I like you

…but I’m not going to date you right now.”  Why guys prematurely declare their love and then don’t make a move.  Or, why guys ask the girl out but then end it fast.  Secrets revealed:

• I am not ready.  I have other things I want to focus on before I commit.
• You have a boyfriend.
• Um, you have a boyfriend….
• I’m also interested in another girl who I may be more attracted to….
• I’m too immature.
• I just had to say it but didn’t think it through.
• I don’t think I’m good enough for you.
• There are some things I don’t like about you (e.g. smoking).
• I’m drunk.
• I’m still not over my ex.
• I can’t see myself being with you for the rest of my life.

“Jerk.”

Tom Lin

http://www.tomandnancylin.com/bio/

Risk-Taking: Holy Investment Challenge
Luke 19:12-27
targeted to college and career

Doing risky business with

1. Our opportunity to be students
             Those who go off to college often find themselves in a different life stage than the rest of us who are workin, building marriages, and raising children.  They have the opportunities to build close friendships (how many say their life friends were made in college), study academics with vast resources around them, to talk late into the night.  Examples of those who have taken advantage of this include a trash outreach in one of the biggest dorms in the nation.  “We are Christians who just wanted to serve in a small way.  Would you like us to take out your trash?”  Some wanted to pay them, others gave them even more trash, but by the end of the night four joined them to see what they were about.
2. Our money and possessions
             John Ortberg wrote a book titled When the Game Is Over It All Goes Back in the Box.  What do you win that you get to keep?  We need to invest what we have before it all goes back into the box, before we leave this earth, before the Master returns.  A college friend of the speaker’s barely had enough to pay rent.  But whenever JP would come upon some cash he would immediately celebrate by spending it with a friend.  He’d want to play tennis with the speaker so JP would use the money to buy a racquet.  He bought a television set for his roommate.  He’d give (not sell back) his books to incoming students.  And sure enough, there would always be enough by the end of the month.  A couple in their thirties wrote the speaker a $10,000 check because they believed God’s work through his ministry and wanted to invest in that.  A group in Harvard donated $20 each and then used that combined amount to serve their classmates on campus with free coffee during finals week.  The speaker himself, at his initial job, would hold a raffle at his desk to give away free stuff.  Coworkers would congregate around his desk and eventually they built personal bonds.
3. Our social networks
            Instead of sticking to the same subjects (e.g. weather, daily routine, television shows), we need to risk conversations.  The speaker said that one time the Spirit prompted him to ask his nonbelieving roommate about God.  “Anybody but him!  He’s my roommate!  I have to live with him!”  But eventually he finally asked, “What do you think about Jesus?”  “I’m glad you asked.  I was just thinking about the time I had this near-death experience in a car crash.  I told God if he saved me I would start seeking him.  I went to church for a little while but eventually stopped….”
4. Time
             We start out all the same, as the parable demonstrates.  Instead of imitating the attitude of the third servant, who knew the minas weren’t going to be his soon anyway and thus did not pay much attention to it, we need the attitude of Schlinder in Schlinder’s List.  At the end he still realized that he had not done all that he could have (e.g. his pin and car).  “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.”  Being trustworthy in a small matter, the first servant was given more.  The command is to invest (not to make as much as possible). 

What prevents us from risk taking?

• Fear (of the Master, of what others think, of failure, of a language barrier..).  ”Do not fear” is mentioned 366 times in the Bible, perhaps due to our cowardliness in investing what God’s given us?
• Asian adverseness for risk.  We recall what our parents tell us essentially: “We took those risks so you won’t have to.”  We’re encouraged to keep a low profile so as to not make waves. 

Pastor Dick asked what we thought of this idea:  He would give everyone in the congregation $5 (financial risk for the leaders) and ask us to give it to the kingdom in some way (social risk for us congregants).  Maybe we want to take someone out, maybe we could pool the money and do something bigger.

Middle of Nowhere: Mongolia 2002 - 2006
I Kings 19:1-19
targeted to the English congregation

Elijah’s Gobi Desert experience:

• Beersheba is a desert
• he left his servant behind
• he made an additional day’s journey deeper into the desert
• broom tree is only about ten feet high
• suicidal

Speaker’s desert experience

• sixth and eighteenth months were the hardest
• strained marriaged
• declared he’d buy plane tickets back to the States
• issues unresolved from the States were brought up in Mongolia

Our own dry isolation experience

• Quarterlife transition.  We moved away to attend college and miss the familiar community we had at home.  We’ve moved back and find everything different.
• Family transition.  We recently became engaged, married, had children….
• Tragedy.  A loved one is severely ill or has died.  No one understands.  We’ve experienced loss and disappointment.  “Where are You, God?”
• ‘Dry’ spiritual life.  The spiritual connection with God is not felt.

Four stages of desert life:

1. Stripping process.  Elijah, by leaving his servant behind, he was declaring that he quit his job of being a prophet for God.  There appeared to be external successes but he still felt like a failure inside.  There was the incredible demonstration by God on the altar and yet Jezebel is still unrepentant and wants him dead.  Victory after victory and yet there is still failure. 
2. Wrestling with God (v. 10).  We complain to God.  “I’ve done all this for You, and there’s nothing still.  It’s unfair!”  The critical decision comes down to this:  Do you give up on God, or go deeper with God?  Coming to this point is a given, but it is especially keenly felt among leaders.  The only question is WHEN (not if) this point will come.  Horeb, the mountain of God, is actually only a seven-days journey from Beersheba, yet it took Elijah the “long time” of forty days, probably because he was wandering and wrestling with God.  Note that though Elijah gave up, God did not give up on Elijah.  God helped Elijah continue to wrestle.
3. Intimacy with God.  “Angel” in the text means a messenger from God.  This can be a human being who is doing God’s work, or simply feeling the presence of God.  In other words, God doesn’t always come “supernaturally.”  Intimacy is God meeting us at a time of great need.  Sometimes you wonder if it was right that you moved, that you were supposed to be here.  The place where you are now is not a mistake but the very place where God has brought you to meet Him.  Elijah didn’t run away to Horeb; God brought Elijah to Horeb.  And then God asks, “What are you doing here?” (v. 9).  Why did God bring you here?
4. Transformation and release. 
   1. From self-seeking confidence to dependence on God and others.  In verse 14, Elijah speaks as if he is the only hope for God’s redemption of Israel.  For the speaker, he was doing pretty well in the States.  But in Mongolia, the children made fun of his since he couldn’t speak Mongolian.  It was quite clear that God would be doing the brunt of the work there.
   2. From being a lone ranger to a community participant.  We think we’re all alone, very unique, but we’re not. 
   3. From an old identity to a new identity.  Other Biblical examples include Moses and even Jesus.  Moses was a prince but had to go into the desert before returning as God’s prophet.  Jesus went into the desert for forty days and forty nights.
   4. Only then did God told Elijah what to do next.

Practical suggestions for going through the desert:

• Be honest.  This is so hard!  Especially for us, with our emotions.  We need to admit that we have an issue with God.  We need to bring our burning questions to God.
• Determine ahead of time to go deep with God.  Our temptation is to seek a thing, an action, another person to fill the loneliness and void.  That’s what the Israelites did by making the golden calf.
• Rest with the other 7,000 (v. 18).  If you don’t know who else is in a similar situation as you, maybe your pastor would know and bring you two together.  If you can’t discern God’s voice, ask another fellow believer to help you hear God’s Word and see why you are going through this desert.  Don’t wait; initiate.

LWB: Ch11: The Truth

In the midst of writing this book, there have been times when I have found myself believing and acting on some of the very lies I was addressing:  “I don’t have time to do everything!” “I can afford to shortcut my time with the Lord this morning” “I’m acting this way because I’m so tired” “I can’t take any more!”  But the longer I walk with God, the more I am in awe of the power of the Truth!  We have already looked at many lies and the corresponding Truth.  In this final chapter, i want to highlight 22 that I believe are particularly crucial.  Rather than skimming, take time to savor these.  You may want to memorize this list, along with the key Scriptures that correspond to each Truth.  Anytime you realize you are believing lies, go back and review this list.

1.  God is good (Psalms 119:68, 136:1).  Regardless of waht we feel, regardless of what we think, God is good, and everythign He does is good.

2.  God loves me and wants me to have His best (Romans 8:32, 38-39).  There is absolutely nothing we can do to earn or deserve His love.  We cannot comprehend such unconditional love; but if we believe it and receive it, His love will transform our lives. 

3.  I am complete and accepted in Christ (Ephesians 1:4-6).  We don’t have to perform to be made acceptable to Him.  Yet we–fallen, condemned, unworthy sinners–can stand before God clean and unashamed, acceptable in His sight.  How?  Because Jesus–the pure, sinless Son of god–is acceptable to Him, and we stand in Him.

4.  God is enough (Psalm 23:1).

5.  God can be trusted (Isaiah 28:16, Hebrews 13:5).  “God has never once let me down–and He’s not goign to start now!”  I am free from the need to figure out this world and my place in it. 

6.  God doesn’t make any mistakes (Isaiah 46:10).  God is always fulfilling His eternal purposes, and they cannot be thwarted by any human failure.  If we are in Christ, our lives are in His hand, and nothing can touch our lives that has not first been “filtered through His fingers of love.”  Even when Job was suffering, God was still in control.  Satan had to get permission from God to touch His servant.  “God’s will is exactly what we would choose, if we knew what God knows.  When we stand in eternity looking back on this earthly existence, we will know by sight what we can only see now by faith: He has done all things well.

7.  God’s grace is sufficient for me (2 Corinthians 12:9). 

8.  The blood of Christ is sufficient to cover all my sin (1 John 1:7).  The psalmist understood both the enormity of his sin and the even greater enormity of God’s mercy toward repentant sinners (Psalm 130:3-4).

9.  The Cross of Christ is sufficient to conquer my sinful flesh (Romans 6:6-7).  When I sin, it is not because I couldn’t help myself; it is because I chose to yield to my old master.  I don’t have to sin (Romans 6:14).

10.  My past does not have to plague me (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).  Paul reminds a group of believers that sin does separate from God; then he assures them that through Christ, the worst of sinners can be made clean and new.  Our past does not have to be hindrances.  By God’s grace, they can actually be stepping-stones to greater victory.

11.  God’s Word is sufficient to lead me, teach me, and heal me (Psalms 19:7, 107:20, 119:105).

12.  Through the power of His Holy Spirit, God will enable me to do anything He commands me to do (1 Thessalonians 5:24, Philippians 2:13).  There is no one we cannot forgive (Mark 11:25), there is no one we cannot love (Matthew 5:44), we can give thanks in all things (1 Thessalonians 5:18), and we can be content in every circumstance (Hebrews 13:5).  The issue is not that we can’t obey God; the real issue is that we won’t forgive, we are unwilling to love, and we refuse to give thanks.  Obedience is a choice made in dependence on God.

13.  I am responsible before God for my behavior, responses, and choices (Ezekiel 18:19-22).  I am not responsible for the actions of others, but I am responsible for how I respond.

14.  I will reap whatever I sow (Galatians 6:7-8). 

15.  The pathway to true joy is to relinguish control (Matthew 16:25, Luke 1:38, 1 Peter 5:7).  We have a drive to control.  Why is it so hard to let God be God?

16.  The greatest freedom I can experience is found through submission to God-ordained authority (Ephesians 5:21).  When we do so, we are granted God’s protective covering, we release Him to workin the lives of those in authority over us, we reveal to the world the beauty of God’s created order, and we proclaim His right to rule over the universe.

17.  In the will of God, there is no higher, holier calling than to be a wife and mother (Titus 2:4-5).  True fulfillment are found through discovering why God made us and then embracing that created purpose and design.  God designed the woman to be a helper to her husband and a bearer and nurturer of life.  Marriage and motherhood are God’s norm for most women.  God’s calling for the married woman centers on her roles in the home (Titus 2:4-5).  A job outside the home may offer greater affirmation and produce more visible and immediate results.  But to make a home, to be united with a man in glorifying Godon this earth, to nurture and tend the lives of children and grandchildren, to train and mold the next generation–there is no higher calling and no greater joy.

18.  Personal holiness is more important than temporal happiness (Ephesians 5:26-27).  Happiness here and now is not the highest good, nor is it a right (Titus 2:14).

19.  God is more concerned about changing me and glorifying Himself than about solving my problems (Romans 8:29).  If we do not recognize and embrace God’s purposes and process in our lives, we will become obsessed with finding a way out of our problems.  We will become despondent and angry when God does not “cooperate” with our agenda.  Everything that matters to us must be subordinate to what matters most to Him.  What matters most to Him is that every created being reflect His glory.

20.  It is impossible to be godly without suffering (1 Peter 5:10).  It is an essential tool in the hand of God to conform us to the image of Jesus.  In the process of making wine in Jeremiah’s day, the juice from the grapes was poured into a wineskin and left to sit for weeks, until the bitter dregs or sediment settled onto the bottom.  Then it was poured into another wineskin so more dregs could be separated, repeatedly, until the wine was pure and sweet.  The nation of Moab had a history of ease and comfort; she had not been through the purifying process of being “poured” from suffering to suffering.  As a result, the thick, bitter dregs of her sin remained in her–she was “unchanged” (Jeremiah 48:11).  Suffering is God’s means of pouring us from one jar to another–of unsettling us–so the dregs of self and sin can be separated out, until the pure, sweet wine of His Spirit is all that remains. 

21.  My suffering will not last forever (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).  All suffering is purposeful and intentional.  God has a specific objective in mind for our suffering.  God has promised tha tone day “there will be no more death” (Revelation 21:4).  So, dear child of God, when your eyes are filled with tears and there seems to be no hope, take courage.  Your faith will be rewarded with the sight of the One who has promised to be with you to the end.

22.  It’s not about me; it’s all about Him (Colossians 1:16-18, Revelation 4:11)!  Once we agree with God that we exist for His pleasure and His glory, we can accept whatever comes into our lives as part of His sovereign will and purpose.

LWB: Ch10: Countering Lies With the Truth

Let’s review the two major points of this book:

• Believing lies places us in bondage.
• The Truth has the power to set us free.

We have seen that the progression toward bondage begins when we listen to Satan’s lie.  God promises a special blessing to those who do not “walk in the counsel of the wicked” (Psalm 1:1).  The progression continues as we dwell on those lies, begin to believe them, inevitably act on them, and then establish patterns in our lives that ultimately lead to bondage.  The pathway to freedom involves at least three steps:

1. Identify the area(s) of bondage or sinful behavior.
2. Identify the lie(s) at the root of that bondage or behavior.
3. Replace th lie(s) with the Truth.

The Truth has the power to overcome every lie.  The Truth has the power to set us free (John 8:32) and to protect our minds and hearts from deceptive thoughts and feelings (Psalm 91:4).  The Truth has the power to sanctify us (John 15:3, 17:17). 

Choosing the pathway of Truth calms my turbulent emotions and restores settledness and sanity to my confused thoughts.  I speak the Truth to myself–sometimes aloud, and, if necessary, over and over again–until the Truth (Matthew 5:5-9, 39, 44, 6:14-15) displaces and replaces the lies I have been believing (e.g.  she made me angry, I have a right to be angry, I have a right to defend myself, I can’t help the way I feel).  I knew I could not wait until I felt like forgiving–that I had to choose to obey God, and that my emotions would follow sooner or later.  The emotional release did not come immediately.  For some time, I found myself still feeling “bruised”; at times, I was tempted to resume my emotional temper tantrum or to subtly retaliate.  But, by God’s grace, I continued to speak the Truth to my heart and to make the choice to act on the Truth.  Out of obedience to God’s Word, I began to look for ways to rebuild the relationship and invest in the life of the one who had hurt me.  I am grateful that He loved me enough to orchestrate circumstances to bring those issues that I had not realized needd to be addressed to the surface, and I thank Him for using that experience to make me more like Jesus.

The transforming power of knowing, believing, and acting on the Truth is a Person–the Lord Jesus Christ (John 14:6, 8:31-36).  True freedom is found in a vital, growing relationship with Jesus (the living Word of God), who has revealed Himself in the Scripture (the written Word of God).  There is no substitute and there are no shortcuts.  We must also surrender to the Truth (Psalm 119:29-30).  Once we are walking according to the Truth, God wants to make us instruments to draw others to the Truth (Ephesians 4:14-15, 25).  The vision that gave birth to this book was the longing to see women set free through the Truth (James 5:19-20). The idea of “turning sinners from the error of their way” is largely foreign in our day.  The hue and cry of our postmodern culture is “tolerance.”  Many believers have become hesitant to stand for the Truth, for fear of being labeled as narrow-minded or judgmental.  Many Christians manifest this “live and let live” attitude, not only toward the world, but also in relation to other believers who are not walking in the Truth.  We must remember that in Christ and in His Word, we have Good News!  If we truly care about them, we will prayerfully and actively seek to restore them.  We must learn, believe, surrender, and live out the Truth with boldness, conviction, and compassion.

Circum

The following are some things we discussed over Chapter 9 on Circumstances:

• Comparing our spiritual lives with our biological lives is a good way to glean wisdom.  Just as you look back and see your teenage years within the context of your adult years and see the difficulties and growth, so you can do so with your spiritual sticking points.
• In your prayer requests, do you see God as sufficient?
• Do you pray to God to get out of a suffering situation?  Or do you pray through the suffering?
• When you ask for joy, patience, faith, etc., how do you expect Him to answer?  Will He give it to you on a silver platter, or will He give you the opportunity to practice (and thus hopefully improve) in that?
• Your greatest suffering will either become your greatest barrier or your greatest mnistry.
• Remember, the world will make fun of the choices that you make for God (I Peter 4).
• Do you think of suffering as punishment or preparation and growth?  Does that change the response to the suffering?  Since either way, whether you are suffering from the consequences of your sin or others’ sins or what, you are being molded and refined.
• There are many examples of those on their deathbeds using their last breaths for another, in prayer, in encouraging, in praising God.  This may be their greatest witness.  Perhaps the trials perfected them into “this finished product” as they breathed their last.
• Remember, Paul was content whether he had or had not (Philippians 4:11).
• If God is not disciplining us, we are not His child (Hebrews 12:10). 

LWB: Ch09: About Circumstances

You may have read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst.  It seemed that everything was going wrong for poor Alexander.  Who can blame the frustrated boy for sighing at the end of the day, “I think I’ll move to Australia!”  In fact, that is exactly what the psalmist prayed on at least one occasion (Psalm 55:6-8).  Like a drop of food coloring poured into a glass of water, sin tainted everything about human beings and their environment.

36.  “If my circumstances were different, I would be different.”

“I was never an impatient person–until I had these twins!”  Or, “She made me so mad!”  Or, I wouldn’t be so bitter, if my husband hadn’t run off with that other woman.”  We are saying, “Someone or something made me the way I am.”  We feel that if we are different–our upbringing, our environment, the people around us–we would be different.  If our circumstances make us what we are, then we are all victims.  And that’s what the Enemy wants us to believe.  Because if we are victims, then we aren’t responsible–we can’t help the way we are.  But God says we are responsible–not for the failures of others, but for our own responses and lives.  The Truth is, our circumstances do not make us what we are.  They merely reveal what we are–so He can change us.  We play the “if only” game (such as ”If only we had more money…” and “If only I were married to someone different…”).  The Truth is, if we are not content within our present circumstances, we are not likely to be happy in any other set of circumstances.  Elizabeth Prentiss wrote:

We want to know no will but God’s in this question….The experience of the past winter would impress upon me the fact that place and position have next to nothing to do with happiness; that we can be wretched in a palace, radiant in a dungeon….perhaps this heartbreaking is exactly what we need to remind us…that we are pilgrims and strangers on the earth.

George Washington’s wife, Martha, expressed the same conviction in a letter written to her friend Mercy Warren:

I am still determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.  We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds, wherever we go.

Paul understood that we may not be able to control our circumnstances, but our circumstances don’t have to control us (Philippians 4:11-12).  The Truth is that we can trust a wise, loving, sovereign God to control every circumstance of our lives.

37.  “I shouldn’t have to suffer.”

Many modern-day evangelistic efforts have promised sinners unending peace, joy, a home in heaven, and a prosperous life between here and there, if they will simply come to Jesus.  That kind of preaching, stripped of the call to disclipleship and cross bearing, has produced a generation of soft, flabby “disciples” who have no stomach for the battles of the Christian life.  When their hopes are dashed by the inevitable trials and tribulations, they whimper and whine and make a dash for the quickest escape route.  By convincing us that our suffering is undeserved or unnecessary, the Enemy succeeds in getting us to resent and resist the will and purpose of God (Acts 14:22).  Arthur Mathews wrote:

We tend to look at the circumstances of lifein terms of what they may do to our cherished hopes and convenience, and we shape our decisions and reactions accordingly.  When a problem threatens, we rush to God, not to seek his prespective, but to ask hi to deflect the trouble.  Our self-concern takes priority over whatever it is that God might be trying to do through the trouble….An escapist generation reads security, prosperity, and physical well-being as evidences of God’s blessing.  Thus when he puts suffering and affliction into our hands, we misread his signals and misinterpret his intentions.

Seventeenth-century Puritan author William Law exhorts us:

Receive every inward and outward trouble, every disappointment, pain, uneasiness, temptation, darkness, and desolation, with both thy hands, as a true opportunity and blessed occasion of dying to self, and entering into a fuller fellowship with they self-denying, suffering Saviour.

The Truth is, God is far more interested in our holiness than in our immediate, temporal happiness–He knows that from apart from being holy, we can never be truly happy.  The Truth is, it is impossible to be holy apart from suffering (Hebrews 2:10, 5:8).  In fact, Peter goes so far as to insist that suffering is our calling (1 Peter 2:21).  True joy is not the absence of pain but the sanctifying, sustaining presence of the Lord Jesus in the midst of the pain.  Through the whole process, we have His promise (1 Peter 5:10).

38.  “My circumstances will never change–this will go on forever.”

The Truth is, your pain may go on for a long time.  But it will not last forever.  It may go on for all of your life down here on this earth.  But even a lifetime is not forever.  The Truth is, a moment or two fro now (in the light of eternity), when we are in the presence of the Lord, everything that has taken place in this life will be just a breath–a comma.  “One day this will all be just a blip on the screen.”  She spoke not as one who is just resigned to her “fate.”  She longs for things to be different now.  But she has a perspective of time and eternity that is enabling her to be faithful in the midst of the “fire.”

Regardless of how long our suffering continues, God’s word assures us that it will not last forever (2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Romans 8:18, Psalm 30:5).  God has determined the exact duration of your suffering, and it will not last one moment longer than He knows is necessary to achieve His holy, eternal purposes in and through your life.  Regardless of how powerful the forces of darkness seem to be here and now, the final chpater has been written–and God wins (Isaiah 35:1,10)!

39.  “I just can’t take it anymore.”

Regardless of what our emotions or our circumstances may tell us, God’s Word says, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9).  (This is assuming, of course, that I haven’t taken on myself responsibilities He never intended me to carry.  If the burden is God-given, I can go on by His grace.)  One woman wrote and said:

I have one-year-old twin boys who have been chronically sick with ear infections and colds for two months, causing them to be whiny and irritable constantly.  I kept telling myself, my husband, and anyone who would listen, “I can’t take it anymore.”  The lie was a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it was stressing me out.  When I finally said, “Yes, I can take it and I will do my duty to them,” the greatest part of the tension and stress I was feeling dissolved.

Dear child of God, your heavenly Father will never lead you anywhere that His grace will not sustain you.  He will never place more upon you than He will give you grace to bear.  When the path before you seems hopelessly long, take leart.  Lift up your eyes (2 Corinthians 3:10, Philippians 3:8).

40.  “It’s all about me.”

In spite of all the talk about poor self-image, our instinctive reaction to life is self-centered: How does this affect me?  Will this make me happy?  Why did this have to happen to me?  What does she think about me?  It’s my turn.  Where’s my share?  Nobdoy cares about my ideas.  He hurt my feelings.  I’ve got to have some time for me.  I need my space.  He’s not sensitive enough to my needs.  It’s not enough for us to be the center of our own universe.  We want to be the center of everyone else’s universe as well–including God’s.  In his book Finding God, Dr. Larry Crabb offers a penetrating analysis of the extent to which the evangelical church has given in to this deception:

Helping people feel loved and worthwhile has become the central mission of the church.  We are learning not to worship God in self-denial and costly service, but to embrace our inner child, heal our memories, overcome addictions, lift our depressions, improve our self-images, establish self-preserving boundaries, substitute self-love for self-hatred, and replace shame with an affirming acceptance of who we are.  Recovery from pain is absorbing an increasing share of the church’s energy.  And that is alarming…

We have become committed to relieving the pain behind our problems rather than using our pain to wrestle more passionately with the character and purpose of God.  Feeling better has become more important than finding God…As a result, we happily camp on biblical ideas that help us feel loved and accepted, and we pass over Scriputre that calls us to higher ground.  We twist wonderful truths about God’s acceptance, his redeeming love, and our new identity in Christ into a basis for honoring ourselves rather than seeing those truths for what they are: the stunning revelation of a God gracious enough to love people who hated him, a God worthy to be honored above everyone and everything else.

…We have reaaranged things so that God is now worthy of honor because he has honored us.  “Worthy is the Lamb,” we cry, not in response to his amazing grace, but because he has recovered what we value most: the ability to like ourselves.  We now matter more than God.

Paul understood that God does not exist for us, but that we exist for Him (Colossians 1:16-18).  His secret was that he had settled the issue of why he was living.  He was not living to please himself or to get his needs fulfilled.  He had one burning passion: to live for the glory and the pleasure of God.  All that mattered to him was knowing Christ and making Him known to others (Acts 20:24).  “To live is Christ.”  Once that was settled, nothign else mattered much.  Coram Deo is a Latin phrase that means “before the face of God.”  Coram Deo is living all of life, in the presence of God, under the authority of God, and to the glory of God.  I want to close this chapter with three sketches fo women who exemplify what it means to live coram Deo.

“Cindy” got married at the age of 18 and had three children by the time she was 21.  When she was in her thirties, as her mother lay in a hospital in a coma, dying of cancer, Cindy picked up a Gideon Bible and cried out to the Lord to help her.  “From that moment on,” she wrote, “my heart’s desire was to know God.”  There was a vicious cycle of abusive behavior and language, her 14-year-old daughter an away from home, and her two sons were in consistent trouble with the police.  She left her husband for two weeks, intending to divorce him; through a series of circumstances, God gave her a new compassion for him, and she returned home.  In the midst of this, Cindy attended a meeting at a nearby church, where she heard the Good News and gave her heart to Jesus.  Things got worse.  Her daughter ended up on the streets for a year, after her dad would not let her back in the house one day.  Subsequently, the daughter married and had five children; she is now going trough a divorce, after 25 years of marriage.  One son was dishonorably discharged from the Marines and spent four years in prison.  The other became a drug addict and was also dishonorably discharged from the military.  He was involved in a homicide in a tavern and spent 22 years in a penitentiary.  Though he made a profession of faith whil in prison, he no longer shows any interest in spiritual things.  Their father is estranged from them, have not spoken to them in years, and does not know his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  Cindy continues to reflect:

There are no Christmases or Thanksgivings here at home.  Will my family ever be healed?  Only the Lord knows.  But God is Lord of my life, and I believe He wants to use me to be a testimony and a light for my family.  If I don’t kshow them the truth of God’s amazing grace, who will?  It would be so easy to just walk away and go to some isalnd where there is peace and joy.  But God has chosen me to be where I am, to be a testimony to my unsaved husband and to my children.  How can I help my husband see that one day his pride will be taken away and he will have to face Christ?  How can I help my daughter see the truth of God’s unconditional love?  How can I help my eldest son, who has turned his back on God since leaving prison?  How can I help my husband reconcile with his other son and daguther?  Only through God’s power, wisdom, and love.  So with all my heart, mind, body, and soul, I say, “Yes, Lord–whatever You want me to do.”

Jennie Thompson is a young woman whose husband went to be with the Lord after an intense two-year battle with leukemia.  In a letter written three months after Robert’s home-going, this widow with four boys ages seven and under expresses:

The Lord has been faithful in holding us up through this time.  I wouldn’t in a million years have chosen this path for my life or the lives of my children, but we have learned so much  in and through our circumstances that we could never have learned another way.  God has been honored and glorified in a way that never could have happened without our circumstances, so I must praise Him for those circumstances.  God is not in the business of making us “happy”; His business is to receive the glory that is due Him as our Creator and almighty God.  Our happiness is the by-product of being in and doing His will.  That, and only that, is the reason I can be weeping at the graveside of my best friend, my husband, and the father of my children and still be happy.

Janiece Grissom, my dear friend and longtime prayer partner, was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease at the age of 41.  She was the mother of four children, ages 4 to 12.  Invariably, throughout the next ten months, when she would hear my voice, she would say, “Nancy, you’ve really been on my heart!  How can I pray for you?”  By October 1999, she was confined to a recliner, could not use her limbs, and could only speak with difficulty due to losing 50% of her lung capacity.  Again, I was deeply touched by how God-conscious and God-centered this couple was, even as they faced the ravages of this disease.  I remember Janiece saying over and over that evening, “God has been so good to us!”  We sang one of her favorite hymns, “Like a River Glorious.”  On the evening of December 31, having a feeding tube inserted at the hospital months earlier, she could not speak above a whisper.  “But,” Tim said, “the incredible thing is that she is still spending most of her waking hours praying for other people.”  Within a matter of hours, Janiece breathed her last.  She died the way she lived–selflessly loving God and others.  In her mind, it was never about her–her health, her comfort, her future.  It was all about God–all that mattered was glorifying Him through surrendering to His purposes for her life (Philippians 1:20).  Her sole desire reflects what pastor’s wife and author Susan Hunt wrote:

History is the story of redemption.  This story is much bigger than I.  I am not the main character in the drama of redemption.  I am not the point.  But by God’s grace I am a part of it.  My subplot is integral to the whole.  It is far more significant to have a small part in this story than to star in my own puny production.  This is a cosmic story that will run throughout eternity.  Will I play my part with grace and joy, or will I go for the short-run, insignificant story that really has no point?

AFFIRM the Truth:  Philippians 4:11-13, James 1:2-5, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

LWB: Ch07: About Children

No greater capacity for joy and love or for disappointment and pain can be found than in a mother’s heart.  She never stops hoping, dreaming, and longing for that child she once cradled in her arms.  It is in this most sensitive of relationships–with their own flesh and blood–that many women find themselves particularly vulnerable to deception.  Satan has a vast arsenal of lies that he uses to deceive a woman in relation to her children and her role as a mother.  His intent is not only to place mothers in bondage, but also to pass his deception down to the next generation.

27.  “It’s up to us to determine the size of our family.”

God is the Creator, Author, and Giver of life.  Satan hates life (John 10:10).  He persuaded Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, knowing that if they did, they would die.  When they gave birth to two sons, Satan incited the elder to murder his younger brother.  Abortion, infanticide, and homosexuality are examples of life-destroying practices that have become widely tolerated throughout our culture.  But many have come to accept a number of philosophies and practices that are subtly “antichildren” and “antilife.”

One of the fundamental tenets of feminist ideology has always been the right of a woman to determine for herself if and when she will have children and how many children she will have.  Shulamith Firestone spoke for the movement when she insisted: “The heart of woman’s oppression is her childbearing and childrearing roles.”  The Christian world has been unwittingly influenced by this way of thinking, leading to the legitimization and promotion of such practices as contraception, sterilization, and “family planning.”  As a result, unwittingly, millions of Christian women and couples have helped to further Satan’s attempts to limit human reproduction and thereby destroy life.  As Mary Pride points out in her penetrating book The Way Home:

Family planning is the mother of abortion.  A generation had to be indoctrinated in the ideal of planning children around personal convenience before abortion today, and rightly so.  But the reason we have to fight those battles today is because we lost them thirty years ago.  Once couples began to look upon children as creatures of their own making, who they could plan into their lives as they chose or not, all reverence for human life was lost.  Abortion is first of all a heart attitude.  “Me first.”  “My career first.”  “My convenience first.”  “My financial plans first.”  And these exact same choices are what family planning, which the churches have endorsed for  three decades, is all about.

The process by which most people–even “believers”–determine the size of their family is often driven by fear, selfishness, and natural, human reason:

• “How will we ever provide for more children?  We’re barely making ends meet, as it is.  What about college tuition?”
• “I can’t physically handle more children.  I’m exhausted trying to take care of the two I already have.”
• “I just don’t have the patience to handle a lot of children.”
• “If we have more children, we won’t have enough time for us as a couple.”
• ‘My friends [or parents] will think we’re crazy if we have more kids.  They already think we have too many.”
• “If we were to let the Lord decide how many children we should have, we’d have two dozen kids!”

The world says, “Children are a burden.”  God’s Word says children are one of the greatest blessings He can give a couple (Psalm 127:3-5).  Yet we look up to heaven and say, “God, please don’t send any more blessings!”  The world says, “The purpose of marriage is to make you happy.  That may or may not include having children.”  God’s Word, on the other hand, teaches that one of the vital purposes of marriage is to produce children who fear and reverence the Lord (Malachi 2:15).  Childbearing is a basic, God-given role for women (1 Timothy 5:14).  Women will be saved through childbearing (1 Timothy 2:15).  Of course, this is not to suggest that a woman’s eternal salvation is obtained through childbearing.  This verse has the same grammatical construction as Paul’s admonition (1 Timothy 4:16).  Paul is saying that preaching was Timothy’s role, and that perseverance in his calling would accompany genuine conversion.  Preaching was not a means of Timothy’s salvation, but a necessary fruit of it.  Likewise, a woman’s willingness to embrace, rather than shun, her God-given role and calling (”childbearing”) is a necessary fruit that will accompany genuine salvation.  (This is not to say that all women are called by God to marry and bear children, but simply that, generally speaking, this is the central role God has established for women.)

Mary of Nazareth is a beautiful example of a woman who demonstrated faith by her willingness to bear a child, even when it was not in her timing (Luke 1:38). She said, in effect, “You are my Lord.  I am Your servant.  My body is Yours.”  How thankful I am for a mother who responded in the same way.  An accomplished musician, when Nancy Sossomon married Art DeMoss at the age  of nineteen, they planned to wait at least five years so she could continue her vocal career.  However, within the first five years of their marriage, the Lord gave them six children!  Mary of Nazareth and my mother–these women are a picture of the Lord Jesus, who welcomed children into His life, took time for them, and urged his followers to do the same (Matthew 19:13-15).

28.  “Children need to get exposed to the ‘real world’ so that they can learn to function in it.”

Satan uses the same tactics with parents that he used with Eve.  Satan was right–when Eve ate, her eyes were opened (Genesis 3:5-7); she did learn something she had not known before–the experience of evil.  The result of this knowledge was shame, guilt, and alienation from God and her husband.  God never intended that you and I should know evil by experiencing it for ourselves (Romans 16:19).  But Satan says, “You need to taste for yourself.”  He says to parents, “Your children need to taste for themselves.”  The Truth is, our challenge is to bring up children who love God with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strength.  I can’t thank the Lord enough for guiding my parents.  For example, when almost every other little girl was playing with Barbie dolls, we scarcely knew what they were.  She wisely understood that for little girls to play with dolls with fully developed figures would not help to cultivate a godly perspective on sexuality.  When I was a young girl, the nation was in the throes of rebellion, rioting, and revolution.  We were not unaware of these developments, but neither were we hearing about them on the evening news.  My parents believed that some topics were not suitable for children’s minds to ponder, and they felt responsible to shape our views on what was going on in the world. 

The result?  I was a very sheltered young person.  But there are some things I did know that few other young people knew.  I knew the difference between right and wrong.  I had hidden large portions of Scripture in my heart.  I could sing from memory all the stanzas of many theologically rich hymns.  I had read the biographies of many true heroes–men and women such as Hudson Taylor, George Mueller, William Carey, and Gladys Aylward.  More than that, I had a vital, personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. The “faith of our fathers” had become my own.  I’m not boasting–I can’t take any credit–they were gifts from the Lord and from parents who took seriously their responsibility to raise godly daughters and sons.  Children will cultivate an appetite for whatever they are fed in their earliest, formative years.  I can only assume that they have an appetite for what they have been exposed to.

No one would think of taking a young, tender plant and planting it outside on a day like today and have any hope of its surviving.  That’s what a greenhouse is for–to provide an optimum environment for plants to grow.  Then, when their roots have developed and they are strong enough to withstand adversity, they can be transplanted to the outdoors.  When I was seventeen years old, my parents sent me to a secular university in southern California.  I didn’t have an appetite for anything that wasn’t consistent with the Word of God (Romans 12:2).  I had a heart for the people who believed those things and practiced those lifestyles and wanted to see them come to know the Lord (Romans 12:1-2).  But their ways held no appeal to me.

29.  “All children will go through a rebellious stage.”

The Enemy wants parents to believe there is no hope of their children living holy, surrendered lives through their adolescent and young adult years.  Children who know their parents expect them to rebel will likely fulfill that expectation.  The fact is, we are all natural rebels (Psalms 51:5, 58:3, Isaiah 59:2-8).  That’s where the Gospel comes in.  God’s intent was that each successive generation should receive His grace, keep His covenant, and then pass it on to their children.  When seeds of rebellion surface, wise parents do not shrug and say, “I guess all kids ahve to go through this.”  They understand that their children are experiencing physiological an dhormonal changes, but they teach their children how to keep them from ruling their lives (Psalms 103:17, 144:12, Isaiah 54:13).

30.  “I know my child is a Christian because he prayed to receive Christ at an early age.”

Only God knows anyone’s heart.  But He has given us some objective standards by which we may measure a profession of faith.  The essence of true salvation is not a matter of profession or performance; rather, it is a transformation (1 John 2:3-19, 3:10; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Colossians 1:13; Jeremiah 32:40; Hebrews 3:14).  For parents to  assume that their children have been born again when their lives give no such evidence can have several dangerous results (Ephesians 5:5-6).  It can lull those children into a false sense of secuirty about their eternal destiny.  It can keep parents from praying approppriately and waging spiritual battle on behalf of their children’s souls.  It gives rise to a “cheap grace” that demeans the person and blood of Christ.

31.  “We are not responsible for how our children turn out.”

I have observed that the Enemy uses two opposite lies to put parents in bondage.  The first is that they have no control or influence over how their children have turned out–they the situation could not be helped.  Believing this leads parents to throw off personal responsbility and to feel that they are helpless victims.  The second lie is that they are 100% responsible–that it is all their fault.  The Scripture includes accounts of godly men who had ungodly children, as well as ungodly men whose children had a heart for God.  Very little explanation is given for why this is so.  However, we are given some clues that provide insight for parents who want their children to become true followers of Christ.  Even though Lot was a believer, he did not guard his heart; he had an appetite for the things of this world.  By his example, he led his family into a love affair with the world (2 Peter 2:8).  As more than one person has pointed out, “What parents tolerate in moderation, their children will excuse in excess.”

The account of Eli’s family demonstrates the necessity of parents’ establishing godly standards for their children’s behavior and then excercising the necessary discipline to enforce those parameters.  How did a dedicated man of god end up with two such sons (2 Samuel 2:12-17,22)?  We know that at the time of his death, Eli was overweight (1 Samuel 4:18).  Could there be a connection between his lack of physical discipline and his sons’ sin of filling their own bellies with meat they had extorted from those who came to offer sacrifices?  At least on one occasion, Eli confronted his sons about their wicked behavior, but by that time he was “very old” and his sons did not listen to their father’s rebuke (1 Samuel 2:22-25; 29; 3:13). 

These examples do not prove that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between parents’ spirituality and the spiritual outcome in every child.  However, they do illustrate that parents have enourmous influence and are responsible to mold the hearts and lives of their children.  As easy as it is to shift blame to peers, teachers, entertainment, church youth groups, or secular culture, the fact is, we are accountable for the spiritual condition of the flock God has given us to shepherd.  Or course, each individual will one day give account to God for his or her own choices (DeuteronoMy 24:16; Jeremiah 31:29-30).

AFFIRM the Truth:  Psalm 127, Matthew 19:13-15, Psalm 78:1-8, 1 Thessalonians 2:7

Plastic Jesus II

Chapter 5: A powerful SUV (on Discovery and Learning).  For most of us who own SUVs, it’s just enough to know we could do something like the commercials if we needed to.  While just knowing we could explore unpaved territory may be okay for literal suburbia, it’s not okay for the landscape of our spiritual lives.  We have a lot of knowledge about God, but are sadly lacking in vibrant experiences with God.  Once very two years or so, I have an encounter with God that makes me fell “saved” all over again.  I fall into a spiritual rut, and then find myself sinking in the quagmire of my own self-preservation.  Those of us who live in spiritual suburbia have become experts on what we don’t experience.  We attend meetings, listen to others, and can critique sermons, services, and sanctity–without ever having to interact with God ourselves:

The short-term mission team and I were performing street dramas, preaching the gospel, and being all-around ethnocentric, upper-middle-class Americans.  Still, God was at work in Budapest, Hungary, and lots of people were committing their lives to Christ and capitalism through us.  As I was wandering a public square, I noticed a weathered and aged man playing a violin that had only three strings.  His knuckles were knobby, and his fingers appeared to be as beaten down as his violin.  As I apprached, he screeched a tune that sounded remarkably like two cats in heat. 
          Clasping my hands together, I pantomimed my question regarding whether I could pray for him.  But as I knelt down, the man extended one of his withered hands to my shoulder and raised the other one up to heaven, and began to pray for me instead.  I felt a tingling rush sweep over my body and then, Wham!, I hit the cement sidewalk, face first and weeping uncontrollably.  I thought, Get a grip, you’re making a scene out here in public!  But my body would not submit to my pride.  Instead, I lay there listening to an old man pray in a language I didn’t understand, hoping no one was noticing me.
          Another tingle went through me, and I found myself sitting at a colossal banquet table that stretched for hundreds of feet and seated hundreds of people.  I was sitting on one end of the table, and Jesus was way, way down on the other side.  I could hear him laughing and talking with those seated around him.  Then I zoomed in on Jesus.  Though we were still at opposite ends of this great expance, Jesus and I were looking eye-to-eye–and he wasn’t happy.  “How many times have I told you that the first shall be last and the least shall be the greatest in my kingdom?  You are kneeling before one of my most holy servants,” he said.
          Then like a hyperspace jump in Star Wars, I was back.  Two Hungarian students who attended the American univeristy told me they had been watching for about ten minutes.  “He was praying, thanking God for sending such a holy man to his city so that many might receive God.  He must think you’re a priest or something.  Then he went on to pray about the poor and needy around the city.”  The students went on to explain how Frank plays his violin every day in order to raise donations so that he can buy bread and distribute it to the poor and addicted who suffer without hope in the backalleys.  If Frank had any bread left over after his rounds, then he’ll eat.  Rumor had it that there had been times when Frank had gone seven or eight  days without eating so that others would have enough food.
          What a world of distance between my Christian suburbia and Frank’s urban wilderness.  Oh sure, I may have been able to dance doctrinal circles around him regarding God’s heart for the poor and broken.  I probably could have helped him set up a more effective and efficient way to collect money and distribute bread to the poor (all in the name of godly stewardship, of course!).  But I wasn’t the expert on ministry to the poor; Frank was.

• How do you connect with God?  Jesus wants to be the master of our lives, and this puts us in the position of becoming his apprentices.  The way to get closer to God is not to study about him, but to participate with him.  “Follow me” surely implied that Jesus was going somewhere.  Reading the Bible for knowledge alone is like going to a restaurant and eating the menu but not the meal.  Now don’t reak out on me.  I’m not about to go all anti-Bible on you.  I know and firmly believe that the best way to know where God is and what he is like is through his holy Word.  However, the meal is in relationship with the person of Jesus Christ, not in simply reading about what he offers.
• In Matthew 6:9-10, Jesus used the Aramaic term Abba.  Abba was a nursery term, and in today’s vernacular it would be “Papa” or “Daddy.”  With this word, Jesus is inviting us to experience the Father’s complete, safe, and radical tenderness toward us.  Our conversations with God need to start with our understanding of God as our Abba.  If we don’t get this, if we don’t let him function in that role, we will always come up short in regard to what he wants for us in prayer.  Has this information changed the way you actually connect with God?  Knowing and actually experiencing and trusting this information are very different things.
• For example, I first ran into Madame Guyon while studing Richard Foster’s Devotional Classics.  She wrote about a profoundly simply way to turn our hearts toward the presence of God (find a Scripture to use to help focus on God, continue to read those words over and over again slowly until you sense God’s presence, shift from the Scripture to conversing with th Lord, then if your mind wanders just go back to the Scripture to get you back on track).  Since then, I’ve gotten pretty good at talking about prayer, but I know God is still waiting….
• Julian of Norwich wrote, “For the highest form of prayer is to to the goodness of God.  God only desires that our soul cling to him with all its strength, in particular that it clings to his goodness.  For of all the things our minds can think about God, it is thinking about his goodness that pleases him most and brings the most profit to our soul.  For we are so preciously loved by God that we cannot even comprehend it.  No created being can ever know how much and how sweetly and tenderly God loves them.”  I could drink from God’s goodness and love all my days, and his well would never run dry, and my thirst would never be quenched.  The invitation goes beyond understanding to truly clinging to the tangible nature of God’s goodness.
• Brother Lawrence wrote, “I imagine myself as the most wretched of all, full of sores and sins, and one who has committed all sorts of crimes against his king.  Feeling a deep sorrow, I confess to him all of my sins, I ask his forgiveness, and I abandon myself into his hands so that he may do with me what he pleases.  This king, full of mercy and goodness, very far from chastening me, embraces me with love, invites me to feast at his table, serves me with his own hands, and gives me the key to his treasures.  He converses with me, and takes delight in me, and treats me as if I were his favorite.  This is how I imagine myself from time to time in his holy presence.”  Let God pour his emotional, reckless, and prodigal love on you.
• While pursuing my PhD (Debt Piled High and Deep), I used to think it was to my advantage to buy used textbooks that already had lots of highlights.  But that was frustrating because previous colleagues didn’t seem to know which things I would think were important.  A couple of times a year, I go back through my selection of books and read the highlights.  I see so many great insights that I wanted to apply to my life.  Some I have, but most remain yellow. 
• Also, most of the highlighting occurs in the front half of the books, with the amount slowly drying to a trickle by the three-quarter mark.  I have a bad habit of not finishing.  I’ve realized I need to apply what I have been learning.  I need to follow through on the commitments I have made, especially the things that Jesus has brought into my life.  Jesus may have been speaking to me through those books, but have the words worked their way into my being (2 Peter 1:3)?
• Escaping suburbia means aligning our behaviors with our beliefs.  The divine power he offers is called grace, God’s empowering presence in our life that helps us turn knowledge into experience (Luke 2:40, 1 Corinthians 15:10, Ephesians 2:8-10).  You get more grace by living it.  The more of God’s grace you allow into and through your day, to work out in and through you, the more he will pour upon you.  We aren’t endued with such power mrely to attend church meetings.  God has equipped us to charge over the gates of hell, to drive straight into the Enemy’s camp, and to live a life that finds itself right smack in the middle of God’s story in the world around us.  Step on the gas, I see a mountain to climb.

Chapter 6: A really big house (on Intimacy with God).  I got to thinking about the types of homes people return to.  Not just the physical structures, mind you, but the relationships behind the brick and mortar walls.  When you live in a large home, you have plenty of room for a variety of activities to be happening at once, but it also means you don’t have to be very close to anyone if you choose not to be.  This book is about the home located inside of you.  As Jesus spoke in Revelation 3:20, he was talking to those who havealready professed to have a relationship with him.  Jesus wants to be invited into deeper, more meaningful relationship than just standing at the door will allow. 

• (1)  Yet, that’s about as intimate as we often get with him, like with the pizza delivery guy.  Secretly, we hope that our plastic Jesus’ head is bobbing up and down. 
• (2)  Or, we plateau at the relatively stable symbiotic business/working relationship where we mutually benefit each other.  We know God by name and commit to working for him because we believe in the vision and values of his organization.  We hold marathon PR meetings to develop plans to sell his product (salvation) to others.  We raise money for the poor.  We get his peace and fire insurance, and he gets our busy bodies.  The temptation to settle in this land is powerful; it is, after all, the Land of Good Things (eg.  it is good to focus on evangelism, it is good to serve others on Sundays). But we can forget to stop and asky why.  Why am I so busy?  Far too many teeter around the edge of burnout.  They signed up because they loved the Boss and grooved with his vision.  The benefits were out of this world and the coworkers were friendly.  Then something began to happen.  Their external busyness dried up the internal goodness.  Once motivated by the Master himself, they are now only motivated by the machine itself; they are simply a cog in the wheel of the business called “churchianity.” 
• That’s what happened to Jonathan.  He grew up street smart and tough, but God grabbed hold of his heart, held it in his nail-pierced hands, and turned this six-foot-four, three-hundred-pound, Hispanic, Hollywood punker into a gentle giant for Jesus.  Early in his walk, his passion often outweighed his wisdom.  He invented the ministry of evandelism.  On other occasions, he’d flatten tires and wait for the owner to return.  He promised to fix their flat for free if they’d listen to his message of God’s love.  He then soon found himself playing the guitar for crowds and leading worship teams.  People gathered around his fire and warmed up in his glowing.  A subtle shift began to happen.  He started playing for the effect of worship and was no longer playing to an audience of One.  Slowly, subtly, and surely, this once radcal, passoinate, no-holds barred, worshipper of Jesus had turned his ministry into a business relationship.  Before he knew it, the goal was to create and perpetuate the sense of God’s presence for others though that presence had long since waned in his own heart.  He found himself growing bitter and resentful.  He realized his worshipping heart had lost its center.  What he’d once done for the love of Jesus, he was now doing for the works of Jesus.
• (3)  The difference between being a servant/business partner and a friend is in the intimacy, not the action.  We are called to do the things that Jesus did.  We can be religious and do these things out of a sense of duty, or we can be intimate and do these things out of a sense of friendship.  I, for one, want to be in a cooperative friendship with Jesus, where he shares with me not only the task at hand, but his heart’s desires and motivations as well.  My team and I were working among the children who were living and working in the desolate and polluted environment of a garbage dump on Bohol Island in the Philippines.  One of the local leaders brought a guitar, and everyone was singing.  Under my breath, I muttered, “God, this song isn’t right.  Look at the deprivation.  How can we be singing you are gracious?”  It was as if Wisdom was standing next to me, for I heard a voice as clearly as if I were talking to my friend Marty, saying, “I sent you, didn’t I?”  It’s hard to explain, but I felt as if god was saying that he was allowing me to be a part of his heart and love for these kids and the Philippines.  I was participating in a cooperative friendship with Jesus, not just a partnership.  And as such it seemed he felt open enough to share with me his heart for those kids and for me.  Conversations like this can turn something hollow to something hallowed.
• (4)  Just as I don’t critique the art my children make for me, neither does God critique our heartfelt worship works for him.  But if we didn’t grow up in such a home, we will often draw a line, buil da fence, and decide to experience Jesus’ love on the cross, but we won’t risk trusting the love that sent him there.  In doing this, we are negating much of the reason Jesus became a man in the first place (John 5:19, John 14:9-11, Luke 11:2).  Jesus came to make God’s love tangible to you and me.  But for many of us, the tainted love of our earthly fathers has poisoned the love we experience from our Father in heaven.
• In Psalm 18:7-15, we wonder what David did to make God that angry.  God was indeed angry, but not at David (5-7).  What really makes God angry is when the Enemy is picking on his kids!  David got brutally honest and cried out to God for help.  God heard and came with the full force of his might to help him.  This same love sent the full force of God’s mercy and forgiveness to the cross to conquer the enemy of our souls, once and for all.  But God doesn’t just love humanity that much, he loves you that much.  I meet people almost weekly whose fathers are terrible representations of what God intended dads to be.  But we must risk believing in a perfect Father’s perfect love.  As we explore God’s love, I believe he begins to restore a sense of wonder, awe, and childlike trust to our desolate spirituality.  Not only does wonder develop intelligence as children grow, i belivee it also helps kids maintain their sense of innocence.  We must ask for it, and then slow down to look for it.
• (5)  When Jesus says John 14:6, I believe he is inviting us to enter into a passionate love relationship with him.  I believe he is telling us that it is possible to know him, and for him to know us like husbands and wives know each other, not sexual or erotic but emotionally intimate and passionate.  God invites us into a relationship of such trust and closeness that we feel completely safe with him, willing to be “naked” in his presence, with nothing to hide, willing to bridge any barrier in order to find complete oneness with him.  To experience this deep level of intimacy with God, we need to risk feeling a little undignified and unruly in the presence of the lover of our soul (Psalm 69:6,9, Matthew 26:7, Joshua 6:7, Matthew 2:9). So step out, do a little dance, and make a little love toward God tonight.
• Worship should declare the joyous celebration of God’s presence in our lives, the awesomeness of his sovereignty over the whole universe, and the tangibleness of a transparent, unashamed, and intimate love–just like God wants expressed through marriage.  The ways that I express my affections for my wife are quite diverse, but my love for her should be evident every day that I celebrate her love in my life.  We should view worship as a lifestyle as well as a part of church meetings.  In both instances, it is choosing to give all honor and thankfulness back to God for his presence in our lives.  Although some contmeporary religious styles often interpret reverence to God as something quiet and somber, scriptural worship is quite diverse.  Biblical worship connotes freedom, ranging from standing, raising hands, or dancing, to kneeling or lying prostrate; from quiet, reflective listening to loud, passionante praise.  Rekindle the romance.
• That’s the beauty of plumbing the depths of the unfathomable.  The adventure never ends.  “When you want God as desperately as you wanted air, you will know him as I do.”  How far can this joureny take us?  Deep…desperately deep.  The devil does not want you going deeper.  If you did, your love for God might become contagious.  Others might become more thirsty and hungry for substance in their relationships with God.  There could actually be revival.  So the Devil work hard tokeep you and me busy.  Just enough so we don’t feel like we are failing.  But many of us are stirring.  Suburbia has lost its appeal.  Our souls are hungry for more of the real presence of God.  We don’t just want him to deliver the pizza to us, we want him to come inside our souls and share the meal with us.

“Without any expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Ghost descended on me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. 
          I could feel the impression, like a wave of electricity, going through and through me.  Indeed it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love….
          No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart.  I wept aloud with joy and love…. The waves came over me, and over me, one after the other, until I recollect I cried out, ‘I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me.’  I said, ‘Lord, I cannot bear any more;’ yet I had no fear of death” (Charles Finney).

Chapter 7: A perfect lawn (on Brokenness).  Brokenness and pain are not pretty.  They are like a throbbing sore, constantly aching and oozing until we medicate or anesthetize them.  Brokenness causes God’s presence and power to fade like an echo in our soul.  The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way! The truth is, the area of our deepest pain often has the potential to be the source of our greatest joy and the launching pad of our highest callings.  Indeed, those who have been forgiven much tend to love much.  Suburbia gives us shame in our brokenness; Jesus gives us hope.  The church often says, “How could you?”  The Holy Spirit ays, “I still love you.”  Our culture finds no value in broken things; God finds redemptive value in them. 

• In Mark 14:3-6, almost all placed value on the jar before it was broken.  But Jesus placed value on it after it was broken. This woman was broken before him, and he was pleased.  This is a story of worship that God likes.  The same story he wants us to live today.  He is drawn to people who admit and invite him into their brokenness.  I am convinced that is why the Father had Jesus be born in a manger.  He wanted his Son to be born in the brokenness of poverty.  But even being born in one of the lowest cities of the day was not low enough, for Jesus was born in a stable that housed only animals.  There is no place on earth he will not go to reach us with his love.  But what if God the Father was trying to tell us his life can best be born out in the lowest, most shameful places of humanity?  What if he was not only talking about the physical but the hidden stuff in our souls as well?  When God’s life came and invaded darkness, the world got the blessing and the Father got the glory.  We work so hard to prop up the exterior of our decent Christian living that we fail to attend to the hurts, hang-ups, and decay within.  If we long to escape, we can no longer hide our brokenness.  We must offer it to God as uncharted territory and be willing to explore it with him, beginning with surrender.
• Often brokenness is masked by addiction and addiction is masked by secrets.  Many who struggle with the continuous ache of brokenness first try all kinds of things to anesthetize it: drugs, alcohol, shopping, cyclic relationships.  We may try yoga, yogurt, or Yoda, popularity, power, or porn, dressing up, dressing down, or complete nakedness.  But soon we find that those things only serve to widen the chasm created by brokenness.  So we make a promise.  Sin, repent, commit to change, and round and round the cycle goes.  When we will crash and burn, nobody knows.  But herein lies the problem–commitment.  As long as we are committed to overcoming our brokenness, we won’t be able to do so.  What we need is to surrender (Romans 7:18-25).
• Surrender is not losing the battle; let Him fight for you.  Surrender is not periodically giving in to your hurt and/or brokenness (not to binge and purge).  Surrender is not giving up a part of your life (He knew what he was getting, but did you know what you were giving?).  Look at the desolate territory of our soul and ask him, “Can you redeem this land?”  If he says yes, then surrender it to him.  Give up trying to fix it to impress him or trying to hide it to protect him. 
• One of the hardest areas for me to surrender was my idea that I needed to have it together in front of those I pastor or lead.  You know, the whole “live above reproach” thing.  The problem arises when living above reproach becomes synonymous with hiding behind dishonesty.  During that early season of my walk, God gave me an opportunity to have lunch with Tom Stipe.  During our chat, he said, “There are no Cinderella stories in the kingdom of God.  Every authentic leader bears the scars of brokenness.  If they don’t walk with a limp, they probably aren’t worthy to be followed.”  Walking with a limp is not only an indication of struggle and past brokenness, but also evidence of healing and perseverance.  The Bible tells us that God’s gift and his call are irrevocable (Romans 11:29), but so is the path to get there.  There is no short cuts on the way to holiness and healing.  One way or another, I was going to have to learn to surrender.
• The movement of posers are restricted.  Instead of exploring, posers are forced to keep up the appearance of their glittering images.  Every life needs to look the same so that no difference can be felt or recognized.  “How are you?”  “Fine.”  Or rather, FINE (Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional).  We must give up our rights, privileges, and personal expectations.  Vertical honesty, and then horizontal honesty.  I see a Wonderbra spirituality.  We use whatever contraption we can to puff up what little substance we atually have to impress others, even if it hurts us in the process.  Then later, they find out we really weren’t as attractive as we made ourselves out to be.  Perhaps the ultimate irony is that by enhancing our weaknesses, we may be distracting others from our strengths.  Psalm 136 says that his love for me has remained consistent, pure, lavish, purposeful, and powerful over all these years.  Vertical honesty doesn’t only mean that I am transparent with God about who I am, but it also means that I’m receptive to who he is in all his love.  Just because I don’t deserve his love doesn’t mean I can’t have it.  It is his gift to give and only my choice to receive.
• Coming clean with a bunch of addicts is amazingly freeing in AA, NA, etc., but when people come clean in the church, the response is often quite different.  After a friend of mine talked about her eating disorder (and the initial under-our-breath gasps), the group piled on her like a school of well-meaning piranhas.  Everyone wanted a piece of “helping” her find the way to healing.  After about a half-hour of counsel and storytelling from the group, she sheepishly piped up again, “I was just asking for prayer.”  The church needs to follow the recovery group model.  The group simply responds, “Thank you for sharing.”  No judgment, no critique, no shaming.  Just genuine thankfulness that someone was…well…honest.  Now no one has to pretend anymore, which is the first step toward healing.  What they do next is up to them, it is their journey, we are just there to help.  The place where honesty on the horizontal and vertical meet looks remarkably like a cross.
• Not long ago, I had the privilege of facilitating a group of twelve spiritually hungry and brutally honest seekers.  I affectionately dubbed our ragamuffin group the “Red Pill Forum,” alluding to the first Matrix movie, and the scene where Neo had to choose either the red pill or the blue pill.  Choosing the red pill meant discovering the truth and following it despite not really knowing just how far that journey would go.  Choosing the blue pill meant erasing the question and going back to pretending everything was FINE.  This group’s version of choosing the “red pill” was swallowing a weekly reading from Brian McLaren’s challenging but noncondescending book Finding Faith.  We had two simple rules and one goal: (1) a commitment to honesty about our own life and (2) a commitment to honor the honesty in each other’s lives.  Our goal was exploring God’s story in Christianity, without manipulation or pressure to convert.  It happened about the seventh week of our weekly gatherings.  I was talking about how Jesus invites us to live from a whole new perspective–one in which life is lived from a “God-ward” orientation and not a “self-ward” orientation.  Then someone said, “That’s one thing I don’t understand.  Christians talk so much about abundant life, but it seems all your decisions are based on fear.  Fear of hell, fear of punishment, fear of displeasing God or others, fear of sharing your faults.”  Ouch.  Indeed, that’s not abundance, that’s avoidance!  She risked honesty bcause she felt safe enough to be honest.  I received her honesty because I felt safe enough not to be defensive. 
• God doesn’t invite us out of suburbia and into the land of brokenness so that we can become fixated on what is wrong in our lives.  He invites us into that dark, unexplored place so that we can see his re-creative power at work.  He doesn’t want us focused on avoiding pain.  He wants us focused on pursuing wholeness.  Maybe it’s time to invest some time, energy, and money on the inside.  After all, that is where we really live. 

Conclusion: Rethinking suburbia.  Most seminaries do a better job of teaching eschatology than they do teaching brokenology.  “The problem with suburbia is that it’s perfectly designed to anesthetize us from pain.  It puts a veneer of wholeness on the outside, and allows hollowness to thrive on the inside.”  But there is no barrier that the power of God cannot overcome when we give him permission–regardless of whether those barriers are from within or from without.

1. Have a clear vision of what you really want out of your relationship with God.  Students with declared majors seldom had many choices between classes.  Their course was mapped out for them on a timetable.  When they graduated, they not only had a degree on a piece of paper, they had a substance to their education.  One student thought that if he just took enough classes, sooner or later he would qualify for a degree and then he would graduate.  He said he liked my sexuality course a lot; he enjoyed various art classes and had taken a number of the fisheries courses.  I told him if he wasn’t careful, he’d end up with a job drawing pictures of fish having sex, and that was a very narrow career field.  If you have a clear vision of where you are going, you’ll seldom get stuck and disappointed with where you’ve been.
2. Give yourself permission to not be perfect.  Sometimes I find myself trying so hard to be something I’m not that I begin to not be something I want.  What I am is God’s beloved.  What if, every day, I just accepted the fact that I’m not going to be perfect in anything I’m trying to accomplish in God’s purpose and plan?  Some might use this as an excuse to be sloppy with their faith, but from where I’m sitting, God’s love deserves my best effort.  I don’t have to earn his love today–I just have to live in it and through it.  Llike when my daughter plays soccer.  She can play her best, and I can expect her to represent her family name well, but I don’t have to expect her to be Mia Hamm.  Living in this reality will release in you new freedom to fail, but fail in a forward direction.  To eternity and beyond.

Plastic Jesus

Exposing the Hollowness of Comfortable Christianity
by Eric Sandras

Chapter 1: When suburbia loses its appeal.  “Suburbia is depicted as a comfortable but somewhat vacuous realm of unreality: consumerist, wasteful, complacent, materialistic, self-absorbed, sprawling, shopping, disneyfied.  They’ve cut themselves off from the sources of enchantment.  They have become too concerned with small and vulgar pleasures, pointless one-upmanship, and easy values.  They have become at once too permissive and too narrow, too self-indulgent and too timid.  Their lives are distracted by a buzz of trivial images, by relentless hurry instead of genuine contemplation, information rather than wisdom, and a profusion of superficial choices” (David Brooks, On Paradise Drive).  We’ve been duped into thinking the perceived safety of predictable ignorant bliss was more rewarding than the risk and joy of discovery.  At best, such a lifestyle is maintenance.  At worse, it is counterfeit Christianity.  We are at a crossroads (Jeremiah 6:16):  Stand, look, ask, and listen. 

Chapter 2: Keeping up with the Joneses (on Identity).  Why do we immediately ask people what they do for a living?  Most of us ask because the answer helps us size a person up.  It enables us to make all kinds of assumptions about a person’s value and potential.  We are tempted to believe that we are what we do, what we have, and what others say about us.  This has been around since the Garden of Eden; the fruit was DoToBe.  But God invites us to eat from the Tree of Life, BeToDo (Galatians 6:4-5 MSG).  Anything in the kingdom of God that is worth doing–is worth doing poorly.  It doesn’t mean doing it apathetically or irreverently but doing them humanly (which includes failures).  Chasing bubbles (Eccelsiastes 2:11) will eventually lead to a bad taste in our mouths and dissatisfaction in our guts.  People have opinions; God has truth.  People have attitudes; God has perspective.  People have brokenness; God has wholeness.  People have loud mouths; God has a gentle whisper:

1. When God said this about Jesus (Mark 1:9-11), Jesus, the man, hadn’t done anything yet.  Yet, the Father makes a huge deal over him.  The Father’s total love and acceptance for Jesus wasn’t based on performance but on relationship.  Jesus was loved because of whose he was, not because of what he did.  When we are rooted in God’s total acceptance, we are like toddlers secure in their relationship with their parents, whch frees us to take risks and explore the spiritual realm because we know we aren’t going to lose God’s love.  Secure kids know they have a safe place to come back to, and that if they get lost, mom or dad will come looking for them.
2. In the parable Jesus tells in Luke 15, the story is not just about a prodigal son (who represents us) but also about a prodigal father (who represents God).  God and humanity both are lavish and wasteful, one in a life-stealing way and God in a life-giving way.  God’s kingdom, by his very nature, is marked by diversity.  God’s communities are built by multiplicity and creativity, and kingdom spirituality seeks to be lavish and diverse in its gifts.  But suburbic spirituality settles for conformity, uniformity, and efficiency.  Too many of us have convinced ourselves that we are narrow and limited in our scope of influences.  For instance, take the church’s use of spiritual gifts surveys.  We identify one or two primary gifts then spend the next ten years defined by what we were on that given day.  But what if we have an entire fruit salad of spiritual gifts?  Sometimes I sccop out more grapes than peaches.  Other times I scoop out more raisins than bananas.  Either way, I know it will be good because my grandma made it.  Each of us has a plethora of gifts and abilities within us, just waiting for the Creator to call them forth.  How do you root yourself in God’s prodigal nature and find a whole new identity? By magnifying the Lord, as if through a magnifying glass, and taking a closer look.  As you ponder God’s prodigal nature in the Word, in the world around you, and through your senses, you will begin to magnify him and see this aspect of his character in everything.  His abundant goodness, overwhelming creativity, and lavish love will seem to permeate every portion of your life.  Next thing you know, you will have restored a sense of wonder and will no longer be a slave to routine.  You will realize that you are a reflection of God’s prodigal nature, and you will become more lavish in your love, compassion, generosity, and creativity because you have found your identity in him.
3. God never gives up on me, but I naturally default to me.  But it’s as natural for God to pursue us as it is for us not to pursue him.  In Psalm 23:6, the word “follow” is translated in most every other place in the Old Testament as ”pursue,” a military term indicating relentlessness, passion, and purpose.  Goodness and Mercy-Love, like sheepdogs, are nipping at your heels every time you being to move away from God’s presence and protection.  He has give you free will, so you can choose whether to love him back.  But God is still pursuing you.  Even if you and I never find all of him, we should not stop looking.  Just like God never stops, never gives up, never falters in his love and pursuit of us, we can find our very identities when we do the same in our relationship with him.  I’m still seeking.

Chapter 3: A promising career (on Calling).  At the close of LOTR: Return of the King, Frodo and Sam are struggling to climb Mount Doom.  They are so close to their destination, but Frodo has reached the point of exhaustion.  Sam, his lifelong friend and companion, says, “I may not be able to carry the ring, but I can carry you.”  With every bit of strength he has left, Sam stands up, puts Frodo over his shoulders, and begins the final ascent to fulfill the destiny for which they were created.  My friend Sonny identified with Sam, a servant leader who didn’t bear the burden of the ring but the burden of the ring bearer.  I identified with Frodo, the reluctant hero who often struggled with the feeling that, although he had clearly been given the task of destroying the ring, the job was too big for him to accomplish.  Frodo was doing what he was called to do, and whenever he was about to fail, “destiny” had someone or something help him fulfill his calling.  However, God doesn’t want us to live vicariously through mythical characters like Frodo, or even through biblical characters like Joshua and Esther.  He wants us to live our own story in the here and now.  Gandalf said to Frodo, “All you have to do is decide what to do with the time given to you” (Joshua 1:5-6, Esther 4:14). 

• Calling is something that comes from within us.  I used to work with developmentally delayed children.  We constantly were looking for ways to connect with one child in particular, Jonah.  Then one day, I was sitting next to him while playing telephone with another child.  The play phone rang, and before I could pick it up, Jonah grabbed it and said, “Hello, this is Jonah.”    Aparently the ringing of the phone triggered something within him, and he responded.  Something similar happens when we are exposed to our God-given calling, whether it comes through the form of a sound, a character, or an opportunity.  But if we’re not careful, our other responsibilities can disconnect taht call and force us back to living life the way we have always lived it.
• Not long ago, I was wearing a Harvard sweatshirt that I had purchased from Goodwill.  Someone asked me for the truth, and the person was no longer impressed.  The whole episode got me thinking about how many jerseys and sweatshirts I wear that represent other people’s callings.  Christians who are living in spiritual suburbia “just wear the shirt.”
• One of the great dangers of living in spiritual suburbia is the temptaion to enjoy the stability of a consistent paycheck at the cost of fulfilling our calling.  Some of us have bought the lie that calling is only for the skilled and seminary-trained.  And so we live life by default, often doing good things.  Churches always have more needs than resources.  Oh, how easy it is for leaders to see the people as commodities that exist to serve the machine called “church,” regardless of whether the job fits their calling or not.  Because of this, many are doing acts of service in the church but aren’t following their calling.  We never become fully alive in our souls because we never fully become what God has created us to be.  The weight of responsiblity presses us down and buries that nagging sense of dissatisfacion and the hope of something more.  So we settle into the safety of the good things we are already doing, and build a fence around it to keep it contained.  What if we grabbed life by purpose and not by default?  What if we sought a calling instead of simply earning a living? 
• When we live out our calling, we sense that we are fulfilling our purpose, that we are in the right place at the right time, “moving to the rhythms of God’s grace” (Eugene Peterson).  Few of us discover our calling by accident; we only find it if we look and pursue it.  But because it comes from within, we can’t just take some personality or spiritual gifts survey and-voila!-idenitfy our calling.  Nor can we just drop all our responsiblites and routines, like we are in some spiritual midlife crisis.  In order to find our calling, we must explore and risk believing Ephesians 2:10.
• One of the challenge of discovering our calling is that it’s often plural and not singular.  Maybe that’s why we have call waiting.  So we took the most important step toward disocvering a call: prayer.  In Numbers 9:15-23, there is (1) God’s presence, (2) the people, and (3) the wilderness.  they didn’t know where they were or where they were going!  all they coudl do was follow God; where they were going wasn’t important.  There I was, wandering in the wilderness of calling, with numerous options with no idea which way to go.  Like the Israelites, I also had a choice: to pursue God’s presence or to stay in the comfort that we’ve built for ourselves.  So there I was, still in the Wilderness of Wondering, but wanting the presence of God more than anything else–even if it meant we would never leave the wilderness.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. 
          But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.  
          Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever wth me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone” (Thomas Merton).

• Leviticus 10 tells the story of Aaron’s sons getting consumed by fire.  According to the passage, God