To do lists and Walking with God

"Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand."

Mat. 4: 17

I love my Monday morning to do list.  Having time to reflect upon the last week and plan for the new week gets me excited.  I always look forward to what the Lord will do next!

This week, as I am preparing for "what's next" I am amazed at how my life can get caught up in the urgent, but not important things.  Last week, I attempted to tear my ankle off my body while playing basketball.  The result was an entire week with a swollen and painful ankle that needed ice and elevation to keep the swelling down.

What a distraction!

This was coupled with a fast hitting cold that appeared suddenly at the end of week.  It was nothing major, and a box of tissues later I am on the mend.

Still, last week I did not get everyone done that I planned to do last Monday.  The week did not go as I planned!

This Monday, I am making a new list.  I am also reflecting upon the truth that true life is found in the midst of distractions.  In other words, our lives were never meant to be a "to do" list.  In the daily rhythm of life, including all the distractions, we are to discover and enjoy the presence of the Lord.   A mark of maturity is learning to walk with God in the midst of all that life is about.

I must confess that I have been slow to learn these lessons.  I can easily be a driven man- a man who gets many things done.  In fact, I grow in frustration as I find I am not getting done all that I wished to complete.  When I find my frustration growing, I must make a list of all I need to finish, with how long I think it will take to do each activity, and then I make a plan to complete the list.  

The question comes, where does God fit into my often-driven, often-distracted life?  Where does God fit into my to-do lists?

By the Lord's grace, He has gently lead me to grow in several ways.  First, He is the one who has made me to be how I am.  My ability to get much done because of planning is a gift from Him.  It is not sin, but part of my created good.  I must remind myself to make my lists so I keep on track!

Second, even though I do get much completed and I am organized, I am not measured by God according to what I do or accomplish.  This has been the toughest lesson of all!  Jesus loves me even on days I struggle to get anything done on my "to do" list!  I now find that my biggest struggle is believing this truth.

How do I do it?  I have learned that life is not about what I do or don't do, but it is about walking in repentance and faith with my Father.  So even as I complete the many tasks on my radar, I must repent of my heart's desire to use the completion of tasks as the measurement of my life.

I believe that part of my frustration (otherwise known as anger!) with distractions and not completing tasks is my core heart belief that I am measured by what I do.  I need to repent of this idol!  I so much need the love and mercy of Christ poured out within my soul by faith.  When I find my satisfaction in Christ's love, I know joy and love that transforms my day.  It is found when I walk in a state of constant repentance and faith.

Repentance and faith.  There are those words again!  I need them so much.  So do you.  So does the Church.  So does all who live on this fallen earth!

Why have we made our Christian walk about so much else other than repentance and faith?  Why have we made worship of the Living God about everything but repentance and faith?

The first words of Jesus' ministry should give us a clue as to what he was about.  His first message was "Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is near."  Repent!  Confess the reality of your sin and your need for God's mercy.  This is a message that all of us need to internalize and believe.  It is a message that rings true to the life of a long-time disciple of Jesus as well as the life of the most seasoned pagan.  Repent and believe in Jesus for in Him is the Kingdom of heaven.

Is this message the centerpiece of your life?  If not, why?  What else do you see as bringing you closer to God and thus closer to the person He has made you to be?  Ask the Holy Spirit to search you and point out anything that you trust in apart from Jesus to bring you life and joy.  

Repent and walk in faith so you can keep the Main thing, the Main thing.

Blogging, Curve Balls, and Giving Offense

Life often throws us curves.  I find that things rarely happen as I think they will happen.  When a surprise curve comes, it sometimes makes us rethink our strategy at the plate.  I think this is natural.

Over the course of the fall, I have been personally maligned.  I have been accused of being a liar, and I have been told that I am not really called to ministry.  In fact, I have been informed that I am unqualified to give spiritual direction.  In addition, I have been called arrogant, self-promoting, and someone completely committed to making myself look good.  

This blog has been used as proof.  I did not think it possible to use this material in this manner, but it was done.  As a result, I did not write much that was new and I attempted to stay away from anything that could be seen as controversial.  I did not wish to give reason for offense and I wanted to check to make sure I was not.  In other words, I did not wish to offend my weaker brothers and sisters (Romans 14:13).  I have searched my heart and this blog for what was supposedly personally and professionally offensive.  It has been a good time of growth and the Lord has been so good in speaking to my soul.

What did I conclude?

My time of introspection and my lack of writing because of fear of offending is over.  It is done.  It is time to get back to work.

Today, I declare that I am back as a blogger and writer.  

In life and ministry, people will often not like nor understand what a real pastor does.  This is a fact of life in a fallen world.  That cannot keep us as pastors from being pastors.  If it does, then we have abandoned our calling.  (Same goes for every other professional calling!)

This blog is an extension of my pastoral calling.

Will everyone like or even understand everything I write?  Probably not.  In fact, I often look back at former posts and I do not like what I had to say.  My lack of clarity and my shortsightedness is so apparent.  So what!  The nature of a blog is to write and communicate ideas.  Some might be half-baked.  My hope and prayer is to stimulate thought and action, and I believe the Lord can even use our half-baked ideas to stimulate deeper thinking in ourselves and others.  

Blogging is similar to preaching.  In my 20 years of ministry, I have had people so encouraged that I was preaching to them on a particular Sunday.  I have also had people who were deeply distressed that I would preach at them.  I have to say that in my life, 99% of the time I was not even thinking about these individuals as I prepared or preached the sermon!  Somehow the Lord used it to encourage or to convict.

I believe this blog and my other writing mirror these experiences.

I truly wish to thank you my readers.  I apologize for not writing more over the past couple of months.  I should not have stopped.  Over the past couple of years, my readership has gone from local to worldwide.  It amazes me that in any given hour people from around the world read about the gospel and my thoughts on ministry and life.  Thank you!  

I feel as if I have let you down by not writing.  I apologize for this short-sightedness.  I was thrown a curve and I had to rethink my strategy at the plate.

From this point on, I will continue to write.  I will continue to think, to read, and to reflect so I can organize my thoughts and present something readable.  May the Lord use it to bless.

Please, if you do not like my blog or the topics, ask yourself why.  Do I write something that personally offended you?  Why?  Most likely (99%) of the time, I was not thinking of you personally.  Don't take it so.  If you have questions about my intent or meaning, reply to the a post.  I have many folks who reply and these are moderated by me before being published.  If it is a personal question, I will reply to you but not publish it.

If you are not willing to to that, then I encourage you to stop reading.  I also encourage you to repent of your pride for thinking it was all about you.  Please remember that not everything is about you.  In fact, thank God that not everything is about you!  (As I also must do.  Our need for repentance is universal.)

May the Lord be glorified and lifted up.  May He even use my frail and often incomplete or short-sighted words to bring Himself glory.  May His Kingdom come and His Will be done.

Look at this cool picture from Lake Michigan.  It is surely winter in the USA!

The Riddle of our Experience

It is commonly the loose and latitudinarian (adjective

allowing latitude, esp. in religion; showing no preference among varying creeds and forms of worship.)  Christians who pay quite indefensible compliments to Christianity.  They talk as if there had never been any piety until Christianity came, a point on which any medieval would have been eager to correct them.  The represent that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach simplicity or self-restraint, or inwardness and sincerity.  They will think me very narrow (whatever that means) if I say that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach Christianity.  Its peculiarity was that it was peculiar, and simplicity and sincerity are not peculiar, but obvious ideals for all mankind.  Christianity was the answer to a riddle, not the last truism uttered after a long walk.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith, 75.

I grew up in a mainline Protestant denomination.  I finished my education in a very secular institution where I studied various expressions of faith.  In both of these places, Christianity is reduced to morality.  In fact, I think in both places Christianity is reduced to left-leaning political morality.

Chesterton is completely correct that such a reduction of Christianity is not promoting its "highest" virtues.  In fact, to do so makes Christianity no longer Christianity.  Such reduction makes it common.  It obliterates the prophetic notion of Christianity.

I say all of this because "the gospel" is not an expression of our need to go love our neighbor.  Nor is it an expression of our need to promote "justice".  In fact, without the core of Christianity, Protestant liberalism in all its forms lacks any real power to transform us so we can love our neighbor.  Such expressions of religion,

"have the appearance of godliness, but deny it power." 2 Tim. 3:5

As Paul states, we should avoid such people!  Yet, so many are attracted to this reduction of the gospel.  It appeals to the side of our fallen nature that seeks to justify itself apart from Christ through religious self-effort.  It feels right and it sounds reasonable.  Yet, in the end it leads to death.

Christianity is the answer to the riddle.  What riddle?  We know we were created for goodness, love, acceptance, joy and love.  We know we were created for perfection.  The problem is that somehow everything got messed up!  We have our own issues, but human society has our issues multiplied by 1000.  

What can be done about this problem?

Religious self-effort says, work it out.  Love each other.  Pass laws to make us love each other.  Pass laws that ban evil.  We can do it!

History and our own experience tells us that these answers do not work.  Yet, we keep trying.  We do everything we can to work this angle.  We try new strategies.  We enact new means of control.  We learn new methods of self and societal control.  Still, the problem remains.

Here is where "the gospel" or good news comes in!  Into this problem, God sent an answer.  Thankfully it is not an answer that depends upon us.  In fact, the more "us" we add to God's answer, the further we get away from the power that can really change lives and our culture!

The answer is the complete, total, and finished work of Christ.  Jesus has done it all.  He has secured the only means for restoration with God!  All we need to do is repent of our self-effort and believe in the finished work of Christ as our means of restoration.  The miracle is that even our faith is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Even as I wrote the last paragraph, I am convinced that many will say, "Those notions are outdated!  We need a more relevant message."

Really?  There is no other message that answers the riddle of our experience.  There is no other answer but Christ.

Struggles with Striving and Being Still

Be still, and know that I am God.

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth!

Ps. 46:10

I awoke early this morning with this verse ringing in my mind.  I just kept hearing it over and over.  "Be still and wait."  I got up, made some coffee, wrote down the experience in my journal, and then have puzzled over what it means for the past two hours.

I know this fact well: I do not like to be still!  I am a person of action.  My mind is often working on three problems at once, and I find I am moving much more than I am ever still.  This message is hard for me.  I have often held to the promises of the Psalm, but I must confess I struggle with being still.

Have you noticed that none of the Psalms tell us to "Strive for me, because without you, I the Lord God would not achieve My purposes"?  I have read them many times, but I have not found this message.  Yet, my heart believes "strive for me" much easier than it believes, "Be still and know that I am God."

How about you?  Where are you on a scale between "strive for me" and "be still"?

Surely our hearts often run against trust, rest, and being still be our God.  We so often make it all about us!

Lord have mercy upon us and show us Your beauty so our hearts will be captured by You.  May our trust and rest flow from a deep-seated knowledge that "You are God!"

One Cause of Church Splits

"What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?  

Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?

You desire and do not have, so you murder.

You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel." 

James 4:1-2

This morning I am reflecting upon a passage I read in Gene Wood's Leading Turnaround Churches over the weekend.  This is a specialized book for pastors, but I enjoyed re-reading it as I walked on my elliptical machine.  

In the book, Wood was describing some of the primary reasons for church power struggles.  One of these reasons was the common struggle between Pioneers and and Homesteaders.  This description comes from a famous church growth consultant named Lyle Schaller.  As Wood writes,

"Pioneers and homesteaders always find it difficult to get along with one another.  The pioneers feel they have the 'first rights' to the land and resent the intrusion of the homesteaders.  This happens in the church too." (49)

When I pastored a rather contentious church in Minnesota, I experienced this first-hand.  I can see now that I never should have gone to the church as it was not ready for change and growth.  I was desperate.  They were desperate.  Nothing good ever happens when two desperate folks get together!

When I interviewed at the church, I told them what needed to be done to change and grow.  When I arrived, I did what I said I would do.  The result was many new believers and a strong influx of new people into the church.  At the same time, I started a "range-war."

Why?  To use Schaller's language, I did not respect the pioneer prospective.  These folks had a long history at this church, and they thought of themselves as owners of it.  When new folks came in with new ideas, it challenged their "authority" and past.  These homesteaders were concerned with the here and now and not the past.  As the new pastor, I was identified, no matter what I did or said, with the new intruding "homesteaders."  

What happened?  Before the new folks (including my wife and I!) could be brought in as new members, the pioneers called a congregational meeting, said many disparaging, malicious, and false things against me and the new "homesteaders" and they voted in a close vote to "go back to the way things were."  These moves caused the homesteaders to leave.  Within six months of the vote, I resigned.

What causes fights and quarrels within the church?  Many issues!  Perhaps the most important was the question of control.  Often people who are very controlling come to positions of power in the church.  Often we allow the squeaky wheel to get our attention and into positions of power.  These folks have no real concern with the Kingdom of God.  Instead, they believe their wishes and desires are the Kingdom!

When control is lost or a threat to the control is seen on the horizon, these folks "murder, covet, fight and quarrel." (James 4:2)  Unfortunately, the collateral damage is huge!  Equally unfortunately, most of the time those desiring control at all costs do not care or they blame it on everyone else.

Have you been caught in an event like this?  Did you cause it?  Repent!  Confess your control issues and look to Jesus to bring healing in your soul and to those whom you hurt.  If you lived through it and were hurt by it, I challenge you to understand what happened.  These struggles in the church illustrate the reality of the Fall of humanity.  The church is an institution in need of grace and renewal or it will quarrel and fight!  All sides need to repent and believe!  People and churches will let you down because they live in and reflect our fallen world.  Jesus does not let us down, and He loves the Church.