Truth, Grace, and Time

It’s evident that this weeks reading will focus on our thought life and the world of ideas that surround us.

I’m always reminded of the nature of American car names and how even that is a cultural teaching moment. Names like Explorer, Navigator, Yukon, Mustang, Expedition, Tundra, Passport, Ridgeline, Colorado, Canyon or Sierra. All of these names pointing to the west toward exploration and adventure. Car companies understand the types of ideas that get consumers to latch onto their products. In Germany you get the X7 and the M-class, Mazda has the 323, 626, RX-7, RX-8. It would be if cultural interest to understand such a wide difference in car name expectations.

So what? This points us to the understanding that we live in the middle of a culture that carries certain ideas about about freedom, love, the pursuit of happiness or God or god. These things surround us more than we think and have more sway over us than we’d like to admit.

Some of that doesn’t really matter but other matters do. What is the cultural influence on happiness, values, surrender, having/holding/keeping power, leadership, followers hip and on and on. Do I hide who I am for reputation? Do I have to be a workaholic or successful in the eyes of the world to be validated? Will spending more or looking better feed my ego and increase my sense of worth?

What core ideas govern our thinking? Invite God to reveal some of those core ideas you carry and ask God what values he would like for you to hold on to.

Todays chapter reminds me of an A.W. Tozer quote, roughly… “What we think about, when we are free to think about what we want, is either what we are or what we will become.”

This chapter labels that as our first freedom, the power to select what our mind will dwell upon. We are the sun total of our choices, but what if our thoughts we observed as part of that process?

Our thought life becomes a lens through which we see the rest of our world. The way this works for me, related to spiritual gifts, is it’s pretty clear that I have the gift of discernment. In the Old Testament it’s like a prophetic gift. The ability to see the ideal verses reality, to see down the road and recognize where our current trajectory takes us and where God would rather take us. Like the prophets of old, most people aren’t interested in those observations, just give me some ole’ time easy listening.

But for me, I see a redeemed and an unredeemed version of that gift that is guided by my thoughts. I think of the story of Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones, bleached by the sun. There is a story of what we see. My unredeemed, negative, fear-full heart can look at almost any negative circumstance in my life and see all the negative valley of bones long dead.

But, when I’m operating in a restored, faith-based mind that imagines what God can do, it’s not a problem to see a valley of dry bones because I know the One who can completely alter the story in a miraculous fashion.

I love the question God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” It feels like a loaded question if ever there was one. My obvious negative answer “No.” My obvious faith based answer “Yes.” Ezekiel’s answer “O Lord God, you know.” Good honest answer right, a touch of skepticism meets the realization that God can do anything.

Our frame of mind alters our interpretation of what we see and expect. A mind immersed in Gods view is healthy, godly and good. A mind immersed in a godless me-driven world sees things in a completely different way.

I pray we exercise our first freedom well, that we would have the mind of Christ. I pray we recognize when we are operating in the unredeemed version of ourselves and continually live in an awareness of the restored, redeemed, reconciled version with the Spirit alive in our hearts!!

Vision. Intention. Means

As we look at Spiritual formation, these are the three topics of consideration as we look into the future. Vision is about an ever-growing awareness of what it means to be part of God’s Kingdom and being Ambassadors for Him. “God’s name and God’s fame is the desire of my heart.” Isaiah 26:8

Intention: Growth is a byproduct of active engagement in the process. No one learned how to speak Portuguese by not finding time or resources to accomplish said goal. Passive positive growth is rarely a thing.

Means: Arranging our lives differently. One of the easiest ways for me to explain this is by going to an unpopular topic. Don’t get so hung up on the topic that you can’t engage in the story of the challenge. Ready… now promise to hear me out…

Take the topic of tithing… see you’re already tuning out, stay with me. I won’t even go into specifics but if I were to give a sermon and convince of God’s view of finances, unless you are already doing it, my guess is that most people could not simply jump into a full version of making it work. Society convinces us to financially strap ourselves so that generosity is a bit of a challenge. At the end of a sermon you still have the mortgage you have, the car payments you have, the credit card debt you have, and the monthly installments you have. For many, there is very little wiggle room after that. At this point of conviction all of those payments don’t change. This is where the definition above helps us, “Arranging our lives differently.” It does take time to rearrange our priorities.

The real goal is for us to grow in our vision of how God sees things by being in His word, recognizing a new way that God wants to bring in our lives, and through the strength that God provides us, engage taking a bite sized piece and bringing Him glory. Celebrating the good moments of victory and living in God’s grace for the ways we fall short and allowing the kindness of God to lead us to repentance.

The end of the chapter lists some suggestions of spiritual disciplines that are a help to discover what it is God is asking of us and ways to live in some implementation of living out the fruits of the Spirit we talked about yesterday. How can I demonstrate God’s love today? When will I have a moment to live in patience for God to work out His way instead of me making my way happen.

This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and there you will find rest for your souls. Jeremiah 6:16 

Years ago, while living in Duluth MN, I made a decision to snowshoe to work every day throughout the winter regardless of the cold. It was a two mile walk through the golf course that took me from my house, right to the church where I was working. Every day I had to make a decision to walk the will worn path I had made or go to the great effort to forge a new trail. The choice was taking the well-worn cow path or get more of a workout with a new trail.

This is the challenge laid out in the book today. Vision, Intention, and Means are our three topics and today is the discussion about Intention. The vision piece was recognizing that our understanding about the Kingdom of God that Jesus ushers in is the vision, but Intention plays a key role. Our broken frail heart tends to walk down the well worn cow path of life. The invitation into the Kingdom is an invitation to charting new ground and the difficulty of the road less(seldom) traveled.

The book invites you to consider what happens if a person has a vision to speak a foreign language and then just waits to see if it will happen. That’s vision with no Intention. An important part of the Spiritual Formation that we are talking about is rooted in the idea of our engagement with the process. To intentionally choose the difficult or unknown path when it would be just as easy to do what we have always done. It’s not always a matter of disobedience, sometimes it’s just easy to repeat what we have always done.

The chapter ask us to differentiate between knowing and believing. It’s possible to know the right answers and not truly believe them. “To believe them means we are set to “act” as if these “right answers” are true. Perhaps the hardest things for sincere Christians to come to grips with is the level of real unbelief in their own lives… and how that undermines the efforts they make toward Christlikeness.” PG 60

We accept a certain level of fatalism and say things like, “That’s just the way I am.” It would be a great step to discover how the choices we make bring us to the vision we might have for the Kingdom. And maybe some of our lack of step taking is rotted in a vision so small that we don’t know where to head.

As you head off into more intention, I encourage you to be content to invite the Spirit to give you some conviction about a piece of your life. Taking steps with one thing is better than being overwhelmed by all the things. The fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness and Self-Control. Ask the Spirit to speak to you about how you could walk out one of these in the next week. Paying attention to these matters gives us a chance to ask the Lord for strength and create in us a testimony of How we see God working in us and say thanks to Him.

We are finally headed in a forward direction and the discussion starts off with Vision. Looking forward, where are we headed? When riding a motorcycle around a curve, the best advice is to look ahead to see where you want to go. If you keep your eyes on the goal, you will intuitively make the steering corrections to get you there and by the way, never look down at the ground, in that case you will also get where you are looking!!

So, the book points us to a discussion about the Kingdom of God. The definition from the book says God’s Kingdom “is the range of God’s will where what God wants done is done.” That earth is a place in God’s creation where God permits His will not to be done. So, we find ourselves living in a place with two choices God’s will or my will be done.

The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 Marks the beginning of Jesus ministry and those chapters offer great insight into how Jesus was trying to give instruction to people about the topic of the day, Vision. The Jewish people had one understanding about the Kingdom of God and Jesus uses the phrase frequently, “You’ve heard it said in days of old… but I say to you…” Jesus is stepping in and trying to frame the Vision for people.

The Bible uses language such as Ambassadors. An ambassador represents one kingdom to another kingdom and that’s the position we find ourselves. Saying yes to Jesus changes our citizenship from one of the world to one of God’s Kingdom. The difficulty is that we are more familiar with the kingdom we live in than the Kingdom we have become part of and that is the challenge of discipleship and spiritual formation.

This is the reason for the challenge to be reading Gods word on a regular basis. It’s the familiarization with God’s way that becomes necessary for us to see the way forward. And to be part of a community of believers because sometimes our motivation can come from the way our brothers and sisters in Christ are living out their story of growth in the ambassadorship we share!!

Our Vision is a very important component in our growth, we move to the thing we are focused on.

Today’s chapter is a bit of a warning about moving into this journey and simply focusing on white knuckling the outward appearance of transformation.

The chapter introduces the topics for the next three days. VIM

Vision: Where am I headed

Intention: The recognition that this stuff doesn’t just happen.

Means: What are some of the tools to make it happen.

All three of these factors become important as we focus on the ongoing work in our lives.

The most groundbreaking part of today’s chapter isn’t really the content, but the realizations that might come from “Today’s Experiment.”

Sometimes great questions lead can give us the direction we need. Consider these….

What things would you like to see changed in your life?

What is my inner life like?

How has that helped or hindered me?

Tell God what you’d like to be on the inside and what would you like for your relationship with him to be like?

Today isn’t really about external content, rather a look inside. Give yourself some space for this to feel awkward. I think if Leah (my wife) and I to have the same conversation just out of the blue would also be a little awkward. But it would have some great use… after the shock of the questions wore off!!

Death to self can be a mixed bag and somewhat confusing and create great and obnoxious results!! Death to self is really an invitation to have Gods view of the matter and when it conflicts with my own view I surrender to His view. But we still live in a world filled people and sometimes someone with a different view than us, also feels led by God. Frequently we don’t get our way, and sometimes we even mistake what we want for what God wants. How do we handle ourselves in these moments is really the question?

We’ve all been in the type of situation where we feel like we have a better way to go about something, but we aren’t in the position of power to make that a reality. In those moments we have to decide to intervene or acquiesce. These are challenging moments especially around matters of preference (issues not related to any moral issues). This is the egotism in the chapter title. A strong conviction one might have without the authority to exercise it. A well-kept heart can let it go. A heart that is not has many responses: rebellion, passive aggressive behaviors, my way or the Highway thinking that wants to scorch the earth rather than working out a solution.

But a selfless life begins to make sense when we learn to get past paying evil for evil, being right at the expense of others, always living in the promotion of my better idea. Its also amazing what can be done when the main concern has nothing to do with who gets the credit.

I would say that surrender to God does increase the good ideas He might give us but humility is more useful than pride. When I offer input in to situations I always tell people it comes with charity. If my perspective is useful, feel free to use it, if not, I won’t live with any negative thoughts about the matter.

It’s better to hold things in an open palm than a clinched fist. However even as I say that, there are things that deserve to be held onto firmly. Sorting out what to hold firmly and loosely is a part of Spiritual Formation. Just don’t let your convictions inflate your ego and create pride in your heart.

Funny thing about humility, once you think you have it, you’ve lost it!!

Dead to self: what does that mean/look like?

The book speaks about organizing our life around God instead of self… “we reject the preeminence of what we want, when we want it.” It’s an exchange of the way I see things for the way God sees things. The way I act for the way He would act, it’s the thought of WWJD; What Would Jesus Do (say, think, act, respond). If God were in my situation right now, what would Terry do? What would Jesus Do? How far apart are those answers?

The chapter goes on to explore a little bit of what that kind of life would look like. When one is dead to themselves our reactions to the negative things that come our way can be minimized. That insult, bad social behavior, insulting comment won’t be able to control us or send us down a rabbit hole of self-defeating thoughts and behaviors. My kids’ behaviors are not a source of public embarrassment and as such I won’t embarrass them in public either. BUT it will get taken care of in private!! Again not because the child embarrassed me, rather because whatever behavior is never going to be okay, and so it will stop. I like the St Francis quote, “Wear the world like a loose garment, which touches us in a few places and there lightly.” I could insert my “It’s a Great Day to be Dead.” sermon here. A dead person doesn’t give a reaction in these moments. Regardless of what is flying around us, there is a capacity to recognize that all is well with my soul.

Another dead-self-moment heads back to Psalms. God is my fortress, my refuge, my strong tower, my defense, my righteousness. If I really believed that I could take a break from building a fortress around my heart because God is that for me. And what if I could take a break from gathering stones and spend my energy elsewhere?

The author takes us to Psalm 23:4-6. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” What’s it like to step out in faith without fear? I ended the verse a clause early it actually says, “I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” It’s not like my mom kicking me out of the house in the summer “Go Play.” Go do that without me, it’s let us walk through this valley of death together because you can trust me,

Hudson Taylor was one of the first missionaries to China in the 1800’s always spoke about the “Exchanged Life.” Trading my life for His. Another explanation of what this chapter is about. The courage to trust that if I gave up A,B,C to the Lord, that He would give me X,Y, and Z and that those would be infinitely better. Giving up what we know feels like dying, but it’s a great day to be dead!!

Every once in a while I probably should let people know that the title of my blog for 61 entries with be the title of the book we as a church are reading together. Your invited to read through it with us, we’re doing 5 two-page chapters a week for 12 weeks and a day!

Today’s topic is self-denial. As a culture we spend a lot of time encouraging people to find themselves. I always appreciate a Rich Mullins thought. He spoke about how culture spends a lot of time trying to get people to esteem themselves, have self-esteem and how this kind of thinking has leaked into the church. “I don’t know how anyone who wakes up with morning breath and bed head” would get confused into esteeming themselves. He would go on to say “the day you lost yourself would be better than the day you found yourself” the day you worked toward self-denial would be a much better day than the day you lived out self-obsession.

A quote from the book…” It is the love of God, admiration and confidence in His greatness and goodness, and the regular experience of His care that frees us from the burden of looking out for ourselves.”

Truthfully a certain level of introspection is of great value to us, BUT, as with anything, too much of it becomes self-absorbed as well. There is a measure of having some sight of our shortfall but being able to see it in the light of God’s grace, power, might, love, justice, and mercy. In the end, being encouraged by who He is more than being discouraged by who we are. The thing you focus on is the direction you’ll move and too much focus on our hearts can lead to simply to more despair rather than the joy of knowing Christ and what we can become through the Holy Spirit alive in us. “So let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.

Self-obsession gets me a certain thing in life. Self-denial gives me access to immeasurable resources, a Kingdom in which to belong, and a purpose for life that one cannot compare with anything the world has to offer. But everyone has to walk through that moment of faith that serving on His ship would be infinitely greater than being the captain of my own.

Today will be a little shorter as I have a heavy travel day before church tonight.

“Moral Therapeutic Deism” is what this chapter reminds me of. Instead of understanding a ruined soul in desperate need of being transformed through the power of Christ, we’ve reduced Christianity to everybody just be a little more nice. A little more moral, a little therapy, and a little “g” god.

As the book says in the first paragraph of page 44: “Without the realization of our utter ruin,and without the genuine revising and redirecting of our lives that this bitter realization naturally gives rise to, no clear path to inner transformation can be found. We will steadfastly remain in the throne of our universe, trying to use a little God here and there.”

Isaiah 6:1-8 is that great moment of realization. Not for the sake of leaving us undone, but ready to see that there is something to be done. I pray your ready to dive in to that great work of God!!