choice

Wise Words from Rich Mullins

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Rich Mullins would have turned 70 today. Instead, we remember him and celebrate his legacy 28 years after his untimely passing in 1997. I sometimes wonder how much more great music he could have produced had he lived longer, but I’m thankful for the catalog of great albums and songs he left behind. Songs like Awesome God and Sometimes by Step are still sung in churches and youth groups and retreats all over the world.

I ran across something Rich wrote that was an interesting take on happiness. He definitely marched to the beat of his own drummer and didn’t conform to anyone else’s idea of normal, but I suppose that is what makes his music so memorable and lasting. Here’s what he wrote:

“1. Forget about finding happiness. Happiness is not worthy of your search.

2. Bake a cake – a really rich cake, preferably from scratch and especially if you are an inexperienced baker or a tested, tried, & notoriously awful cook. The value is in the baking more than in the cake.

3. Call up some enemy of yours and invite that enemy to eat the cake with you. If the cake is good you may lose an enemy and gain a friend. If the cake is bad, at least vengeance is sweet.

4. If you can’t think of a single enemy, then call up a friend. Invite your friend over to eat the cake with you. If the cake is good the favor may be returned. If the cake is awful your friend may go buy one from a bakery for you. If you are without any enemies or friends, take your cake to an old folks’ home. Eat it with them! If the cake is good you will no longer be without friends. If the cake is terrible you will no longer be without enemies.

Finding a friend, making an enemy – now those are things worth pursuing. Happiness may come tagged on – but even if it doesn’t, at least you will have done something and established some relationships.

5. Memorize Isaiah 40 or the first Psalm or Psalm 91. Read the closing chapters of the Book of Job. Meditate on the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). Write out one of the Prison Epistles (Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Collosians) and send them to some other unhappy person.

All of this may not make you happy but it will tell you how to be holy. Once you tie that knot you may find yourself in a position to be made happy.

6. Work hard. Clean something. Find new and more space-efficient ways of folding your clothes. Rake someone else’s yard for them. If you are unhappy maybe you can help someone else be less so.

7. Go back to the third chapter of Lamentations and then repeat after me:

“It is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for a man to bear
The yoke while he is young.
Let him sit alone in silence
For the Lord has laid it on him.”

8. Reread the 23rd Psalm and remember that if the Lord is your shepherd, then you are in a lush pasture. You are by a still stream. If it seems otherwise to you, it may be because you would rather be happy than be God’s. If this is so, then you have more reason to be happy than anyone. God has chosen you – ungrateful, decadent you – and being His is a joy and a happiness that goes beyond anything else you may seek, and in your folly settle for. God will (in His mercy) make you discontent with anything less than Him.

So we have only one step left…

9. Rejoice.”

You Have a Choice

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I learned a long time ago that people tend to see the world according to their perspective. Negative people only see what’s wrong with the world, while sometimes positive people only see the good. There is such a thing as self-fulfilling prophecy where if you believe in a certain outcome, good or bad, you have a tendency to end up there.

A lot of success in life depends on your attitude. If you’re expecting to fail, you probably will. If you’re expectations are to succeed, the chances are much greater that you will. But I decided a long time ago to take a different road.

I choose to feel blessed because I am. Every day that I wake up is a gift from God.

I choose to feel grateful because everything I am and everything I have is a gift from God. I don’t deserve any of it, but God saw fit to bestow so much on me.

I choose to be excited because I know as a believer that the best is yet to come and that my best life is not now but coming soon.

I choose to be thankful for so many small ways that God shows up in my daily existence.

I choose to be happy. Better yet, I choose joy.

My expectations are all about what God wants for me. To succeed without God is just as bad as failing because it’s like climbing the ladder to the top only to realize it was against the wrong wall. Where you end up is not where you thought you would be.

My choice is to choose joy. Not happiness. There will be plenty of times when being happy is not an option, or at least not an appropriate one, but joy always is. Joy is simply contentment in Jesus. Nothing more, nothing less.

There’s Always a Choice

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“I call Heaven and Earth to witness against you today: I place before you Life and Death, Blessing and Curse. Choose life so that you and your children will live. And love God, your God, listening obediently to him, firmly embracing him. Oh yes, he is life itself, a long life settled on the soil that God, your God, promised to give your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Deut. 30:19-20).

The children of Israel had a choice. They could choose to serve and obey God, or they could follow after the gods of the peoples in the land they were called to occupy.

Both choices had consequences. Choosing to follow Yahweh led to life and blessing, while running after idols led to curses and death. There was no third option with no consequences.

Today, we have a choice. Following God leads to life, and following sin, self, and Satan leads to death. Jesus said that He was the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one could come to the Father and eternal life but through Him.

The good news is that while you’re living, there’s always time to change the road you’re on. No matter what you’ve done in the past, what terrible choices you might have made, what wreck you might have made of your life, you can always come to God, and He will never cast out anyone coming to Him in faith.

Choose today. Choose Jesus.

Obedience and Trust

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Here are some words from George MacDonald on the importance of obedience and trust:

“Trust and obedience is the greatest thing that is required of any of us. The care that is filling your mind at this moment, or but waiting until you lay the book aside, to consume you, that need, which is no real need, is a demon sucking at the spring of your life. Do you object, saying, ‘But no, you do not understand. The thing I am worrying about is a reasonable anxiety, an unavoidable care.’ ?

‘Does it involve something you have to do at this very moment?’, I ask.

‘Well, no.’

‘Then you are allowing it to usurp the place of something that is required of you at this moment. The greatest thing that can ever be required of any man or woman.’

‘And what is that?’

‘To trust in the living God.’

‘What if God does not want me to have what I need at this moment?’

‘If He does not want you to have something you value, it is to give you instead something He values.’

‘And if I do not want what He has to give me?’

‘If you are not willing that God should have His way with you, then in the name of God, BE MISERABLE, until your misery drives you to the arms of the Father.’

‘Oh, but this is only about some financial concern. I do trust him with spiritual matters.’

‘Everything is an affair of the Spirit. If God has a way of dealing with you in your life, it is the only way. Everything little thing in which you would have your own way has a mission for your redemption. He will treat you as a willful child until you take your Father’s way for your own.'”

There is no area of your life that does not concern God or is outside of His purview. Every part of your story is sacred because God is using that small part to showcase His glory in a way that only you can see. What everyone else can see is your faithfulness to trust God when it doesn’t make sense or goes against what you think is best.

When you choose God’s way over your way, then people see where your allegiance really lies. They see that you are God’s and that He is yours. While it is important to speak your faith, how you live it out is just as vital to a good testimony of the goodness of God.

John 3:16

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“For God expressed His love for the world in this way: He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not face everlasting destruction, but will have everlasting life” (John 3:16 VOICE).

Life. That’s what it’s all about.

Finding it. Living it. Sharing it.

I’ll be honest. I wouldn’t have chosen to insert all of John 3:16. I’m quite fond of the part about everlasting life. I’m all for that.

It’s the part about everlasting destruction that I would have left out. It’s not my favorite part.

Some have chosen to omit that part from their theology. It makes them uncomfortable. It rubs them the wrong way.

Here’s the thing. If you want the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, you have to take all of it. The good, the bad, and the parts that make you uncomfortable.

Here’s another thing. Those that get everlasting destruction choose it. C. S. Lewis once said that some will say to God, “Thy will be done,” and God will say to some, “Thy will be done.”

In other words, God will respect whatever decision a person makes, whether that is for or against Him. It’s called free will.

I don’t pretend to fully understand why God operates the way He does, but to say that God would never do something because I would never do it is to put myself in a position above God, to be His judge. I know I don’t want that responsibility.

So there it is. If you take anything away from this, it’s that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about a choice. It’s not your parents’ choice or your friends’ choice. It’s yours.

Decide today whether or not you really want to follow Jesus and surrender everything to Him. I chose Jesus because He chose me first long before I was born. But that’s another topic for another day.

The end.

 

Those Wildflowers and Sparrows

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“If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met” (Matthew 6:30-33).

That’s the key to dealing with worry.

Remember that God provides for wildflowers and sparrows. He will provide for you.

Worry says that God is not enough. Faith says that He is.

Worry says that I have to be in control of figuring a way out of my problems. Faith says God already has.

Worry kills. Faith renews.

If I’m given the choice, the obvious is to choose faith over worry.

Yet I still choose to worry. It seems like it’s hard-wired into my human nature to want to worry and to give into anxiety.

Let’s just call worry what it really is– unbelief.

I need to repent every time I give into worry and pray for God to grant me faith to believe.

I’m not saying I’m 100% there, but I’m closer today than I was yesterday.

So to recap: remember those wildflowers and sparrows and choose faith over worry.

The end.

 

Being Present to the Present

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sunrise_earth

A few years ago, I bought a set of DVDs called Sunrise Earth. They are exactly what you think they are. Each program is 50 minutes of spectacular sunrises in some of the most beautiful places in the U.S., captured without any additional music or commentary. In short, the filmmakers let nature speak for itself.

I confess that I haven’t really watched any of these until very recently. I even forgot I had them.

But I rediscovered them and found myself watching the beauty of nature unfold. Instantly, I was in North Maine at Kidney Pond, watching a mother moose with her calf cavorting in the water. I could literally feel my blood pressure falling and a feeling of calm and serenity coming over me.

I confess. Too often, I don’t see the nature in front of me because I’m too focused on where I have to be on Wednesday or something coming up on Sunday. I fret and I worry about what may or may not happen in the future or what could or should have happened in the past.

I can’t change either one of those. I can choose to live in this present moment and be alive to all that God is unveiling before me. I can choose to look out my window and see the sunset (or God forbid, actually forklift myself out of bed at the ungodly crack of dawn to witness a sunrise).

I can also choose to be thankful for the moment I’m living in. I can decide that I don’t want to be so obsessed over the future and the past that I miss this present. Jesus said that tomorrow will take care of itself. And that God will take care of you when that tomorrow comes. It won’t make one bit of difference if you worry or not, because fretting over the future won’t change one iota of it.

So I’m going to continue to be a broken record and say that I want to be fully present to where God has me right now, whether it’s everything I hoped it would be or not. I can look down at empty hands and see all that I am missing out on or I can see those hands as ready to receive all that God is preparing for me in a future that is so much bigger and wilder than anything I could ever dream of on my own. It’s all about my perspective.

It’s my choice. It’s your choice, too.

 

Real Love

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I’d like to preface this by confessing my lack of expertise in this area, but here goes.

I think true love doesn’t always look like it does in the movies.

It’s not as dramatic and there’s usually no orchestra playing a grand theme in the background when it happens.

There may or may not be butterflies and it may or may not happen in an instant, though I’m inclined to believe that the best of true loves happen gradually over time as friends realize that they are in love with each other.

Sometimes, I think people miss true love because they expect it to be like it is in those rom-com movies and in those Nicholas Sparks books and in all those love songs.

I’m not saying that movie-love never ever happens outside of the movies, but more that it isn’t the norm.

Love isn’t a feeling as much as it is an act of the will. A choice. A commitment to seek the welfare of the beloved regardless of whether you feel like it or not. And the feelings will come and go. You will probably fall in and out of love many times but you can always choose to love consistently through it all. Sometimes you have to act loving and do loving things before the loving feeling comes.

As I understand it, love isn’t easy. Love takes work. It takes dying to your own needs sometimes and putting the other’s needs above yours. It takes dying to your ways of doing things and your perceptions about how those things ought to be done.

I think it’s okay to watch those Hallmark movies or listen to those love songs as long as you don’t confuse them for reality. Real love isn’t as flowery or poetic but in the end, it’s something far more grand.

Never forget that real love led a Man to a Cross to be tortured and bleed and die for you and me. Real love said that no price was too high to win your heart. To win my heart.

That, my friends, is real love.

A Beautiful Borrowed Lenten Prayer

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Nouwen

 

I found this Lenten prayer from Henri Nouwen when checking my email. I’m subscribed to a site that sends me a daily quote of his because I am a huge fan of his writing. This one spoke powerfully to me and echoed my own thoughts better than I could ever express them. It seems very appropriate for this Ash Wednesday.

“The Lenten season begins. It is a time to be with you, Lord, in a special way, a time to pray, to fast, and thus to follow you on your way to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, and to the final victory over death.

I am still so divided. I truly want to follow you, but I also want to follow my own desires and lend an ear to the voices that speak about prestige, success, pleasure, power, and influence. Help me to become deaf to these voices and more attentive to your voice, which calls me to choose the narrow road to life.

I know that Lent is going to be a very hard time for me. The choice for your way has to be made every moment of my life. I have to choose thoughts that are your thoughts, words that are your words, and actions that are your actions. There are not times or places without choices. And I know how deeply I resist choosing you.

Please, Lord, be with me at every moment and in every place. Give me the strength and the courage to live this season faithfully, so that, when Easter comes, I will be able to taste with joy the new life that you have prepared for me. Amen.”

I could only add that God would give me the discipline to take the time I normally spend on social media and use it to delve into His Word and not just read words but to have my mind and heart transformed by what I read.

 

My Prayer Life

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praying-cat

I went to part one of a conference about Spiritual Practices. The guy who spoke focused on the discipline of prayer.

I have to be honest. Most of the time, I suck at prayer. When I try to pray early in the morning, I fall asleep. My mind wanders. I end up thinking about anything and everything but God.

One of the good takeaways (so far) from this conference is the idea of praying through the Bible, specifically the Psalms. It’s a good way to literally pray God’s Word back to Him and to keep your mind from wandering. It also keeps you from falling into rote prayers where you pray those same old tired cliches and phrases you’ve always prayed because you don’t know what else to pray, i.e. “Bless my family, bless my dog, etc.”

The point is to keep praying and not give up. It’s called a discipline because it takes effort and time. No one is born spouting off beautiful prayers. Everyone has to learn and everyone has to start somewhere.

Just because you’re not an expert at something is not a reason to quit. Besides, you become an expert only after you’ve put in 10,000  hours at something. At least that’s what I’ve read somewhere. The point is that it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of looking (and sounding) foolish.

Think of someone learning to play an instrument. At first, it sounds like an animal is being tortured to death and needs to be put out of its misery. But eventually you get better. But not by giving up after a few off-notes.

Jesus didn’t teach us to pray perfectly or even to pray well. He just said to pray. Other parts of the Bible tell us to pray boldly, without ceasing, and with confidence.

So take it from this guy. I’m still learning to pray and probably will be for the rest of my life. But the good thing is that it doesn’t take eloquence and perfect theology for God to hear. It just takes a sincere heart and a willing spirit.

That’s all.