Rekindling Love

Jesus tells the church in Ephesus, “I hold this against you, you have forsaken your first love.” This weekend is our church retreat for men. In looking over the itinerary I see we are covering basics, evangelism, discipleship and confession. I got to thinking about my own life and the tenets of faith. I see so much that I do that is Christ maturing me. I pray differently now than before. I trust God to hear my prayer whereas as a young believer so often I wondered if He listened or heard.

The flip side is that it’s easy to lose sight of the early astonishment of it all. Early on I feared God differently. Now it is more as father than as scary big-as-the-universe God. There is a fine line there someplace. True I can rest in my heavenly dad’s love for me. Still it is good to tremble at the fullness of all that He is.

That inkling of thought for me, that nudge from the Spirit, is to rekindle those first amazing understandings of God. To pray to Him as He is, to surrender to Him as He deserves, to worship in awe at the fullness of Him who holds all things together by His hand. In that balance between trembling awe and childlike comfort lies the secret of staying in love with God.

Memory, Retrieval And Story

“We don’t have memory problems, we have retrieval problems,” says a friend. There is something about having a child that prods memory. This week my daughter anguished over her pre-calc at a level that was painful for a father to watch. I flashed back to my childhood. I hated math. I had significant math anxiety. I remember crying because it made no sense to me yet I still had to produce.

Tonight the kid was working on Spanish homework via a computer program. As I let my mind wander (as I accessed the file marked ‘Spanish’) I remembered a song I enjoyed when I was in Taxco, Mexico. Thinking of the song brought back other memories of my trips to Mexico.

Memory is an interesting animal. One day late in my fathers’ struggle with Alzheimer’s he was recounting to me the loves he had over his life. He started fine but soon into the story I realized that he was combining elements of his early life with the current. As an example he told of a high school sweetheart of his and how their love didn’t last because he lost her on 9/11. The memories were there, just the ends threaded together without the middle.

I am hopeful that despite loss of RAM I am still able to retrieve memories and data as I age. Part of me suspects that my stories will be lost both to time and to access. That is one reason I blog. To set down the stories. The ‘cloud’ will remember long past my capability to do so.

Plastic Fish, Jolly Jumpers And Smelly Feet

My wife has a bigger heart than mine. That is why she encouraged me to take part in our church Harvest Festival. We spent a long three hours manning the Jolly Jumper. Truth be told last time I did a Harvest Festival Clinton was in office. The last time I manned, solo, a game in which you had to catch plastic fish, or ducks, or something with a fishing rod. I lost my voice that night.

There are no Harvest Festival games for mimes. That’s right. Every booth requires screaming and corralling children. Okay, the children were fun. One little boy stood in line every ten minutes and told us each time, “I am five.” We had the out-of-control little kids and the cute-as-punch little boys and girls. We did a fine job manning the booth as a team but still it entailed much yelling. I think I lost my voice again.

What I didn’t lose was my sense of smell. If you’ve never been in a Jolly Jumper note that you have to remove your shoes to get in. We had children from age (wait for it) five to sixteen. The young ones jumped, sweat, and some looked like they were taking a leak as well. The older ones, “I’m in puberty,” jumped and sweated and went crazy. All that jumping and sweating made Jolly Jump smell like a Middle School locker room.

I’m willing to do it again next year. Can somebody just remind me to bring lozenges and Lysol?

Working On Attitude

The scientific name for it is ‘learned helplessness.” In 1965, psychologists Mark Seligman and Steve Maier conducted an experiment in which three groups of dogs were placed in harnesses. In the third group dogs received shocks which the dogs could not turn off by pressing a lever (as could the control group). Shocks came randomly and seemed inevitable, which caused “learned helplessness,” the dogs assuming that nothing could be done about the shocks. The dogs in group three ended up displaying symptoms of clinical depression. Clinically this happens when you can not control your environment.

At work my struggle is between my expectations and my attitude. There are many things I can not control such as my employees, support from bosses and hours to run my department. I am impacted by each of these. I wish I could lower my expectations but that is not possible nor is it proper. Therefore I need to work on my attitude which plummets as I wrestle with how little control I have. Attempting to arrive at a solution today I came up with a framework.

I often ask Christ how He managed to deal with us. Since He left Heaven to live among us, deal with us and put up with us I am using His example as a starting point. I arrived at three main points.

1. Be humble. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.

2. Submit. For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, WHO COMMITTED NO SIN, NOR WAS ANY DECEIT FOUND IN HIS MOUTH; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously…

3. Allow the sting of the situation to fall upon the back of Christ.

That’s the framework I’m trying to live in. I can’t control my bosses, my employees or my customers. I can control my attitude and prayers.

Coming Home To My Wife And My Mistress

Here’s a partial list of things that sucked today: my lack of sleep, my crummy mood, the rude customer, and the SUV with the driver who used it as an urban assault vehicle to force himself into my lane, the drivers that think riding on my tail will get them home faster, and the tomato soup I nearly burned while typing. Days like this infuse the words ‘coming home’ with meaning.

I have the joy of coming home to a loving wife that I laugh with. Some days I come home to a daughter that makes me proud, makes me smile and punches me in the shoulders. Days like today I walk in and crank the stereo—loud. If I’m not listening to Pandora then I’ve got my Third Day, Jars of Clay and Pink Martinis. Once I’ve turned the music up loud and changed into jeans and tee-shirt I set myself down in my beat up blue office chair.

Once I sit down in the big-blue-beat-up-chair it can only mean one thing. I am turning on the computer. In my house she’s nicknamed ‘The Mistress.’ I don’t know why she’s called that. I gave my wife a kiss when I walked in the door, right? I have to know what’s happening in the world. Hey these blog posts don’t magically appear from thin air, okay?

On these days I am thankful for the home I have. It’ll take me a couple hours but the crummy mood will disappear, the rude guy will be forgotten, desired vengeance on my fellow drivers will (almost) abate and sleep will come. It is good to be home.

Accountability

Nobody gets excited about openly sharing their failures. I for one like my world to, at least, appear to be neat, orderly and running well. I rebel against sharing my failures and mistakes. As an example it is great to have a personal trainer to improve on habits you are working on. The Trainer may have a different reaction if you purposely slacked off the training while at the same time engaging in self-destructive behaviours. Accountability should holistically react well to both instances both correcting and encouraging as you walk with another.

Being accountable is being willing to risk self. ‘Iron sharpens iron’ so being accountable to another person means both people encourage in areas they are sharp and sharpen areas of dullness. Spiritual accountability holds iron to the fire. If we are serious we will bare and share areas we have rebelled or are struggling. Our brokenness before each other encourages simply because “no sin has overtaken us but such as are common to man.”

In this life we wrestle with flesh and blood. To stay on the straight and narrow is difficult more so because our old flesh is bent toward all kinds of depravity. We are not to fight alone. One reason we are a body in Christ is that we may encourage one another as the day draws near. True accountability in loving fellowship equips us for the fight so that we can press on and celebrate that great day when we arrive.

On Finishing Well

Early in his cycling career my friend Dee would go full speed out of the gates then crash and burn at the end of each long ride. Most of us look great coming out of the gate. Like Dee we look strong, fast and invincible. It’s not how we do in the first stretch that matters. What matters is how we finish.


I haven’t listened to my Jennifer Knapp CD for some time. It’s not that I don’t still enjoy her music. It’s difficult to listen to her lyrics knowing that she professes Christianity while at the same professing to be in a lesbian relationship. Though her previous music has great guitar riffs and god focused lyrics it is obvious that she currently puts little stock in a Bible centered lifestyle. Like my friend Dee she looked strong at the outset but may not finish well.

Looking at my life as a snapshot there would be many pictures where I would appear to be a pagan because my outward fruit did not match up with my heart. As Paul said in Romans 7, “For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body…” The measure of my life and each of our lives will not be how we performed at the start or middle of the race. The final determination will be based on our finishing well.

It Feels Like Helms Deep

It feels like Helms Deep. We look for good but see only Nazgul. In a different image I see a movie scene; dark black roiling clouds moving swiftly toward the city. They cast a shadow on the ground as they grow bigger and move to cover everything. If you understand purity and good, if you eschew evil then you sense it too. I think about the coming election and the current state of the Union. No matter the winner we are a country divided. As a nation we turn to relativism and we worship gods we have created in our image. My heart breaks.

This week the high school my daughter attends had a motivational speaker at the required assembly. At the end of his presentation he said, “To me Jesus isn’t a cussword He’s my Saviour.” A number of people got up in arms and today there were news crews at the school. I received a note from a friend telling me to show up at noon. I can’t comprehend the purpose.

I wonder if we will serve them water. Seriously it seems a better thing to show up and serve the news crews and anti-Christian protesters water and punch than to protest and stand up for our side. What does that gain us? A church pastor in Charlotte, North Carolina invited LGBT protesters into his house for dinner and discussion.

On Sunday morning, Aug. 26th, about 10 protesters showed up (we were disappointed there were so few) and some of our FIRE leaders met with them, offering them water and snacks, sharing God’s love and truth with them, and then inviting them to join us in the service. After a few minutes they left, explaining that we were too nice and loving to deserve a protest! Bear in mind that these protesters know the stands we have taken for biblical values and some of them have listened to my radio broadcasts or read my writings, so they recognize how strongly we differ with them on many key issues. Yet they also recognized our genuine love for them and saw that we were not full of hate. The love of Jesus, flowing out of Spirit-filled, godly hearts, makes an impact that cannot be denied.

The darkness encroaches. As it did for believers suffering under Nero and the Diaspora so the call is the same for us. Let us ‘prove to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world.’

Lost Enough

I can't see how You're leading me
unless
You've led me here
Where I'm lost enough to let myself be led
And so You've been here all along I guess
It's just Your ways and You are just plain hard to get---Rich Mullens, Hard To Get

The great thing about trials is that they remind me I’m not in charge. When life is going well (some of us are still waiting) I’m feeling like I’ve got it all wired the right way. Then I’ll break my glasses or dent my car and realize I don’t have the universe under control. It may be a speed bump or it may be a major collision but those trials turn my focus from self to God.

God works that way. He brings tests into our life that we may lean on Him. Cruise control doesn’t work so well on wet windy roads. God seems hidden which causes his children to seek with greater intensity.

That must be, in part, why we are to rejoice in our trials. Its in that darkness that we recognize our need for guidance. Lost enough we let ourselves be led.

Botulism, Canned Food and Hoarding

The good news is that she wasn’t a hoarder. The bad news was that when mom died some years ago we still had to sort through the house. This meant boxes with important papers were in the same box with L.L.Bean Christmas catalogs and voter information pamphlets. The freezer was full as was the pantry.

My friend Glenn recently had a similar experience with his mom’s pantry which he cleaned out while she was recuperating in the hospital. As he describes it,

“I threw out half of the canned food in her pantry (an entire garbage can full of canned food) because what hadn’t already exploded (can you say “botulism,” kids? I know, it’s a fun word, isn’t it?!) (had) glued itself to the shelves (which I had to remove—the shelves, that is, because the cans wouldn’t come off by hand—those I had to scrape off with a putty knife)…”

I don’t know if it’s just my parents generation or families of eastern European decent who are born pre-depression that keep so much. My father had a garage full of plumbing supplies, tools, sprinklers (you never know when you will need a pop-up 180 degree brass sprinkler head) paints, waxes and chemical lubes for every purpose. I am certain that it is all worth some money save the chemicals. Those should be taken out by a Haz-Mat team and moved to a landfill on another planet.

At times I worry that I will get Alzheimer’s like my father. Truth is I show more tendencies to storing things that ‘will be worth something some day.’ Fortunately I am not a hoarder. The other good news is that I have a small house with little room for storage. That is unfortunate because I have this nice collection of pill bottles…

Photo courtesy of Flickr commons   By LlGC ~ NLW