Over the past ten years we have had the great privilege of being a part of another family's Thanksgiving day tradition, a family that has become very much like family to us as well as to the others who have attended. In the last ten years we have only missed two Thanksgivings with this family, one of those was today. In missing, however, we were privileged to join another family's Thanksgiving day tradition, another family who very much like the first, is like family to us.
Traditions run differently between different households, but one thing is very much the same, this is a day to give thanks by setting aside everything else and just focusing on what is good. Of course, every Thanksgiving I have thoughts of wouldn't it be better to live every day like this, but today truly is a uniquely special day.
So right now, in the spirit of thankfulness, I would like to share some things that I am thankful for.
I am thankful for my wife of almost 19 years. We merged our life paths together very young, and at just the right time. From that day on, our journey has been one adventure after another; God leading us, and sometimes even catching us as we have stumbled at times from the path that He has so wonderfully set before us. We have learned to lean on each other through thick and through thin, and there has been plenty of both. She is my partner, my love, and every bit my friend. She is a blessing from God.
I am thankful for my two daughters. We thought there would be many more, but God knew to grace us with these two wonderfully gifted and talented and beautiful young ladies. They are a joy and a delight (when they aren't fighting!) and I love that I get to be a father to them. I have much hope for them as they are continuing ever more independently on their own journeys of discovering who their Heavenly Father is and what this life of His is really all about.
I am thankful that I have had another year with my mother. I am grateful that God has used this time to heal even more wounds and give us the relationship that I have always craved, but didn't always know how to give in return.
I am thankful for a father who dared to show me what it was to be a true man. I am grateful that he did not give up on us and chose instead to become the man that I love and respect so much today.
I am thankful for a loving little sister who has chosen to look past the mental and even some physical scars that a mean big brother can inflict. I love the relationship I have with my lil-sis and niece.
I am thankful for a mother-in-law who is also my mother. God has specially gifted and equipped her through so much adversity and pain. She is amazing proof of what God can do with one who chooses Him above everything else in life.
I am thankful for my friends, friends who are more than acquaintances, friends who are like brothers and sisters to me. You have stood with us, you have stood behind us in support, and you have gone ahead of us to lead when we were weak. Each of you are blessings beyond words.
I am thankful for our pastors, Brian and Jeanine. You are friends, family, spiritual leaders, you have discipled us, you have loved us, and you have taught us more than we can even remember.
I am thankful that God's mercies are new every morning. I am thankful that He is faithful even when I am not. I am thankful that God is not the God I once thought Him to be, but He was kind enough to challenge my thinking to begin to recognize Him for the loving Father that He truly is. I am thankful that He continues to daily pour out His measures of grace that I might continue to follow Him even more into the abundant life that He has planned for me since the beginning. I am thankful that He loves me. I am thankful that He even likes me.
I am thankful that I am continuing to learn to be thankful in spite of my wildly fluctuating circumstances, emotions, fears, and feelings. I am thankful that I look a little more like Him today than I did yesterday. He is good.
Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable; if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things. Philippians 4:8
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Plopping In Hover Chairs
Let's just say that we're sitting here together today having coffee when the conversation begins to turn to something that I have been working on lately and excitedly I begin to tell you about my new invention, the hover chair!
Sounds amazing, doesn't it!
Still, you remain skeptical, as you should; all of the chairs that you know of have legs firmly planted on the ground. I begin to bore you with scientific details of gravitational pull and magnetic forces, bore you with engineering specs and diagrams (yes, if you know me at all, you have to do quite a bit of imagining at this point). I do begin to peak your interest a bit, however, when I start to explain how you will never feel more comfortable in a chair, more supported, more secure, more in correct bodily alignment, than in the hover chair. Can it be? A chair that finally doesn't hurt that achy back you have been living with all this time? Finally I go into my back room and bring it out, the hover chair!
It's amazing! Here is an actual chair, hovering above the floor. You get up out of your "chair from the past" with its "legs" and walk over to examine more closely. You get down on your hands and knees and look underneath. You move your arm back and forth, under and around and over the top of the hover chair; you find no hidden strings or attachments of any kind, and yet there it is, just hovering.
I invite you to try it out; "go ahead, sit in it."
Visions of walking in the front door after a long day at work or school, dropping your things by the door and plopping down into your favorite chair come to mind. It hits you now that not once have you ever thought about that chair holding you up, it just always has, but this is different, this is new.
You may not be able to plop your full weight down in the hover chair without thinking about it, but you do push on it. You start with one finger, you test the chair's ability to stand up under just a couple of pounds of downward pressure. Then you try your whole hand, so far so good. You lean on the chair, still it doesn't budge. Now for the commitment. You stand beside the chair and ever so slightly shift your balance towards it. If anything goes wrong, you will still be able to catch yourself at this point. You slowly begin to bend lower until, contact. You are now in that very awkward and thigh burning position of a partial squat. You won't be able to hold it for long, but you can still recover if everything goes crashing to the ground. First it's just contact, then one cheek is solidly on the chair, your weight is beginning to shift past the point of no return; if this is a prank, you won't be able to save yourself now, and...nothing. The chair is holding you. It works! It's actually quite comfortable. Of course your muscles are still tense, you're ready to spring forward if anything gives way, but it's holding. Now you begin to shift your weight back and forth, you bounce up and down, everything is good. The hover chair works!
I offer to let you take it home with you, try it out for a while, see if you like it.
You get the hover chair home and you can't help but show it to your family and neighbors and friends. They come and see it for themselves, test it out, slowly sit in it. It's the talk of the neighborhood.
Over time you begin to notice that the anxious feeling, the tense muscles, the little surge of adrenalin that you feel every time you sit in the hover chair is beginning to dissipate. You are beginning to trust that the hover chair is actually able to do what I claimed that it would. You are also beginning to receive comments about how you seem to have a little more spring in your step; you look like you have more energy; you seem to be standing straighter, taller even.
One day, you arrive home after a particularly grueling time at work or school, you drop your things by the door, you plop down into the hover chair, you kick your feet up...wait a second...you realize you didn't even think about it this time! No tight muscles, no surge of adrenaline, no thought whatsoever as to whether or not the hover chair would actually hold you, you just plopped down! When did this shift happen? What made you stop thinking about it? When did you decide to stop wondering if the hover chair would actually hold?
When was your skepticism replaced by faith that the chair would actually do what I claimed that it would?
Who knows? The facts are:
This is how faith works.
If hope is anticipating the future with joyful expectancy, then faith is living today as if what I claim to be true about the future actually is in fact true.
This living by faith, this living today as if my claim of a good future is actually true may well happen slowly over time, a bit more every day. This living by faith may, and actually most likely will, come with placing a finger on it to see if it will hold up...then one cheek...still with some muscle tension...still with a slight surge of adrenaline. Over time as I begin to exercise that faith, as I begin to put it into practice and His claims hold up under weight, then I will begin to think about the process less and less and it will begin to become a fact in my life. He can be trusted. He will not allow me to fall. He will in fact hold me.
It has to begin somewhere though. It must begin with some effort on my part. It must begin with me choosing the hover chair over the old chair. It must begin with repentance, a rethinking of everything.
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." - Hebrews 11:1
Faith is not blind. Faith is not a leap off the edge into nothingness. Faith is not a step in the dark. Faith is having assurance and conviction that He will in fact do what He claims He will do. Faith is not that there will be sure footing, faith is that He will hold me up even when the sure footing is gone. Faith is not that I will be able to see the outcome, faith is that He will lead me to the best of all outcomes. Faith is not that all of my problems and pains and difficulties will be resolved like a Disney fairytale, faith is that He will use troubles of all kinds to develop in me the character to handle the worst that life can offer and still have joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and self control and gentleness and faithfulness and love and love and love...
Faith is where the rubber meets the road. Faith is dirt under our fingernails. Faith is sore muscles. Faith is daily crucifying my TV and magazines and self help gurus with all of their velvety advertisements and vague promises of salvation found in money and toys and retirement packages and vacations and...and...and...
Faith is having the hope that God does in fact have a plan for all of His good creation and I want to live today joining with Him in His work to bring it about. I don't just pray "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in the heavens" but I actually order my day to be a part of that happening in the very space that I occupy.
This is why James can claim that "faith without works is dead." (James 2) Faith is simply the meat, the substance of hope. If your claims of hope do not change the very course of your day; how you look at your circumstances, how you treat those around you, how you order your finances, how you do your business; then you don't have faith, you are simply posturing.
Jesus called us to something more wonderful and more grand than we have settled for in most of our religions today. He called us to be a part of something new and yet old. He called us to join with Him in His Kingdom movement. He called us to repent, to rethink our whole approach to our lives. He called us to lay down our lives, to join Him on our own crosses as we crucify all of our wrong thinking and selfishness and self preservation and self-centered desires for something bold and powerful and new. His promise, His guarantee by leading the way Himself on His own cross, is a new life. A life beyond compare with these shallow shadows of lives that we so desperately cling to now. He calls us to give up our chairs with legs for hover chairs that redefine "the way things should be". He calls us to embrace a new normal. He calls us to embrace a new reality. He calls us to embrace that which is unknown that we might become a part of making it well known.
This is faith, it's plopping in the hover chair and realizing that you didn't even think about it this time. You weren't able to do it at first, but you were willing to try, and He was very ok with that effort. After all, He is the one that gave you the strength to try in the first place...and that is grace.
We'll talk about that next...
Sounds amazing, doesn't it!
Still, you remain skeptical, as you should; all of the chairs that you know of have legs firmly planted on the ground. I begin to bore you with scientific details of gravitational pull and magnetic forces, bore you with engineering specs and diagrams (yes, if you know me at all, you have to do quite a bit of imagining at this point). I do begin to peak your interest a bit, however, when I start to explain how you will never feel more comfortable in a chair, more supported, more secure, more in correct bodily alignment, than in the hover chair. Can it be? A chair that finally doesn't hurt that achy back you have been living with all this time? Finally I go into my back room and bring it out, the hover chair!
It's amazing! Here is an actual chair, hovering above the floor. You get up out of your "chair from the past" with its "legs" and walk over to examine more closely. You get down on your hands and knees and look underneath. You move your arm back and forth, under and around and over the top of the hover chair; you find no hidden strings or attachments of any kind, and yet there it is, just hovering.
I invite you to try it out; "go ahead, sit in it."
Visions of walking in the front door after a long day at work or school, dropping your things by the door and plopping down into your favorite chair come to mind. It hits you now that not once have you ever thought about that chair holding you up, it just always has, but this is different, this is new.
You may not be able to plop your full weight down in the hover chair without thinking about it, but you do push on it. You start with one finger, you test the chair's ability to stand up under just a couple of pounds of downward pressure. Then you try your whole hand, so far so good. You lean on the chair, still it doesn't budge. Now for the commitment. You stand beside the chair and ever so slightly shift your balance towards it. If anything goes wrong, you will still be able to catch yourself at this point. You slowly begin to bend lower until, contact. You are now in that very awkward and thigh burning position of a partial squat. You won't be able to hold it for long, but you can still recover if everything goes crashing to the ground. First it's just contact, then one cheek is solidly on the chair, your weight is beginning to shift past the point of no return; if this is a prank, you won't be able to save yourself now, and...nothing. The chair is holding you. It works! It's actually quite comfortable. Of course your muscles are still tense, you're ready to spring forward if anything gives way, but it's holding. Now you begin to shift your weight back and forth, you bounce up and down, everything is good. The hover chair works!
I offer to let you take it home with you, try it out for a while, see if you like it.
You get the hover chair home and you can't help but show it to your family and neighbors and friends. They come and see it for themselves, test it out, slowly sit in it. It's the talk of the neighborhood.
Over time you begin to notice that the anxious feeling, the tense muscles, the little surge of adrenalin that you feel every time you sit in the hover chair is beginning to dissipate. You are beginning to trust that the hover chair is actually able to do what I claimed that it would. You are also beginning to receive comments about how you seem to have a little more spring in your step; you look like you have more energy; you seem to be standing straighter, taller even.
One day, you arrive home after a particularly grueling time at work or school, you drop your things by the door, you plop down into the hover chair, you kick your feet up...wait a second...you realize you didn't even think about it this time! No tight muscles, no surge of adrenaline, no thought whatsoever as to whether or not the hover chair would actually hold you, you just plopped down! When did this shift happen? What made you stop thinking about it? When did you decide to stop wondering if the hover chair would actually hold?
When was your skepticism replaced by faith that the chair would actually do what I claimed that it would?
Who knows? The facts are:
- I claimed the chair would hold under you.
- You chose to test out that claim to the best of your ability, and a little more so every day.
- The chair did not once ever fail you.
- Now you have developed a new pattern in life of just plopping into the hover chair without even thinking about it.
This is how faith works.
If hope is anticipating the future with joyful expectancy, then faith is living today as if what I claim to be true about the future actually is in fact true.
This living by faith, this living today as if my claim of a good future is actually true may well happen slowly over time, a bit more every day. This living by faith may, and actually most likely will, come with placing a finger on it to see if it will hold up...then one cheek...still with some muscle tension...still with a slight surge of adrenaline. Over time as I begin to exercise that faith, as I begin to put it into practice and His claims hold up under weight, then I will begin to think about the process less and less and it will begin to become a fact in my life. He can be trusted. He will not allow me to fall. He will in fact hold me.
It has to begin somewhere though. It must begin with some effort on my part. It must begin with me choosing the hover chair over the old chair. It must begin with repentance, a rethinking of everything.
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." - Hebrews 11:1
Faith is not blind. Faith is not a leap off the edge into nothingness. Faith is not a step in the dark. Faith is having assurance and conviction that He will in fact do what He claims He will do. Faith is not that there will be sure footing, faith is that He will hold me up even when the sure footing is gone. Faith is not that I will be able to see the outcome, faith is that He will lead me to the best of all outcomes. Faith is not that all of my problems and pains and difficulties will be resolved like a Disney fairytale, faith is that He will use troubles of all kinds to develop in me the character to handle the worst that life can offer and still have joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and self control and gentleness and faithfulness and love and love and love...
Faith is where the rubber meets the road. Faith is dirt under our fingernails. Faith is sore muscles. Faith is daily crucifying my TV and magazines and self help gurus with all of their velvety advertisements and vague promises of salvation found in money and toys and retirement packages and vacations and...and...and...
Faith is having the hope that God does in fact have a plan for all of His good creation and I want to live today joining with Him in His work to bring it about. I don't just pray "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in the heavens" but I actually order my day to be a part of that happening in the very space that I occupy.
This is why James can claim that "faith without works is dead." (James 2) Faith is simply the meat, the substance of hope. If your claims of hope do not change the very course of your day; how you look at your circumstances, how you treat those around you, how you order your finances, how you do your business; then you don't have faith, you are simply posturing.
Jesus called us to something more wonderful and more grand than we have settled for in most of our religions today. He called us to be a part of something new and yet old. He called us to join with Him in His Kingdom movement. He called us to repent, to rethink our whole approach to our lives. He called us to lay down our lives, to join Him on our own crosses as we crucify all of our wrong thinking and selfishness and self preservation and self-centered desires for something bold and powerful and new. His promise, His guarantee by leading the way Himself on His own cross, is a new life. A life beyond compare with these shallow shadows of lives that we so desperately cling to now. He calls us to give up our chairs with legs for hover chairs that redefine "the way things should be". He calls us to embrace a new normal. He calls us to embrace a new reality. He calls us to embrace that which is unknown that we might become a part of making it well known.
This is faith, it's plopping in the hover chair and realizing that you didn't even think about it this time. You weren't able to do it at first, but you were willing to try, and He was very ok with that effort. After all, He is the one that gave you the strength to try in the first place...and that is grace.
We'll talk about that next...
Thursday, November 7, 2013
A Picture Of Love
I saw this image today. I couldn't help but think of Jesus.
Isn't this the goal, to look like Him?
Saturday, November 2, 2013
The Light At The End Of The Tunnel
"Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight seconds without air, but only for one second without hope."
I think the best definition I have heard yet is from my pastor, "Hope is to look forward with joyful anticipation to what is yet to come." To hope, is to know, not wish, but know that something is going to happen, and that something is good and desirable. Hope is something of substance, it is something that can be held, clung to even, sometimes desperately so. It is to know that whatever my circumstances are right now, there is something good coming. There is relief. There is a light at the end of the dark and difficult tunnel.
-James Matthew Barrie
I first heard this quote several years ago and I immediately loved it. It's similar to the prophet Jeremiah's statement, "Without hope, the people perish." There are songs of hope, stories of hope, reports of hope; hope is something that we humans seem to long for deep in our souls. Hope pulls us from dark places, it gives us light at the end of long tunnels.
...but what is hope?
How many times have you heard "hope" in the following kinds of contexts:
- We just bought a new house, I hope the market starts to turn around now.
- We just took our car in again! I hope they finally figure it out this time!
- I hope (insert sports team here) can hold it together this season.
- We're hoping the biopsy results come back negative.
When using the word "hope" like this, you could easily exchange it with "wish".
- I "wish" the market would start to turn around...
- I "wish" they would just figure out what's wrong with my car...
- I "wish" (insert sports team here) would hold it together...
- We're really "wishing" the biopsy will be negative...
...because really, you could follow every one of these statements with "...but I don't know if that will be the case or not."
I think we've lost something in the word "hope" when we have reduced it to a wish. James Matthew Barrie's quote just doesn't have the same punch when you exchange "hope" with "wish"...
...so what is hope then?
I think the best definition I have heard yet is from my pastor, "Hope is to look forward with joyful anticipation to what is yet to come." To hope, is to know, not wish, but know that something is going to happen, and that something is good and desirable. Hope is something of substance, it is something that can be held, clung to even, sometimes desperately so. It is to know that whatever my circumstances are right now, there is something good coming. There is relief. There is a light at the end of the dark and difficult tunnel.
Hope is not a bet, it is the "sure thing".
Hope overcomes the darkness.
Hope conquerors depression and anxiety and pain.
Hope is the anchor in the raging storm.
Hope is a "thing", not a thought, not an emotion, not a feeling.
You own hope. You get to choose whether it is put away in a locked box of despair, or pulled out into the daylight and put to work. You get to choose where your hope is placed. You get to choose whether you use your hope as a wish in the great unknown, or as the sure thing that it is intended to be to light your path and give you direction when the way is unsure.
This is only possible though, if you place your hope carefully.
Think about it, what can be known? What can be looked forward to with certainty...with joyful anticipation?
Your investments?
Your job?
Your retirement?
Your health?
Your relationships?
Your life?
What becomes evident fairly quickly is that "sure things" are hard to come by...
At the end of Jesus' time here physically among us, He is talking with His disciples and giving them some last thoughts before He returns to the Father. In the course of the conversation He lays out some difficult expectations. He tells them that if they stay true to what He has taught them, things will be difficult. They will have trouble. They will have conflict. They may even face death directly because of Him. Where is the hope here? Why would anyone willingly choose that life?
Jesus' answer comes in a statement, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me." Believe...trust...place your confidence in... Do not let your hearts be troubled, place your hope in God and in Me.
He is the sure thing. God is the sure thing. The only sure thing.
He is from everlasting to everlasting. He is the same yesterday today and forever. He has no beginning and He has no end. He was, and He is, and He is still yet to come. He has brought all things into existence with a spoken word. He is the starbreather, the life giver, and the One who holds all things together even as I am writing this.
He is the only One who can handle the unique circumstances of your life. He is the giver and sustainer of your life whether you know it or not. He is the only One who can be trusted with your life...and He loves you.
So what hope does He bring? What light does He shine at the end of your tunnel?
The hope that He and He alone can offer is that He isn't afraid or intimidated by your difficult and painful and troubling circumstances; He can handle them. He can do better than handle them, He promises to turn them into something wonderful and beautiful and good...if you let Him. Better yet, He promises to teach you to not to be troubled in this life, to not be overwhelmed, to not be crushed, to not be undone; He promises to teach you and develop in you the character necessary to face whatever may come in life with hope, with joyful anticipation of a good future.
...and what is the good future that He promises to bring about?
He promises justice, and righteousness, and peace, and joy, and unending good life, and purpose, and mission, and love.
He doesn't tell us exactly what that will look like, I think in part because the best we can fathom will actually pale in comparison to what He actually has in mind. I think we can expect a long and eternal future of being amazed at how much better it is than we could have ever imagined.
...but that is tomorrow, that is the joyful anticipation of what is yet to come, what about today?
Today is Faith, today is the substance of my life formed by Whom I have chosen to place my hope. Faith is how I choose to face today because of the future that I am looking forward to with great joy.
Faith is how I move toward the light. More on that next time...
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