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Where It All (Begins)

May 22, 2013 in Spiritual Formation with 0 Comments

Every journey starts with one step. Lao Tzu said something like that, I believe.

It’s true though. Every journey starts with one step.one-step

Knowing the mess that is human life, the complicated dances we do to make things work and make up for our dysfunction, a journey is more than just a trendy way to talk about faith & God. It is an adequate description of what Paul calls the Spirit of Christ being “formed in us.” (Gal. 4)

Formation.

Shaping.

Character change.

It takes time. It takes distance.

Yet any journey must begin somewhere. It begins with a step. It begins with pulling out of your driveway, stepping out of your door, buying that plane ticket or getting those third-world prepping shots. It begins. It must begin.

So why is it that many of us struggle with our growth and character change in Christ?

It seems simple to say it this way, but in a nutshell:

We never begin. We never take a first small step. The reason is that we haven’t yet fallen in love with the destination.

We never think how good it could be to have patience, so we never do the small practices such as choosing the longer line at the checkout and getting in it.

We never think how good it could be to live without anger, so we never practice extended periods of disconnecting from being “productive” and allow God to control the world.

We never think how good it could be to live beyond the influence of our compulsions, so we never fast that one meal a day/one day a week (or fast from technology thirty minutes a day/one day a week/one week a month/one month a year).

Jesus invites us to this – to see how good it could be to live as if God was King right here and now. He invites us to pray,

“…your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matt. 6:10)

He invites us to know,

“I am the resurrection and the life (present tense)…” (John 11:25)

He invites us to understand,

“If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit, but apart from me you can do nothing.”  (John 15:5)

We have this moment, this poignant and pregnant moment that’s waiting to bring life to us. And yet we’re caught. We’re frustrated and confused and irritated and overwhelmed. Why?

Because we have lost the simplicity of just beginning. Start small, there are no reasons to be heroic, focus on progress rather than perfection, and follow the road that leads to life (John 14:6).

Begin. One step. Today.

Near Depth Experience

May 20, 2013 in Spiritual Formation with 0 Comments

ballet_shoes

This weekend, I attended my daughter’s first dance recital. Though I’m new at this whole recital thing, from a purely critical standpoint I have to say:

I thought she was the best of the group. Acclaimed, poised, beautiful. Period.

Moving on.

I was captivated as I watched other groups – I’m not much for dance myself, uncoordinated since time out of mind – do the waltz and the rumba and the samba. They moved smoothly, these children who had yet to reach high school and some even prior to junior high, and their movements gave age and wisdom to them that they had yet to earn.

It was beautiful.

However, it also made me think of the world I live in. How the beautiful grace of the human body in coordinated motion can turn to other things. How those children, one day, may grow up and use that grace and beauty for broken and self-satisfying purposes. They grow up to be humans with the capacity for great beauty, but also for great ugliness and darkness as well.

When I’m reminded of the tension – the beauty and good in this world along with the evil – I think back to Paul’s conversation with the intelligent and searching Athenians on Mars Hill and I am struck by the power of one passage:

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ (Acts 17:26-28, NIV)

At that boundary line, where elegant dance may one day become enticement and seduction, where the goodness is turned on its ear and becomes evil and the beauty is exchanged for one bite of the fruit of ugly self-indulgence, God is there.

In all His depth, in all His worth and glory, God stands near to us even when we are at the cliff’s edge of destruction. So that maybe, perhaps there is an outside chance, that we would stretch our fingers away from the darkened void and feel the breath of God’s Spirit on our hands. We would know we are near to Him – perilously close to the miraculous Father – and then live in the beautiful truth that everything we do is in Him.

We live, we move, we have our being in the full view of a finite audience. One to be precise. A near depth experience is around every corner, if we would simply seek it.

Today, be on the lookout for beauty and goodness and truth in your life. Live today knowing that everything you do today is in Him – every choreographed moment of our lives are executed on the stage of life granted to us by a gracious and good Father.

And dance furiously. You are so near the depth that you seek.

The Hardest Good

May 15, 2013 in Spiritual Formation with 0 Comments

If you want to reduce a room to silence…

If you want to cause panic, sweat, furrowed brows and downcast eyes…

If you want to put the nerves of others on edge (goodness knows why)…

Then there is one simple topic you can bring up:

Forgiveness. 6a00d834ff002153ef0133ee6b2d62970b-800wi

To clarify, not the Jesus-died-my-sins-washed-away discussion – no, this is the she-slighted-me-he-wounded me discussion. This is the nitty gritty core of revolutionary living, spray painted on the brick walls of human reality.

This is Jesus’ finest hour, finest teaching and His finest work and it scares us to death.

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:14-15, NIV)

I understand the challenge this poses - are you telling me Jesus won’t forgive me until I forgive the person who raped/murdered/injured/betrayed/abused, etc. me? 

No, that is not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that forgiveness fundamentally teaches us something about ourselves and something about God.

1. We are in need of, and indeed recipients of forgiveness (Mt. 6:14)
2. We are in need of, and indeed capable of, sharing what we’ve been given (6:15)

If we’ve been restored, forgiven, and made whole by God we have the opportunity and the responsibility to break the cycle of anger, bitterness and hatred that binds us and destroys us from the inside out. To withhold forgiveness shows that our hearts still haven’t grasped how deep and beautiful and powerful the forgiveness of God is for us.

The other thought here is how do we do it?

In Klaus Issler’s book Living into the Life of Jesus, he quotes from social researcher & follower of Jesus Robert Enright. Notice this is a process – Jesus sets the example and we are to walk in the path of forgiveness, seeking progress first rather than perfection.

First, (we) acknowledge that the offense was unfair and will always continue to be unfair. Second, we have a moral right to be angry; it is fair to cling to our view that people do not have a right to hurt us. We have a right to respect. Third, forgiveness requires giving up something to which we have a right – namely our anger or resentment.” (167)

The result? “…as we reach out to the one who hurt us, we are the ones who heal.” Notice in the second step that this isn’t about weakness – this is a strong statement that says “I won’t let you hurt me like this again, but I can’t hold you to the past hurt either.”

Jesus knew what we often fail to see – this isn’t about being a doormat, about letting people off the hook, about becoming a passive spectator welcoming punches in the face. Instead, it is the true life of trusting that if God can forgive me and take care of me completely then I can experience the peace that comes in releasing the person I’m keeping prisoner in my own head. So I can heal. So I can see life beyond the pain.

I have people in my life that I have had to work on forgiving, and it has been a task and it is still in process. They may be the origin of minor slights that time has turned into wars of emotions, or slow leaks of influence that drained me completely. But I believe in the process. I believe that if we practiced forgiveness the world of darkness and pain would begin to cave from the inside out.

So I try to pray for good things to come to those who hurt me. Not good things as a reward for their actions, but good things that will reveal God’s grace to them.

If I can’t pray for that, and hope for that, and live for that, then how can I live as if someone has forgiven and prayed for my best when I’ve been at my lowest?

The Better Choice

May 13, 2013 in Spiritual Formation with 0 Comments

032010peacefulbathRecently my wife and I began a new parenting tactic – which is more like hostage negotiation sometimes, but oh well – with our daughter. The phrase is simple:

You need to make the better choice. What is the better choice?

If you want to whine and cry about taking a bath you’ll waste time and won’t be able to play later. What is the better choice?

If you do your homework now, you won’t have to miss playing with your friends later. What is the better choice?

If you do your homework now, you won’t have to miss playing with your friends later. What is the better choice?

Granted, it doesn’t always go well but I think there’s great insight for her to figure out that her choices affect long-range changes later down the road.

I know this will shock you, but this logic also works for spiritual transformation into Christlikeness. Our choices have long term consequences.

When I’m counseling with people who are in crisis, many times if the crisis came from within (something they did) there is a clear, clean line you can draw to a destructive and misaligned choice. The long term challenges are clear, but they all started at one choice.

Jesus knew this, and knew it well, so He went right at the heart of the issue – literally:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28, NIV)

I chose the adultery passage but you can use most any text from Jesus’ teaching as an example. Jesus went for the heart because that’s where the motivations come from, that’s where the active life of a human being begins to take shape. The heart is what moves us from knowing to doing, and it works according to the boundaries of what matters most to us.

The mind gets information and ideas.

The heart is informed by the mind and channels it into motivation.

The hands follow the heart and we work out the fruit of our hearts and minds, in line with our priorities.

Making the better choice comes between the head and the heart. When my daughter chooses to whine about a bath, wasting precious play time, she’s giving in to a motivation to have what she wants WHEN she wants it because she can’t see how good it could be to harness the goodness of obedience to those who can see the next step more clearly (most of the time).

Jesus is trying to refocus us on how we get into the mess we get into, namely, that we don’t realize the better choice has to do with what is most important to us.

That’s why Jesus uses the “You have heard that it was said…but I say…” device. The law is good at keeping people in line, at maintaining boundaries and structures, but the law doesn’t transform. It doesn’t reset priorities that inform our hearts and minds.

People look for loopholes. They wait for other people to turn their heads and go forward with the desired action thinking, “If I don’t get caught, all is well.” Or worse, they become uber-prideful at how well they keep the law that their heart sours in reverse, drowning in it’s own perceived superiority. Translation – Pharisees.

This is not the better choice. Not at all.

Transformation happens when we get our hearts set on becoming the kind of people who can easily, routinely, and consistently do what Jesus asks us to do, trusting that it will be the better choice in the long run.

This is what Jesus had in mind in Matthew 6:33 – “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” 

What is the better choice for you today – in your decisions, in your actions, in your attitudes towards others? Do you believe that making the better – and oftentimes harder – choice today has goodness to share later? How can seeking the Kingdom first today create ripples of simple obedience for you that will bring fresh life into some dying situations?

A Prayer For Friday – Remembering Dallas Willard

May 10, 2013 in Spiritual Formation with 0 Comments

This past week, a poetic voice in the spiritual formation world found a different venue. The articles on Willard’s life here and here are well worth reading, but personally I have only grown to appreciate his work in the last 2-3 years.

From books like Renovation of the Heart to The Divine Conspiracy, Willard has laid out a realistic view of how we can put on the character of Christ and begin to live the Kingdom of God that is available NOW.

His voice will be missed, but there are many missed voices. Mentors, fathers, mothers, friends and others who shaped our way and gave us our first dose of life in full voice, singing with thunderous goodness into our souls. These are God-with-voices, humming eternity like the swell of a cello into the very deepest part of us, calling our heart to that which matters most.

Eternity, now as it will be later.

Kingdom, here as it is in heaven.

So, a fitting prayer comes from the Apostle Paul and my hope is that if you have lost someone this will bless you with courage to listen anew again.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:14-21, NIV)

Thank you Dallas, for helping us be rooted and established in love.

 

Remembering the Carrots, Remembering God

May 8, 2013 in Spiritual Formation with 0 Comments

I returned, triumphant from the grocery store.

Sometimes the feeling of going to the store and completing the list is a Herculean feat for those of us who, well, let’s just say have issues retaining details. We take the list. We execute the list. We are the champions.

Did you get the carrots?Grated carrots in a glass cup

My wife’s question awoke a great vacuum in my soul – a disturbance in the Force if you will – as I realized that the plainly-inked item reading “shredded carrots” had been completely ignored. I had a list. I had a mission. Mission incomplete.

We continued to talk and in our conversation I ended up throwing out a quote from Thomas Aquinas, “Beauty is that which, when seen, pleases.” My wife grinned her beautiful grin and narrowed those glittering eyes and said, “You have stuff like that up there, it must be hard for the carrots to fit in.” We laughed and it all makes sense.

Memory is critical in spiritual formation. Not because we have a list of things to “check off” in our holy habits. Not because God wants intellectually superior followers – if so, the twelve disciples were a bad call. No, in this case memory is not about keeping details straight or having information at recall but is:

The working memory of a person, namely God, and our experience with Him thus far.

Deuteronomy is, by it’s name, a book of the “second instruction.” It is Moses teaching the people of Israel, again, the path of God for them in the promised land they were about to enter.

However, this book is a book of memories. Over and over again the words of Moses are centered in stories of the past – stories of failure, stories of provision, stories of promise, and stories of presence. The word “zakar” – to remember – shows up repeatedly in the text and then there are several places where the people are asked not to forget.

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. (Deut. 5:15)

Why does this matter?

If we forget what God has done, how can we pray for what God will do?

If we forget what God has taught, what reason do we have to engage the Scriptures?

If we forget what God has done in rescuing us, how can we appropriately serve and rescue others?

The memory of God sets our whole life in context – and to forget God is to forget the larger story. It becomes a wound, infecting and inhibiting our transformation into Christlikeness. Following Jesus, in and of itself, is based on the memory of how shabby our Kingdom was and how sufficient God’s Kingdom has been ever since we walked into it.

My suggestion to you is to write a memory journal. Take time each day to recall something in the previous day or in past days where God moved, sustained, promised, or taught you. Write this event/events down in as much detail as you can come up with. Meditate on how you are different on this side of that memory. Pray that God will etch that memory on your brain – it will shape you and prepare you for challenges yet to come.

And don’t forget the carrots.

My 3 Recent Great Reads in Formation

May 6, 2013 in Spiritual Formation with 0 Comments

reading-a-bookEven though I’ve often said that spiritual formation is about more than just knowing more things, there is the reality that reading is a rich and fertile place to find new growth ideas and challenges. I wanted to share three recent reads that have been significant for my own formation so that you might find some goodness there too.

Renovation of the Heart (Dallas Willard) 

You don’t have to read this blog for long to realize how much of an influence Willard has been on me. I recently began reading through Renovation of the Heart again in preparation for some teaching and was reminded of how important this book is to getting my head around what is happening in spiritual formation. It is dense, thick and full of ideas but there are gems that pop up that are worth the work of reading. For example,

“(Jesus) way is truly the way of the heart, or spirit…He saves us by realistic restoration of our heart to God and then by dwelling there with his Father through the distinctively divine Spirit. The heart thus renovated and inhabited is the only real hope of humanity on earth.” (18)

I’d recommend this book to anyone who is looking to be challenged about what it means to life life “with God” in a world filled with brokenness and despair.

John 13-17

Okay, so that sounds like a Sunday school answer but these four chapters of the Gospel of John have drawn me down to the core of what it means to live with Jesus everyday. The love of Jesus to wash the disciples feet (13), the promise of the Spirit (14), the abiding/producing fruit teaching (15), the grief to joy movement (16) and finally Jesus’ prayer for the disciples (17) form a very whole and complete teaching on what our lives should look like if we are longing to be like Jesus and being formed into His character and activity. Read through these chapters slowly and imagine what your life would look like if these teachings and promises would become reality.

Falling Upward (Richard Rohr)

I recommend this book with one note – you must be ready for Rohr to challenge your sensibilities. He is a Franciscan priest living in New Mexico, and he is broad and wide in his ideas and that may put some of my readers on edge. I understand, and if you begin this book and decide to put it away for a while you have my blessing. However, if you are willing to live in the tension of some of his ideas you will find powerful and potent direction for your soul. Such as,

“We do not make or create our souls; we just grow them up. We are the clumsy stewards of our own souls. We are charged to awaken, and much of the work of spirituality is learning how to stay out of the way of this rather natural growing and awakening. We need to unlearn a lot, it seems, to get back to that foundational life which is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3).”

Rohr presses us beyond what he calls “surviving successfully” which is the very basic way of staying alive, into the deeper life of Jesus where we find our deepest and most significant purpose in Christ. It is well worth the read if you are searching for deeper paths in your life with Christ.

I pray these help as you walk this path and engage in this transformational conversation with Jesus. Peace friends.

A Prayer For Friday

May 3, 2013 in Spiritual Formation with 0 Comments

In honor of the wonderful weather, a prayer for Spring from Arthur A.R. Nelson’s A Book of Prayers:

So much joy greets us at our spring windows, Lord. The blue and yellow embroidery of young flowers across the floor of your earth. The smell of just enough dew on young grass to make us eager to put the seeds down and watch the renewal of your world.

It is a time of year when it is not hard to think of the future. There is the planning that happens naturally – another coat of paint for the garage, filling the birdhouse with fresh seed, washing winter grunge from the windows.

We all come welcoming a springtime of the spirit. It is the season of resurrection, to move from war to peace, from imprisonment to freedom, from hunger for more to finding a full life. In Christ risen we can sing again in our sorrow, see possibilities for love to overcome strife; all people can experience the amazing gift of a clean break from sin and a run after the peace and joy of the Savior.

In the spring of our joy, give us drums and trumpets and help us let the world know redemption’s music. (pp. 98-99)

Amen.

 

What We’re Praying For

May 1, 2013 in Spiritual Formation with 0 Comments

In my life, I’ve been asked to pray in a variety of different situations. Not necessarily because my prayers are somehow more “effective” but oftentimes because I live at the intersection of “pastor-as-job-title” and “you-don’t-fear-speaking-in-public.”

My in-laws asked me to pray because my prayers before meals were short.

My congregation asked me to pray because, well, that was my job.

My family asks me to pray because, well, that’s my job – different context.

I remember gazing into the glassy eyes of a dear friend as she laid in the ICU, unable to speak and connected to more equipment than I had ever witnessed, and watched her soundless mouth form the word “Pray.”

I remember praying at the bedside of an aging man in our community as he battled, again, with a list of health issues that stem from a body hard worn from labor.

I remember praying for a married couple, knowing full well as I spoke the words to God that unless something divine and completely unexpected happened I would be navigating the land-mine conversations that come with standing in the middle of divorce.

Prayer, obviously in this case, is about intercession. I’m speaking up for other people – going to God for them, not because they can’t go for themselves but in another sense knowing they can’t go for themselves.

They lack the words. They lack the hope. They lack. And so they ask us to pray.

One of the most transforming elements of the life of discipleship – the intentional posture we take in Christian spiritual formation – is how we learn about how good God is and how He’s sufficient to take care of any challenges we have. So we need not worry, or be anxious, or lose sight of reality because of our pressing and impending tragedy.

But in prayer, especially prayers of intercession for others who are crushed or being crushed, what are we asking for? How do we honor the banquet God has spread before us as we pray for those who feel like they’re scouring under the table for any crumb – any morsel of hope in the darkness as their bodies and kingdoms and constitutions fail?

This morning I believe I heard it, maybe for the first time. We pray for them, yes and amen, but we do more than that. We pray for something specific. We pray for something that is the great equalizer in the cycle of death and hopelessness that we often find ourselves standing in the midst of.

Perhaps we should simply speak it here and now, and let that be our guide:

We pray for God to be enough. Period.enough

We pray for healing, yes. We pray for direction, absolutely. We pray for discernment and peace and hope and we pray them with brow-sweating desperation but at the heart of those prayers is a belief that we desperately need to harness.

When we pray for others, when we pray for ourselves, we are simply praying that God would be enough. And since we know that He is (see Hebrews 13:5-6) we are really praying for one small nuance.

We pray that we would believe God is enough. And that is enough. For everything. 

A Time to Swim

April 29, 2013 in Spiritual Formation with 0 Comments

This week will see 80 degrees in Chicagoland. God be praised.

I am already looking forward to the blessing of sweat glistening on my skin, coats going into storage, and the air I breathe feeling more like it originated in an oven than from a freezer.

The other hallmark of summer, one that my daughter prizes a bit higher than I do these days, is swimming. In the light of that discussion, it occurs to me that we often don’t realize that for our own formation into Christlikeness we “swim” in a variety of different streams.

Every person explores different pathways and activities that lead them to growth and maturity – leads them to look like Jesus.

Too often we think there’s only one kind of activity, one type of getting to know God and understanding His desires for us, and it stream1becomes limiting for us. Yes, reading Scripture and praying is critical for our health and maturity. However, swimming in that stream alone will hide us from other good, beautiful, and true pieces of the life God has for us.

Richard Foster in his book Streams of Living Water talks about six different streams of spirituality in the Christian tradition. Today, I think we need to take seriously whether the absence of one of these streams takes away from the richness of our lives in Christ. Foster’s point is that when these six streams come together we live the “With-God Life.”

The whole package. The whole enchilada.

Take a look at the six streams below and see if there is any “water” that isn’t flowing through your life today:

1. The Prayer-Filled Life: this stream focuses on relationship with Christ and depth of spirituality. This stream speaks to a longing for a deeper, more vital Christian experience. Practices like silence, solitude, and daily practices of prayer help this stream.

2. The Virtuous Life: this focuses on personal moral transformation and power to develop “holy habits”. It seeks to work against the erosion of morality in personal and social life. Practices like truth-telling, abstaining from meaningless media and limiting distracting entertainment help in these streams.

3. The Spirit-Empowered Life: Focuses on the gifts of the Spirit and worship. This stream speaks to the yearning for the immediacy of God’s presence among his people. This life need practices like writing down a list of our blessings, worshiping together with others, using our gifts and abilities to serve in the local church. Also, reading Scripture and opening up space for the words to speak to us about where God is leading us.

4. The Compassionate Life: This stream is about justice and shalom in all human relationships and social structures. It seeks to live out the Gospel imperative for equity and compassion among all people. The practices of doing local and global missions work, living a life of simplicity where we keep a loose grip on our possessions so that we may share them with others, practicing hospitality toward the poor and looking seriously at the companies we buy from as to whether they are helping or encouraging economic oppression in other countries or our own. Reading the book of James is a helpful exercise in seeing this stream come to life.

5. The Word-Centered Life: This stream focuses on the proclamation of the evangel, the good news of the gospel. This stream speaks to the need for people to see the good new lived and hear the good news proclaimed, along with a commitment to Scripture as the faithful story of the Gospel. Obviously, our engagement with the Bible in reading, study, and memorization are key here but also the need for Scripture to inform and give us wisdom for how we talk to other people and live in public.

6. The Sacramental Life: The sacramental stream, though it sounds complicated, is all about the realm of God – the kingdom of God or God-in-action-now – been made visible in our life. Taking the elements of communion, working at a marriage that shows the grace and goodness of God looks like in human relationships, or simply acting as Jesus would in our interactions and relationships everyday.

Father, help us take a long swim in your glistening streams so that our lives might be “with-You” lives. Amen. 

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