The Message

Prayer and the Pray-er

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“Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good” (Romans 8:26-28, The Message).

Sometimes I feel like I should be a much better pray-er by now. I’ve had enough practice and amassed all this spiritual knowledge, yet when I actually take the time to pray in private, I get distracted and my mind wanders and I occasionally fall asleep.

I read about all these spiritual giants who would spend hours upon hours in prayer, yet for me even five minutes in dedicated prayer seems like an eternity.

Tonight, I was reminded that sometimes the truest prayers look and sound a lot like sighs and groans. Sometimes, the most spiritual kind of prayer is to confess your complete and utter helplessness to express what’s in your heart, knowing the Holy Spirit is able to translate those inaudible (and sometimes audible) yearnings into prayers that the Father hears.

I’ve mentioned before that sometimes the three best prayers are “Help,” “Thanks,” and “Wow.” Anne Lamott wrote an entire book about those prayers and I confess at times, those are the only words I can muster to express what’s in my heart.

It’s not my great faith in God that sustains me but rather my faith in a great big God that has carried me through seasons of so-called self-sufficiency and seasons of complete God-dependence.

On a side note: today is the seventh anniversary of my very first blog post all the way back in 2010. On another side note, I originally wrote that it was the sixth anniversary before my internal editor caught the mistake.

Thank you, God, that you are more faithful to me than I am to you, and that my destiny isn’t based on my faith in You but in Your faith in me.

 

At the End of the Day

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At the end of the day, I’m well spent.

I’m still a little heart-sore over my little departed fur baby Lucy. It’s an ache that I know will never fully go away, but it comes with lots of memories that I wouldn’t trade for the world.

I’m worn out from hoofing it all over downtown Franklin after a full day of work. I’m especially looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow with no 5 am wake-up call to interrupt my dreams.

Overall, I’m still blessed. I’m even thankful for the rain for making me appreciate sunshine all the more.

“At day’s end I’m ready for sound sleep,
For you, God, have put my life back together” (Psalm 4:8, The Message).

What You’re For

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I’m remembering something Uncle Mike (known to the non-Kairos folks as Dr. Mike Glenn, pastor of Brentwood Baptist Church) said a few years back.

He said that it seems lately that Christians are known for what they are against. You name it, they’re against it. He went on to say that at his old church, they’d get together and celebrate the fact that they hadn’t done anything that week.

It’s good to have convictions and standards. It’s good to speak up for what you believe in. To be silent about the things that matter to you is to give consent.

But I wonder if we haven’t fallen into that old trap again about being known more for what we’re against rather than what we’re for.

Here’s a few suggestions of what we can loudly proclaim that we’re for:

  1. Grace. No one deserves it, but grace is open and available to anyone. Even the Donald Trumps of the world? Yes. Even to the Hillary Clintons? Yes. Jesus died for these and for all.
  2. Life. Not just the unborn and not just Americans. All life matters because all life is sacred and every human being bears the Imago Dei, the image of God, whether Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, Christian or Muslim.
  3. Love. Not just for those who treat you right and who always agree with you. Jesus said to love your enemies, even those on the opposite end of the political spectrum.
  4. God. There is still no one too lost or too far gone or too past hope for God to reach down and redeem and save to the uttermost. Not even you.

As always, speak the truth but speak it in love and never in an insulting or demeaning way. The people who disagree with us are not our enemies– the battle isn’t against flesh and blood but against those spiritual forces that Paul talked about. Abba’s children should never stoop to mocking or belittling others.

“We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love” (1 Corinthians 13:12-13, The Message).

Living Letters

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“Does it sound like we’re patting ourselves on the back, insisting on our credentials, asserting our authority? Well, we’re not. Neither do we need letters of endorsement, either to you or from you. You yourselves are all the endorsement we need. Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God’s living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it.

We couldn’t be more sure of ourselves in this—that you, written by Christ himself for God, are our letter of recommendation. We wouldn’t think of writing this kind of letter about ourselves. Only God can write such a letter. His letter authorizes us to help carry out this new plan of action. The plan wasn’t written out with ink on paper, with pages and pages of legal footnotes, killing your spirit. It’s written with Spirit on spirit, his life on our lives!” (2 Corinthians 3:1-6, The Message).

Two questions continue to haunt me from this morning’s sermon by Sean MacNally at The Church at Avenue South: 1) What kind of letter are you? 2) Who is reading you?

I can only hope that my letter is a letter full of both grace and truth. I hope that people who read my life will know that their stories don’t have to end with ashes and tears but that there is hope for a new start and a better ending.

As for the second question, I believe that there’s always someone watching you. Someone out there hears you say that you’re a Christian and pays attention to see if your lifestyle matches your testimony. What are they seeing?

I still love what Dwight Moody said. For every one person who picks up and reads a Bible, there will be ten who will read the Christian. What kind of gospel will they find? What will they learn about the Jesus– not the Jesus you talk about but the Jesus you emulate by your daily words and actions?

These are questions that I hope linger in my mind for a while. May they be more than nice sentiments but the keys to real and lasting transformation.

 

Finding Rest for Your Souls

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“We overvalue nonessentials like a nicer car or house, or even intangibles like the number of our followers on Twitter or the way we look in our Facebook photos. As a result, we neglect activities that are truly essential, like spending time with our loved ones, or nurturing our spirit, or taking care of our health” (Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less).

Tonight’s topic at Kairos was keeping the Sabbath.

It was not the usual guilt trip about how you shouldn’t go to Wal-Mart on Sunday or how if you skip church you must be a heathen pagan.

It was more about how God designed the seventh day for rest. Not merely sleeping in one day a week (though that is a good thing in my opinion) but truly resting in body, mind, and spirit.

Chris Brooks, the Kairos pastor, pointed out that we don’t rest from our work as much as we work from our rest. Interestingly enough, the Hebrew word for work can also be translated as worship, so even our labors can have an element of rest in them if we view our jobs as offerings of worship rather than just tasks and to-do-lists.

I still love what Macrina Wiederkehr said: “Work is love made visible.” When we see that our job isn’t something we endure to get to Friday, but an act of worship and a demonstration of love, then it becomes less of an ordeal and more of a joy.

In a world where busyness is glorified and justified and promoted, God says to rest. God says that you can get more done in six days with a day set aside for rest than you can by charging ahead full speed for seven days without a break.

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly” (Jesus, Matthew 11:28-30, The Message).

Keep Your Eyes on Jesus

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“Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!” (Hebrews 12:1-3, The Message).

Keep your eyes on Jesus. That’s the key.

For me, if I look around me and compare myself with others, I either get despondent and envious or I get self-righteous with a false sense of superiority. It doesn’t end well.

If I look at my circumstances, I get overwhelmed. I don’t have a good enough perspective on the big picture to understand my present situation.

I feel like Bilbo from The Hobbit sometimes. In one scene, the dwarves ask him to climb a tree to see how near they are to the edge of the forest. Bilbo obliges, only to see an endless sea of trees. If he had only found a taller tree to climb, he might have found that they were much closer to the end than they imagined.

Keeping your eyes on Jesus is seeing your life from the absolute best vantage point. You realize that it’s not really about you after all but that you get to be a part of what Jesus is doing, and that’s huge. Remember, you may not feel like much of anything, but Jesus still chose you to be not just on His side but to be the very means He uses to turn the upside down world right side up again.

Keep your eyes on Jesus.

 

 

Feeling SUPER

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“For God’s Word is solid to the core; everything he makes is sound inside and out. He loves it when everything fits, when his world is in plumb-line true. Earth is drenched in God’s affectionate satisfaction” (Psalm 33:4-5 MSG).

I have mixed emotions about the outcome of Super Bowl LI. I was rooting for the Atlanta Falcons and hoping they could hold on and pull out the victory, but I was also very impressed by the poise and experience displayed by the New England Patriots in engineering the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history.

It’s probably a good thing I’m not a betting man. I’d have lost big time.

For me, the real victory is knowing that God is with me, for me, and in me.

He’s with me because He has told me that He would never leave me nor forsake me. That’s written down where I can read it and be reminded of it every day.

He’s for me. He promised He would finish the good work He started in me. That’s also written down for me for when I get forgetful and discouraged.

He’s in me. John 14:23 says that whoever loves God and keeps His commandments will be indwelled by all three members of the trinity. It’s not my own strength that will carry me through, but God’s power dwelling in me that enables me to live right and love well.

I’m happy for Tom Brady on winning his fifth Super Bowl. I also hope that he finds the ultimate victory when he comes to know and trust Jesus as his Lord and Savior (if he hasn’t already).

PS The best part about any Super Bowl party for me is always the snacks, and they were stellar. I probably need to go on a water and celery diet after to make up for all the calories I consumed, but they were delicious.

 

 

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I have friends that are dealing with health issues. I have friends who are walking through that dark valley of the shadow of death in grieving over a loved one. So many are struggling through finances, stress, anxiety, and depression.

Sometimes, life can seem overwhelming. It’s hard to look five years down the road when it’s all you can do to breathe in and breathe out and make it through the next five minutes.

The good news is that you can say with confidence, no matter what, “Whatever my problems and no matter how big and insurmountable they seem, my God is bigger. My God is able.”

Struggles are temporary. Even the worst of days only last 24 hours. God is eternal. His promises are true through all seasons and through every passing emotion.

Sitting in the doctor’s office facing the worst possible scenario is scary, but God’s perfect love still casts out all fear. The God who brought you this far in your journey will be faithful to get you through even the darkest and most terrifying circumstances.

Even in those moments, there is nothing that God can’t redeem and turn into something good and glorious. Not even death, for to live is Christ and to die is gain. It’s a win-win.

The Apostle Paul walked through every kind of trial and suffering both from within and without, yet was able to pen some of the most hopeful words ever written not because of a great big faith in God but because of faith in a great big God:

“I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us” (Romans 8:38-39, The Message).

 

Love Like That

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“Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that” (Ephesians 5:1-2 MSG).

Love like that.

It’s so easy to type out but so very difficult to live out. In fact, it’s impossible.

It’s impossible to love the way God does, especially if you’re working purely on your own strength.

The only way to love like God loves is that you must first open yourself up to receive God’s love freely and unhindered. As my pastor once said, trying to contain the love of God is like trying to contain the ocean in a thimble. It will spill out.

That’s how you love like God loves. It’s from the overflow of God’s love for you.

My prayer for you is that you can stop trying to earn or deserve God’s love but instead simply stretch out your hands and receive it.

Once you understand God loves you not because of your worthiness but in spite of your unworthiness, once you realize the nature of His unconditional love for you, it frees you to love even the most unlovable people (even the Trumps and/or Clintons, depending on your political persuasion).

One day, they might very well say about you, “I know and believe God’s love for me because I have seen in in you.”

That’s the best kind of love.

“The love for equals is a human thing–of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing–the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing–to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy–love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world” (Frederich Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat).

Finding Rest for Your Souls

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“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly” (Matthew 11:28-30, The Message).

That’s the key. That’s how you can navigate through a busy life without becoming harried and hurried.

I heard today how Pastor John Ortberg had become overwhelmed with busyness and asked his mentor, Dallas Willard, what to do. Willard’s response was simple: “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”

The key is to define yourself in terms not of your performance but in your identity as one dearly loved by Jesus. Once you work from your true identity and not for a false one, everything changes.

It’s good to create margins in your schedule and take seasons of rest and rejuvenation. Sleep is good. Naps are good. Finding a hobby that inspires and relaxes you is good.

The point is that none of us were ever meant to go nonstop 24/7. That’s not a sustainable way of life. Being in a hurry all the time actually causes you to get less done and to miss out on so much that’s important in your life.

I love the way one writer puts it:

“It’s ironic that in a culture so committed to saving time we feel increasingly deprived of the very thing we value. … Despite our alleged efficiency … we seem to have less time for ourselves and far less time for each other. … We have quickened the pace of life only to become less patient. We have become more organized but less spontaneous, less joyful. We are better prepared to act on the future but less able to enjoy the present and reflect on the past” (Jeremy Rifkin).