Tag: Listen

Posted on

Twelve Days of Advent – #1 The Waiting

“For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, nor has the eye seen a God besides You, who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him.”  Isaiah 64:4

I’ve always loved music – any kind of music (well, I draw the line at Polka, but that’s a different post). Last year saw the passing of Tom Petty, a musical hero of my 20’s. In 1981 he released a song called “The Waiting.”

There’s a line in the song that says “You take it on faith, you take it to the heart, the waiting is the hardest part.” Many of us can identify with that sentiment, especially when we’re younger – I know I did. Waiting is, well, hard.

Stretching the analogy a bit farther, “the waiting is the hardest part” also describes much of what the season leading up to Christmas – and, ultimately, the season all Believers have been in since Christ’s ascension nearly 2,000 years ago – feels like.

“Pssst … Santa, you up there?”

As kids, we “wait” for Santa and his magical sleigh. As adults, we “wait” for gift-giving and Holiday parties. For Christians, Advent is a season of expectation, a time of preparation. Advent reminds us to wait and prepare for the inevitable return of Christ just as he came during that first Christmas season so long ago.

A different kind of waiting

Yet, I’m also reminded this time of year of a different kind of waiting; a waiting more immediate, more real, and perhaps more painful for many – both during Christmas and throughout the year.

This kind of waiting relates directly to prayers and the cries of our hearts. Prayers for intercession, prayers for healing, prayers for miracles we so desperately need. Prayers that the divorce our spouse just asked for doesn’t happen. Prayers that the doctor’s diagnosis of cancer isn’t real. Prayers that “what is” might become “what if?”

The same prayers of anticipation the nation of Israel cried out during the 400 years between the prophetic writings of Malachi and the miraculous events in Bethlehem. Prayers of waiting …

Credit: www.iprayer.com

Sometimes God answers prayers immediately. We feel the imminence and power of His hand in our lives and reach out to tell everyone about the amazing goodness of His love.

But other times – perhaps too often for many of us – prayers seem to be answered with deafening silence, miracles hovering forever just over the horizon. As time passes and God doesn’t appear genie-like in response to our plea-filled conjuring, our faith can falter.

Why does this happen? If God truly is the God of Salvation, a Savior who actually saves, why do we often feel so alone, so empty, so … forsaken?  Where is this God of Jacob and Abraham who sent His son to take our place on a Roman cross of humiliation?

Why, God?

On two occasions leading up to and in the midst of his Crucifixion Jesus himself speaks for those of us facing times of despair. The first occurred in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus prayed with such earnestness his sweat became like “great drops of blood, falling down the ground” (Luke 22:44). In this seminal moment of temptation, he asks God to take away the sacrificial cup, to spare him the trial and suffering to come.

We don’t read if God answers, because Jesus answers for Him, saying “yet not my will, but Yours be done.” Jesus knew God saw his heart, and knew his deepest desire was to follow God’s will.

“The Importance of Prayer,” Sebastiano Ricci c. 1701

How many times have we been able to ask and answer our own questions of God in confidence? Too often, our prayers seem like one-way streets, shouting to God to repair our lives yet stopping short of asking what God wants from us.

The second instance occurred on the cross. As described in Matthew 27:46, “About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’” Imagine the anguish of one who has been with God from before the beginning of time suddenly left alone, his prayers unanswered, his cries met with absolute silence. Yet still Jesus trusted.N

Not our will

Mother Teresa, writing in a letter to spiritual confident Rev. Michael van der Peet about the separation she experienced from Jesus, said “the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear, the tongue moves (in prayer) but does not speak … I want you to pray for me–that I let Him have (a) free hand.”

Hear the reflection of Jesus’ approach to God in her words. In the face of unanswered prayers, she acknowledges His sovereignty in all things.

As we grow in our relationship with God, more deeply understanding His purposes for us, our attitudes change. We come to realize how much God loves us and already knows the desires of hearts. Even when we’ve been waiting. Even when we think He isn’t listening.

The true meaning of Advent is this: Pray and Trust. Ask God for a need, show our faith in His Will, Trust in His provenance, and wait with expectancy and hope.

“My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus,” Paul wrote in Philippians 4:19. His miracles are still here – Emmanuel still means “God is with us.”

During this Advent season, don’t fall victim to the belief hope is gone. Don’t build walls around your heart so you can’t feel God’s touch. Don’t deafen your ears to His call.

Trust in God’s promises. Lift Him up in praise and worship daily. Thank Him for the blessings and protections He provides and will yet provide.

Tom Petty passed away as all humans do.  God’s Word and His promises will never die.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

Posted on

Daily Spiritual Diet: Not for the Faint of Heart

“Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” – Romans 6:16

Diets – they’re everywhere. Zone, Paleo, Low Carb, No Carb, Gluten-free, South Beach, Atkins, Mediterranean, Dash, 3-Day, Shred, Flat Belly … if you can think of it, there’s a diet for it. Once-famous celebrities gain newfound notoriety through endless commercials discussing how much weight they lost on their highly-lucrative endorsements for this or that meal plan.

Today’s culture seems slavishly obsessed with weight, even as a recent article in the New York Post indicates that while Americans are consuming supposedly healthier foods, the percentage of American adults who are considered obese stands at a whopping 36.5%. Ironically, being slaves to the scale actually makes us slaves to weight.

Slavery is a thread as interwoven into humankind as our DNA. Sadly, there is nothing so abhorrent in man’s experience as one human enslaving another. Throughout our history, from the earliest settlements of hunters and gatherers into local concentrations of shared protection to our relatively post-modern societies of this very day, humans have continuously found ways to prey on the weakest and force the less fortunate into bondage. Today, this bondage can take many forms: physical slavery, while relatively rare, still exists in modern Africa; sexual slavery, is a burgeoning trade in certain parts of the world; financial bondage, a highly refined form of slavery, flourishes nearly everywhere.

No, this isn’t a post about man’s inhumanity to man. We’ll save that for another time. Rather, it’s about the fire burning inside each of us, and how that fire can ignite the ember of unrest into a flame of action.

John Wesley, the celebrated preacher and founder of the Methodist Church, was a man in whom this flame burned bright and fierce. A life-long opponent of slavery, Wesley remained an outspoken advocate until his death. He not only fought against the scourge of slavery, but as a leader of the emergent Methodist movement he practiced throughout his life a regimen of personal discipline and ordered living.

As horrendous as human slavery can be, there is another, even more insidious form of enslavement many of us fall into every day. That slavery is self-imposed. It burrows into the crevasses of our hearts and our minds because we allow it to thrive there. It’s the slavery of the soul.

Paul writes about this in the passage above from Romans 6, comparing enslavement to sin with the ubiquitous practice of slavery across Palestine in his day. Paul is argues that if we give ourselves over to slavery, we will follow whatever master controls us. As slaves to sin, we are free to righteousness, he writes, yet our reward is death. But now that we have been set free from sin through the atonement and reconciliation of Christ, we are slaves to God, having as our reward sanctification and its end, eternal life.

It can be a difficult concept: trading one form of slavery for another, or that slavery in some sense equals freedom. Yet that is just what Paul is telling us; and where our friend John Wesley re-enters the conversation. Wesley’s commitment to disciplined living, that same discipline that bolstered his fight against slavery – imposed by others as well as self-imposed – offers us a path to follow in our daily struggle against slavish devotion to the things of this world vs. the will of God.

Lewis Allen, Pastor of Hope Church in Huddersfield, UK, is a well-respected follower of Wesley’s teachings. A few years ago he created a list of questions we should ask ourselves regarding our own spiritual discipline based on the teachings of John Wesley. I share that list here for your consideration. I’m fairly sure you’ll find something of value in one or more of these questions as part of your daily spiritual diet!

  1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?
  2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?
  3. Do I confidentially pass onto another what was told me in confidence?
  4. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits?
  5. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?
  6. Did the Bible live in me today?
  7. Do I give it time to speak to me everyday?
  8. Am I enjoying prayer?
  9. When did I last speak to someone about my faith?
  10. Do I pray about the money I spend?
  11. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?
  12. Do I disobey God in anything?
  13. Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?
  14. Am I defeated in any part of my life?
  15. Am I jealous, critical, irritable, touchy or distrustful?
  16. How do I spend my spare time?
  17. Am I proud?
  18. Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisee who despised the publican?
  19. Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold resentment toward or disregard? If so, what am I going to do about it?
  20. Do I grumble and complain constantly?
  21. Is Christ real in me?

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

Posted on

Love Wins. Every Time.

He said to the disciples, “Why are so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” Mark 4:40

Control: kənˈtroʊl [kuh n-trohl] – to exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command. Control has always been a capital“B” capital “T” Big Thing to me. Friends, jobs, relationships, family, dog’s bathroom habits, cable channel remotes … all of these and a thousand other things offer abundant opportunities to exercise my “control-at-all-costs” gene. Control. Sure, I’m the master of it!

My genetic pre-disposition for control showed itself early. In sixth grade I alphabetized all 63 of my mother’s spices – much to her dismay, as she apparently didn’t cook on an A-Z basis. Later, I would iron. Iron everything (nothing like a good crisp crease to make the world right).

It turns out Control is also one of our species’ favorite pastimes. Look around at the endless devices we’ve erected to “control” our environment. We feel if we can just bring order to chaos and make the unpredictable a little more predictable we can make sense of an incomprehensible world. Control becomes our answer to the soul-searing question “WHY, God?”  Control becomes our proxy for … Love.

This is especially true in times of traumatic global calamity – for example in the face of horrific events such as the Holocaust of World War II. Survivors from death camps like Auschwitz and Dachau tell heartbreaking stories of watching their fellow Jews being marched to gas chambers, wondering aloud why God had so utterly forsaken them.

“What happened?” they wondered. Why had God forsaken their covenant? Why did He not protect them now? A group of Auschwitz prisoners felt so moved they conducted a formal trial, to try God for His indifference (this true story was turned into a BBC television special entitled God on Trial in 2008). For those who find this a curious notion, putting God on trial would not have been a blasphemous oddity, but rather something altogether understandable to Jews – in the tradition of the psalms, the Book of Job – and even Christ’s terrible accusing cry from the cross: “Why have you forsaken me?”

In the end, a group of prisoners finds God guilty. And immediately, one of the rabbis among the prisoners says: “So what do we do now?” The reply is classic: “Let us pray.”  That is, the Jews accepted God for what He was.

I thought about this story as I read the verses from Mark 4:30-41. This passage is the well-known episode of Jesus calming the waves during a storm while his Apostles panicked. I was curious with a line from near the beginning, where the evangelist says, “They took him, just as he was, in the boat.”

What might this mean? For context, Jesus had been teaching people by the lake all day. Mark mentions several parables in this chapter (the Sower, The Mustard Seed, The Growing Seed) and the implication is that by day’s end Jesus was exhausted, probably in need of rest, maybe a bit withdrawn. His Apostles had been with him all day, and were probably just as tired. Perhaps they wanted rest. Perhaps they wanted to eat. Yet, the passage tells us they cast aside those concerns and took Jesus, as he was, in the boat with them. Jesus may not have delivered what the Apostles needed at that instant, yet they accepted him.

I travel a great in my business and often read books about faith while in flight. It’s fascinating to me how many folks I meet are interested in talking about the matter of belief. Frequently the subject of God’s role in their life comes up, and often it takes the form of disappointment – either God has disappointed them or the church hasn’t lived up to expectations, or they believe they’ve somehow disappointed God, and turned away from Him in shame.

Obviously, in these situations people feel hurt and abandoned in some way – by circumstances, or God, or God’s people, or their families, or even by themselves. I’ve talked to many people who have a similar reaction: “I don’t need people or gods who I can’t depend on, so I’ll be my own protector.” The ultimate profession of “control.”

This profoundly saddens me because it is so obvious these individuals are crying out for love or compassion yet can’t see that the problem is their own need to impose order and control rather than turning their eyes to God in humble acknowledgement that we cannot know all things as God knows them. In the absence of control, we abandon.

Jesus had an entirely different approach.

Indeed, Jesus’ ministry was built on a deep and profound reconciliation between people and God, as he continuously reminded his followers. He admonished the Pharisees and Sadducees for their insistence on arcane rules and points of Law as a way to control the lives of men and maintain righteousness. He chided the self-righteous and pious leaders of his time who rejected those who showed less adherence to the Law than they.

Perfection is a fiction existing nowhere except in our imaginations, where it rages like an out-of-control virus

In contrast, Jesus modeled love and reconciliation in everything he did. He accepted everyone, meeting them where they were, loving them as they were, assuring them God loved them the very same way. There was no requirement to perfect their lives before they could enter the Kingdom. He did not try to control their hearts or thoughts. He showed them the Way and invited them to follow.  Love wins every time with Jesus.

Yet Saved does not mean Perfect. If God required us to be perfect, there could  be no salvation at all. Perfection is a fiction existing nowhere except in our imaginations, where it rages like an out-of-control virus, leaving nothing but the wreckage of human shells devoid of emotional or spiritual depth in its wake.

I hear this over and over from people who feel they’ve been pushed away from God by the controlling motives of those who require them to measure up to some arbitrary standard of alleged perfection. And how many personal relationships have been destroyed by this very issue? It’s sad that people often turn their backs on God (or each other) when their expectations aren’t met. How many times have we run away from God because we perceive God has let us down?

These are all examples of our reacting to a world we don’t understand by trying to seize control. By abandoning someone who has hurt us, we control our emotional outrage. By turning our back on God when we find ourselves in the midst of what we consider unwarranted calamities, we control our own inner sense of justice in the world.

Such acts of desperation masquerading as bringing order and chaos and meaning to our lives are, in fact, the very things that destroy souls. Control is not the answer – forgiveness grounded in love is. When Jesus said “turn the other cheek” he wasn’t encouraging masochism. Instead, he was teaching us that the urge to take control of a perceived wrong by inflicting another wrong will only perpetuate the brokenness of the relationship. Forgiveness, accepting people as they are, loving them as they are (or even in spite of who they are) instead of attempting to change them into the perfect example of whom we think they should be is the very essence of living a Christ-filled life.

To be sure, forgiveness and acceptance don’t mean we’ll never have conflicts or need to exhort or correct errant behavior. In the story from the Mark, Jesus
accepted his disciples, and loved them, even though he was dismayed by their lack of faith. He probably didn’t appreciate being awakened from a sound sleep (I wish I could sleep that soundly in a tossing boat!) and if he reacts to low blood sugar the way I do there’s a pretty good chance he wasn’t feeling altogether hospitable (they didn’t have Red Bull in those days). Yet, he also gently scolded them for their inability to trust God.

It’s ok to tell people (or God) when you’re hurting because of something that happened. It’s healthy and normal to say “this is causing me pain,” or “I think what you’re doing is self-destructive” because that’s what people who really love each other do. That’s what real relationship is about. And that’s the kind of relationship God wants to have with us. It’s the kind of authentic relationship in community that we should have with one another.

Because in the end, Love really does win.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

Posted on

War of Words

“A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. The tongue of the wise adorns knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly.” – Proverbs 15:1-2

So I was on FB the other day (“Facebook” for anyone who has spent the last 10 years in lost deep in the rainforests of Amazonia is a place where 1.86 billion people freely share intimate details about their waking existence and more than occasionally their opinions on every conceivable issue of the day). No, really – I was on FB. Ok, not so much of a stretch to believe that, I admit.

Thumbing down my timeline while waiting to board a plane – because apparently that’s what we do with smartphones these days – I idly began counting the positive, uplifting comments vs. the negative remarks. Predictably, in this age of the instant megaphone, negative posts won by a margin of nearly 7 to 1. You can guess the topic.

What struck me most was not that people have opinions. Nor that they feel free to share their opinions. We call that the market place of ideas and it’s a hallmark of free societies.

“Crushing Words” by Tabenrea via DeviantArt

Rather, what gave me pause was the level and tone of anger and bitterness from people on all sides. While it’s not surprising how loud the decibel levels have become over the last couple of years there seems to be a boiling-over happening today. And I was reminded of a verse from Proverbs 15 that reads “The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.”

We all know folks with no filters. Something comes into their minds and immediately erupts from their mouths. I was certainly guilty of that during much of my younger years.

While the ability to measure what and how we share our thoughts is a clear mark of spiritual and emotional growth, the opposite is also true. Not being able to control one’s words is usually a sign of social immaturity and can do significant damage to relationships and peace of mind. (Editor’s note: to some, too much filtering leads to “bureau-speak” and creates all sorts of social ills.)

The Book of Proverbs is filled with wisdom seemingly crying out to us, as relevant today as when these 31 chapters of sayings were first collected over 2,700 years ago. In Chapter 15, King Solomon speaks to the importance of moderating our words by comparing positive comments to their negative counterparts, and the results of each: peacefulness or wrath, knowledge or folly, healing or a crushed spirit.

Said differently, when we can’t control what we say, we don’t just fail to uplift or enlighten (or especially persuade). Rather, we create lasting divides between ourselves and others that can often never be bridged.

Jesus offered a clear guide on how communicating with others can be both persuasive yet uncompromising. His approach combined a number of ways to share ideas without shutting out the other person with shrill arguments or crass insults.

For example, he used countless stories (parables) – or illustrations – to breath spiritual truth into ever day life. His mastery of hyperbole to drive home his point (e.g. “If your right eye offends you, pluck it out and throw it away” – Matthew 5:29) shocked his listeners without insulting them. He spoke eloquently, often poetically. He asked questions of his adversaries rather than condemning them. He used physical demonstrations of his points (e.g. washing the feet of his disciples, holding up a Roman coin to distinguish God’s provenance from worldly obligations, the lesson of unselfishness while pointing to a widow giving her last two coins).

Honest disagreement is healthy. Mindless insults and condescension neither broker peace nor win discussions. Our words are the outward displays of our hearts and minds and can betray what we think rather than what we show. In the words of James 3:9 “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness.”

Here’s a thought: before you initiate or respond to the next perceived offensive comment on social media or in a social setting, pause and ask yourself a couple of things. Do you have a hard time controlling your words? How will the other person hear what you say? Will your response help bridge or divide?

Peace.
Colossians 1:17