? What does a spiritually healthy person look like? What kinds of practices does a spiritually healthy person have in their lives?
I am a relationally healthy person. What does a relationally healthy person look like? What kinds of relationships do they have? How do they orient their time? What kinds of boundaries does this person have?
I am an emotionally healthy person. What does this look like? How do I lean into working on emotional health? Are there signs of not being emotionally healthy that need to be addressed?
I am a physically healthy person. What kind of person is physically healthy? What is true of this person? What practices are in place for a person to by physically healthy?
Notice that these were statements followed by questions. They were not questions followed by more questions. I began to change the way I thought of myself.
I am…
As my self-identity began to change things became easier and easier.
When I went out to dinner I would look at the menu and ask myself, “What would a physically healthy person order here?” Then I would order that because I am a physically healthy person.
Self-identifying as a “physically healthy person” also helped getting physically active much easier. On the many mornings that I don’t want to hit the gym I think to myself, “A physically healthy person goes to the gym. I am a physically healthy person, so I will go to the gym.”
As I grow in my new self-identity as a healthy person (spiritually, reltionally, emotionally, and physically) I find making decisions to be easier. I am also finding that there are other things that are beginning to happen. For instance, part of my new identity is that I’m a person who goes to they gym three days a week and lifts weights. That’s who I am now.
In the past, I was a person who was on a diet.
Diets are something that end.
As a person on a diet I would eventually become a person not on a diet. This meant that when I wasn’t on a diet I would typically revert to old habits and undo much of what was done on the diet.
I am a person who is healthy. This never stops. It’s a new way to of being. This way of being lasts beyond reaching any particular goal.
Pursuing a way of being is not goal driven. It is journey driven.
Who am I?
That’s the question that shapes the journey.
Good morning! May you press on #today with the hope of rest on your horizon.
THE JOURNEY - NUTS AND BOLTS
As I see friends who haven’t seen me in a while they are effusive in their praise of physical fitness. Over the last year, my body has transformed. What they can’t see is the transformation that has taken place in my heart, mind, and soul. Those changes are of course nearly impossible to simply see.
As important as the physical fitness has been, it’s these other changes that are more important. They are the changes that will help me to maintain my physical fitness beyond reaching a goal.
The single most common question that I get is, “how did you do it?”
My usual response is, “eat less, move more.” Which in a crude sense, is exactly the answer.
But there’s more to it than that, much more.
What are the nuts and bolts for the change in fitness that I’ve experienced?
The first thing, of which I’ve written about at length, is that my self-perception had to change. I had to love myself enough to pursue fitness. By loving myself I was able to make a decision to choose a fully orbed pursuit of health.
Regarding spiritual fitness, I once again began reading. I know that sounds silly. Reading had fallen from my regular habits. I read only when necessary. But, over the last year I began reading in earnest. Not just reading, but reading books that challenged me spiritually and theologically. I didn’t read fast or to “get through” things but I read and pondered. This included the Scriptures and books written by people that I wanted to learn from.
I know that these aren’t really the nuts and bolts that people are interested in when they ask, “How did you do it?” But, without the inner changes the outward changes would not have been able to happen. We have to deal with the inside so that the outside can be transformed.
What about the nuts and bolts for the physical fitness?
“How did you do it?”
The first step that I took was to identify what was the friction point that inhibited me from pursuing exercise. What I learned was that my key friction point was how long it would take me to exercise for 45 minutes. My gym was about a 20 minute drive. So, 40 minutes round trip, plus 45 minutes to exercise, plus another 20 minutes to shower and dress. In other words, it took two hours to exercise for 45 minutes. I don’t know about you, but I’m not typically able to carve out two hours from my day.
When I learned this, I started a 15 minutes per day walking commitment. My thought was that I could do anything for 15 minutes. Indeed I could and I did for over a year. This got me moving. Once I started moving, I kept moving.
I realized that I wasn’t losing any weight and my body was not changing. I had to change what was going into my body. I spent about six months controlling for carbohydrates. I ate less than 25g per day. This started my weight loss.
After six months I hit a plateau at about 30lbs lost. One of the trainers at my new gym (it is 7 minutes from my house!) told me about something called Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). This is the number of calories your body burns just by living. He shared with me about the need to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight long term. We talked through the role of macronutrients, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. The plan was to maintain muscle while losing weight. To do this I followed a simple plan.
Eating: I targeted approximately 2000 calories per day with 100g protein as the bulk of those calories. This target was based on my BMR. I used this calculator to determine my calorie goal: BMR Calculator. I ate a lot of chicken, salmon, turkey, cruciferous vegetables, and green leafy vegetables.
Tracking: I used an app called Carb Manager. Its free version allowed me to track calories and macronutrients. The premium version I purchased to get finer control. For about a year I tracked almost everything that I ate and drank. This helped me to understand what foods were costing me in terms of calories. It was surprising to see how many calories were in things like dressings and sauces. Tracking is critical because it keeps you honest.
Exercising: I began lifting weights three days a week and I used an app called, FitBod. It uses AI to construct workouts. There are gifs that show you how to do the lifts and it tracks all the weights that I lift. It’s like having a personal trainer in my phone. I also walked for at least 30 minutes, at least twice a week.
That’s it. That’s the nuts and bolts.
That’s how I did it.
What questions do you have? What other information do you want? How can I help you on your journey?
THE JOURNEY - NUTS AND BOLTS
As I see friends who haven’t seen me in a while they are effusive in their praise of physical fitness. Over the last year, my body has transformed. What they can’t see is the transformation that has taken place in my heart, mind, and soul. Those changes are of course nearly impossible to simply see.
As important as the physical fitness has been, it’s these other changes that are more important. They are the changes that will help me to maintain my physical fitness beyond reaching a goal.
The single most common question that I get is, “how did you do it?”
My usual response is, “eat less, move more.” Which in a crude sense, is exactly the answer.
But there’s more to it than that, much more.
What are the nuts and bolts for the change in fitness that I’ve experienced?
The first thing, of which I’ve written about at length, is that my self-perception had to change. I had to love myself enough to pursue fitness. By loving myself I was able to make a decision to choose a fully orbed pursuit of health.
Regarding spiritual fitness, I once again began reading. I know that sounds silly. Reading had fallen from my regular habits. I read only when necessary. But, over the last year I began reading in earnest. Not just reading, but reading books that challenged me spiritually and theologically. I didn’t read fast or to “get through” things but I read and pondered. This included the Scriptures and books written by people that I wanted to learn from.
I know that these aren’t really the nuts and bolts that people are interested in when they ask, “How did you do it?” But, without the inner changes the outward changes would not have been able to happen. We have to deal with the inside so that the outside can be transformed.
What about the nuts and bolts for the physical fitness?
“How did you do it?”
The first step that I took was to identify what was the friction point that inhibited me from pursuing exercise. What I learned was that my key friction point was how long it would take me to exercise for 45 minutes. My gym was about a 20 minute drive. So, 40 minutes round trip, plus 45 minutes to exercise, plus another 20 minutes to shower and dress. In other words, it took two hours to exercise for 45 minutes. I don’t know about you, but I’m not typically able to carve out two hours from my day.
When I learned this, I started a 15 minutes per day walking commitment. My thought was that I could do anything for 15 minutes. Indeed I could and I did for over a year. This got me moving. Once I started moving, I kept moving.
I realized that I wasn’t losing any weight and my body was not changing. I had to change what was going into my body. I spent about six months controlling for carbohydrates. I ate less than 25g per day. This started my weight loss.
After six months I hit a plateau at about 30lbs lost. One of the trainers at my new gym (it is 7 minutes from my house!) told me about something called Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). This is the number of calories your body burns just by living. He shared with me about the need to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight long term. We talked through the role of macronutrients, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. The plan was to maintain muscle while losing weight. To do this I followed a simple plan.
Eating: I targeted approximately 2000 calories per day with 100g protein as the bulk of those calories. This target was based on my BMR. I used this calculator to determine my calorie goal: BMR Calculator. I ate a lot of chicken, salmon, turkey, cruciferous vegetables, and green leafy vegetables.
Tracking: I used an app called Carb Manager. Its free version allowed me to track calories and macronutrients. The premium version I purchased to get finer control. For about a year I tracked almost everything that I ate and drank. This helped me to understand what foods were costing me in terms of calories. It was surprising to see how many calories were in things like dressings and sauces. Tracking is critical because it keeps you honest.
Exercising: I began lifting weights three days a week and I used an app called, FitBod. It uses AI to construct workouts. There are gifs that show you how to do the lifts and it tracks all the weights that I lift. It’s like having a personal trainer in my phone. I also walked for at least 30 minutes, at least twice a week.
That’s it. That’s the nuts and bolts.
That’s how I did it.
What questions do you have? What other information do you want? How can I help you on your journey?
Good morning! May you have a sense of joy in your work #today.
Good morning! May you glimpse your purpose knowing you matter #today.
Good Monday morning! May your week be filled with joyful adventures.
Good morning! May you create community #today!
Good morning! May you do something today that simply brings you joy.
A little college baseball on a brillaint Friday afternoon? Yes, please!
Gym thought…
Good morning! We made it to Friday, persevere, press on, and choose joy #today!
I love this!
Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.
— Epicurus
Good morning! May you create joy #today in the midst of whatever it is you are pursuing.
Hung out on the lake with the boys this afternoon to end the summer. It was perfect!
It was Thanksgiving and we were heading to my brother Jay’s home outside Baltimore, Maryland. As we drove the weather grew worse and worse.
This journey was not going well.
THE JOURNEY - THE UNSEEN
What do we do when the goal is unseen?
It was Thanksgiving and we were heading to my brother Jay's home outside Baltimore, Maryland. We were excited to spend time with his family and celebrate together. As we drove the weather grew worse and worse.
The snow and sleet were becoming overwhelming. Cars were pulling off and sliding off the road at an alarming rate. My hands gripped the steering wheel tighter than I knew I could. White knuckling was an understatement. I grew more and more tired. Tensions were rising in the car. I knew that Amy wouldn't be comfortable getting behind the wheel and so I drove on.
This journey was not going well.
I desperately wanted to stop and sleep. Amy was desperately trying to find a hotel room.
The “good” hotels were all booked up with other travelers hiding from the storm.
We drove on.
We made it to Jay's house.
Had we known how the journey would have played out, we might not have left. But, the hope of the joy of seeing my brother, sister-in-law, niece, nephew, and mom was more than enough to keep us going.
We couldn't see, quite literally, our destination, yet there was hope of the joyful reunion that kept us going. The perseverance paid off! The joy was made that much more sweeter after the difficulty of the journey.
—
“So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18, The Message)”
—
At the beginning of any journey you can't see the end. You can try to picture it in your mind's eye but you don't see it. You have to start out and just go. You hope that the going will be smooth and easy. You hope that there will not be any bad weather or traffic jams or delayed flights. But, at the end of the day, you just don't know what the journey will be like nor can you see the destination.
Every journey demands faith.
Paul Tillich wrote, “Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.”
I'm realizing that this is exactly what has been at the center of my journey toward fitness. It is a journey of the finite being grasped by the infinite.
You see, there's no end to the pursuit of fitness. It's an ongoing journey with various stops along the way.
—
I am struck by something that the Apostle Paul says in that quote from 2 Corinthians, “The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever.”
As I consider what is going on in my fitness journey, this really is the heart of the matter. It's not about a particular number on the scale or the size of my waist. No, those things are here today and gone tomorrow. It's truly about the pursuit of fitness. A pursuit of something that will last forever.
Being strong, feeling good, having energy, loving well. These are the things that the journey brings about.
So I journey on.
I am believing by faith that the journey will help me become fully myself.
We can't truly see the end when we begin, but stepping out in faith on the journey opens the door to joy.
THE JOURNEY - THE UNSEEN
What do we do when the goal is unseen?
It was Thanksgiving and we were heading to my brother Jay's home outside Baltimore, Maryland. We were excited to spend time with his family and celebrate together. As we drove the weather grew worse and worse.
The snow and sleet were becoming overwhelming. Cars were pulling off and sliding off the road at an alarming rate. My hands gripped the steering wheel tighter than I knew I could. White knuckling was an understatement. I grew more and more tired. Tensions were rising in the car. I knew that Amy wouldn't be comfortable getting behind the wheel and so I drove on.
This journey was not going well.
I desperately wanted to stop and sleep. Amy was desperately trying to find a hotel room.
The “good” hotels were all booked up with other travelers hiding from the storm.
We drove on.
We made it to Jay's house.
Had we known how the journey would have played out, we might not have left. But, the hope of the joy of seeing my brother, sister-in-law, niece, nephew, and mom was more than enough to keep us going.
We couldn't see, quite literally, our destination, yet there was hope of the joyful reunion that kept us going. The perseverance paid off! The joy was made that much more sweeter after the difficulty of the journey.
—
“So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18, The Message)”
—
At the beginning of any journey you can't see the end. You can try to picture it in your mind's eye but you don't see it. You have to start out and just go. You hope that the going will be smooth and easy. You hope that there will not be any bad weather or traffic jams or delayed flights. But, at the end of the day, you just don't know what the journey will be like nor can you see the destination.
Every journey demands faith.
Paul Tillich wrote, “Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.”
I'm realizing that this is exactly what has been at the center of my journey toward fitness. It is a journey of the finite being grasped by the infinite.
You see, there's no end to the pursuit of fitness. It's an ongoing journey with various stops along the way.
—
I am struck by something that the Apostle Paul says in that quote from 2 Corinthians, “The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever.”
As I consider what is going on in my fitness journey, this really is the heart of the matter. It's not about a particular number on the scale or the size of my waist. No, those things are here today and gone tomorrow. It's truly about the pursuit of fitness. A pursuit of something that will last forever.
Being strong, feeling good, having energy, loving well. These are the things that the journey brings about.
So I journey on.
I am believing by faith that the journey will help me become fully myself.
We can't truly see the end when we begin, but stepping out in faith on the journey opens the door to joy.
Good morning! May you be fully present with those around you #today.
Good morning! May you leave joy in your wake as you pursue your authentic self today.
Good morning! May you start your week with enthusiasm, joy, and hope.
Good friends seem to know what you need even when you don’t.
Good morning! May you connect deeply with others today experiencing the richness of being known.
Good morning! May you intentionally pursue joy today.
Good morning! May you finish the week well #today, press on!
I love watching this kid play ball!
Good morning! May you get that thing off your list #today that is going to impede rest.
THE JOURNEY - THE CREW
We aren't made to walk the path alone.
I began my journey toward physical fitness with a commitment to walk fifteen minutes per day. My thinking was that I could do anything for fifteen minutes. I was right. Rarely did I walk for less than twenty minutes. Almost always, I walked at least thirty.
I had, in my excitement over such a plan, decided to invite some close friends to hold me accountable. My walk needed to be done by 10 pm or they were free to give me all the grief!
At some point in my walking, I pulled a muscle. I could barely walk. But, I persevered. I can do anything for fifteen minutes.
During that time, it was all I could do to walk around the block. I had a dip in the hip but absolutely no glide in the stride. One evening, I had decided that after mowing the lawn I had had enough for the day.
I then made a fatal mistake. I told my close friends that I was counting the mowing as my walk.
In the words of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, “Big mistake, huge, BIG!”
“You made a commitment to walk. Your commitment was not to mow.”
I raged. I argued. I walked.
Never in my life had I been actually held accountable to anything.
These friends loved me enough to hold me accountable to the commitment I had made. I really didn't like them when they did. Yet, they held their ground and pushed me to walk. They wanted me to succeed. In that moment they wanted me to hold to my commitment more than I did.
I walked!
—
There is a passage in the ancient text that goes like this,
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3)”
This is written right after the writer lists out a number of people who had lived and died in faith. They were the “who's who” of the Old Testament. These people persevered in their faith and made up the “great cloud of witnesses,” along with countless others.
It is interesting to me that when he writes about persevering through the race he sets the call in the context of a “great cloud of witnesses.”
The community of faith, the cloud of witnesses, were the context from which the author calls people to press on and persevere.
—
We are not made to be alone. It is not good for us to be alone. We need community. We need a cloud of witnesses.
In my pursuit of fitness (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational) I have become keenly aware of my need for a cloud of witnesses. This cloud of witnesses I call my “crew.” These are the people that I have learned to trust with all of who I am. I have invited them into my life and given them the go ahead to hold me accountable.
When I don't want to persevere, I reach out to these people and they encourage me to walk on.
A community of people who are truly involved in your life will eventually make you very angry because they will not let you get away with quitting. To quit, to stop walking, is the one thing that is unacceptable to them. This crew of mine reminds me of my commitments, to be sure, but more than that, they remind me of who I am and who I want to be.
My identity is not shaped in isolation. It is shaped in community. My crew reminds me of who I am and these reminders give me the hope to carry on.
The journey towards fitness necessitates a crew of people who walk with you.
Who is your crew? Will they ensure that you walk on?
—
*And love is not the easy thing The only baggage that you can bring And love is not the easy thing The only baggage you can bring Is all that you can't leave behind
And if the darkness is to keep us apart And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off And if your glass heart should crack And for a second you turn back Oh no, be strong
Walk on, walk on What you got they can't steal it No, they can't even feel it Walk on, walk on Stay safe tonight* – U2
THE JOURNEY - THE CREW
We aren't made to walk the path alone.
I began my journey toward physical fitness with a commitment to walk fifteen minutes per day. My thinking was that I could do anything for fifteen minutes. I was right. Rarely did I walk for less than twenty minutes. Almost always, I walked at least thirty.
I had, in my excitement over such a plan, decided to invite some close friends to hold me accountable. My walk needed to be done by 10 pm or they were free to give me all the grief!
At some point in my walking, I pulled a muscle. I could barely walk. But, I persevered. I can do anything for fifteen minutes.
During that time, it was all I could do to walk around the block. I had a dip in the hip but absolutely no glide in the stride. One evening, I had decided that after mowing the lawn I had had enough for the day.
I then made a fatal mistake. I told my close friends that I was counting the mowing as my walk.
In the words of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, “Big mistake, huge, BIG!”
“You made a commitment to walk. Your commitment was not to mow.”
I raged. I argued. I walked.
Never in my life had I been actually held accountable to anything.
These friends loved me enough to hold me accountable to the commitment I had made. I really didn't like them when they did. Yet, they held their ground and pushed me to walk. They wanted me to succeed. In that moment they wanted me to hold to my commitment more than I did.
I walked!
—
There is a passage in the ancient text that goes like this,
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3)”
This is written right after the writer lists out a number of people who had lived and died in faith. They were the “who's who” of the Old Testament. These people persevered in their faith and made up the “great cloud of witnesses,” along with countless others.
It is interesting to me that when he writes about persevering through the race he sets the call in the context of a “great cloud of witnesses.”
The community of faith, the cloud of witnesses, were the context from which the author calls people to press on and persevere.
—
We are not made to be alone. It is not good for us to be alone. We need community. We need a cloud of witnesses.
In my pursuit of fitness (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational) I have become keenly aware of my need for a cloud of witnesses. This cloud of witnesses I call my “crew.” These are the people that I have learned to trust with all of who I am. I have invited them into my life and given them the go ahead to hold me accountable.
When I don't want to persevere, I reach out to these people and they encourage me to walk on.
A community of people who are truly involved in your life will eventually make you very angry because they will not let you get away with quitting. To quit, to stop walking, is the one thing that is unacceptable to them. This crew of mine reminds me of my commitments, to be sure, but more than that, they remind me of who I am and who I want to be.
My identity is not shaped in isolation. It is shaped in community. My crew reminds me of who I am and these reminders give me the hope to carry on.
The journey towards fitness necessitates a crew of people who walk with you.
Who is your crew? Will they ensure that you walk on?
—
*And love is not the easy thing The only baggage that you can bring And love is not the easy thing The only baggage you can bring Is all that you can't leave behind
And if the darkness is to keep us apart And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off And if your glass heart should crack And for a second you turn back Oh no, be strong
Walk on, walk on What you got they can't steal it No, they can't even feel it Walk on, walk on Stay safe tonight* – U2
Good morning dear #fediverse! May you make progress #today so that you can find some rest.
THE JOURNEY - PERSEVERANCE OVER PERFECTION
What if we valued perseverance over being perfect?
Sophia was walking through the forest with her friend Avil. As they were walking and talking she stubbed her toe on a root that had broken through the path. She stumbled and exclaimed her shock and surprise. She regained her footing and they continued walking.
A little bit later, Avil stubbed his toe as well. He cried out and then found another root and stubbed his other toe. When he did, he tripped and skinned his knee. He was distraught and threw himself down the side of a hill where he broke his leg. As rolled down the hill he also skinned his knee. So, he took a rock and broke his other arm.
It didn't take long before Sophia realized that the walk was over.
—
This parable is ridiculous! Avil (the Hebrew word for fool) is beyond foolish. Nobody would ever stub their toe and then go on to break their leg. Not to mention all the other ridiculous responses he made. Most of us likely see ourselves in Sophia, she stubs her toe and then continues on. That just makes sense, right?
Here's the crazy thing, if I'm honest, Avil is a reflection of me.
Over the years I've tried all kinds of things to lose weight and to pursue physical health.
Without fail, I've fallen short of my “plan.” When I did, I would throw my hands up and say, “Well, I blew it. Might as well enjoy it!” So what would I do? I'd get the famous number two from McDonald's, (two cheeseburgers, large fry, and a Coke) or I'd get a large pizza. I mean, why not? I have messed up the diet anyway.
You see, when it came to pursuing physical health my mindset has been, “perfection or nothing.” If I couldn't be perfect, I might as well just indulge.
There was no in between.
All or nothing.
I can trace this all or nothing approach through my pursuit of emotional health, spiritual health, and relational health too.
Health has always been a goal, a pursuit, something that I sought to attain. So, if I wasn't perfect then I was a failure. If I failed, then why press on?
I was all about perfection over perseverance.
—
The Apostle Paul wrote, “I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back. (Philippians 3:12-14, The Message)”
Paul was someone who was aware of the reality that life isn't a zero sum game. Inherent in what he writes here is the reality that life is a process. Becoming mature in his faith was not something that he was necessarily going to succeed at. It was a journey that he was on.
Notice also, that there was failure baked into what Paul said. Paul seems to be saying, “I fail too! I fall short too! But I press on!”
Perseverance is more important than perfection.
—
I will never be perfect. I will never have a perfect streak of eating well or exercising or being a good friend or being emotionally fit. But, instead of quitting I need to embrace the way of Sophia and recover my footing and keep hiking.
Something that I think that has been an important lesson is to learn the subtle shift from thinking about health to thinking about fitness.
Mental fitness. Physical fitness. Spiritual fitness. Emotional fitness. Relational fitness.
Fitness doesn't have an end. It's a goal to strive toward but you never really attain it. You never arrive at the end of fitness. So, you keep on pressing on. Straining toward the goal.
No turning back!
If the journey is the goal and the goal is the journey then all we really have is perseverance.
Perfection is not something that we will ever find. If not being perfect derails the journey then I will never be able to move forward.
Because I am on a journey that has no end there is only the option of pressing on. Getting a little better each day. Even when there's a step backward it's not the end. I can regain my footing like Sophia and keep walking.
Perseverance over perfection.
THE JOURNEY - PERSEVERANCE OVER PERFECTION
What if we valued perseverance over being perfect?
Sophia was walking through the forest with her friend Avil. As they were walking and talking she stubbed her toe on a root that had broken through the path. She stumbled and exclaimed her shock and surprise. She regained her footing and they continued walking.
A little bit later, Avil stubbed his toe as well. He cried out and then found another root and stubbed his other toe. When he did, he tripped and skinned his knee. He was distraught and threw himself down the side of a hill where he broke his leg. As rolled down the hill he also skinned his knee. So, he took a rock and broke his other arm.
It didn't take long before Sophia realized that the walk was over.
—
This parable is ridiculous! Avil (the Hebrew word for fool) is beyond foolish. Nobody would ever stub their toe and then go on to break their leg. Not to mention all the other ridiculous responses he made. Most of us likely see ourselves in Sophia, she stubs her toe and then continues on. That just makes sense, right?
Here's the crazy thing, if I'm honest, Avil is a reflection of me.
Over the years I've tried all kinds of things to lose weight and to pursue physical health.
Without fail, I've fallen short of my “plan.” When I did, I would throw my hands up and say, “Well, I blew it. Might as well enjoy it!” So what would I do? I'd get the famous number two from McDonald's, (two cheeseburgers, large fry, and a Coke) or I'd get a large pizza. I mean, why not? I have messed up the diet anyway.
You see, when it came to pursuing physical health my mindset has been, “perfection or nothing.” If I couldn't be perfect, I might as well just indulge.
There was no in between.
All or nothing.
I can trace this all or nothing approach through my pursuit of emotional health, spiritual health, and relational health too.
Health has always been a goal, a pursuit, something that I sought to attain. So, if I wasn't perfect then I was a failure. If I failed, then why press on?
I was all about perfection over perseverance.
—
The Apostle Paul wrote, “I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back. (Philippians 3:12-14, The Message)”
Paul was someone who was aware of the reality that life isn't a zero sum game. Inherent in what he writes here is the reality that life is a process. Becoming mature in his faith was not something that he was necessarily going to succeed at. It was a journey that he was on.
Notice also, that there was failure baked into what Paul said. Paul seems to be saying, “I fail too! I fall short too! But I press on!”
Perseverance is more important than perfection.
—
I will never be perfect. I will never have a perfect streak of eating well or exercising or being a good friend or being emotionally fit. But, instead of quitting I need to embrace the way of Sophia and recover my footing and keep hiking.
Something that I think that has been an important lesson is to learn the subtle shift from thinking about health to thinking about fitness.
Mental fitness. Physical fitness. Spiritual fitness. Emotional fitness. Relational fitness.
Fitness doesn't have an end. It's a goal to strive toward but you never really attain it. You never arrive at the end of fitness. So, you keep on pressing on. Straining toward the goal.
No turning back!
If the journey is the goal and the goal is the journey then all we really have is perseverance.
Perfection is not something that we will ever find. If not being perfect derails the journey then I will never be able to move forward.
Because I am on a journey that has no end there is only the option of pressing on. Getting a little better each day. Even when there's a step backward it's not the end. I can regain my footing like Sophia and keep walking.
Perseverance over perfection.
THE JOURNEY - WHO AM I?
Our self identity shapes what we do.
A couple of years ago I read a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear. He tells the story of a friend who went on a weight loss journey. To begin this journey his friend started a habit of going to the gym. At this point you might be thinking, “Well, of course he did.” But here's the kicker, he never went in. Every day he drove to the gym and parked in the parking lot.
What a strange thing to do, I thought. It surely didn't make any sense to me when I initially read it. I stopped and pondered why would he do something so strange before continuing to read. I wanted to try and figure it out. For the life of me, I couldn't. It just didn't make any sense.
Eventually, as you would expect, his friend began going into the gym. But, he didn't work out. He just went in. Then, he started exercising but only did one set of one movement. Then he left. But, then he started working out regularly and changed his physical state of health.
What was happening in this story?
This man was changing his identity.
When he started his journey he was not someone who exercised. To become someone who exercised he needed to become someone who went to the gym. He wasn't that guy either. He had to become a person who went tot he gym before he could become a person who exercised. So, at the most basic of levels he became a person who went to the gym.
This story deeply resonated with me.
I had begun figuring out my why. I was beginning to learn what it meant to love me. But, there was a second question that I needed to wrestle with, “Who am I?”
What kind of person am I?
I began to work through a series of “I am...” statements related to health.
I am a spiritually healthy person. What does this mean? What does a spiritually healthy person look like? What kinds of practices does a spiritually healthy person have in their lives?
I am a relationally healthy person. What does a relationally healthy person look like? What kinds of relationships do they have? How do they orient their time? What kinds of boundaries does this person have?
I am an emotionally healthy person. What does this look like? How do I lean into working on emotional health? Are there signs of not being emotionally healthy that need to be addressed?
I am a physically healthy person. What kind of person is physically healthy? What is true of this person? What practices are in place for a person to by physically healthy?
Notice that these were statements followed by questions. They were not questions followed by more questions. I began to change the way I thought of myself.
I am...
As my self-identity began to change things became easier and easier.
When I went out to dinner I would look at the menu and ask myself, “What would a physically healthy person order here?” Then I would order that because I am a physically healthy person.
Self-identifying as a “physically healthy person” also helped getting physically active much easier. On the many mornings that I don't want to hit the gym I think to myself, “A physically healthy person goes to the gym. I am a physically healthy person, so I will go to the gym.”
As I grow in my new self-identity as a healthy person (spiritually, reltionally, emotionally, and physically) I find making decisions to be easier. I am also finding that there are other things that are beginning to happen. For instance, part of my new identity is that I'm a person who goes to they gym three days a week and lifts weights. That's who I am now.
In the past, I was a person who was on a diet.
Diets are something that end.
As a person on a diet I would eventually become a person not on a diet. This meant that when I wasn't on a diet I would typically revert to old habits and undo much of what was done on the diet.
I am a person who is healthy. This never stops. It's a new way to of being. This way of being lasts beyond reaching any particular goal.
Pursuing a way of being is not goal driven. It is journey driven.
Who am I?
That's the question that shapes the journey.
THE JOURNEY - WHO AM I?
Our self identity shapes what we do.
A couple of years ago I read a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear. He tells the story of a friend who went on a weight loss journey. To begin this journey his friend started a habit of going to the gym. At this point you might be thinking, “Well, of course he did.” But here's the kicker, he never went in. Every day he drove to the gym and parked in the parking lot.
What a strange thing to do, I thought. It surely didn't make any sense to me when I initially read it. I stopped and pondered why would he do something so strange before continuing to read. I wanted to try and figure it out. For the life of me, I couldn't. It just didn't make any sense.
Eventually, as you would expect, his friend began going into the gym. But, he didn't work out. He just went in. Then, he started exercising but only did one set of one movement. Then he left. But, then he started working out regularly and changed his physical state of health.
What was happening in this story?
This man was changing his identity.
When he started his journey he was not someone who exercised. To become someone who exercised he needed to become someone who went to the gym. He wasn't that guy either. He had to become a person who went tot he gym before he could become a person who exercised. So, at the most basic of levels he became a person who went to the gym.
This story deeply resonated with me.
I had begun figuring out my why. I was beginning to learn what it meant to love me. But, there was a second question that I needed to wrestle with, “Who am I?”
What kind of person am I?
I began to work through a series of “I am...” statements related to health.
I am a spiritually healthy person. What does this mean? What does a spiritually healthy person look like? What kinds of practices does a spiritually healthy person have in their lives?
I am a relationally healthy person. What does a relationally healthy person look like? What kinds of relationships do they have? How do they orient their time? What kinds of boundaries does this person have?
I am an emotionally healthy person. What does this look like? How do I lean into working on emotional health? Are there signs of not being emotionally healthy that need to be addressed?
I am a physically healthy person. What kind of person is physically healthy? What is true of this person? What practices are in place for a person to by physically healthy?
Notice that these were statements followed by questions. They were not questions followed by more questions. I began to change the way I thought of myself.
I am...
As my self-identity began to change things became easier and easier.
When I went out to dinner I would look at the menu and ask myself, “What would a physically healthy person order here?” Then I would order that because I am a physically healthy person.
Self-identifying as a “physically healthy person” also helped getting physically active much easier. On the many mornings that I don't want to hit the gym I think to myself, “A physically healthy person goes to the gym. I am a physically healthy person, so I will go to the gym.”
As I grow in my new self-identity as a healthy person (spiritually, reltionally, emotionally, and physically) I find making decisions to be easier. I am also finding that there are other things that are beginning to happen. For instance, part of my new identity is that I'm a person who goes to they gym three days a week and lifts weights. That's who I am now.
In the past, I was a person who was on a diet.
Diets are something that end.
As a person on a diet I would eventually become a person not on a diet. This meant that when I wasn't on a diet I would typically revert to old habits and undo much of what was done on the diet.
I am a person who is healthy. This never stops. It's a new way to of being. This way of being lasts beyond reaching any particular goal.
Pursuing a way of being is not goal driven. It is journey driven.
Who am I?
That's the question that shapes the journey.
THE JOURNEY - START WITH "WHY?"
Answering one question can start the journey.
I recently shared a before and after picture one year apart on my social feeds. It sparked congratulations and a lot of kind words. Over the last eighteen months I have lost over 100 lbs. My entire body has changed. I see old pictures and it doesn't even seem like I'm the same person.
Do you want to know something interesting? When I look in the mirror I don't really see much change at all. I will catch myself walking past a mirror and think, “wow! I've changed!” Then as I continue to look at myself I can almost see my body transform back to the “old me” in the mirror.
It's weird.
Many of the comments and conversations I have around this journey are about how hard it must be to be on a diet and how hard it is to exercise regularly. Folks are impressed by the consistency and perseverance. Often people want the “playbook.” They want the nuts and bolts about how I got here. I gladly share it with them, but more times than not, their eyes glass over.
The thing is, this really is a journey. It's my own personal hero journey. There are ups and downs. There are obstacles and pitfalls. There have been big successes and some big failures too.
A number of years ago after my second child, Libby, was born I lost a lot of weight. I wanted to to do it for “the kids.” Life was pretty easy and I dropped the weight.
A few years later, life got stressful. I gained all the weight back and kept it on for almost twenty years.
There were diets here and there and I lost some weight and I gained it back.
But, then something changed.
—
Over the last ten years I have become obsessed with trying to wrap my head and heart around two ideas. These two ideas are things that I come back to over and over again. I feel like they are all I talk about and think about.
Love and grace.
I suppose it shouldn't be all that surprising that a pastor thinks about love and grace (well, these days with the state of American Christianity perhaps it is). For the longest time I was more interested in truth and righteousness.
I wanted to be right. I knew I had the truth. More than anything I wanted people to embrace the truth and see that I was right so that they would be able to know what I knew. You could say, I was a bit of tool, and you'd be right. I was arrogant and self-consumed. I was not all that kind.
In the background of all that there was a nagging question, “What's so amazing about grace?” It had been posited to me by my friend and mentor, Bob. This question just floated around in the background like a little soundtrack that I tried to ignore.
Over the last ten years that question wouldn't remain in the background. It exploded into the foreground and with it came the question, “What is unconditional love?”
—
“What does any of this have to do with a journey toward losing weight?”
Great question.
In some ways it doesn't have anything to do with it and at the same time it has everything to do with it.
My journey hasn't been a journey of weight loss. My journey, my hero journey, has been a journey of health. Physical health is but one aspect. And, it's almost the least important aspect of the journey! It's a consequence of a pursuit of love and grace. As I pursued these things I started becoming more aware of my need to be a healthy person. This meant a healthy spirituality, healthy emotionally, and healthy relationally along with the physical.
I titled this, Start with “Why?”, because when I finally got rolling on my journey it was when I had finally come to the realization that I loved me.
I loved me enough to exercise. I loved me enough to change my eating habits. I loved me enough to be intentional about relationships. I loved me enough to doggedly pursue my spiritual life.
As I set out on this journey eighteen months ago it was not for my wife or for my children. It was not to get healthy.
I took the first step on the journey because I had finally come to the place where I loved me.
—
I had to confront my lack of love for myself.
Jesus said, “Love your neighbors as yourself”. It struck me that love of neighbor was limited by my ability to love myself. How I treated myself was in some way a reflection of how I loved my neighbor. I was becoming obsessed with the idea of “loving well”, which for me is the incorporation of love and grace. But, to really do that, to truly and thoroughly love well, I had to love me.
I'm convinced that the first step in the journey toward health has to start with, “Why?”
I am also convinced that if the why doesn't include “because I love me” then the journey is likely derailed from the beginning. The journey toward health (spiritual, relational, emotional, physical) is the hardest thing that I've entered into. If it wasn't rooted in love, I don't think I would have continued.
Because the journey is rooted in love, grace is always nipping at the heels. Grace frees me from legalism. Grace in the midst of perseverance opens the door to stumble and fall and get back up knowing that I'm still embraced and accepted.
—
“How did you do it?”
Love and grace my friend, love and grace.
THE JOURNEY - START WITH "WHY?"
Answering one question can start the journey.
I recently shared a before and after picture one year apart on my social feeds. It sparked congratulations and a lot of kind words. Over the last eighteen months I have lost over 100 lbs. My entire body has changed. I see old pictures and it doesn't even seem like I'm the same person.
Do you want to know something interesting? When I look in the mirror I don't really see much change at all. I will catch myself walking past a mirror and think, “wow! I've changed!” Then as I continue to look at myself I can almost see my body transform back to the “old me” in the mirror.
It's weird.
Many of the comments and conversations I have around this journey are about how hard it must be to be on a diet and how hard it is to exercise regularly. Folks are impressed by the consistency and perseverance. Often people want the “playbook.” They want the nuts and bolts about how I got here. I gladly share it with them, but more times than not, their eyes glass over.
The thing is, this really is a journey. It's my own personal hero journey. There are ups and downs. There are obstacles and pitfalls. There have been big successes and some big failures too.
A number of years ago after my second child, Libby, was born I lost a lot of weight. I wanted to to do it for “the kids.” Life was pretty easy and I dropped the weight.
A few years later, life got stressful. I gained all the weight back and kept it on for almost twenty years.
There were diets here and there and I lost some weight and I gained it back.
But, then something changed.
—
Over the last ten years I have become obsessed with trying to wrap my head and heart around two ideas. These two ideas are things that I come back to over and over again. I feel like they are all I talk about and think about.
Love and grace.
I suppose it shouldn't be all that surprising that a pastor thinks about love and grace (well, these days with the state of American Christianity perhaps it is). For the longest time I was more interested in truth and righteousness.
I wanted to be right. I knew I had the truth. More than anything I wanted people to embrace the truth and see that I was right so that they would be able to know what I knew. You could say, I was a bit of tool, and you'd be right. I was arrogant and self-consumed. I was not all that kind.
In the background of all that there was a nagging question, “What's so amazing about grace?” It had been posited to me by my friend and mentor, Bob. This question just floated around in the background like a little soundtrack that I tried to ignore.
Over the last ten years that question wouldn't remain in the background. It exploded into the foreground and with it came the question, “What is unconditional love?”
—
“What does any of this have to do with a journey toward losing weight?”
Great question.
In some ways it doesn't have anything to do with it and at the same time it has everything to do with it.
My journey hasn't been a journey of weight loss. My journey, my hero journey, has been a journey of health. Physical health is but one aspect. And, it's almost the least important aspect of the journey! It's a consequence of a pursuit of love and grace. As I pursued these things I started becoming more aware of my need to be a healthy person. This meant a healthy spirituality, healthy emotionally, and healthy relationally along with the physical.
I titled this, Start with “Why?”, because when I finally got rolling on my journey it was when I had finally come to the realization that I loved me.
I loved me enough to exercise. I loved me enough to change my eating habits. I loved me enough to be intentional about relationships. I loved me enough to doggedly pursue my spiritual life.
As I set out on this journey eighteen months ago it was not for my wife or for my children. It was not to get healthy.
I took the first step on the journey because I had finally come to the place where I loved me.
—
I had to confront my lack of love for myself.
Jesus said, “Love your neighbors as yourself”. It struck me that love of neighbor was limited by my ability to love myself. How I treated myself was in some way a reflection of how I loved my neighbor. I was becoming obsessed with the idea of “loving well”, which for me is the incorporation of love and grace. But, to really do that, to truly and thoroughly love well, I had to love me.
I'm convinced that the first step in the journey toward health has to start with, “Why?”
I am also convinced that if the why doesn't include “because I love me” then the journey is likely derailed from the beginning. The journey toward health (spiritual, relational, emotional, physical) is the hardest thing that I've entered into. If it wasn't rooted in love, I don't think I would have continued.
Because the journey is rooted in love, grace is always nipping at the heels. Grace frees me from legalism. Grace in the midst of perseverance opens the door to stumble and fall and get back up knowing that I'm still embraced and accepted.
—
“How did you do it?”
Love and grace my friend, love and grace.
THE WAY OF RECONNECTING
Why I find the Jesus Way helpful in loving well.
In the single most unsurprising thing ever written, I as a pastor think about religion. I think about it an awful lot. For a long time whenever I thought about religion I did so in a negative way. There was almost an allergic reaction to the word for me. Religion, in my understanding was nothing more than a set of beliefs or rules, an attempt by humanity to reach God.
Over the years though, I have come to understand religion in a very different light. In my desire to run from religion I ran to Jesus. As I ran to Jesus I discovered that religion is good and beautiful. How can I say this? Because, I continue to learn that religion at its core is about re-connecting again and again those things or people that had been broken apart.
As I continue to pursue the way of Jesus I am dumbfounded by how I could not have seen this sooner. For so long my practice of faith was marked by creating in groups and out groups. It started with “Believers” and “Non-believers”. Within the “Believers” there were the “Committed” and “Nominal”. Within the “Committed there were the “Faithful, Available, and Teachable” and their counterparts.
I certainly was not practicing religion. My practice of faith simply functioned to divide and separate.
Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
The Jesus way is rooted in this idea of love that crosses the disconnections. It is religion, that is, re-connecting again and again.
The love that Jesus describes here is not a love that is easy. It costs something. It demands that we set aside our innate desire to separate from and disconnect from those we consider enemies. Not only that, but we are to indeed love them. We are to treat them as neighbors. In the Jesus way we are to treat no one as part of the out-group. No, we are to move toward them in love seeking to re-connect with them.
Jesus also said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father but through me.” The longer I walk with Jesus the more I'm understanding this to mean that as we walk in the Jesus way, this way of self-sacrificial love, we will experience the Divine.
James, the brother of Jesus wrote, “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
The control of your tongue in James is directly related to connection/disconnection (he uses the terms blessing/cursing). So, if you claim to be a “religious (reconnecting)” person but all you do is divide your religion is worthless. But, pure and faultless religion (reconnecting) is displayed in looking after orphans and widows. Why those folks? Because they are the embodiment of disconnection. Widows have been disconnected from their husbands. Orphans have been disconnected from their parents. The way of Jesus calls us to the practice of re-connection.
Why do I think this way of Jesus is the best way to practice re-connection (religion)? Because there is a foundation for bringing about re-connection. Jesus teaches the way of reconciliation and re-connection through forgiveness.
As I continue to realize my complicity in causing brokenness and disconnection I continue to find grace, mercy, and forgiveness in Jesus. I am often overwhelmed by a sense of forgiveness from those around me. This provides me an ample pool of grace to draw from to be a conduit of that same grace to help bring re-connection to this world of disconnection.
Perhaps at the end of the day, the most powerful aspect of the Jesus Way is that it's not an individual endeavor but by following his way I find myself part of something bigger than myself. This community of other practitioners of the Jesus Way helps spur me on to love well.
THE WAY OF RECONNECTING
Why I find the Jesus Way helpful in loving well.
In the single most unsurprising thing ever written, I as a pastor think about religion. I think about it an awful lot. For a long time whenever I thought about religion I did so in a negative way. There was almost an allergic reaction to the word for me. Religion, in my understanding was nothing more than a set of beliefs or rules, an attempt by humanity to reach God.
Over the years though, I have come to understand religion in a very different light. In my desire to run from religion I ran to Jesus. As I ran to Jesus I discovered that religion is good and beautiful. How can I say this? Because, I continue to learn that religion at its core is about re-connecting again and again those things or people that had been broken apart.
As I continue to pursue the way of Jesus I am dumbfounded by how I could not have seen this sooner. For so long my practice of faith was marked by creating in groups and out groups. It started with “Believers” and “Non-believers”. Within the “Believers” there were the “Committed” and “Nominal”. Within the “Committed there were the “Faithful, Available, and Teachable” and their counterparts.
I certainly was not practicing religion. My practice of faith simply functioned to divide and separate.
Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
The Jesus way is rooted in this idea of love that crosses the disconnections. It is religion, that is, re-connecting again and again.
The love that Jesus describes here is not a love that is easy. It costs something. It demands that we set aside our innate desire to separate from and disconnect from those we consider enemies. Not only that, but we are to indeed love them. We are to treat them as neighbors. In the Jesus way we are to treat no one as part of the out-group. No, we are to move toward them in love seeking to re-connect with them.
Jesus also said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father but through me.” The longer I walk with Jesus the more I'm understanding this to mean that as we walk in the Jesus way, this way of self-sacrificial love, we will experience the Divine.
James, the brother of Jesus wrote, “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
The control of your tongue in James is directly related to connection/disconnection (he uses the terms blessing/cursing). So, if you claim to be a “religious (reconnecting)” person but all you do is divide your religion is worthless. But, pure and faultless religion (reconnecting) is displayed in looking after orphans and widows. Why those folks? Because they are the embodiment of disconnection. Widows have been disconnected from their husbands. Orphans have been disconnected from their parents. The way of Jesus calls us to the practice of re-connection.
Why do I think this way of Jesus is the best way to practice re-connection (religion)? Because there is a foundation for bringing about re-connection. Jesus teaches the way of reconciliation and re-connection through forgiveness.
As I continue to realize my complicity in causing brokenness and disconnection I continue to find grace, mercy, and forgiveness in Jesus. I am often overwhelmed by a sense of forgiveness from those around me. This provides me an ample pool of grace to draw from to be a conduit of that same grace to help bring re-connection to this world of disconnection.
Perhaps at the end of the day, the most powerful aspect of the Jesus Way is that it's not an individual endeavor but by following his way I find myself part of something bigger than myself. This community of other practitioners of the Jesus Way helps spur me on to love well.
FINDING MY RELIGION
Could religion actually be good?
When you think of religion what comes into your mind?
For many of us it's probably something like, “man's pursuit of the divine,” or “a system of beliefs,” or “the crutch of humanity,” or “the worst thing that's ever happened to humanity.” Whatever our understanding or definition it's typically tinged with a bit of negativity.
How many folks do you know say something like, “I'm spiritual not religious”? In many of my circles that saying goes like this, “Christianity is a relationship not a religion.”
Religion is apparently not a very popular thing.
“Whatever you do, don't talk about religion or politics.” – Someone
“Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too” – John Lennon
Religion is a dirty word. When you talk to most folks it seems like religion conjures up images of disconnection, judgementalism, factionalism, and maybe even hate. I saw a funny meme that said, “Religion is just weird guys in robes making stuff up.”
I think it is safe to say that we do not think, by and large, very highly of religion.
Is there anything redeeming or good or helpful about religion?
Does religion deserve its bad reputation?
Is it possible that religion might not be the evil villain that it has been made out to be?
—
I think it was in a Rob Bell podcast (and he probably got it from Richard Rohr) that I heard something that jarred me and I may have heard an audible record scratch in my mind.
He was talking about religion and in particular he was hitting on the Latin root of the word. Both religion and ligament share the Latin root, “ligare”. “Ligare” means to bind or bond. “Religare” is the Latin term from which we derive “religion.” If my research into the Latin pre-fix “re-” is correct then the idea of “religare” is “bind again and again.”
It's interesting to me that the word that developed into our modern word for “religion” is one that in so many ways is the opposite of what it means today.
What if religion is really about “binding again and again”?
—
As I think about the idea of religion in conjunction to its linguistic roots it is exactly the kind of thing that I want to be about.
What I like about thinking about the term, religion, at this deeper level is that I find it to be deeply connected to the best aspect (in my not so humble opinion) of the human experience: forgiveness.
There is an assumption with the very core of the word that there is going to be disconnection and brokenness and separation but there is also the hope of connection and healing and unity. But, not only that those are realities but also the reality that they would be an ongoing process. There is in the Latin prefix “re-” a sense of again and again.
Religion in this sense is such an honest word. It doesn't try to sugar coat our experience. It doesn't pretend that there is in some way an end to the need for re-connecting. All of us know that life and relationships of every kind are messy and hard.
The deeper we go in relationship the more we will find our need to pursue love and forgiveness.
—
There is only so long that we can pretend in relationships. At some point our masks come off and we finally get real (yes, yes, that sounds an awful lot like the opening to MTV's Real World, I'm a product of my culture). When this happens we will inevitably hurt the person with whom we are in relationship with and they will inevitably hurt us.
My wife and I just celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. There is no person that knows me like her and I assume that I know her better than any other. We have known one another since 1995. In the nearly 30 years that we have had a relationship we have hurt one another. Some hurts were deeper than others. But, they were hurts nonetheless. Each time we have chosen to forgive and pursue love. In so doing, we were practicing the most foundational form of religion.
I am coming to the conclusion that instead of running away from religion as I follow Jesus, I'm running head long into religion. Religion is the core of what I want to be all about because it seems to be what Jesus was all about.
—
One time Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was. He responded with love God and the second being love your neighbor as yourself. Later, Jesus would expand on the love your neighbor bit to also include loving your enemies.
Jesus was all about religion. He was all about re-connecting again and again those things or people that had been broken apart.
Whether someone is a Christian or a church-goer or even an atheist I think we all might want consider religion.
You see, I don't need to imagine a world without religion. We see that world every single day. Everywhere we look it seems that we can easily find broken relationships and disconnection.
It's harder to imagine a world with religion. A world that was rife with connection and forgiveness rooted in love.
As I continue to think about this it strikes me that there is not any particular belief necessary for religion. What matters is for people to love well. Can a person who believes in God do that? Yes. Can a person who does not believe in God do that? Yes.
I am committed to following Jesus. I think by following in his way it becomes easier to love well to practice religion (but that's for another post).
It turns out that as I have tried to run from “religion” to a “relationship with God” or a deeper “spirituality,” I'm actually finding my religion.
Everyday I wake up with one thing on my mind, “How can I love well today?”
In other words, “I can't wait to practice religion today!”
FINDING MY RELIGION
Could religion actually be good?
When you think of religion what comes into your mind?
For many of us it's probably something like, “man's pursuit of the divine,” or “a system of beliefs,” or “the crutch of humanity,” or “the worst thing that's ever happened to humanity.” Whatever our understanding or definition it's typically tinged with a bit of negativity.
How many folks do you know say something like, “I'm spiritual not religious”? In many of my circles that saying goes like this, “Christianity is a relationship not a religion.”
Religion is apparently not a very popular thing.
“Whatever you do, don't talk about religion or politics.” – Someone
“Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too” – John Lennon
Religion is a dirty word. When you talk to most folks it seems like religion conjures up images of disconnection, judgementalism, factionalism, and maybe even hate. I saw a funny meme that said, “Religion is just weird guys in robes making stuff up.”
I think it is safe to say that we do not think, by and large, very highly of religion.
Is there anything redeeming or good or helpful about religion?
Does religion deserve its bad reputation?
Is it possible that religion might not be the evil villain that it has been made out to be?
—
I think it was in a Rob Bell podcast (and he probably got it from Richard Rohr) that I heard something that jarred me and I may have heard an audible record scratch in my mind.
He was talking about religion and in particular he was hitting on the Latin root of the word. Both religion and ligament share the Latin root, “ligare”. “Ligare” means to bind or bond. “Religare” is the Latin term from which we derive “religion.” If my research into the Latin pre-fix “re-” is correct then the idea of “religare” is “bind again and again.”
It's interesting to me that the word that developed into our modern word for “religion” is one that in so many ways is the opposite of what it means today.
What if religion is really about “binding again and again”?
—
As I think about the idea of religion in conjunction to its linguistic roots it is exactly the kind of thing that I want to be about.
What I like about thinking about the term, religion, at this deeper level is that I find it to be deeply connected to the best aspect (in my not so humble opinion) of the human experience: forgiveness.
There is an assumption with the very core of the word that there is going to be disconnection and brokenness and separation but there is also the hope of connection and healing and unity. But, not only that those are realities but also the reality that they would be an ongoing process. There is in the Latin prefix “re-” a sense of again and again.
Religion in this sense is such an honest word. It doesn't try to sugar coat our experience. It doesn't pretend that there is in some way an end to the need for re-connecting. All of us know that life and relationships of every kind are messy and hard.
The deeper we go in relationship the more we will find our need to pursue love and forgiveness.
—
There is only so long that we can pretend in relationships. At some point our masks come off and we finally get real (yes, yes, that sounds an awful lot like the opening to MTV's Real World, I'm a product of my culture). When this happens we will inevitably hurt the person with whom we are in relationship with and they will inevitably hurt us.
My wife and I just celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. There is no person that knows me like her and I assume that I know her better than any other. We have known one another since 1995. In the nearly 30 years that we have had a relationship we have hurt one another. Some hurts were deeper than others. But, they were hurts nonetheless. Each time we have chosen to forgive and pursue love. In so doing, we were practicing the most foundational form of religion.
I am coming to the conclusion that instead of running away from religion as I follow Jesus, I'm running head long into religion. Religion is the core of what I want to be all about because it seems to be what Jesus was all about.
—
One time Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was. He responded with love God and the second being love your neighbor as yourself. Later, Jesus would expand on the love your neighbor bit to also include loving your enemies.
Jesus was all about religion. He was all about re-connecting again and again those things or people that had been broken apart.
Whether someone is a Christian or a church-goer or even an atheist I think we all might want consider religion.
You see, I don't need to imagine a world without religion. We see that world every single day. Everywhere we look it seems that we can easily find broken relationships and disconnection.
It's harder to imagine a world with religion. A world that was rife with connection and forgiveness rooted in love.
As I continue to think about this it strikes me that there is not any particular belief necessary for religion. What matters is for people to love well. Can a person who believes in God do that? Yes. Can a person who does not believe in God do that? Yes.
I am committed to following Jesus. I think by following in his way it becomes easier to love well to practice religion (but that's for another post).
It turns out that as I have tried to run from “religion” to a “relationship with God” or a deeper “spirituality,” I'm actually finding my religion.
Everyday I wake up with one thing on my mind, “How can I love well today?”
In other words, “I can't wait to practice religion today!”
THE THING CALLED DECONSTRUCTION
What if deconstruction was something else?
Everywhere you look people are deconstructing. For some, this looks like a total rejection of faith. Some question a doctrine here or there. Others walk away from “church” and hold on to Jesus. Loads of “Christian famous” folks are carrying out their deconstruction online for the world to see. Some are leveraging deconstruction for financial gain (yes, you can hire people to coach you through a season of deconstruction).
Then there's the response to deconstruction. Some celebrate it and almost evangelize it to others. Others point to it as a simply a way to disguise apostasy. Both seem to be missing the mark.
The Dark Night of the Soul
What we now call “deconstruction” is nothing new.
St. John of the Cross is largely credited with coining the term, “dark night of the soul” in his 16th century poem.
Even before him, the concept is present throughout the writings of early Christians. The dark night of the soul often refers to seasons where the one who believes encounters in fresh ways the mysteries of the divine. This could be in good times and bad times.
As we look to the story of the people of God in the Bible we see this dark night of the soul or deconstruction all over the place. In particular, I think of the books of Ecclesiastes, Lamentations and Jeremiah (honestly, almost all of the prophets show signs of this). One of my favorite parts of the Acts of the Apostles is witnessing the deconstruction of Peter and Paul's faith.
What strikes me is that counter to what some folks would have us think, deconstruction is normal for people seeking to follow in the way of Christ.
Maybe what it is...
I have been thinking a lot about this dark-night-of-the-soul/deconstruction for the last number of years. Something I am realizing is that I have gone through many seasons of deconstruction. So much so, that I'm not sure that the term is even helpful. For a while I thought maybe it was a cycle of deconstruction and reconstruction. But, I'm not sure that's really it. I think that perhaps, something else is going on.
I wonder if a little phrase from C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle might be helpful,
“It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this.You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking-glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different–deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t describe it any better than that: if you ever get there you will know what I mean.
It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right forehoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried:
“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!”
“Further up, and further in.” It strikes me that this is really what is happening in my life and the life of so many others. Maybe, it's not de- and re- construction? Could it be that it's a vast spiral of becoming more and more of who we are meant to be? Ken Wilber in his text, A Theory of Everything, calls this the process of “transcend and include.”
What if we could envision our lives progressing not along a linear line of ups and downs, but as a spiral that is driving us deeper and deeper towards reality. We learn what we need to learn where we are right here, and right now. Then that drives us ever deeper to new truths and a clearer sense of who we are and who we are to become. The mystery continues to beckon, “further up, and further in...”
I don't have a new word for this, but maybe an old word would do? Maybe the old word, “sanctification,” is a better term. This process of becoming something new. When I read through the stories of God's people I see them constantly moving and growing and changing.
“Further up, and further in...”
It's not so much a deconstruction or even a dark night of the soul as much as it is being confronted with a current reality and the hope of something new before us. This something new is a version of ourselves moving towards greater flourishing.
What if...
I wonder if this sanctification is what Jesus meant when he talked about how he had come to give us life and life to the full?
What if, all the stories that are emerging of deconstruction are really stories of sanctification. Most of the time, from what I see, when people come out from the other side of this season they are more loving, more gracious, more given to mercy, and have a greater empathy.
What if, we need to follow the footsteps of the prophets and of the apostles and have all our assumptions about God challenged and broken, to truly find God in the deep mystery?
Have you experienced a dark night of the soul? Or have you experienced deconstruction? How have you changed? In what ways does your life look different as a result?
THE THING CALLED DECONSTRUCTION
What if deconstruction was something else?
Everywhere you look people are deconstructing. For some, this looks like a total rejection of faith. Some question a doctrine here or there. Others walk away from “church” and hold on to Jesus. Loads of “Christian famous” folks are carrying out their deconstruction online for the world to see. Some are leveraging deconstruction for financial gain (yes, you can hire people to coach you through a season of deconstruction).
Then there's the response to deconstruction. Some celebrate it and almost evangelize it to others. Others point to it as a simply a way to disguise apostasy. Both seem to be missing the mark.
The Dark Night of the Soul
What we now call “deconstruction” is nothing new.
St. John of the Cross is largely credited with coining the term, “dark night of the soul” in his 16th century poem.
Even before him, the concept is present throughout the writings of early Christians. The dark night of the soul often refers to seasons where the one who believes encounters in fresh ways the mysteries of the divine. This could be in good times and bad times.
As we look to the story of the people of God in the Bible we see this dark night of the soul or deconstruction all over the place. In particular, I think of the books of Ecclesiastes, Lamentations and Jeremiah (honestly, almost all of the prophets show signs of this). One of my favorite parts of the Acts of the Apostles is witnessing the deconstruction of Peter and Paul's faith.
What strikes me is that counter to what some folks would have us think, deconstruction is normal for people seeking to follow in the way of Christ.
Maybe what it is...
I have been thinking a lot about this dark-night-of-the-soul/deconstruction for the last number of years. Something I am realizing is that I have gone through many seasons of deconstruction. So much so, that I'm not sure that the term is even helpful. For a while I thought maybe it was a cycle of deconstruction and reconstruction. But, I'm not sure that's really it. I think that perhaps, something else is going on.
I wonder if a little phrase from C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle might be helpful,
“It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this.You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking-glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different–deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t describe it any better than that: if you ever get there you will know what I mean.
It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right forehoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried:
“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!”
“Further up, and further in.” It strikes me that this is really what is happening in my life and the life of so many others. Maybe, it's not de- and re- construction? Could it be that it's a vast spiral of becoming more and more of who we are meant to be? Ken Wilber in his text, A Theory of Everything, calls this the process of “transcend and include.”
What if we could envision our lives progressing not along a linear line of ups and downs, but as a spiral that is driving us deeper and deeper towards reality. We learn what we need to learn where we are right here, and right now. Then that drives us ever deeper to new truths and a clearer sense of who we are and who we are to become. The mystery continues to beckon, “further up, and further in...”
I don't have a new word for this, but maybe an old word would do? Maybe the old word, “sanctification,” is a better term. This process of becoming something new. When I read through the stories of God's people I see them constantly moving and growing and changing.
“Further up, and further in...”
It's not so much a deconstruction or even a dark night of the soul as much as it is being confronted with a current reality and the hope of something new before us. This something new is a version of ourselves moving towards greater flourishing.
What if...
I wonder if this sanctification is what Jesus meant when he talked about how he had come to give us life and life to the full?
What if, all the stories that are emerging of deconstruction are really stories of sanctification. Most of the time, from what I see, when people come out from the other side of this season they are more loving, more gracious, more given to mercy, and have a greater empathy.
What if, we need to follow the footsteps of the prophets and of the apostles and have all our assumptions about God challenged and broken, to truly find God in the deep mystery?
Have you experienced a dark night of the soul? Or have you experienced deconstruction? How have you changed? In what ways does your life look different as a result?
WHEN CERTAINTY DIED
My certainty died but then my faith lived
I was there when he died.
I sat next to him as they turned off all the machines. His wife and daughters had left the hospital and entrusted these moments to me and another friend.
It didn’t take long.
He was ready.
I had met him shortly after we moved into the neighborhood. He had a loud laugh and a sly sense of humor. I had never met anyone quite like him. He was both the life of the party and a loner. Each winter he drove around picking up the neighborhood kids so they didn’t freeze at the bus stop.
His laugh was unmistakable.
During the time we knew one another he taught me about being someone who thought of others before himself.
I taught him about Jesus.
I guess in reality, he taught me about Jesus.
After he died, I didn’t really know what to do. I had done the pastor thing when other people died.
But, this was different.
Our faith community had prayed and prayed. We visited. We cared. We never stopped showing up.
I had taken him to dialysis.
We had good and deep conversations about God, faith, and love.
If anyone should have been healed it was him. Yet, he didn’t get healed. A tiny leak in his bowel, indiscernible until the very end, killed him from the inside out.
I was confused. I was heartbroken. I was angry.
It was there sitting next to my friend when he died that my certainty died too.
As I sit here today years later, I realize that something else was born that day: my faith.
Up until that point my belief was an intellectual certainty. Sure, I wrestled with various theological and doctrinal ideas but these were simply intellectual machinations. They didn’t really mean much. Theology, doctrine, and dogma was an intellectual game. I was constantly testing it and stretching it to figure out what was the most intellectually appealing position. It was fun and life-giving.
Wherever I found myself on any particular day I was certain.
This certainty was something very precious to me. I held on to belief with an iron fist. I protected my certainty like Frodo protected the Ring.
I could tell you affirmatively all the things that I believed and I could argue for them. Likely, I could convince you that I was right.
The day that my certainty died was the day that faith was born.
You see, certainty requires no faith. It simply needs some intellectual ascent and a bit of reasonable evidence and certainty can be attained.
But, faith comes from the mistiness of doubt. Faith is the small light shining in the misty darkness of spiritual pursuit. We stumble and grope and discover bits here and there.
When certainty dies, we can finally find faith.
Faith is hope in the midst of doubt. Doubt is not the adversary of faith. No, it turns out that doubt is the harbinger of faith.
Certainty, is the great adversary.
When we are certain, we don’t have to have faith.
For instance, I don’t have faith that I ate a ham and pepper omelette for breakfast this morning. I know it. I am certain of it.
I have faith that God loves me and cares for me in the midst of all the goods and bads of this world. Why? Because I’ve experienced things in my life that don’t make sense apart from something outside myself. I am confident that Jesus is who the Gospels writers say he is. I am confident that he did what the Gospel writers say he did. This confidence in the self-sacrificing-loving Christ provides me with grounds for faith.
When certainty died, faith came to life.
With certainty dead, I could finally explore all the things of God. What a journey it is! There’s no longer any need for us/them, in/out, there’s only a need for loving well.
Living with faith is freedom because I no longer have to protect my certainty. I can stare into the mist and ask the questions and re-imagine faith and grasp for hope.
I was there when he died.
I was there when he began to truly live and so did I.
WHEN CERTAINTY DIED
My certainty died but then my faith lived
I was there when he died.
I sat next to him as they turned off all the machines. His wife and daughters had left the hospital and entrusted these moments to me and another friend.
It didn’t take long.
He was ready.
I had met him shortly after we moved into the neighborhood. He had a loud laugh and a sly sense of humor. I had never met anyone quite like him. He was both the life of the party and a loner. Each winter he drove around picking up the neighborhood kids so they didn’t freeze at the bus stop.
His laugh was unmistakable.
During the time we knew one another he taught me about being someone who thought of others before himself.
I taught him about Jesus.
I guess in reality, he taught me about Jesus.
After he died, I didn’t really know what to do. I had done the pastor thing when other people died.
But, this was different.
Our faith community had prayed and prayed. We visited. We cared. We never stopped showing up.
I had taken him to dialysis.
We had good and deep conversations about God, faith, and love.
If anyone should have been healed it was him. Yet, he didn’t get healed. A tiny leak in his bowel, indiscernible until the very end, killed him from the inside out.
I was confused. I was heartbroken. I was angry.
It was there sitting next to my friend when he died that my certainty died too.
As I sit here today years later, I realize that something else was born that day: my faith.
Up until that point my belief was an intellectual certainty. Sure, I wrestled with various theological and doctrinal ideas but these were simply intellectual machinations. They didn’t really mean much. Theology, doctrine, and dogma was an intellectual game. I was constantly testing it and stretching it to figure out what was the most intellectually appealing position. It was fun and life-giving.
Wherever I found myself on any particular day I was certain.
This certainty was something very precious to me. I held on to belief with an iron fist. I protected my certainty like Frodo protected the Ring.
I could tell you affirmatively all the things that I believed and I could argue for them. Likely, I could convince you that I was right.
The day that my certainty died was the day that faith was born.
You see, certainty requires no faith. It simply needs some intellectual ascent and a bit of reasonable evidence and certainty can be attained.
But, faith comes from the mistiness of doubt. Faith is the small light shining in the misty darkness of spiritual pursuit. We stumble and grope and discover bits here and there.
When certainty dies, we can finally find faith.
Faith is hope in the midst of doubt. Doubt is not the adversary of faith. No, it turns out that doubt is the harbinger of faith.
Certainty, is the great adversary.
When we are certain, we don’t have to have faith.
For instance, I don’t have faith that I ate a ham and pepper omelette for breakfast this morning. I know it. I am certain of it.
I have faith that God loves me and cares for me in the midst of all the goods and bads of this world. Why? Because I’ve experienced things in my life that don’t make sense apart from something outside myself. I am confident that Jesus is who the Gospels writers say he is. I am confident that he did what the Gospel writers say he did. This confidence in the self-sacrificing-loving Christ provides me with grounds for faith.
When certainty died, faith came to life.
With certainty dead, I could finally explore all the things of God. What a journey it is! There’s no longer any need for us/them, in/out, there’s only a need for loving well.
Living with faith is freedom because I no longer have to protect my certainty. I can stare into the mist and ask the questions and re-imagine faith and grasp for hope.
I was there when he died.
I was there when he began to truly live and so did I.
FREE TO LIVE
There is this interesting little line in the letter that Paul of Tarsus wrote to the faith community in Galatia.
“Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never >again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.” – Galatians 5:1, The >Message
What does it mean that we are set free to live a free life?
Our freedom is rooted in grace. When are all bound up in shame we can't live well. There is a constant fear and a constant sense of existential dread. Everything we do is under this weight of shame. Shame presses us into hiding from being exposed. We believe that we are the sin-sickness that entangles us.
Grace comes in and says, “No! You're free! You are healed from that sin-sickness, your true self is now free to live life to the full! No more hiding! No more worry! You're whole and free and embraced by the Divine! Go now and live!”
Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life and have it to the full! (John 10:10)”
Grace frees to live that life.
In another letter that Paul wrote he wrote this, “Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing. (Ephesians 2:7-10, The Message)”
Isn't that amazing? We are not simply freed by grace but we are called by grace to join Jesus in work that he has “gotten ready for to do.”
When grace breaks into our lives it transforms everything. All of a sudden we are no longer burdened about this or that. We no longer find ourselves all bound up in shame. What do we find? We find our sense of purpose, a sense of being, a sense of calling!
One of my favorite movies is The Mighty Ducks. It tells the story of Gordon Bombay a fallen hockey star who has lost his way. He ends up having to coach a hockey team of benchwarmers. In the midst of his coaching his shame is removed as experiences grace after grace. What does he discover? He discovers that this thing that was at first a punishment, becomes his calling. He's a coach and he's really good at it. In his coaching he experiences love and joy and fulfillment.
This is the very thing that grace does. Grace sets us free to find love, joy, and fulfillment.
Christ has set us free indeed!
GRACE OR KARMA?
“Karma is a bitch.”
Did that get your attention? 
I am sure it did. Pastors are not supposed to use that kind of bad language.
This little sentence is something that we hear often in our world isn’t it? It points to this sense that “what we put out into the universe will return to us.” If we do bad things, then we get bad things in return, so the thinking goes.
Karma can be useful as an answer to the age old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Well, you did bad things in a previous life and those bad choices are being visited on you in this life, so the thinking goes.
Karma can also challenge us to do better. If we believe that any bad action will ultimately be returned to us in some way, we will likely try to choose the better.
In a nutshell, karma argues that every action has consequences.
That resonates, does it not?
We like the idea that when a bad person does a bad thing that they will face consequences of their bad action. But, what do we do when we are that bad person? Most of us don’t really think we are bad. We are able to see how those people have bad karma, we don’t really see how we deserve it.
I think this is something that I love about grace. It breaks us out of the karma cycle.
A real and true grace is not cheap. A real and true grace has two key components. First, it acknowledges the bad. Grace is not naïve. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in his seminal book, The Cost of Discipleship,
“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
Grace needs a cross. What wrong has been done must be dealt with. If you offer a cheap grace it is not truly grace, it is simply looking the other way. Cheap grace, a cross-less grace, is nothing more than ignoring one’s bad actions for the sake of avoiding conflict. Grace necessarily engages conflict because it refuses to ignore brokenness.
Second, a real and true grace deals with the bad. What do I mean by this? I mean that a grace that simply acknowledges the bad but doesn’t actually deal with the consequences of that bad is no grace. This is often why we find so many public acts of confession to be hollow. Their words are nice, but we see no resulting action that supports the words. Grace is costly precisely because it demands a cross. It demands for justice to be restored.
At the core of our bad actions we ultimately become purveyors of injustice.
When we hurt another in word or deed we are practicing injustice by demeaning the image of God in them. Too often there is a doubling down by not redressing the issue. Then finally, we try to pretend as though we were maintaining our moral uprightness.
Grace seeks to set this right.
Unllike karma that is ultimately retributive in nature, grace goes a different way.
What we see God do through Christ is to deal with the bad at its most fundamental level. For justice to be restored the bad ultimately has to be dealt with. At the deepest level, injustice is an affront to God. What we see throughout the Scriptures is that separation from the divine presence is the ultimate consequence for the bad. In the cross, we see God through God’s own self-sacrifice meet the requirements of separation but then overcomes it in resurrection.
The cross and the resurrection of Christ not only restores justice at the most fundamental level but also opens the door for all of creation to be redeemed, restored, and reconciled.
This costly grace frees us from the consequences of our bad actions and intentions.
But more than this, it frees us to live as agents of the very same reconciliation!
Grace is amazing because it frees us. We no longer look over our shoulder. There is a freeing to follow in the self-sacrficial-loving way of Jesus.
Grace drives us beyond our ego and self-concern. Karma locks us into primarily worrying about self.
It’s been a really fun few days watching our boy play ball. The joy on his face as he plays the game he loves is like nothing else.
Learning new things is hard. I’m continuing to learn how to lift weights. I’m falling love with doing hard things.
When even your tobacco is orthodox…
😂😂🤷♂️
Sweet summer nights! #LifeIsGood
A perfect iced coffee at my favorite coffee shop in Ypsilanti, Cafe Liv!
Reading and enjoying a nice smoke on my patio while overlooking a freshly mown lawn. #lifeisgood
A ball field on a beautiful night is one of my happy places.
What a beautiful day to spend on the patio of my favorite Flint Area Coffee Shop, The Station!
Consistency is the key. Down below 250lbs, that’s over 70lbs.
Not perfect.
Consistent.
AN ALWAYS PRESENT GRACE
Often, as we read through the Old Testament, it feels like God is some sort of angry deity. We read some of the stories and think, “Woah dude, chill out.” Yet, when we read closer, we see how many times God warns the people.
And then warns the people again,
and again,
and again…
Now it feels like a loving parent who has asked their kid to pick up their shoes for the 100th time and finally loses their cool. It seems like that’s a more apt description of how God relates to the people in the Old Testament.
I wonder if we can hold that image in our head while we read the stories of the Old Testament, if we can begin to really understand the God who is,
“The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.”
- Psalm 103:8, NIV
This psalm, in particular, paints a picture of the gracious God.
What strikes me is this line, “He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel:”. When the people of Israel thought of the writings of Moses, they thought of the first five books of the Bible. It is in these five texts that we have the revealing of God to Moses. As I have read those books over the years, I have struggled to see in them a “compassionate and gracious” deity. Yet, recently, I’ve been reading them while trying to hold this image of a loving parent reminding their children of what they need to do. As I do, I see the “slow to anger” bit come to the forefront. Particularly so when I try to imagine that the narrative bits of the text are not moments after one another. But are likely weeks or months, or maybe even years apart!
Grace is not something that showed up with Jesus. Grace is all over the Old Testament in as many diverse ways as it is in the New Testament. The God of the people of Israel is understood as the all-loving, all-forgiving, all-gracious God. Jesus is the perfect display of that grace, compassion, and loving-kindness. But it’s not as though grace burst onto the scene with Paul’s writing about Jesus.
Consider the opening lines of this Psalm:
Praise the LORD, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits— who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.
This is not from Romans or Ephesians. This is not from 1 Peter or James. No, this is a Psalm.
When we read the Old Testament, we have to remember that there is something bigger happening. This vision of God is the overlay for the entire Old Testament.
The next time you read a story in the Old Testament where it seems that God is an angry, judgmental deity, ask yourself, “What else is going on here?” I think part of our responsibility as we enter into the stories of the Old Testament is to try and understand why the people were writing the way they were writing about God and remember that the overarching narrative is that of a gracious, sin-forgiving, justice-working God.
I’m beyond proud of this kid. He’s a college baseball player and he’s also demolishing it in the classroom. Tonight he was honored for making the Moot Court Nationals at LSU and inducted into the Pi Sigma Alpha Honors Fraternity. #notjustanathlete #smarterthanme
Golfing with my pops today was good for the soul. I’m so grateful for these days.
Scored some new vinyl today. What a beautiful album not just musically but also in physical presentation.
In August, Amy and I are participating in something called, The Mammoth March.
You hike 20 miles in 8 hours.
Training starts now.
KARMA? NAH... GRACE!
“Karma’s a bitch.”
Did that get your attention? 😏
I am sure it did. Pastors are not supposed to use that kind of bad language.
This little sentence is something that we hear often in our world isn’t it? It points to this sense that “what we put out into the universe will return to us.” If we do bad things, then we get bad things in return, so the thinking goes.
Karma can be useful as an answer to the age old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Well, you did bad things in a previous life and those bad choices are being visited on you in this life, so the thinking goes.
Karma can also challenge us to do better. If we believe that any bad action will ultimately be returned to us in some way, we will likely try to choose the better.
In a nutshell, karma argues that every action has consequences.
That resonates, does it not?
We like the idea that when a bad person does a bad thing that they will face consequences of their bad action. But, what do we do when we are that bad person? Most of us don’t really think we are bad. We are able to see how those people have bad karma, we don’t really see how we deserve it.
I think this is something that I love about grace. It breaks us out of the karma cycle.
A real and true grace is not cheap. A real and true grace has two key components. First, it acknowledges the bad. Grace is not naïve. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in his seminal book, The Cost of Discipleship,
“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
Grace needs a cross. What wrong has been done must be dealt with. If you offer a cheap grace it is not truly grace, it is simply looking the other way. Cheap grace, a cross-less grace, is nothing more than ignoring one’s bad actions for the sake of avoiding conflict. Grace necessarily engages conflict because it refuses to ignore brokenness.
Second, a real and true grace deals with the bad. What do I mean by this? I mean that a grace that simply acknowledges the bad but doesn’t actually deal with the consequences of that bad is no grace. This is often why we find so many public acts of confession to be hollow. Their words are nice, but we see no resulting action that supports the words. Grace is costly precisely because it demands a cross. It demands for justice to be restored.
At the core of our bad actions we ultimately become purveyors of injustice.
When we hurt another in word or deed we are practicing injustice by demeaning the image of God in them. Too often there is a doubling down by not redressing the issue. Then finally, we try to pretend as though we were maintaining our moral uprightness.
Grace seeks to set this right.
Unllike karma that is ultimately retributive in nature, grace goes a different way.
What we see God do through Christ is to deal with the bad at its most fundamental level. For justice to be restored the bad ultimately has to be dealt with. At the deepest level, injustice is an affront to God. What we see throughout the Scriptures is that separation from the divine presence is the ultimate consequence for the bad. In the cross, we see God through God’s own self-sacrifice meet the requirements of separation but then overcomes it in resurrection.
The cross and the resurrection of Christ not only restores justice at the most fundamental level but also opens the door for all of creation to be redeemed, restored, and reconciled.
This costly grace frees us from the consequences of our bad actions and intentions.
But more than this, it frees us to live as agents of the very same reconciliation!
Grace is amazing because it frees us. We no longer look over our shoulder. There is a freeing to follow in the self-sacrficial-loving way of Jesus.
Grace drives us beyond our ego and self-concern. Karma locks us into primarily worrying about self.
A cold day at the ball field, wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
Fireside Coffee in Flint, MI for the win! This Brazilian “Sweet Yellow,” is dang good! ☕️
Trying out a coffee shop in Eastern Market in Detroit, Anthology. My guy The Beard loves it and recommends the Coffee Tonic. He’s right on the money. Delicious!
Pistons game with some of the fellas courtesy of our guy Noah (not pictured). 🏀
AMAZING GRACE? OH, OK
I remember sitting in the living room of my friend, mentor, and pastor, Bob Smart. There were about ten of us sitting in a circle for a Koinonia Group. Koinonia is the Greek word that is roughly translated as “fellowship” in English. He asked a simple question, “What is grace?”
I answered quickly because I knew the answer!
“Grace is unmerited favor, Bob!” I said.
“What’s so amazing about that?” He said.
I sat dumbfounded. Silenced by a simple question that demanded more of me than an intellectual response.
Bono of U2 once wrote about grace this way,
Grace
She takes the blame
She covers the shame
Removes the stain
It could be her name
Grace
It’s the name for a girl
It’s also a thought that
Changed the world
And when she walks on the street
You can hear the strings
Grace finds goodness
In everything
Grace
She’s got the walk
Not on a ramp or on chalk
She’s got the time to talk
She travels outside
Of karma, karma
She travels outside
Of karma
When she goes to work
You can hear her strings
Grace finds beauty
In everything
Grace
She carries a world on her hips
No champagne flute for her lips
No twirls or skips between her fingertips
She carries a pearl
In perfect condition
What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because Grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things
Grace finds beauty
In everything
Grace finds goodness in everything
This paints a picture well beyond something cold like, “unmerited favor”. I am struck by the emotion of what Bono has written.
At the time that I responded to that question by my friend, Bob, I don’t think that I understood that emotion. Grace hadn’t made it down from my head to my heart.
Why?
There’s an ancient story that resonates deeply in my soul.
One of the Pharisees asked him over for a meal. He went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down at the dinner table. Just then a woman of the village, the town harlot, having learned that Jesus was a guest in the home of the Pharisee, came with a bottle of very expensive perfume and stood at his feet, weeping, raining tears on his feet. Letting down her hair, she dried his feet, kissed them, and anointed them with the perfume. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man was the prophet I thought he was, he would have known what kind of woman this is who is falling all over him.”
Jesus said to him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
“Oh? Tell me.”
“Two men were in debt to a banker. One owed five hundred silver pieces, the other fifty. Neither of them could pay up, and so the banker canceled both debts. Which of the two would be more grateful?”
Simon answered, “I suppose the one who was forgiven the most.”
“That’s right,” said Jesus. Then turning to the woman, but speaking to Simon, he said, “Do you see this woman? I came to your home; you provided no water for my feet, but she rained tears on my feet and dried them with her hair. You gave me no greeting, but from the time I arrived she hasn’t quit kissing my feet. You provided nothing for freshening up, but she has soothed my feet with perfume. Impressive, isn’t it? She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful. If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.”
Then he spoke to her: “I forgive your sins.”
That set the dinner guests talking behind his back: “Who does he think he is, forgiving sins!”
He ignored them and said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” (Luke 7:36-50, The Message)
For a really long time I thought of myself as good. If I’m really honest with you, I thought of my self as being really, really good. So, while in some sense I knew that I needed grace, I was much like Simon in the story above. I didn’t realize that my shadow, my sin, my own brokenness was deep.
I don’t really know when it happened that I began to get it.
Perhaps it was with the birth of our first child and I began to see the deep seated selfishness that reigned like a tyrant only to be demolished by a toddler tyrant supreme?
Perhaps it was beginning to see how I responded to various stressful situations where my go to was anger and rage (heck, that happened yesterday!)?
Perhaps it was acknowledging that my sin-sickness was not somehow less than any other person’s?
As my own need for grace moved from head to heart it stopped being an intellectually rooted concept. It became something else.
Grace had become the thing that “makes beauty out of ugly things.”
What is grace? Grace is the fundamental reality that we are loved, accepted, embraced, reconciled, and cherished by a sovereign and good God because we simply are.
There’s nothing that we do to earn the love. There’s nothing we can do lose the love.
The only thing we bring is ourselves and God loves us.
God chose to love us by lavishing a grace on us that is overwhelming when begin to think about it.
It truly is amazing.
Absolutely killed my workout today! Good start to my off day.
My first day with an Apple Watch that I got just for fitness tracking and I definitely just went for a one mile walk at 9 pm to close all my rings. #challenge #fitness
I liked this picture for the photoblog challenge with the prompt, analog.
Happy Oberon Day!
Hit the gym early. Figured this was as good as any for today’s photoblog challenge. @challenges
THE BREASTPLATE OF ST PATRICK
I arise today Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through belief in the Threeness, Through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.
I arise today Through the strength of Christ’s birth with His baptism, Through the strength of His crucifixion with His burial, Through the strength of His resurrection with His ascension, Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.
I arise today Through the strength of the love of cherubim, In the obedience of angels, In the service of archangels, In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward, In the prayers of patriarchs, In the predictions of prophets, In the preaching of apostles, In the faith of confessors, In the innocence of holy virgins, In the deeds of righteous men.
I arise today, through The strength of heaven, The light of the sun, The radiance of the moon, The splendor of fire, The speed of lightning, The swiftness of wind, The depth of the sea, The stability of the earth, The firmness of rock.
I arise today, through God’s strength to pilot me, God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye to look before me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak for me, God’s hand to guard me, God’s shield to protect me, God’s host to save me From snares of devils, From temptation of vices, From everyone who shall wish me ill, afar and near.
I summon today All these powers between me and those evils, Against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose my body and soul, Against incantations of false prophets, Against black laws of pagandom, Against false laws of heretics, Against craft of idolatry, Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards, Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul; Christ to shield me today Against poison, against burning, Against drowning, against wounding, So that there may come to me an abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through belief in the Threeness, Through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.
Today’s photoblog challnege is, road.
My favorite road is often no road at all.
Today’s photblog challenge: patience
The journey toward health in whatever area demands patience.
March 14, 2023 #3goodthings
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An unreal conversation that lasted hours with a new friend.
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A massive incline workout.
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Ice cold beer.
Today’s photoblog challenge, horizon. One of my favorite views in Ypsi.
I did the thing today. 💪
Day 13 of the Photblogging Challenge: connection
I have learned the critical importance of connection to my body. Working out has been crucial to that process. I live a lot in my head and trying to figure out how live embodied has a been a journey.
