Did You See That?

Can’t you buy a car now that will stop for you if you get too busy doing something else, other than driving? I think there are vehicles that will even warn you if you somehow wander out of your lane. Isn’t there a car that will parallel park itself? Of course we are all waiting for the “driver-less” cars that are being developed. Driving is fast becoming an activity to which we have to pay less and less attention. Great!

What are you paying attention to these days? Where are your worries taking you? What keeps you up at night?

We tend to pay attention to what’s urgent – what’s currently on fire!
We pay attention to what’s familiar to us
We also pay more attention to problems that we feel as if we can fix (or we want to fix)

When you feel overwhelmed – and it happens to everyone – think about what you are paying the most attention to during these times. Of course, when you’re involved in a car accident or just heard that your job has been phased out, that’s all you are supposed to think about in those moments. It’s natural and normal. But what about the context within which you frame these kinds of disasters or even the normal bad days?

“For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.” – 2 Corinthians 4:18

Remind yourself that this time of trouble is not going to last forever – one day you will see it in your rear view mirror.
You are a child of God – he is going to care for you in his way.
Think about the messages your words and actions are sending to others about how confident you are about your true future.

We need to stop looking and start paying attention. What does it mean to pay attention to the context within which the Christian life is lived? Think about the works of God in your life that ARE going to last forever. Think about the transformation that the Holy Spirit is accomplishing in your life. The Fruit of the Spirit is nourishing both you and others eternally. Your real home is not here on earth but with Christ in heaven. God has never once left you alone as you traveled through those dark days. At a moments notice you are able to enter God’s presence with your prayers and know the peace that passes all understanding.

“For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long.” – 2 Corinthians 4:17

The ways that we go about defining situations is a powerful process for determining what we believe. You see it’s not always what’s true but what we believe is true that shapes how we go about living. Is the “here and now” so real to you that you can’t get past it and see the “forest”? Have you got things mixed up and are you defining your earthly circumstances with eternal weight? Start looking at the whole picture – frame your life within what you truly believe. There’s a larger story being played out and your life is a part of it. Even the terrible times.

“What is the price of two sparrows—one copper coin? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.” – Matthew 10:29-31

Paul wrote to the Corinthian church and encouraged them to not get tripped up by their worries about current circumstances and to instead think about what was being born in their lives now and what was to come, what would last forever – life eternal. What seems so urgent and terrible, what can make us feel so powerless, is actually only for a moment.

“We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.” – 2 Corinthians 4:7

This power to stop staring at the immediate circumstances and instead take the long view and frame what’s happening by looking down the road, that ability is a gift that comes from within us. When we surrender and submit our fears, it is then that our gaze can be raised to see eternal hope spread before us like the bright lights of the dawn.

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.” ― Og Mandino

Who You Thought You Were

I was watching a talk by writer David Brooks a few weeks ago. He said something that seemed very important to me.

“As Paul Tillich put it, suffering introduces you to yourself and reminds you that you are not the person you thought you were.”

Tillich was a Lutheran theologian from Germany (1886-1965). He spent his academic career here in the United States first at Union Theological Seminary and then at Harvard Divinity School. I hear these words from the past and I discover some meaning to the road I’m on for the past few years. A road I’m sharing with several others as well.

My response to suffering has been anything but pretty. I can’t believe what’s coming out of my mouth most of the time. I’m the guy who has old men at church calling me “sir” – surely at this stage I am supposed to have things figured out and be able to maturely handle defeats and disasters. But that’s not what’s been going on. Tillich hits the nail on my head. I’m never going to grow up if I’m not even sure of who I really am.

“I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us.” ― Hermann Hesse

When we suffer we are able to look past the fable of who we think we are and present to others. We see another side of ourselves, the vulnerable and broken remains.

Suffering helps us to grow up because it reveals to us a truth hidden from our happy introspection
Suffering helps us to see what must be attended to in our lives, we see faults and frailties for the first time or that we thought we had outgrown
Suffering shows us more of the truth and less of the fiction that keeps us deluded about whether we are moving forward or not

This quote from Tillich continues to speak to me because it calls me to cast off more and more of the comforting veneer and become more genuine, more frail and less in control. I believe that transformation, healing and growth can happen only when we look at our true selves. No, I’m not who I thought I was.

That’s okay.

“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

The Loneliness of Crowds

“A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke” ― van Gogh

There are two things that I know to be true: (1) Being with other people is essential for our health and survival, and (2) deep within us lies a treasure, filled by our experiences with these people and of course, with God.

We met God because of significant people in our life. All the days of our life, a fire is being built and stoked within us. It is called many things: drive, passion, motivation, calling, even purpose.

We take so much for granted. Think about who you are and what you are becoming. All the social experiences in your life

Our parents taught us by word and deed
We remember experiences of inspiration
We watch the example set by role models
Those days in school with teachers and friends (and enemies)
We have dreams implanted and shaped in us by all the important people we encounter

Because this inner strength is built by others it is vital that we remain within our social currents throughout all the changing stages of life. We really can’t make it on our own. But there is always a danger that living in the crowd of others and conflicting ambitions can cause us to loosen our grip on what matters most.

Do you remember what once burned within you? What was it that once drove you onward and enlivened all your daily conversations? Is there now a dark shadow where once that fire in your belly burned?

The everyday journey that now takes us through the darkest places of life and death, at times grows very lonely. Everyone else seems to be riding a carousel. Only God knows how long is this path. As the days march on, resolve is squeezed aside by all the business of life – distracted like Martha, doing what must be done but in the process, often missing what ultimately matters.

“The seed that fell among the thorns represents others who hear God’s word, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced.” (Mark 4:18-19)

The crowded life has mostly superficial interactions and half-filled meanings. Nothing in the crowded life ever satisfies, it only creates the craving for more. A crowded life is sometimes a lonely life. A life starved for meaning, from others and especially the words of God. The words of life.

“Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life.” (John 6:68)

Keep asking yourself that essential question, what matters most?

The people in your life that matter most can help you find that answer to this question.

One day you may find that the crowd all around has hidden from you the answer to this question.

How Do You Know What You Know?

Your faith in God takes all your days and then some…

I’ve just spent the week trying to explain a very abstract concept to my students. The world that we’ve made to live in, a world full of relationships, expectations, rules, feelings, organization and dreams is as real as the natural world all around us. The guilt your dad can make you feel is as real as that river rushing by. But as real as it is, it’s socially constructed, so…unlike the rainstorm that hits at just the wrong time, our man-made reality can be changed and improved.

I encounter God in dozens of ways each week. He reveals himself through social experiences with family friends and strangers.

What we come to believe about God is planted in us by all the people around us our whole lives. Our parents, teachers, friends are essential in helping communicate to us what it means to believe. These people and the social institutions they inhabit (family, church and friendship) are all used by God to strengthen our grasp of eternity.

What we know about God comes from other people. We often expand what we believe as we grow and add new experiences to our menu. As we meet new people and increase our general and specific knowledge of the world around us, our experience of God changes. God doesn’t change. That’s what get’s confusing. As we change, we mistake that experience and come to believe that God is the one that is different.

When I was a child, I spoke, thought, and reasoned in childlike ways as we all do. But when I became a man, I left my childish ways behind. For now, we can only see a dim and blurry picture of things, as when we stare into polished metal. I realize that everything I know is only part of the big picture. But one day, when Jesus arrives, we will see clearly, face-to-face. In that day, I will fully know just as I have been wholly known by God. But now faith, hope, and love remain; these three virtues must characterize our lives. The greatest of these is love.

– I Corinthians 13:11-13 (The Voice)

Are you growing up (maturing) in what you know and experience about God? – Do you need to stop what you’re doing and START doing something different, right now?
Do you understand and communicate to others that what you do know is only partial? – If not, change the way you are speaking. If you can’t hear the way you are speaking, ask your spouse to tell you. Stop talking so much and start listening to others. Stop feeling like you have to solve other people’s problems or have an answer all the time. You don’t really have to be God’s number one spokesperson. Just be you. Be authentic.
When you experience God and pass this on to others is it characterized by faith, hope and love? You aren’t trying to fix everyone, are you? Everyone needs more of these gifts. Are you getting out of your private world and spreading your experience to others?

“Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame… at your past, which naturally has a share with everything that now meets you.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

How Long Will It Take?

There are all kinds of prisons. We are all bound to live some part of our life trapped. Sometimes it’s just because of terrible circumstances like illness or a tumbling economy. Some prisons are of our own making, consequences of bad choices and evil desires.

However you got there, how long do you have to stay in prison before something significant changes? If you look carefully at the story of Joseph from the Old Testament you see a man who let his prison experience transform him into someone remarkable.

When Joseph was seventeen years old, he often tended his father’s flocks….Joseph’s brothers pulled him out of the cistern and sold him to them for twenty pieces of silver. And the traders took him to Egypt. – Genesis 37:2, 28

He was thirty years old when he began serving in the court of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. And when Joseph left Pharaoh’s presence, he inspected the entire land of Egypt. – Genesis 41:46

How long does it take to go from being a selfish punk to the most influential man in Egypt? He seems to have spent a good part of thirteen years as a slave to Potiphar and then in prison because of the false accusations of Potiphar’s wife. His physical imprisonment came to an end when he was able to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh. He told the king…

“It is beyond my power to do this, but God can tell you what it means and set you at ease.” – Genesis 41:16

This is the same man who as a teenager spent too much time dancing around his brothers flaunting that “amazing technicolor dreamcoat” their father had given to only him. He was such a miserable person to be around, they felt like killing him, literally.

What happened to him during those years in slavery and prison that transformed him into a man who could calmly walk into the court of the most powerful king on earth and bear witness of the power of God?

As incredible as it reads, Joseph’s story is everyone’s story. We all face opportunities to either be transformed or remain in prison. There are all kinds of prisons that enslave people. Defeats can fall on us like a flood. No one is immune.

Wherever you are right now – whatever the prison might look like – it doesn’t matter how you got there. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how you are going to get out – often this is out of your control. Think about the ways that relationships evolve, long-term sickness, a career that’s changing. What always matters is what’s happening to you while you are in that prison. What is God going to do in your life, with your life, through your life because of this experience?

When people are in prison they always face a number of choices:

Prison can cripple people. Even when released people often carry within them, for too long, their imprisonment experience. It haunts them even as they walk in freedom. It is as if they remain in prison and die a little every single day. They relive their defeats like a never ending re-run of doom.
In prison, some people build a new life – a future self. This takes time, involves others and there are certainly mistakes along the way. When freedom comes, they are ready to start life anew, their thinking has changed and they see with a bigger vision. But they have to wait for freedom to arrive in order to start living their new life.
Others learn, over time, to differentiate between internal and external circumstances – they come to recognize what is passing and what is eternal. They can see beyond their chains and recognize what is temporary and what matters. The prison experience transforms their perspective and in so doing it provides an eternal freedom. No matter where they find themselves, these people discover true freedom.

What is prison doing for you? For Joseph it was a time to wait until just the right time. It was an experience that transformed him into a man ready to serve God, not his own wishes.

It seems strange to urge that you pray, not to be set loose from your chains, but instead to let your earthly chains set you truly free.

“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Bind My Wandering Heart to Thee

“Always hopeful, yet discontent.”- a line from the epic Tom Sawyer by Rush

“Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.” (Genesis 22:2)

You remember how the story turns out. God stops Abraham just as he holds the knife ready to strike his son.

I wonder what they talked about on that long road trip to the mountain? Probably a very different conversation walking downhill, back to a different kind of relationship.

Did God need to learn something he didn’t know or did Abraham need to prove to himself (and his son) that the promise from God would never become bigger than God himself?

I want so much. There’s always the danger of wanting something other than God.

Can you imagine Abraham watching Isaac growing up and all the dreams he shapes around his future? And then God calls out of the deep.

Sometimes I pray for God to slay my hopes and dreams. They are too painful to bear when I watch them crash and burn. I am afraid. Fearful that I want what I think God has promised more than I want God himself. There’s always that danger that they will become an Isaac to me. Not a chance to declare his purpose and glory to all who see, but just another opportunity for me to prove something to myself and others.

What will He ask me to do? How will He awaken me to see that He is of more value than anything I could hope or dream?

^“For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” – Philippians 2:13

I am not alone in my efforts to distinguish between the gift and the giver. His Spirit is working within me, leading me up that mountain of revelation. He wants me to see for myself that He is the true delight of my heart. It’s one thing to say this, it’s another to actually seek it. Abraham worshipped God while he cherished Isaac. I worship God and pray to him all day, but the desire of my heart is typically for earthly and mundane hopes. My soul is torn between desires.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

– Robert Robinson, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

What a conversation Abraham and Isaac surely had scaling back down Mount Moriah. Isaac must have gotten a whole college degree learning about faith from his father on that trip. I wonder what I will learn as I walk back down the mountain with my Isaac (dream), back toward the God I love.

“I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.” – Charles Dickens

What is God’s Will For Me?

We asked that question in my Sunday School class today. We didn’t come up with any “Sunday School answers” like “Jesus loves me”

Mostly blank stares. I had been talking too much.

How do people find an answer to this big giant question? Here’s one place to look for guidance.

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. (Romans 12:1-2)

After reading this, it makes me think of several crucial steps to take when trying to figure out God’s will. I don’t like to reduce the Christian life to a list but I couldn’t resist.

Live out your physical life in service to God – take a hard look at all your motivations
Expect to act, think and feel different – this type of consistent practice and worship changes your internal “wiring”
Submit to transformation – you always have a choice, sometimes we don’t know God’s will because we don’t really want to obey it…
Learn what God wants by spending time with God as a submitted and transformed disciple – this type of practice makes understanding God’s will easier and more evident to us

I really think knowing God’s will is not that difficult. Obeying God’s will is much larger challenge, one we struggle with all our lives. I want to pray in faith each day – “May Your will be done on earth (in my life), as it is in Heaven” – it’s not going to be done in my life if I’m unwilling to make that first step and choose to walk in that direction. There’s always a choice before me.

“Choices will continually be necessary and — let us not forget — possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we can do nothing but act on them.” ― Elisabeth Elliot

This corrupt world is already wasting away, as are its selfish desires. But the person really doing God’s will—that person will never cease to be. (1 John 2:17, The Voice)

Houston, We Have a Problem

I never could figure out how I ended up in Houston, Texas.

This is not the place I imagined I would spend my years. A big, humid, hot, crowded city down here on the dirty Gulf was never my idea of the part of Texas where I wanted to live.

We’ve been here for almost twenty years. More time here than any other place in my whole life. For years I wondered, what happened? I think I realized why just the other day.

The Bible is full of stories about people who were led by God to foreign lands. Places where God had future plans for them. Places full of challenges, obstacles and providence. Remember when God called Abraham out of his homeland and into an unknown future?

The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you.” – Genesis 12:1

While I do not see myself as a Bible character, I do see the hand of God all around me – just like you do in your own life.

After being here for twenty years I’m now so thankful that here is where we are. Where else would anyone rather be while fighting cancer? We didn’t know so long ago that this beast would one day try and strike us down. But what better place to do this battle than here where we have found the very best medical care in the world?

Today I am reminded of Joseph, who was sold into slavery and so many years later found his brothers and was there to deliver them. He told them, “God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors.” – Genesis 45:7

I think I know why we are in Houston – we are here to find healing and deliverance from this beast. Our heavenly Father knew what lay ahead of us and prepared the way. He gave us family and friends to bear our burdens. Here we have found the best of medical care.

Can you solve the mysteries of God? Can you discover everything about the Almighty? Such knowledge is higher than the heavens— and who are you? It is deeper than the underworld — what do you know? It is broader than the earth and wider than the sea. – Job 11:7-9

Half the time, without even realizing it, we are leaning on the everlasting arms.

Be Inspired

Blessed is the man that heareth Me, watching daily at My gates, waiting at the posts of My doors. – Proverbs 8:34

See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. – 1 John 3:1

Till men have faith in Christ, their best services are but glorious sins. – Thomas Brooks

…there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries… – Daniel 2:28

Since He hath looked upon me my heart is not my own. He hath run away to heaven with it. – Samuel Rutherford

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how your remember it. – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. – Colossians 3:12

You will be dead as long as you refuse to die. – George MacDonald

Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the [a]Praetorium and gathered the whole Roman cohort around Him. They stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. And after twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand; and they knelt down before Him and mocked Him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They spat on Him, and took the reed and began to beat Him on the head. After they had mocked Him, they took the scarlet robe off Him and put His own garments back on Him, and led Him away to crucify Him. – Matthew 27:27-31

The Reconciliation

“Go where your best prayers take you.” ― Frederick Buechner

I think what we call faith, what is our own, is a reconciliation of two essential dimensions of our life; our lived experience and our internalized beliefs.

Our faith isn’t really a noun, it’s a verb. It’s a life-long construction process. We fit together all that is handed down to us with the bits and pieces of our own lived experience. This faith shields us from a cruel world and an enemy out to destroy us. It makes us feel safe. It really keeps us safe.

Our lives are filled with experiences like coins in a jar. We gather formal knowledge from intentional learning (going to school, reading, watching someone else, etc.). But don’t discount the informal knowledge we gain from everyday interactions and living in the real world:

What about that whole menagerie of characters that we have lived and worked with during our life?
After those years in school and having a few jobs we start to stockpile all kinds of information about other people and about yourself.
Each one of us practices all those lessons and stories about God and how Christianity is supposed to be lived.

We also have beliefs that are internalized into our hearts. Beliefs about other people and the world in which we live. Some of these are from personal experiences (like the list above) but most come from our shared culture:

Two wrongs don’t make a right
When the going gets tough, the tough get going
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

And of course there are our beliefs about God.

Mostly we don’t think too much about our everyday beliefs. Usually they don’t get challenged that often. Every now and then a tragedy might hit and we come face to face with taken-for-granted beliefs about “the way things are” and we see how much of a hurricane they can withstand.

As we mature and reflect, our understanding of our own experiences changes and can deepen. Our beliefs get tested and we discard those that don’t hold enough water. We cling to those that stand up over time. As time goes on and we put together more and more of our life we begin to weave a faith.

I think that’s what walking by faith means. It’s finding your way through what life hands you, your own rebellion, all the everyday experiences and building something meaningful to hang on to.

Faith is also a gift from God.

Our faith is not ours alone but great parts of it are passed on to us by significant others in our lives. Our experiences and beliefs are handed to us by others, intentionally and unintentionally. Our faith is borne up and supported during difficult times by the faith of others who come alongside us and help us travel the dark roads home.

Faith is what grows in a life that is being transformed by the work of God’s Spirit. There is a great reconciliation between our hopes and our hikes. The interaction of experience and belief brings it about. Ultimately we must walk through our faith or it’s not much use.

Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness. – Colossians 2:7

The Invisible Man

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. I Corinthians 13:12

Author: Randy Wilson