Archive for the ‘Disciplines’ Category

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When You Find Yourself In Complacency

January 26, 2017

So you wake up. Who knows what wakes you up. There you were happily asleep and Pow, there you are, wide awake.

It happens in the middle of the night.

It happens when you’re in an organization.

You were lulled into complacency. The pot has not yet boiled (see yesterday’s post). You have time. Just like the “good guy” in those 1930s short movies. You pull the girl off the railroad track just before the train comes.

But there is no girl. No train. Except metaphorically.

You can rescue yourself. Can you rescue the organization?

That is the question.

What do you do?

1. You can bail out. You wake up. Look around. See the signs.  Think you’ll be better off elsewhere. There you go, searching for a new adventure.

2. You can close your eyes. Ignore the signs. Slip back into the comfort of the known. And slowly…die. If not physically, then spiritually.

3. You can decide to try to change things. Become an idea monster. Every morning you awake. Brew that cup of coffee. Grab your notebook (you do have a notebook, right?). Write 10 ideas. Every morning. You talk to people about doing things differently. Find some people who are awake. Build a coalition. Go for it.

Me? I went off for other adventures. Sometimes you just can’t find that coalition. Sometimes the “supreme leader” just doesn’t have the skill or stomach for change. Or, they have a different agenda. Then it’s time to forge your own trail.

That light in the tunnel. It could be a train coming at you. Or…it could be the light out. The light to a better you.

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Why Do People Hold Views Contrary to Facts Or Truth?

January 25, 2017

The speaker works so hard. She uses every trick of emotional pull she’s been taught to sway the audience to believe her. She wants to get them to change in one way or another.

Sometimes the effort reaches such a fever pitch because she just doesn’t see the results in the audience she desires.

Good speakers know that it isn’t facts that will persuade an audience. It isn’t facts that will move hearers to desired action–whether it is an altar call or a service project or a vote in the election.

Have you ever wondered why people you meet hold opinions that are so contrary to fact that it is laughable? Intelligent people. People that you respect on many levels. Yet, they just can’t get past their opinions.

Fact is that our brains are wondrous creations. Brains are not as rational as we may have been led to believe. Our brains are actually quite gullible. They’ll believe anything you tell them.

Tell your brain often enough the same “lie” and it will cling to it until the end. Ask any preacher how hard it is to work up enough emotion to get people to come forward on an altar call. Let alone really change their lives.

Even engineers. We fact-based people. We’re more swayed by stories of injuries or deaths to make us look for change than when someone says there must be a bug in the program.

Jesus on the walk to Emmaus after his resurrection opened the Scriptures to the travelers and showed them why he had to be the Messiah.

Try that with an Orthodox Jew today. Won’t work. They have their interpretation.

Ever try that with a Christian. “Where did you get that,” you may ask. They say, “The Bible.” You open the Bible and show them. Did you change their mind? Nope.

Sometimes the only way to retain our sanity is to just recognize defeat and pray that someday something will open their eyes. It does happen, you know.

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The Subtle Smooth Slide Into Complacency

January 24, 2017

Ah, the warmth. It feels so good. Is it getting warmer? I’m not sure, but the warmth eases muscle stress. Frees the joints. And it gets warmer.Then, it’s too hot.

It could be the proverbial frog being slowly boiled. Or it could be me in the steam room.

Or it could be any of us in our church, our company, our organization.

How easily we don’t notice we’re not growing anymore. We’re not developing new services for our customer.

We just sort of gently slid into the routine.

Same people. We’re comfortable with them. No one around to upset things with new ideas.

We’re comfortable with the same surroundings. We enter and everything is familiar. We feel like we belong. We don’t notice the things that would turn off an outsider. Fatal to a church or retail business.

What was our mission again? I sort of forget. I know it’s printed somewhere. Probably posted on a wall that has just become part of the environment.

It feels so good to be comfortable.

But…

Is that what we are placed here on Earth to experience?

Or are we supposed to push through comfort? Find that place of discomfort that impels us toward fulfilling a mission.

Was it telling people about Jesus?

Providing a valuable service to people?

Designing and making a product that will bring joy, relief, health to others?

“There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.”

Which are you?

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You Have a Choice

January 23, 2017

You cannot always chose what life will throw at you.

You can choose your response. Maybe after an initial outburst of “Why me, God?”

I teach soccer referees, give the player or coach leeway on an initial emotional exclamation. You get kicked. It hurts. You exclaim something. It may not be nice. But it hurt. After that, there is a choice. Keep it up or shut up.

Sometimes what comes at us is a result of choices.

We can choose lots of fried food and sodas.

Where did that overweight come from? The stomach and digestive tract issues? The cancer of the gall bladder (or elsewhere)?

We chose.

Our friend suggests something fun to do. We choose. We get into trouble. (What person who has survived being a teenager can say that never happened?)

We chose.

We devote ourselves to helping other people.

Another choice.

Sometimes someone you know is not aware of their issues. But to offer unwanted advice is never welcome.

You choose to be quiet until the appropriate time.

Choices. We make thousands per day. Choose wisely.

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Do As I Say, Not As I Do

January 20, 2017

Do as I say, not as I do.

The memory is as clear as the day it happened. The small cafeteria/study hall in my high school. Group of high school students gathered around a new teacher. She tells them to do something. High school students are prone to questioning things. She uttered that response.

Paul devotes much writing to showing us how we’ll live as someone who believes in Jesus–the gospel, good news, resurrection from death.

People get confused. They think it ends with faith. Faith that Jesus is the Son of God. Not faith in Jesus as our guide and teacher and way to God.

Paul says many times, if we have faith, then we will behave in certain ways.

James says faith without works is dead.

Jesus says the second commandment (of two) is to love our neighbor. Then he shows us examples of love and neighbor. Revolutionary to his original listeners. Revolutionary to most of us.

John talked much of love–not love as an emotion but love as an action.

As I grow older, I listen less to what men say and watch what they do. — Andrew Carnegie

Some people can talk a good game. But they don’t play it.

Beware the person who tells you what to do with their mouth but says something completely different with their life.

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A Leader To Bring Us Together

January 19, 2017

Those people! Those (other) people.

They ignore all the rules. They bring their guitars and drums into church. Wear whatever clothes they wish. They shout and dance. They don’t believe all of our strict interpretations of Scripture. They don’t even look like us. They don’t always speak the same language.

Those people!

They are so strict and humorless. They think they follow all the rules and sit there pointing out where everyone else falls short of following some rule. They think everyone should believe everything just like them, dress like them, talk like them. If not, then they don’t belong.

Sorry, I’m not talking about the politics of Washington, D.C. Or France. Or Britain. Or Germany. Or whatever. The state of politics globally is pretty divisive right now.

But what about churches?

I’m not Catholic, but I love to see the direction that Pope Francis is trying to lead.

On the other hand, there is the politics of all the local places of Christian worship. So much divisiveness.

Where is the injunction of Jesus–“you will know my followers by their love”?

In those early years of the church, leaders struggled with bringing together two completely different groups of people into one faith. The “racial” divide at the time was between Jews and everyone else in the world who was not a Jew.

Keeping that in mind, go back and read Romans straight through. Read it from the point of view of what Paul is saying about that divide.

“Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised (Jews) on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised (everyone else) through that same faith.”

Paul’s plea throughout the letter is that the two sides come together. I often fall short of being that kind of reconciler. We need more of us to speak up to bring people together instead of bowing down to those who seek to divide.

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God’s Kindness Leads to Our Changing Our Life

January 18, 2017

Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? — Paul, to the Roman church

If you judge other people as to the things they do that are wrong, you judge yourself as well.

Paul was very clear. He listed all the moral wrongs that people do. He must have realized that when people heard that list, they would immediately assume that the list applied to other people. Then he hits them, hard, by saying in essence that you also do things morally wrong. How is it then that you can sit there with righteous face on condemning others? You also are condemned.

But Paul doesn’t leave us just hanging out there condemned. He offers an alternative.

Already in the letter he hints at the theme. God’s grace.

Is repentance one of those words that triggers images of mean-spirited men or women with frowning faces, pointing fingers, shouting at you that you’re going to hell?

Actually all it means is that where once your life journey took you to places with people that you should not have gone to and with. Then you decide, with God’s help, to turn in a different direction and live life differently.

Instead of following our passions, our emotions, our “friends”, we start acting according to the many examples we can find from Jesus and Paul and others.

We put God first.

We help those in need.

Our lives reflect the fruit of the spirit–love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

(Me, I’m working on that forbearance part. What about you?)

We practice the spiritual disciplines–study, prayer, meditation, living simply, quiet, celebration, worship, and the rest.

 

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Those Darn Other People Are The Problem

January 17, 2017

Ran into a guy the other day. He was so happy that he found a church where everyone believed just exactly like he did. The pastor met the litmus test of disliking (hating?) homosexual people (except that they never add “people” to the phrase) and anti-abortion.

Mentioned something about other sins the people might have. He kind of blew that comment off.

It’s a small church, by the way.

Paul starts his journey of spiritual formation in his letter to the Romans by listing all the sins that humans commit. I always like to ask people who just read the last part of Chapter 1, “how did you feel as you read it?” Meaning, “Did you think about how bad other people are, or how much I myself sin?”

Paul assumes you’ll be answering the first way–all those darn (because I’m perfect, I don’t use vulgar language) other people. They are all such bad sinners.

Paul continues:

Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.

That’s one of those phrases I should have pop up on my smart phone every time I turn it on. Just as a constant reminder. No matter how much people disappoint me and I call them out. It still points back to me.

Those other people, why, they’re just like me. In need of grace.

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I Have A Dream

January 16, 2017

Is there an American who does not know what follows that phrase, “I have a dream”?

I hope not.

I remember taking a lot of grief from pretty much everyone in my home town back in the day for agreeing with that dream.

But I still have the dream–that every person will be judged by the strength of their character and not the color of their skin–or any of the other ways we have of dividing people into groups “like us” and “not like us”.

Jesus did not have difficulties crossing the very strict racial boundaries of his day (Jew v non-Jew).

I’m leading a small group studying from Romans right now. Paul is devoting much time to bridging the divide between the significant racial divide of his day–Jew v non-Jew.

It was painful to me in the last presidential election to watch one marketing message very clearly playing on the racial fears or prejudices of a group of Americans while the other candidate failed to come out strongly as one who would bridge the gap.

The same attitudes are springing up world-wide. Look at the unrest in Europe right now.

Where is the next Martin Luther King, Jr. who can raise a powerful voice in a non-violent way to unify people instead of dividing them?

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Watch Out For What Can Kill Your Soul

January 12, 2017

Fear him who can kill both (your body and your soul). — Jesus

There does not seem to be a lot of attention paid these days to a spiritual person identified as Satan or The Deceiver in the New Testament. The medieval drawings of the Devil are often stuck in our memories.

Just as we talk about God whispering to us, someone else whispers to us. “Go ahead and do that. It’ll be fun. Everyone does it.”

There is a cartoon character who lives deep in the Appalachian mountains. A “good old boy”, he fishes, plays checkers, cheats at cards, and brews illegal moonshine. Sometimes the artist would draw Snuffy Smith with a small angel hovering over one shoulder and a small devil hovering over the other. These beings would engage in a verbal tug of war to influence Snuffy’s next decision.

Do you ever feel that same tug of war played out in your mind?

Andy Stanley has advised that whenever you get a feeling of uncertainty about a decision or proposed activity, you should stop and consider. Don’t just act rashly. There is that tug of war going on within you.

I’m teaching on Romans again. While studying about it, I ran into a commentator who said that while the other Pauline letters were written to people he knew or churches he had founded, he had never been to Rome and knew only a few of the Romans there. Therefore, he concludes, he wrote a dispassionate theological treatise.

Dispassionate? Where was this guy when he read the letter?

When I read the last half of the first chapter I feel the outrage and disgust of person who simply cannot believe the open flaunting of moral standards that he witnesses in Corinth–the city where he was when he wrote Romans.

“They became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.” And again, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” He talks about giving in to their passions and their debased minds. Then he lists all the things that he sees.

The Deceiver has cost them their souls. Fear him who can kill the soul.

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