VillagePastor

Idols on the Court

Every now and then, I am captured by a story in Sports Illustrated. I enjoy sports a lot, having played them in high school and college, as well as watched hours of sports with my dad and son. I particularly love the stories of champions. This specific story, however, was not so inspiring. It was an excerpt from Andre Agassi’s new book, and it reveals what happens when people center their whole lives on a sport—in this case, tennis.

 

I’m well acquainted with the emotions of this sport, having played it for forty-seven years, and still playing competitively. At times I have loved it. At other times, it takes everything in me to get on the court. But nothing in my emotions has ever approached the level of Agassi, who grew to hate it. As he put it, “I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have.”

 

This hate grew out of an obsessed father, who forced Agassi at a very young age to face a ball machine and hit up to a million tennis balls a year. I grew up on a tennis court as well, but I was graced with a father who encouraged, but never forced me. My ball machine, as a kid, was a tennis coach by the name of Wilbur Folsom. Every Saturday, I would meet him at Helix High School, and he would hit balls to me in every part of the court. Like an old school English teacher, grounding students in the basics of verbs and nouns, Folsom grounded me in the fundamentals of forehands and backhands. He was not so impressive in appearance, especially because he had little mobility. Struck by a car earlier in his life, he had lost his left leg, and so he would drag himself on the court, stand at the net, and toss balls. But he could coach, coaching so well in fact, that he influenced a number of top tennis players in San Diego during the fifties and sixties. His trophy was Maureen Connally, who won nine major singles championships.

 

Maybe I am impacted by Agassi’s story because I have played tennis for so many years. Maybe because I have met a number of parents like his, who have made the sport more about them and their own needs for accomplishment than their kid’s. Agassi’s story shows the ugliness of idols. His father’s idol was tennis, and he did what lots of idolaters do—sacrifice their children on the altar. Tennis ended up so consuming, defining Agassi, that, as he put it, he had no idea who he was. There is a melancholy in the story, the result of what happens when one takes some incomplete joy in this world and builds a whole life on it. It speaks powerfully to the nature of idols, their bloodthirstiness and impossibility to appease; hence, the tendency to ultimately hate. Even Agassi’s father came to the place of hating tennis just as Agassi was hanging it up.

 

In his latest book, Counterfeit Gods, Tim Keller speaks powerfully to all of this. How do we spot them?  Keller says to look for what controls your thinking. Identify those thoughts you effortlessly go to when there is nothing else demanding attention. Take inventory of those things that take on a disproportionate size. All of us have gods who compete with the Living God, gods we go after and serve. For Tiger Woods, it is probably golf. For our culture today, it might be fame. One writer recently suggested 2009 will go down as the year we sold our souls to fame, what with Octomom, Balloon Boy, and WH Gate Crashers. For an increasing number, fame is not only everything—but the only thing. And when that happens, the heart is overcome with idolatry.

SEIZING MOMENTS

It’s Wednesday, time to write a blog, and I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to reflect on something we celebrated last Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. It was far more than a remembrance of Plymouth Rock. One year ago, Thanksgiving night, we returned home from dinner and experienced an event that we will never forget. Heather came in the bedroom, complaining of a headache that suddenly came on, moving with such force she went into convulsions and became unconscious. After dialing 911, emergency crews were at our home in minutes. What followed were two intense weeks in ICU, lots and lots of prayers, followed by a brief time in rehab, and then home to recover from a subarachnoid hemorrhage.  

We are still amazed at the goodness of God. Heather quickly regained her form. By March, she was back, keeping up with a demanding schedule as a public school teacher. We’ve traveled throughout the Middle East and Europe since then, kayaked some great rivers, and lived fairly normal lives. This weekend, we will celebrate 34 years together. A year ago, I was making trips back and forth to St Vincent Hospital. This past Sunday, I was putting up the Christmas lights.

Someone has asked how life has changed since our personal 911. I’m not sure it has changed that much. And maybe that is a testimony to the fact things moved to near normalcy pretty quickly, which, given the prognosis of aneurisms, was a miracle. Heather’s a bit more tentative. But who would not be?  I ruptured my Achilles tendon three years ago on a tennis court, and there is hardly a moment I don’t think about it when I play competitively. There is a greater sensitivity to light, noise, and certainly wariness when headaches come on. But life has moved on.

What we both know, far more deeply, is that life is terribly short. The important thing is to live each day to the maximum—not squander the days. As McManus puts it in his Seizing Your Divine Moment, “Moments move in a timely manner, and time waits for no one. Though it may seem to be the case, time never stands still. And like petals of a rose, moments fall to the ground once there is no life in them. Moments are to be treasured.”

On a reading note, I have discovered some good reads as of late. They are noted in the margin. I highly recommend Just Listen, especially if you are having trouble getting through to someone. I’m just into Keller’s new work on idols, and it is an important book for our times. On the periodical side, Time’s recent article on our decade from hell is worth pondering. The mess in our culture has a lot to do with the idols we have made and serve. Just ask Tiger Woods. Atlantic Monthly’s cover article, suggesting Christians are to blame for the recent recession, reminds me of the Roman era, when the early church was blamed for much of the world’s ills. Could this be the beginning?

I’m still getting use to my Kindle. I love the immediacy of books I can read. I like reading from the screen—easier to me than pages from a book. But there’s something about a book, its cover, the way you can mark it up and go back to over and over again. My Kindle will never replace books, but it is becoming a great complement.

 

Annual ETS Awards

Coming back from theological meetings in New Orleans, it's time for my annual ETS awards, given to the most irrelevant (if one goes by the titles) papers presented. As far as I know, they could be some of the most fascinating, life changing, soul searching works ever presented by scholars—but I have serious doubts. So here they are:

• “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Presuppositionalism, Circular Reasoning, and the Charge of Fideism”
• “The Contribution of Pente-Hexoglossia to an Understanding of the Nature of NT Greek with Implications for Exegesis”
• “A Newish Argument Against Humanism”
• “Reconsidering the Archaeology and Boundaries of Urartu”
• “Theodicy in Romans: An Inter-textual Exploration of Romans 1 and the Habakkuk Targum”

Missing were some of the more interesting ones like last year’s—

• “Would Jesus Eat a Whopper?”
• “Castration for the Kingdom”

My own contribution to all of this was a paper I presented entitled: “Is Apostolic Leadership the Key to the Missional Church?” (Attached to this blog if you want to read). Somewhere, this title has probably made the irrelevant list of some blogger (who is probably a Semitic scholar or member of a philosophical society). If I stayed on for a broader set of theological meetings, I may have heard a paper on Wiccans and their parallel work with ancient OT priests.

What amazes me most are not the papers but the presentations themselves. How 1500 educators can be so oblivious to any pedagogical rules is beyond me. Flight attendant instructions before take-off can be scintillating by comparison. There seems to be a number of unwritten rules in force. Here are some—

1. Read every word, line by line, droning on in a dull, monotonous voice.
2. Avoid any gestures, facial expressions, or variance in tones—especially if they might enhance communication and engage the listener.
3. Do not make eye contact with your audience, as this could suggest you are aware they are there.
4. Use long, obscure words wherever possible.
5. Attempt to use the whole time allotted for reading so as to avoid time for questions that might challenge any conclusions.
6. In the event a question slips in, try to be vague in your response, suggesting that your answer transcends the question.
7. Any annoying habits (going up an octave), looking at the back of the room, wearing a tie from the 60’s—are all encouraged.
8. Refrain from humor. Theological academicians would not get it anyway.
9. Treat those who disagree as idiots from another planet.
10. Select a title no one would understand or find relevant.

They are not all this bad. Some are actually amazing, but it can be like finding a piece of antique furniture in an old warehouse. Hence, I will probably submit to this exercise again next year, and submit others to the similar pain they have inflicted on me.

Dinner with GMAC

Two nights ago, I had the privilege of having dinner with Gordon MacDonald. His writings have had a significant influence on me, beginning with Ordering Your Private World. It’s the second time I have personally spent time with him, and it was the most meaningful.

 

There was a time I was angry with MacDonald. For a number of us pastors in our earlier years of ministry, Gordon was a pastor’s pastor. He always brought us back to center, with such books as Ordering and Restoring Your Spiritual Passion. The Effective Father was a constant reference point for Father’s Day sermons, as well as my own initial days as a father. His numerous articles, always filled with wisdom, were a must read. He once gave me a grid for defining people in my church (Very Resourceful People to Very Dependent People), and I have used it ever since.

 

But with MacDonald’s moral failure in the 80’s, I felt betrayed. It was just earlier that my own spiritual father, who brought me to Christ and invited me into ministry, had been exposed for a different moral failure. He led a thriving parachurch ministry during the day and frequented gay bars at night. It was a double blow, and I almost contemplated looking for another profession.

 

What I so deeply respect about Gordon today was that he went through a profound repentance and restoration. My spiritual father never seemed to own up to his failures, and lived a kind of cover up until the day he died of AIDS. Gordon submitted to his leadership, stepped back and allowed God to heal him, and renewed his relationship with his wife. In the process, he showed us all how to face up to a poor decision and experience the God of second chances. To this day, MacDonald’s Rebuilding Your Broken World sits on my bookshelf as a constant reference, for as he rightly puts it, all of us are broken world people. So when he writes about “pastorable moments”, or spins a tale in Who Stole My Church, I read them. He is still pastoring me.

 

We talked about lots of things Monday night, ranging from Bill Clinton and Thomas Friedman, to parenting, marriage, church trends, retirement, travel, and sports. It is rare in these days to sit down with someone of depth, who reads widely, thinks deeply, and exhibits warmth and grace. It is one of the perks of leading a doctoral ministry—to invite the people I have always wanted to meet to teach a doctoral seminar, and then share a meal with them. He is living out what Bobby Clinton refers to as a leader’s “Afterglow” period, when a life well lived pours out wisdom for those who will follow. It’s a reminder that failure is not falling down. It is falling down and not getting back up. I’m grateful MacDonald is up and still running.  

Rethinking Success

In his latest book, ChurchMorph, Eddie Gibbs identifies the megatrends in ministry, how different ecclesial communities are redefining church. It is another reminder of how turbulent is our age, how much church is changing, ministries are reconfiguring. A fair amount of this is driven by the need to more effectively reach a lost world. Some of it is moved by a desire to be successful. I believe pastors are no different from anyone else. It’s in our nature to want to succeed. No one wants to fail. So books like Gladwell’s Outliers are hugely popular. We like to discover that which explains extraordinary human achievement. We want to achieve, successfully provide leadership, be it in a corporation, on a team, or in a church.

 

This is all on mind today because I am talking to my students about assessing ministry. It’s not an easy subject. I just know that if we are not careful, we can get terribly off course. Years ago, I went on a morning run with Kent Hughes, and he confirmed a story he had written in Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome. It began with the account of a pastor who one day borrowed a truck, backed it up to his church office, impassively threw his office furniture and entire library into the bed of the truck, and drove some miles to a city dump, where he tossed it all unto the awaiting piles of garbage—rotting melons, dead rodents, and discarded vacuum bags. It was his way of putting behind his overwhelming sense of failure. He never returned to ministry.

 

My guess is, with all the movement in ministry today, there are a lot of pastors with similar temptations. And maybe like this pastor, they are operating from misguided measurements. Hughes wrote the book out of his own experience and temptation to do the same thing. He was set apart to lead a daughter church, for he was a young up and comer, and everything pointed to success. But it turned out to be a failure, and it led to a dark night of the soul. But out of the ashes, he came to grips with a clearer theological assessment of success and failure. And though his book was written over 21 years ago, his words are as timely and needed as ever.

 

How does one measure success in life? In ministry? Is it even appropriate to aim for success?  Some in ministry automatically assume that ambition of any sort is of the flesh. But you can’t get away from the fact that God invites us to dream (Ecc. 11), to live an abundant life (John 10:10), as well as seek His blessing (I Chron. 4:9-10). Lot’s of people gravitated to the Jabez prayer phenomenon, and I would guess it centered around a passion for God’s favor, for a larger world, and yes, for success.

 

But here’s what we cannot overlook—

First, Scripture makes it clear that promotion is God’s prerogative, for God’s purposes, in God’s way (I Peter 5:6). There was a moment God lifted up Joshua, but this is God’s doing, not ours. It’s up to Him to do the lifting, as well as the putting down.

 

Second, while we should be about measuring success, the reality is that you cannot measure with the same precision of business. It’s not to say that ministry shouldn’t have some criteria. There’s no virtue in not holding ourselves accountable. But just finishing Jeremiah, I am reminded again, that by earthly standards, he would have been considered a failure. Next to no one took his calling seriously, and almost no one listened to him. Isaiah was warned, in his calling, that he would speak to an unresponsive generation. They remind us that growth in numbers does not automatically assume a thing.

 

Many of the early church fathers, for all of their greatness, did not die with the most toys. Gregory, the great bishop of Cappadocia, died alone, considering himself a failure. John Chrysostom, the greatest preacher of his day, died in a rain ditch. Martin Bucer, the formidable reformer, was thrown out by his people, and died in exile. The apostle Paul, for all of his success, considered himself the scum of the earth.

 

Third, the longer I am in ministry, the more God changes my misguided assumptions of success, and places far more important questions in front of me—

-first—for my life—

  -have I been faithful?

  -did I declare everything God called me to declare?

  -did I follow the Spirit’s leading and step into what He is doing?

  -have I completed what God called for me to complete?

 

-second—for my ministry—

  -is this a community where I can confess my sin?

  -is this a place where one hears God’s word?

  -is this a place where prayer is taken seriously?

  -is this a place that cares if I am sick?

  -is this a place markedly different from the world?

 

(A lot of the other stuff does not matter so much anymore)

 

Finally, I continue to be warned that success, for all of its blessings, can be one of God’s greatest tests. Tough times can do us in, but good times, successful ministries, can be more dangerous. Proverbs 27:21 suggests that success may be our hottest crucible, our more severe test. As I watch the lives of successful people, all too many end up imploding. Like rivers that expand, they all too often break the levy and do lots of damage. They stand as a warning to be careful what I want.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Working With Ideas

Mostly I blog about things I am reading, ideas that are shaping my world. I have to stay at reading, lest my conversation descends merely to events or people. Not that events or people are unimportant; but ideas are what keep our conversations at the higher level, keep them full of life. There’s nothing more energizing than to be in a conversation, like yesterday with Alan Hirsch (author of Forgotten Ways), talking about the kind of leadership that is necessary to create tomorrow’s missional church.

 

Hirsch, and others-like fellow author Michael Frost-are passionate to see the church embrace the right leadership. Leaders create a culture, an atmosphere, a “field”, so it is critical the missional church is led by missional leadership. For Hirsch and Frost, this means recovering the five gifted leaders mentioned in Ephesians 4. Churches are typically run by pastors and teachers, but without apostolic and prophetic and evangelistic types, the church tends to become insular, building up but not stretching out. He may have a point. I am actually spending a significant part of my time this Fall assessing his model and presenting a paper (hence my sporadic blogging).

 

It is their conviction that unleashing all five are necessary to keeping the church from devolving into an institution, keeping white hot convictions from cooling down into crystallized codes and petrified dogmas. Every organization needs an apostolic type—a pioneer, an entrepreneur—who sees beyond the horizon, sees the next hill. This is why I like to go to Beirut every year. Grant Porter, former head of OM, is an apostolic type. We sit overlooking a valley, and he sees the next region that must be reached for the kingdom of God. He’s hard wired that way. Me? I like to think out there like him, but a lot of my heart is back in Bekka Valley, figuring out how to help believers go deep. It’s my pastor/teacher coming out.

 

Lord knows we also need prophetic types to round out leadership. But the church can be less embracive of them as well. I am reading the fascinating life of Winston Churchill, and I am discovering that, like almost all prophets, he was not generally liked. In the 30’s, with Hitler ascending into power, he often spoke in the House to empty seats. England was not ready for him. As he put it, “the forces of apathy, of willful myopia and of general delusion in high places were too strong for us”. His only hope was that England would awaken before it was too late. Maybe some leaders will die in office, and if they do, his best advice was “embalm, bury, cremate. Take no chances!”  Like most prophets, Churchill could see into the future, and warned England of the inevitable dark clouds (sort of like what Jeremiah did with Israel). Despite the criticisms, he remained faithful to the cadence of his own drummer. He feared those in the lead were dead. All the way back to his childhood, he had memorized the lines—

 

“Who is in charge of the clattering train?

The axles creak and the couplings strain;

And the pace is hot, and the points are near,

And sleep has deadened the driver’s ear;

And the signals flash through the night in vain,

For Death is in charge of the clattering train”

 

The church needs the same types—people who will tell us what we need to hear—not necessarily what we want to hear. Help us see the clouds on the horizon—awaken us out of any apathy.

 

And in our day, we need leaders with the heart of evangelism; those not so interested in the next mountain, or taking people deep, or speaking “Thus saith the Lord” language. Rather, they are mainly interested in pouring their lives into people with the aim of seeing the lost come to Christ. And doing it with the kind of passion that emboldens the rest of us. And while pastors and teachers lead numerous churches, we still need an emergence of those who take the gift of leadership serious, who value both reaching in and reaching out.

 

What is intriguing with Hirsch’s concept is that he believes each one of these ministry gifts provide an ethos for the next. The apostle creates the context for the prophet, who does this for the evangelist, who does this for the pastor, who does this for the teacher. It makes great sense. What it exactly looks like, I am not so certain. But I am curious to figure it out. Whether one agrees, ideas are what keep us moving forward.

 

Missional Begins with Amazement

I am currently challenging our church, out of Acts, to be a missional people. Yesterday, I shared a bit of the story of Susan Atkins. It actually began several weeks ago, when I happened to see a documentary on the Manson Murders. I did not stay with it too long, for it was a horrific account of the depravity of man.

Maybe it is why I could not help but notice the obituary in the most recent issue of The Week, entitled “The Manson Family Member Who Murdered Sharon Tate .” It recounted the story of Susan Atkins, who died in prison, on September 24, of brain cancer. 

The article noted that, for most of her life, Atkins lived as a troubled woman. Her mom died of cancer, and her father was an alcoholic. She was left to make it on her own, working as a topless dancer among other things. Sadly she got caught up with Charles Manson, and with him and others, participated in some of the most grisly slayings in the annals of crime. Their aim was to create havoc, make a “major assault” on society, and for a brief time in L.A., they did.

Eventually they were all arrested. At her sentencing, Atkins showed no remorse, warning those in the courtroom they best keep their doors locked. She was arrogant and defiant as she entered prison. And I would guess many who suffered because of her were determined that she would never get released, and once she died would be consigned to the deepest pit of hell. As it turned out, she was denied parole eleven times, and ended up being California’s longest serving female inmate. As one put it, she paid substantially—though not completely—for her horrendous crimes.

What made Atkins’ story so compelling to me had little to do with her awful choices. It was the remarkable experience she had while in prison. As the article puts it, “Atkins eventually apologized, denounced Manson, and embraced Christianity.” And while prison is the story of many “jailhouse conversions” that end up going nowhere, Atkins apparently lived out her faith, giving herself to the things that mattered the most—working with at risk youth, victims of violent crime, as well as homeless kids. But what struck me the most were her last public words—“My God is an amazing God!”  She obviously came to grips with this—Someone else paid substantially and completely for her sins. And she could never get over this.

I mention all of this because, as I shared yesterday, I wonder how many of us in Christ have gotten over our forgiveness. Reading her last words, I found myself asking, “Would these be my last words? Is there still this awe that God has paid completely for my failures, this amazement that God has an eros sort of love for me (Willimon’s recent book on Salvation is so helpful here). Or like a park ranger who becomes bored with his assignment at the Grand Canyon, have I lost sight of my surroundings?” 

It may, more than anything else, explain our failure to share our faith with lost people—those who are still under the weight of guilt. Much of the barrier today with sharing our faith may have little to do with the ability to give rational arguments. It may not even be so much about fear. The real issue may simply be this—we have lost this overwhelming sense of astonishment that God, nonetheless, in spite of our mistakes, has loved, still loves, and will love us. If we can get “over the moon” about this, sharing our faith might have a chance. For at its essence,  evangelism really is overflow. Atkins seemed to get this.

Habits of Spiritual Outliers - Part Two

There are few rigors more demanding than the spiritual discipline of listening for God’s voice, but for me, the practice of speaking to God can be even more challenging. I have a prayer bench I brought back from Europe. I found it at an  antique store my wife and I used to visit in Katwijk. It was back in a corner, under a number of other aged pieces. I like to imagine it came from an old Dutch Reformed church, frequented by some saint with camel like knees. It is now in my study, but all too often, it again sits alone in a corner.

Early in the morning yesterday, before this formidable task of preaching, I used it to pray. I pleaded with God to make the Word fresh, anoint me with His Spirit, and awaken the hearts of our people. But this bench does not get the use it should, it must. Too often, I spend far more time crafting just the right word in a sermon, when it would be better to just stop and talk to God. Maybe it is because there are times I feel I am talking to the air—talking to myself. There are the daily distractions. As Yancey notes, interruptions seem to increase during prayer times—“against all mathematical odds!” 

Prayer is this discipline that requires careful listening, for prayer by nature is responsive speech. Eugene Peterson taught me this. God always has the first word. And because of this, my prayers have become much more meaningful. This morning, I was reading Hezekiah’s desperate prayer in Isaiah 37, and in response I made his prayer my prayer for today (for I too am desperate). “O Lord, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth” (37:16). I don’t usually address God this way, but I did today. Hezekiah was placing God in context, life in context. Suddenly, formidable enemies were not so threatening. My challenges were suddenly not so daunting.

It’s clear Jesus intended prayer to be a practice, one with a certain discipline. Why else would He say, “When you pray”? He seems to be saying that every time you come before God, here is how I want you to approach Me. In contrast to the mindless, perfunctory, ongoing babbling, this is the prayer I long to hear (Matt 6:9-13).

This is so contrary to most prayers I hear, that are pretty random. So much of my former prayers were like those of Matthew 6--a running off of the mouth, thinned out pious clichés, senseless drool. There was no discipline to them. What Jesus gave was an outline of sorts, a spiritual practice for outliers, in which everything we need to bring to God finds its place. It was never intended to become a formality, a ritual on Sunday morning. It is the skeleton that serves to guide our approach. This is the prayer God listens to—

-“Our Father”—starts prayer off in the right direction. God is not a faceless abstraction. Right away, I am reminded prayer is a high personal act.

-“Make Your name sacred”—compels me to set everything in context by first pleading for His reputation to be enhanced in the world that tends to cheapen, trivialize, and abuse the name of God. The imperatival language here and in the following words declare that prayer is to be made with passion.

-“Advance Your kingdom”—sets the agenda for everything else I am concerned about. God, bring something of Your future reign into the present. Though Your kingdom is not here in all of its fullness, grow this tiny seed into an overpowering plant. Use me to expand the realities of Your reign where I live right now! 

-“Accomplish Your will”—sets everything, beginning with my will, in perspective.

-“Give us our daily bread”—reminds me I am dependent upon God for everything. It is in this statement I feel the freedom to bring all of my petitions. There is nothing too small to pray over—for nothing is too big. True prayer acknowledges our nakedness, our need at life’s most basic level—daily bread.

-“Cancel our sins”—helps me to keep short accounts with God. I’m usually in some trouble—some mistaken judgment, some careless word, some foolish expenditure, some relapse to old ways. But it is the other part, “as we forgive others” that draws me up short, forces me to consider who I may be frustrated with, holding back from. I am forced to reconsider my ways.

-“Lead us not into temptation”—brings me back to this important reminder we all are in a war. The greater my spiritual maturity—the more deceptive the adversary becomes. I need God’s leading.

I am still on this journey of prayer.  What gives me hope is God’s grace. What gives me determination to stay at it is this undeniable fact—that apart from this discipline, life just doesn’t work. Ministry loses its power, impulse begins to take over, bad decisions generally follow, and a heart begins to harden.

Marks of An Outlier—Part One

I just finished a summer series on the practices of spiritual outliers, a takeoff from Gladwell’s book, in which he researched the reasons why some people become exceptionally successful people: 

1-CONVICTION-Outliers believe they can do something pretty amazing

2-CONCENTRATION-Outliers are not easily distracted, maintain incredible focus

3-CONTEXT-Outliers are almost always surrounded by a supportive community who encourage and support them

4-OPPORTUNITIES-Outliers have been given some extraordinary moments to seize

5-DISCIPLINE-Outliers devote themselves to a strict set of practices

The same characteristics define those who live extraordinary spiritual lives. Spiritual outliers I have met tend to be confident, focused, supported, opportunistic, and highly disciplined. Paul challenged Timothy to be an outlier of sort when he wrote these words in I Timothy 4:7-8—“Exercise daily in God—no spiritual flabbiness please! Workouts in the gymnasium are useful, but a disciplined life in God is far more so, making you fit both today and forever”(The Message).

I work out four to five times a week, on a tennis court, in a weight room, and in the pool. I have to work around a schedule that is pretty demanding with two jobs. So some mornings begin at 5:30 on a court, and some evenings in a weight room go past 10:00 pm. The older I get, the less and less I like this regimen. But it is critical if I have any hope of accomplishing anything physically. Paul is telling us that it is no different in the spiritual realm. If you want to see God do something significant, if you want to acquire the necessary muscle to get through hard times, it will also require a regimen, a set of spiritual practices.

This summer I looked at a number of spiritual disciplines, many of them practices of the ancient church. Here, and in some future blogs, I would like to share some things that I learned.

The first of the practices, and the necessary start point for all the disciplines, is the discipline of reading Scripture, the practice of listening to God. The routine requires an intentional slowing down. The Word was not given for our perusal, as something to be glanced at like a People Magazine in a doctor’s office. The Word cannot be read with a randomness, nor with a distancing eye. Nor can it be read with an uninvolved ear. Reading that never moves to listening will over time seem lifeless and boring, irrelevant and obligatory. This was all part of the early practice of lectio divina—getting the words off the page—beyond our eyes—into our ears.

For the past twenty five years or so, my discipline has been reading through the One Year Bible. Often, I read like I drive to seminary in the mornings—as fast as the limits will allow. There is a lot of ground to cover each day, if I am to get through this book in a year. But I have stayed with this discipline because my soul needs to be exposed to the whole of the Scripture on a regular basis. The regimen keeps me from missing areas I would otherwise avoid, ignore, overlook (Leviticus, Nahum, Jude).

But the practice of listening to God reminds me that it is not enough to cover ground. Too easily, I read with a distancing eye. The practice of spiritual reading forces me to slow down, get off the freeway and unto the country road, where there are numerous stop signs and other sign posts to pay guide my way. This summer, we drove to Ione, Washington, driving at night in the mountains where there are numerous deer crossing warnings. It required a different kind of driving than the sort earlier in the day on I-84.

It’s the same with Scripture. Numerous things cross the road, turn sideways, require intentional slowing. Lord knows how many things I have run over in the Word, not even looking in my rear view mirror—verses in which God wanted me to come to a full stop, but I did a hit and run. This discipline reminds me that the goal is not so much to get through Scripture—but get the Scripture through me; to move from the distancing eye to the listening ear, to the reflective heart. I need to slow enough to let the word move into the interior, stay at it until it is coursing through my veins. Only then is there any hope that what might have been mere information turns into transformation.

A helpful tool in this discipline is Peterson’s Eat This Book. He brings me back to this reminder, that the aim is to get to the eye, the ear, as well as the mind, the will, and the heart involved. What is read and heard must be savored, chewed, and contemplated. It is when this happens the word “spreads through our blood, and gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son.”

Sometimes it will not sit well. God warned John the apostle-“Take it and eat—it will turn your stomach sour” (Rev 10:10). Not everything will be to our liking. Peterson warns us to have a well-stocked cupboard of Alka-Seltzer and Pepto-Bismol on hand. But everything will be to our growth, to becoming outliers.

 

 

 

Unwinding

Few series have so impacted me as the one I am doing this summer on the spiritual disciplines.  Maybe it is the wide range of themes, from learning how to hear the voice of God to the practice of seizing the moments, to earth keeping, to learning to enter into the practice of celebration, to yesterday’s theme on fasting.  If there is a common thread, is that each spiritual practice is a call to live life wide awake.  There is so much to be alert to.

Two weeks ago, we headed to the Pend Oreille River up in northeast Washington for one last small vacation.  It is here, time stops for me, enabling me to more easily engage in the ancient practices I have been preaching, discerning what is around me.  The listening ear begins to take over the distancing eye, as I read through Ezra during the week.  He was by his own river, the Ahava River, where he humbled himself for his journey. 

You can’t get away from this book without sensing he was a man who heard God’s voice, and no matter what kings he interfaced with, he never lost sight of Who has the power.  It is God who enlarges nations, and it is God who disperses them.  As Job puts it, “He can grant men power to lead, or deprive them of their reason and send them wandering through a trackless waste.”  Getting away can renew one’s sense of the sovereignty of God.

Prayer took on undistracted focus, as I was able to more faithfully practice the discipline of praying through the structure of the Lord’s Prayer.  Nothing helps me pray well like the discipline of using the outline Jesus taught His disciples.  Walking each morning amidst deer and wild Turkey and cows, not to mention the wide range of birds, it was the perfect place to talk to God.  And thinking through earth keeping as a discipline this summer, one gets a better sense of creation’s longing when you are more fully engaged with it.  Even in this pristine place, you know that things are not right.  One of the take-aways from this summer series, I hope, is that we as a church  will become a voice, a model, of what it means to serve and protect the earth.

One day, we took our kayaks and paddled four hours from Metaline Falls to Boundary Dam, flowing with the river northward through a vast gorge that runs along the eastern side of the Selkerk Mountains. It was here I thought once again about another ancient discipline, the practice of seizing the moments God serves up.  New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is currently writing of his experiences in Africa, and today he quoted from his guide:  “If you spend enough time in nature and allow yourself to slow down sufficiently to let your senses work, then through exposure and practice, you will start to sense the meanings in the sand, the grasses, the bushes, the trees, the movement of the breezes, the thickness of the air, the sounds of the creatures and the habits of the animals with which you are sharing that space.”  If we don’t spend the time, we lose this innate ability.  We miss the opportunity.  So I seized the moment to let my senses engage in what was around me, be it a sudden storm we faced, or an amazing lagoon we explored, that felt like being on another planet.  And here’s the meaning—Day to day creation pours forth speech, declaring that God has made everything for His glory (Ps 19).

I found new meaning in the practice of celebration, entering into the joy God serves up.  It would dishonor God to miss it.  C.S. Lewis is right—“Joy is the serious business of heaven.”  And all too many of us do not take His joy serious enough.  We can easily become joy impaired.  Get away, sit by the river with a simple sandwich, and I find myself agreeing with Solomon—“There is nothing better than to eat and drink and find pleasure in one’s work” (Ecc 2:24).  This has to be one of my most favorite spiritual disciplines.

On our last day, some of life’s harsher realities came home to me.  I went on a call with the husband of my cousin.  He is a retired firefighter, and in the years they have lived on the Pend Oreille, he has helped this little community ramp up and become better equipped to handle life’s emergencies.  Like many small towns miles away from anything, Ione has its share.  The long winters can take their toll.  Alcohol and other abuses can take hold.  Kids become bored.  Whether drinking had anything to do with it, we came upon the scene of an ugly accident.  A young man who lived up the road decided to push his car to the limits and failed to navigate a nearby curve.  His truck appeared to have launched like a missile, crashing through the trees and landing upside down.  Nearby was his lifeless body, obviously hurled out of the vehicle.  The town’s cadre of volunteers converged on the scene to help.  It all reminded me that even in an unspoiled forest, life can have its grief.

The practice of fasting is all about entering into what McKnight refers to as sacred, grievous moments.  Life has its share of them.  And in these moments, food would be sacrilegious.  After leaving the scene, I had little appetite.

Here’s what a few days away reminds me—a big part of life is living alert to what God is doing—entering into both the joys and the griefs that life serves up.  There is a time to mourn, a time to dance.  Avoiding both would be to live a deadened life.  To miss these, as well as the rest of the spiritual practices, as Paul reminds us, would be to miss the gymnasium God has for the soul, the place He works to conform us more and more to His likeness (I Tim 4:7).