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| Every now and then I find a blog writer that articulates a lot of ideas and thoughts that I resonate with deeply. Here's one
When I came to know The Lord long ago, my first understanding of the Christian Life was that you “got saved” and sometime later you died and went to heaven. In between the two you tried to “be good”. The problem was (initially at least) that I was no more successful at “being good” after I was saved than before (not that I was ever that bad; but those things I struggle with before I “got saved” were just as much of a problem afterwards). Yet it was also pretty clear to me from reading the Bible that more was expected of me now that I was a Christian. Eventually I came to understand the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian, and by allowing God's Spirit to work in my life I started to see changes and improvements. Thirty years on, I have come to understand that the Christian Life is all about a process of transformation into God’s image. As Paul wrote to the Corinthian church: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness”; or as Paul wrote to the Romans: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” This transformation is not something I do under my own strength of will. I fixed those things I was strong enough to fix on my own long ago, and eventually reached the point that every time I worked to improve myself in one way I started to fail in some other way in the process. When everything else seemed to go well, I realized that I succumb to pride. No, the real transformation came about when I submitted myself to God’s hand and allowed Him to work in my life. I became a trainee and God was my master, teaching me to become like Him. These lessons came in the form of instruction, life circumstances, and examples in other people’s lives. Michelangelo is quoted as saying that he created his sculptures by taking a block of stone and chipping away everything that was not the statue. As a Christian I feel like that bock of stone sometime, with God slowly chipping away all parts of me that are not Like Him. One day He might be working on my eyes, another day on my hands; but God always seems to be working on something. This is important – in hindsight I realize the only times God was not working to transform me into His image was when I was in rebellion, refusing to allow him to work on me. Sometimes God’s work is evident in the moment, while other times it isn’t obvious until later; but while I am submitted, God always seems to be working on some part of me. My role then is just to submit to the process and obey when he tells me what to do. Obedience here is not in the form of “stop doing that” – God knows I can’t transform myself on my own. No, what God asks me to do are things like “go help that person”, knowing that in the process of helping them some attitude in my heart will change. So God keeps putting me in circumstances and asking me to do things that have the side effect of making me more like Him. That’s what it means to live a Christian Life.
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| Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains people more than having to think. – Quote from Strength to Love, by Martin Luther King Jr.
I have always liked answers, specifically the right answers. I have always liked doing things correctly – doing things the right way. As a child growing up, when it came to school (and therefore life), that’s what it was all about – get an A, preferably an A+. It’s how I’ve approached most things in life and it has worked for me with regard to many things in life. The rules were helpful to meeting certain goals, but I can’t help but wonder how they also spared me from having to do too much thinking. Perhaps that approach even deprived me of the opportunities to develop creativity or an ability to improvise.
I have really struggled with having too many choices. Choices opened up all sorts of problems. It’s time consuming to do the research, I might end up wondering if the alternative choice would have been “better” and there’s an internal pressure to get it right, and make the best decision possible and since most of the time “it could have been better” I hold myself responsible for the consequences which easily leads to regret or guilt. – It’s crazy thinking…I know. The truth is if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original (Ken Robinson).
I’ve had this notion that I really dislike thinking or being told to think and that I prefer assuming, and taking things at face value without examining them too closely. It’s puzzling though, why I seem to love being in school so much, and find learning and the process of learning deeply satisfying. It may be because the point of having ideas and learning was always utilitarian. Perhaps it’s due to the anti-intellectualism of the public sphere that bars any thought that can’t be expressed in a 10-second sound bite. I’m recognizing more clearly now that the reality is that I love engaging in solid thinking. I love the deep pleasure of an intellectual discussion in which people don’t just defend their set positions, but instead really feel that they are thinking through a complex problem together. I love considering original thoughts and ideas, and then having them tested for soundness. I’ve simply been unaccustomed to thinking of ideas as beautiful, rather than merely as useful or profitable and never thought it was good enough reason to engage in intellectual labor for the sake of intellectual love. But as of late, it’s becoming reason enough for me.
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| I've been going through my old papers from high school and college and recycling the ones that I’ve decided I probably don’t care to look at ever again. While going through everything, I found the file from a class I took when I was 19 on discovering your calling in life. It was a decal class taught by another student and the final assignment was creating a mission statement, which included writing down strengths, weaknesses and 6 month, 2 year, 5 year and 10-year goals. The 10-year mark was June 2009, which is 3 months away.
Looking at this 10-year-old document was really encouraging and challenging at the same time. For starters, I was pleased to discover that the trajectory of my life has headed in the general direction that I intended for it. In looking at my goals I now notice that they were not very holistic, they were all related to evangelism and spiritual formation. Noticeably absent were any goals related to work, family, community, health and so forth – which are all things that I am intentional about these days. My strengths have remained very consistent although some of them have developed more fully now. What was really cool was finding that a lot of the weaknesses that plagued me then are not really issues these days. I have a whole host of other ones now, but it’s still reassuring to realize how bound I was and how much freer I am now.
As whole I felt really grateful, to think about how life really hasn’t turned out the way I had pictured or hoped for, but seeing that still when it comes to the things that really matter, it’s been good.
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| I’ve been a Christian for a long time, and very early on, I was taught that to know God and communicate with Him I needed to be in the Word. Or better still, the Bible needed to be in me. That being said, trying to get into the 66 books that were written 2000 or more years ago has never been easy. But one thing my upbringing has given me is how to just do it, even if only dutifully.
I still remember the first time I ever got excited about it. I was 14, and I had met James who was a new Christian and we would talk for hours about the gospels, laughing at his rendition of Peter and marveling at the stuff that came out of Jesus’ mouth. It was so much fun!
During the years I went to Living Water, the way we were in Scripture was like a balm on my soul that we soaked in. PC was one of those teachers who really didn’t move onto the next sermon, the next topic, the next passage wanting our hearts and minds to be opened to this singular revelation – that we were God’s beloved one. He believed deeply that was what God’s desire was for us. Looking back I’m amazed at how he was able to bring us back to this over and over, using different words, and different angles, but staying to the central message. He called it the thousand ways to cook SPAM, sort of like Bubba Gump’s endless ways to make shrimp. It did work though, God transformed all of us, and I especially remember the certainty that gradually arose, that what we said and talked about was actually true.
At the tail end of 2007, I asked God to help make the Scriptures come alive for me as I had hit a rut with it for the last couple years. In the middle of 2008, I started going to a Jesus Community, named Eucharist and it’s been here where the Scriptures have begun to impact me again. The Scriptures demand a response; they should offend us, convict us, and also free us from the burdens of a man-centric worldview. We have conversations that are reminiscent of the ones I used to have with James and as we do the Scriptures come alive again. Most Sunday nights, we get into a heated discussion that gets my juices flowing and wrestle, sometimes ending with no conclusion but a continued determination to engage with the text.
The personal reading has still been hard, but I’m hopeful about how else God would answer my prayer.
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| Saw this on Amanda's blog
May God bless you with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness
To believe that you can make a difference in the world,
So that you can do what others claim cannot be done
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor
Amen
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