Christian Maturity

“Christian maturity is the distance between God’s call and your capacity for obedience” (from the Growing Deeper class this morning).

I’m reminded of something my pastor once said during a sermon. He stated that you can’t wait until you confirm the call of God on your life to start getting reading. You have to be ready. You have to develop a life of disciplines before God calls you.

I believe that maturity look a lot like leaning on the Lord. It’s a declaration of dependence that acknowledges the words of Jesus in John 15:5: “Apart from Me, you can do nothing.”

I can’t expect to recognize the voice of God if I never spend time with Him. If I rush through my prayers and Bible reading, how can I learn to discern when the Shepherd is speaking? If my prayer life is spiritual version of my Amazon wish list, I leave no room for God to respond.

Sometimes, I think the best prayers are ones where I’m silent in the presence of God, not bringing any petitions or requests or even thanksgiving, but simply sitting at the feet of Jesus for as long as it takes to come to a place of calm where I can hear Him speaking. Sadly, I’m often too busy or impatient to wait that long.

I’m also learning that it’s better to read less Bible and ruminate on it more. I tend to speed read for information instead of prayerfully meditating on what I read and turning it into a prayer. Also, it’s easy to leave the words on the page and not put them into action. Then nothing changes.

But thankfully God is more patient than I am. He still speaks when I’m less inclined to listen. He has more time for me than I have for Him. And I believe He’s making me more like Him even on those days when I don’t act very much like Him.

Lord, speak to me and all your servants, for we are listening.

Spoiler: God Wins

“… just slipping a note to those in the thick of it who really need to know right now how this all works out, how today ends, how this week ends, how this whole shebang ends:

SPOILER: GOD WINS” (Ann Voskamp).

“No doubt about it! God is good—
    good to good people, good to the good-hearted.
But I nearly missed it,
    missed seeing his goodness.
I was looking the other way,
    looking up to the people
At the top,
    envying the wicked who have it made,
Who have nothing to worry about,
    not a care in the whole wide world.

Pretentious with arrogance,
    they wear the latest fashions in violence,
Pampered and overfed,
    decked out in silk bows of silliness.
They jeer, using words to kill;
    they bully their way with words.
They’re full of hot air,
    loudmouths disturbing the peace.
People actually listen to them—can you believe it?
    Like thirsty puppies, they lap up their words.

What’s going on here? Is God out to lunch?
    Nobody’s tending the store.
The wicked get by with everything;
    they have it made, piling up riches.
I’ve been stupid to play by the rules;
    what has it gotten me?
A long run of bad luck, that’s what—
    a slap in the face every time I walk out the door.

If I’d have given in and talked like this,
    I would have betrayed your dear children.
Still, when I tried to figure it out,
    all I got was a splitting headache . . .
Until I entered the sanctuary of God.
    Then I saw the whole picture:
The slippery road you’ve put them on,
    with a final crash in a ditch of delusions.
In the blink of an eye, disaster!
    A blind curve in the dark, and—nightmare!
We wake up and rub our eyes. . . . Nothing.
    There’s nothing to them. And there never was” (Psalm 73:1-20, The Message).

It’s easy to lose sight of the end when you’re stuck in the middle. When evil seems to rule the day, it’s hard to believe that God can ever set things right. It’s tempting to fall into a cynical view of “Well, that’s it. We’re done for. There’s no hope left.”

But just as Billy Graham said, I’ve read the last page of the Bible and I know it’s going to be fine in the end. Actually, more than just fine. It will be better than the happiest ending in the best book you’ve ever read. It will be like in the last book in the Narnia series where all that happened before was merely the title page and prologue, but heaven is where the real story starts and where each chapter is better than the one before.

The Bible says for those who are in Christ that whatever the worst that we can face is light and momentary compared to the joy that’s coming. Read that again. The absolute worst we can imagine ever facing is light and momentary compared to the joy that awaits.

Not that what we face isn’t very real and very scary and very awful. But the joy ahead is infinitely greater and longer and lasting. It will be like the joy of a new mother holding her child after the pain of delivery, knowing it was way more than worth it.

It will be way more than worth it when we get there.

The Litmus Test of Our Faith

“We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts. How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community)

I wonder if the litmus test of genuine faith is gratitude. I also wonder if one of the hindrances to answered prayers is failure to give thanks for previous answered prayers. It could just be that the more we’re able to give thanks for God’s graces and gifts, the more discerning we are to God’s responses in the present. The more we can see and hear God at work.

I also know that God is not bound to my obedience. The life of faith is a life of grace. I know that if for God to answer one of my prayers required complete faithfulness and obedience, I’d be lost, both figuratively and literally.

Still, the word I keep hearing over and over is thanksgiving. Saying “thank you” to God isn’t a magic formula that forces God’s hand, but a prayer that frees us to see more of God’s smaller gifts and maybe makes us able to receive the larger gifts.

That June Post

“Our culture has accepted two lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is to love someone’s means you believe with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense” (Rick Warren).

Yes, it’s June. These days they have created something called Pride Month where we are supposed to celebrate all things LGBTQ, etc. The thinking goes that if you love someone, you will love and endorse just about everything about them, and if you disagree with someone on any point, you must hate them.

That’s not true. I know and love people who are in the rainbow lifestyle, but I don’t endorse or agree with their lifestyle. I don’t hate them. I don’t wish them harm. I do pray for them and wish them true happiness.

I also don’t happen to see sexual sin as any worse than living together outside of marriage or adultery within the context of marriage. I don’t think someone else’s struggle with homosexuality is worse than my struggle with the sins of pride and envy.

Jesus loved people in the middle of their messes but didn’t leave them in their messes. He called prostitutes, tax collectors, and other sinners to follow Him. The best part is that when He was finished with His work, they weren’t prostitutes, tax collectors, or sinners any more. They were disciples. That was their new identity.

Did they still sin? Absolutely. But Jesus still loved them.

One of my favorite quotes that sums up the kind of love Jesus had for them (and for us) goes like this:

“Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire” (George MacDonald).

For those of you in the LGBTQ lifestyle, my prayer is first and foremost that you fall in love with Jesus and surrender to Him fully. I don’t want you in heterosexual marriages as much as I want you to be fully devoted disciples of Jesus who confess and repent daily of their sins and let Jesus’ love transform them to be more like Jesus.

Ultimately, your identity is not your sexuality or your skin color or your ethnicity or your nationality or your tax bracket or your ancestry. Your primary identity is one made by God who bears the image of God, called into relationship with God to be a son or daughter of God.

Not Good but God’s

“For years, I begged God to help me be good. Didn’t you join up because you wanted to be good? I’d worked years trying to be good and I wasn’t good! Oh, I was gooder than I was when I started out, but I still wasn’t good because as good as I was getting, I still wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t sustain it long enough. Sometimes I’d go 7 or 8 minutes without sinning. But it still wasn’t long enough!

And the Lord spoke to me very clearly that day. He said, ‘The issue isn’t being good, the issue is being God’s. Just come to Me and I’ll provide goodness for you. Just come and love Me. Seek Me with all your heart.’

Now I’m not arguing for sin, but I am saying this: my focus these days is not on trying to be good. I am gooder than I’ve been in the past, but it’s not because I’m focused on trying to be good, it’s because I’ve focused on Him and doing His bidding. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for me and my sinning” (John Wimber).

As I’ve heard before (and maybe you have as well), Jesus didn’t become incarnate to make bad people good but to make dead people alive. See, it’s not about behavior modification and better morals. It’s about being made new.

I still think that more than being gooder, I need to focus on being more like Jesus. That can only happen when the Spirit of Jesus inside me starts to manifest outward from me as I live more surrendered and obediently. It’s no good if I behave better when I still have the illusion of control over my life and my destiny. It’s only when I acknowledge that I belong to another that I really begin to transform.

It’s not about being good as much as it is being God’s.

The Soliloquy of Prayer

They tell me, Lord, that when I seem
To be in speech with you,
Since but one voice is heard, it’s all a dream,
One talker aping two.

Sometimes it is, yet not as they
Conceive it. Rather, I
Seek in myself the things I hoped to say,
But lo!, my wells are dry.

Then, seeing me empty, you forsake
The listener’s role and through
My dumb lips breathe and into utterance wake
The thoughts I never knew

And thus you neither need reply
Nor can; thus, while we seem
Two talkers, though are One forever, and I
No dreamer, but thy dream” (Unknown, quoted in Letters to Malcolm by C. S. Lewis).

That’s how prayer works for me. Sometimes, I feel like I’m talking to the ceiling. My words can’t possibly be reaching God’s ears, and if they are, He doesn’t seem to hear. But then I remember that God is not just in some faraway heaven beyond all time and space. He’s in the room with me.

Other times, my prayers seem to come from somewhere else. I find myself praying words the same way an actor speaks lines written by another. It’s as if God Himself is giving me the very words to speak to Him the desires of my heart.

Often, I will rattle off a list of my own requests and desires and then give God no time to reply. Even then, I think He hears the heart cry behind the list. He is way more patient with me than I am with Him most of the time.

On occasion, I won’t even be able to speak. Either through grief or fear, I can’t find the words. In those moments, the Holy Spirit and Jesus intercede for me in those groanings too deep for words.

Whatever the case, I am never alone. If there is but one voice speaking, it’s not mine, but God praying through me to God who hears and honors the request. Not God in the sense of me and all things are a part of God, but God as holy and totally other who still dwells in me and makes Himself known to me. That God.

More Like Jesus

More purity give me;
More strength to over-come;
More freedom from earth-stains;
More longings for home;
More fit for the kingdom;
More used would I be;
More blessed and holy;
More, Saviour, like Thee” (Phillip P. Bliss).

Sometimes, I think the reason that I’m not more like Jesus is that I’m not willing to do whatever it takes to look more like Jesus. Sure, I pray that God would conform me into the image of His Son, but when that process starts, it looks a lot like stuff I don’t like.

When my job position got eliminated, maybe that was God’s answer to my prayer to look more like Jesus. When I was having trouble with my old Jeep and wondering why it kept breaking down and leaking, maybe God was molding me.

If it were up to me, I’d never have to deal with anything stressful or uncomfortable. I’d go from strength to strength, from comfort to comfort. And at the end of the day, I’d look a lot less like Jesus and a lot more like the old me.

Thankfully, God didn’t ask for my permission before He began chiseling away at the sharp edges and the abrasive angles and the rough patches in me. I’m grateful God loves me as I am but won’t let me stay that way.

The old analogy is perfect. It’s like I’m the arrow that God is aiming at the target and He keeps pulling and stretching sometimes beyond what I can endure, but still He goes on pulling and stretching. He waits until I am perfectly centered on the target that only He can see, then He lets loose.

You never really think about archery from the perspective of the arrow. At least I normally don’t. But God does. Every single trial, every single set-back, every single disappointment is God preparing you for a future that only He can see and a destiny that only He knows.

And one day it will all have been worth it. You will look back and see that everything worked out beautifully and had you known what God knew all along, you would have chosen exactly the same all over again.

Social Rules to Live By

This post is a bit outside my wheelhouse, so to speak. What follows is some good advice that I wish I had learned earlier (or maybe paid better attention to when someone else was trying to teach me). Some of these may be more applicable than others, but I hope they will all be useful at some point in your life:

  1. Don’t call someone more than twice continuously. If they don’t pick up your call, presume they have something important to attend to.
  2. Return money that you have borrowed even before the person who loaned it to you remembers or asks for it. It shows your integrity and character. The same goes for umbrellas, pens, and lunch boxes.
  3. Never order the expensive dish on the menu when someone is treating you to lunch or dinner.
  4. Don’t ask awkward questions like ‘Oh, so you aren’t married yet?’ Or ‘Don’t you have kids?’ Or ‘Why haven’t you bought a house?’ Or ‘Why haven’t you bought a car?’ For God’s sake, it isn’t your problem.
  5. Always open the door for the person coming behind you. It doesn’t matter if it is a guy or a girl, senior or junior. You don’t grow small by treating someone well in public.
  6. If you take a taxi with a friend and he/she pays now, try paying next time.
  7. Respect different shades of opinions. Remember, what may seem like 6 to you might appear as 9 to someone else. Besides, a second opinion is good for an alternative.
  8. Never interrupt people while they are talking. Allow them to pour it out. As they say, hear them all and filter them all.
  9. If you tease someone, and they don’t seem to enjoy it, stop it and never do it again. It encourages one to do more and shows how appreciative you are.
  10. Say “thank you” when someone is helping you.
  11. Praise publicly. Criticize privately.
  12. There’s almost never a reason to comment on someone’s weight. Just say, “You look fantastic.” If they want to talk about losing weight, they will.
  13. When someone shows you a photo on their phone, don’t swipe left or right. You never know what’s next.
  14. If a colleague tells you they have a doctor’s appointment, don’t ask what it’s for, just say “I hope you’re okay.” Don’t put them in the uncomfortable position of having to tell you their personal illness. If they want you to know, they’ll do so without your inquisitiveness.
  15. Treat the cleaner with the same respect as the CEO. Nobody is impressed by how rudely you treat someone below you, but people will notice if you treat them with respect.
  16. If a person is speaking directly to you, staring at your phone is rude.
  17. Never give advice until you’re asked.
  18. When meeting someone after a long time, unless they want to talk about it, don’t ask them their age or salary.
  19. Mind your business unless anything involves you directly – just stay out of it.
  20. Remove your sunglasses if you are talking to anyone in the street. It is a sign of respect. Moreover, eye contact is as important as your speech.
  21. Never talk about your riches in the midst of the poor. Similarly, don’t talk about your children in the midst of the barren.
  22. After reading a good message, consider saying “Thanks for the message.”

APPRECIATION remains the easiest way of getting what you don’t have.

I am including the original post to give credit where credit is due.

Daily Bread Vs. a Lifetime Supply

Recently, a friend sent me an article about trusting God for daily bread versus really wanting God to dump a year’s worth of supply in one drop so I don’t have to worry. In my flesh, I’d rather be set for life than have to be like the Israelites of old and trust God for daily provision.

Speaking of those ol’ people of God, they didn’t always listen. When God said to gather only as much as manna as you need for that day, they thought they’d be oh so smart and oh so clever and gather two or three days’ worth. What happened? The excess manna rotted and smelled to high heaven, as did the people’s attitude.

God supplies our needs daily because He knows our ultimate need isn’t bread. What we need most isn’t physical. We need God, and when we learn to trust God for each day, our dependence deepens and grows as we see each day’s needs met.

I confess I’m not very good at that. I tend to be forgetful. Thankfully, God has a gentle way of reminding me of the last 10,000 times He’s provided for me (sometimes without me even knowing or asking). He’s faithful even when I’m faithless and forgetful.

Anyway, I included the original article if you want to be blessed as much as I was:

God at Work

A friend posted this. I stole it because it’s too good not to share. Plus, I’ve made it my own prayer going forward.

I saw Unsung Hero tonight, a movie about the Smallbone family who moved from Australia back in the early 90s. Basically, their original plans fell through and they had to learn to depend on God’s provision and timing.

Maybe it was God’s timing for me to see this movie at this particular point in my career transition. As any of you who have been in that place know, it can be stressful at times and discouraging at other times. It can be so easy to base your self worth on what you do for a living or how much you make a year or anything like that.

But God is teaching those of us in that process that who God says we are matters more than any job title or salary or car we drive or house we live in. In fact, what God says about us trumps it all. Only what God says matters.

God’s character and God’s promises are inextricably linked. What God does can’t be separated from who God is, and if it is God’s nature to love us sacrificially, then He will keep every promise that He has ever made to us. As a good father provides for his children, so God provides for His own.

I’m still trusting in the heart of God when I can’t see His face or feel His hand. I know He’s there because He’s said He won’t leave. Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.