New Year's Eve

Every year I look forward to New Year’s. To me, it means a fresh start; I can, as it were, wipe the slate clean and start new with the things I know I should be doing. With a big, obvious, starting-over date like this it is a bit easier to make up one’s mind to get started with a new routine or habit. Like getting enough exercise or reading the Bible every day and completing it in a year; like making a plan to pray every day or maybe more than one specific time a day.

In a way, every day is a type of New Year. Our slate is wiped clean every day. Actually, it has been wiped clean once and for all; we just have to remember to avail ourselves of that fact. As we keep enjoying God, talking with him and worshiping him every day, we keep becoming more like him each day. Even if (when!) we fall short of that, when we are disobedient and do the things that go against God’s wishes, he is still forgiving and our slate will be wiped clean at that moment.

So I hope everyone will remember that they have a clean start every day. We don't have to wait for the New Year to roll around.

As 2010 appears on the horizon, I wish you an amazing new year full of love and growth in Him!

Blessed are the Pure in Heart…

For the last few weeks I have been in a small group that has been studying the Beatitudes. Recently we were discussing this verse: “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God” (Matt. 5:8). What does it mean to be “pure in heart” and what does it mean to “see God”?

Initially, it brought to mind my blog entry from back in September when I wrote about God speaking to Moses “face to face, as one speaks to a friend” from Exodus. Was Moses pure in heart and that’s why he was able to see God?

Then I also remembered some of my thoughts about weeds in our gardens. How can we be pure in heart with so many weeds trying to distract us? Do we get rid of the weeds once and forever? Or do we pull thorns up as they come up? Does it make a difference?

I realized that it relates to David as well. Acts says that God “testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do’” (Acts 13:22). But did he? Didn’t he do many sinful things? In another group we have been looking at 1 Samuel, and our most recent study considered Saul. In chapter 15 Saul was told by God through Samuel to wipe out all the Amalekites: the king, all the men, women, children, and servants, as well as all the animals. Saul chose not to follow through with the exact plan that God told him to do; he chose to alter that plan to fit his own specifications. Saul chose to let the king live and he kept some of the animals alive in order to sacrifice them to God. The main problem with that choice is that he never took responsibility for it. When Samuel confronted Saul, saying “Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the Lord?” (15:19) Saul replied, “But I did obey the Lord… I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag the king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder….” (15:20). Not only did he not take responsibility for not completely obeying the Lord, but he didn’t even recognize that he had been disobedient!

In contrast, David recognized that he had sinned against God, took responsibility for having done wrong, and confessed them to God. In that sense he was pure in heart and he saw God. He recognized God’s movement in his life and in the world, and his relationship with God grew. Look at all the psalms he wrote: ones expressing sorrow over having done wrong (see Psalm 51); ones delighting in the Lord and in his power and mercy (see Psalm 37); and expressing praise and thankfulness (see Psalm 103).

So, pure in heart is not perfection; it is keeping “short accounts” with God, always keeping in touch with him, and letting the Holy Spirit work in your—and my!—spirit to lead us into a closer relationship and desire to follow him.

Hide and Seek

(This is a short devotional I wrote for the Advent Devotional guide my church publishes every year. We use the daily Scripture texts from The Book of Common Prayer, and my selection is for Sunday, December 20, 2009.)

“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ ” Genesis 3:8, 9

When we played “hide and seek” as kids, the whole point of the game was to not be found. We wanted the “seeker” to take a long time to find us; we wanted to win the game by being the last one found. On the other hand, we also didn’t want to go too long without being found—we didn’t want the others to forget about us! We didn’t (and still don’t) want to be abandoned!

Sometimes, not only as children but also as adults, we hide because we are afraid. Maybe we’ve done something to make someone mad, to upset someone, and we are afraid of how they’ll react—we don’t want to be yelled at or punished! Maybe I know I’ve done something wrong, and I’m afraid something bad is going to happen as a result. In these verses in Genesis, “the man and his wife,” Adam and Eve, know they have done something wrong (see Gen. 3:7) and they are afraid because they listened to the serpent. They aren’t sure what’s going to happen to them.

Today, we can take comfort in the fact that God is still looking for us; he’s still pursuing us. It’s not that he doesn’t know where we are, but rather that he wants us to come to him, to reveal ourselves to him so that we can have a relationship with him again. At this Christmas season we remember that God is actively seeking us because he sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to pursue us, to reveal God himself to us, to clear the way for us back to a relationship with God. Let’s celebrate his seeking us still.

Do You Have Weeds in Your Garden?

One of my favorite parables is the one about the Sower and the Four Soils (Mark 4:1-20). It is a parable that captures our imagination with its sights (the Sower scattering the seed, the vast field with the varieties of soil), sounds (the wind blowing, the birds calling, the seeds falling on the ground), textures (the seeds, the dirt), even tastes.

The Sower goes out one day and scatters seed in the field; and the seed falls on four types of soil: the hard-packed path; the shallow soil with rocks; the soil filled with thorns and weeds; and the good soil that produces an abundant crop. As Jesus explains, the seed is the Word of God and the four types of soil are four different conditions of our hearts. Our hearts being in different conditions of receptivity take in the seed in different ways.

I know I have experienced some of each type of soil in my heart, sometimes in succession, sometimes all at once. There are times when my heart is like the hard-packed soil of the path. Whatever it is, I’ve heard it enough times and I become hardened so that when God speaks to me, nothing gets through. What God has said gets ignored and nothing grows. There are times when I hear the Word and I get excited about it, but when I need to live it out, that situation becomes more challenging than anticipated and the little plant wilts. Sometimes, I let my responsibilities overwhelm me. I focus more on how I am going to get everything done instead of praying and asking God to guide me and show me ways that I never would have dreamed up myself; the good word that I’ve heard and the ministry God has asked me to do gets choked out by my worry, and any fruit produced is pretty shriveled and dry. And finally, there are the times when everything goes just right: I hear the Word, the soil of my heart is well-turned and soft, ready to receive the seed; the Holy Spirit does all the feeding and watering necessary, and a good crop is produced.

My observation has been that an awful lot of Christians are like the third soil in the parable, the soil filled with the thorns and weeds that choke the seed which never gets a chance to really take hold and grow. We are choked by the cares and responsibilities of our lives. As adults, we have our jobs that take a lot out of us each day; we have to make sure the bills get paid, that our children get to school and do well and stay out of all the trouble it’s possible to get into these days; we have to keep up with the car payments and the boat payments and the mortgage payments for our home (maybe even a vacation home or time-share). We have to get our children to soccer practice, swimming lessons, ballet lessons, piano lessons, after-school tutoring to help get them into the right college—and none of that is free, either. We have so many things going that we don’t have time or space to let the seed planted in our hearts grow. There is lots of noise and distractions; there are so many things competing for our time and attention—sometimes they are legitimate things—that we just seem to let God, who is forgiving and understanding, wait while we “stand him up.”

I find that so many Christians don’t take (make?) the time to read let alone study the Bible. It has been said a lot but the Bible is truly a love letter from God to us, intended to draw us, the readers, to the Writer. If we ignored our spouse, our children, or our friends as much as we ignore God we would be pretty alone in the world! We all need to ask the Sower to weed our gardens, to turn over the soil, so that it will be soft and ready to receive the good seed which will then produce the fruit that the world needs.

And he will do it!

Change

I’ve just finished reading a book by Gordon MacDonald called Who Stole My Church? A very thought-provoking book! I ordered it on the recommendation of Bryan Burton on his blog in an entry posted in August. The description on the back cover of the books says: “Who Stole My Church? is a fictional story that reflects the all-too-real situation of many church communities today, where loyal and long-standing members can feel pushed aside by the new demands of evangelism in the twenty-first century.” I was intrigued because I have felt this way sometimes.

The focus of the book is a journey with a group of “loyal and long-standing members” in their fifties and up as they discuss with the pastor their fears and concerns about the changes happening in the church. Music changes; technological changes; changes in the style of dress; all this is happening a little too fast for some of these folks. This group makes some great progress in understanding change and why the younger people want to make these changes, and the book handles that well. It does address the topic of helping the younger worship team to understand why these “long-standing members” are resistant to change and how to address their “worship needs” but I wish it had been developed a little more.

Change in the church is necessary. The church needs to speak in a language common to its surroundings. If I moved to France, I would enjoy myself and have more success in understanding and working within the culture if I learned to speak French. In the same way the church needs to learn the language of the people around it. Just as some of the vocabulary of the French language changes periodically, so the vocabulary of the church needs to change periodically. Not completely, and certainly not the message, but as the culture around us changes we need to be able to modify our language and communicate the message of Jesus.

It’s not that I object to change, but change is a process, not an overnight event with no preparation or explanation. It seems to me that pastors and leaders need to talk about change a lot with the congregation ahead of time, planting seeds in the minds and hearts of the people so they might be ready for the change when it happens. Changing the course of a church is more like steering a cruise ship rather than a ski boat. Churches can’t turn on a dime, especially if you don’t want it to tip over! Many churches desire to be intergenerational and to be that, the leadership must be considerate of all the generations.

Often, the solution to this need for change is to have two services with completely different styles (i.e. “traditional” with organ and hymns and “contemporary” with guitar and praise songs). I have found that having two different services generally does not encourage unity, but could easily promote a feeling of “us and them” (us vs. them?). This may often mean that if I’m not able to attend the service I prefer on a particular Sunday, I have an easy excuse for just not going at all because I don’t like the style of the other service. Having two services that are the same enables (and encourages) members of the congregation to attend either service. There is more likelihood then that the church has one unified congregation rather than two (possibly) competing ones.

This may instigate a big discussion about music styles and use of technology (i.e. Whose style takes precedence which week? Isn’t that just going to create a service that isn’t “satisfying” or worshipful to anyone? etc.), but my suggestion is that the teaching from the pastor and leaders over the years promote understanding and acceptance of change; consideration, kindness, thoughtfulness, and acceptance must be shown to all members of the Body of Christ, both young and old.

Face to Face

The other morning I read a devotional about Moses and God by Mark Roberts, the senior director of Laity Lodge. The verse being discussed is Exodus 33:11:

Inside the Tent of Meeting, the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Afterward Moses would return to the camp, but the young man who assisted him, Joshua son of Nun, would remain behind in the Tent of Meeting.

The phrase describing how the Lord spoke to Moses—“face to face, as one speaks to a friend”—caught my attention. It highlights the intimate quality of the conversation between God and Moses, not that Moses could literally see the face of God. That is certainly what I long for! I want to have that intimate conversation with God, not necessarily literally face to face, but certainly with that confidence and trust and openness. The idea of meeting God and having a conversation as one speaks to a friend certainly feels more welcoming to me than coming before a teacher or a judge or the King of the Universe! I feel more relaxed when I pray if I think of God as a friend; it helps release the feeling of being judged or criticized, that I will find out all the things I have done wrong recently. Definitely, God is not our “buddy”—God is still “God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth,” but God wants us to come to him without fear and experience his love for us. Psalm27:8 says it this way: “When You said, ‘Seek my face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, O Lord, I shall seek’” (NASB).

When I speak to a friend face to face and not just over the phone or by email, I do that because I want to have time to find out about my friend, how she’s doing, how she’s feeling. I want to spend time with that friend, not shopping, not reading, not watching a movie, but finding out what is going on in my friend’s life. I want to be able to pay attention to my friend and have a good conversation with my friend. To think that God, the Lord of the universe, “Creator of all that is seen and unseen,” might want to speak to me face to face! And didn’t he, in the form of Jesus?

What Do We Do?

Waiting. We usually don’t like to do it, even when we know what is at the end of that waiting time. But that seems to be most of our Christian lives. We live our lives waiting for God to do something. We wait for him to answer our prayers. We wait for him to make the world better. We wait for him to show us who we are supposed to marry or what job or career we are supposed to have or what house we are supposed to buy. We’re always wondering what we are supposed to do.

Even the disciples asked Jesus that question. In the Gospel of John, Jesus had just fed the Five Thousand and walked across the lake to the other side when the disciples discovered him. When they asked him how he got here, he responded,

“I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” (John 6:26-27)

He is saying here that the people following him are here because they are looking for something to eat; they are looking for immediate gratification. They don’t realize that he just fed 5,000 people (at least!) with only a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. They just know they got something to eat: “You ate the loaves and had your fill.”

Jesus goes on to say that they should look beyond the food that spoils; they should look to the bigger picture, to what “endures to eternal life.” That really confused them! If you don’t think we should work for food that spoils, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” (John 6:28) They want to do the right thing, but they don’t know what it is. Isn’t that what we ask when we are waiting? “OK God, what do you want me to do? I can’t just sit here!”

Look what Jesus says: “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent” (John 6:29). What?? Is that all?? All I have to do is believe? What does that mean? Do I just sit around all day saying, “I believe in God, I believe in God”? I want to know what to do! Maybe what God wants is that whatever we choose to do, we do it with a believing heart, a heart that trusts God, that he is working in us and through us, and that his will is being done as long as we do it trusting in his power and love.

So maybe we are supposed to be who God wants us to be and the doing will come as a result. Then maybe it will seem less like waiting.

Being Focused

“I dare not urge you to your Cross. But He, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world’s needs. By inner persuasions He draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks, God’s burdened heart particularizing his burdens in us. And He gives us the royal blindness of faith, and the seeing eye of a sensitized soul, and the grace of unflinching obedience. Then we see that nothing matters, and that everything matters, and that this my task matters for me and for my fellow men and for Eternity.”

—Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion

This is the opening quote in a lesson from a small group Bible study I've been leading on Heart Renewal. This particular lesson is called “The Renewal of Focus.”

I wonder if this quote is what inspired Frederick Buechner to say (and I’m paraphrasing) that our calling is where our deepest desires coincide with the world’s deepest needs; that’s what I hear Thomas Kelly saying here. God disturbs our comfort and complacency, the deep part of our hearts, with the world’s needs. When we are feeling uncomfortable, for example, seeing children, not only in Africa, but in our own hometowns, not having enough to eat, we should pay attention to that inner voice. When we feel unhappy or concerned that a particular group of people, for example, artists or women or singles, aren’t being treated well, especially by the church, we should pay attention to that inner discomfort.

It is not just our being disquieted or disturbed by the world’s needs. The very next sentence says that “He draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks, God’s burdened heart particularizing his burdens in us.” I love that idea! They really aren’t our burdens, are they? They are God’s burdens that He is willing to share with us. It reminds me of Ephesians 2:10 which says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (NASB). If we let Him, God will let us in on the work He wants done. He knows the situation and has prepared it and us to meet up—that is, if we are willing to let God lead us.

I have been using the word “we” here a lot, and I very definitely include myself in that we. I also need to keep my own focus on God, on the disturbances He puts in my heart, and on following the way He leads.

Holy Discontent

I’ve been leading a women’s Bible Study at the church my husband and I attend in Redmond, WA. It’s not a complicated study nor does it appear very deep when one first looks through the guide itself. It is a study called Heart Renewal: Finding Spiritual Refreshment (currently out of print). Initially I thought it would be a “light” study, one that the women could benefit from without necessarily putting a lot into. It utilizes texts from various places in the Bible rather than going through one book, so it just didn’t seem like it would be that taxing. With lots of other summer activities, I wanted to “lure” the women to this study by promising them it wouldn’t be that hard—what about “refreshment” doesn’t sound light and easy??

To a certain extent that has been true. There are only ten to twelve questions that can be answered in 45 minutes or less. But they are not just surface questions. They open up little slits in your soul to let in the Holy Spirit who goes to work in His own stealth way.

The introductory study in the guide is called “Holy Discontent,” a look at Hannah and how she responded to her unhappiness at being barren (1 Samuel 1:1-20; 2:1-10). The quote at the beginning of the study is from a book by George MacDonald. The first sentence intrigued me:

“Of all things let us avoid the false refuge of a weary collapse, a hopeless yielding to things as they are.”

Can’t you just feel the weight of that on your shoulders? “… a hopeless yielding to things as they are.” It seems like so many people feel that way nowadays. We feel powerless to change things; we can even feel that our situation is just plain, old hopeless. But here is a woman who had had enough. Elkanah’s other wife had lots of children and Hannah had none. The other wife was always making fun of Hannah and pointing out to her that she was not carrying out her “wifely duties” so she had very little worth to society at that point. The sad part is that Hannah endured this provoking for many years; and she would endure it to the point of tears.

Until one day. Hannah had finally had enough. When she and her family went to the temple to make the ritual sacrifices, she took her unhappiness, her discontent, to God. The Bible says, “In bitterness of soul, Hannah wept much and prayed to the Lord.” She didn’t let her discontent fester any more. She finally took it to God and asked Him to do something!

In the end, God met her in her unhappiness. He provided her with a son, who she promised to dedicate to the service of the Lord. When he was born she named him Samuel. He became a prophet, the one who eventually identified David to become the king of Israel. His line is where Jesus came from. Imagine if she had been content to be harassed and just lived her life in bitterness?

“However,” you may say, “I have been discontent and prayed to the Lord about my situation and nothing has changed! What about me?” You’re in good company! Paul had the same issue. In his second letter to the Corinthians he says with some hindsight,

“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me…. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

Just because we ask doesn’t mean that our prayer will be answered the way we want it to be answered. What God wants more than anything is that we come to Him with our discontent; we don’t let it sit and make us more and more bitter. He wants us to be in relationship with Him, not off in a corner crying by ourselves! Hannah and Paul had it right. They were both very unhappy with the way things were in their lives. But they went to the Father and told Him how unhappy they were, and God remedied the situation by bringing them closer to Himself. Hannah was given the son she wanted, but Paul was not relieved of that thorn in the flesh. But he was drawn into a deeper relationship with God the Father.

If you’re discontent, talk to the Father!

Is Blogging for Me?

Blogs. They are everywhere. I myself am a faithful follower of many blogs. So when I started thinking, “Is blogging for me?” I wondered if I had anything to add to the blogging world. It feels pretty daunting: Where do I start? What do I say? What do I even think that is important enough to share?

Theological observations, musings, and reflections are what I intend to contribute. In preparing to be a pastor, in the end I hope I am following in Eugene Peterson’s footsteps, who said, as he spoke to an audience in Seattle, “I wrote not to tell anyone anything, but to discover how to work with a congregation. I wrote to find out how to be a pastor.” I’m writing to discover what I think and how that connects with and influences what I do.

I love the arts, and that will certainly be included in this blog, musings on the arts, theology, spirituality, following Jesus.

So there it is. I hope you’ll join me on what will be for me an “adventure of discovery.” I hope it will be for you as well.