Posts Tagged ‘disciplines’

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Pattern Recognition for Growth and Success

September 3, 2014

Our brains are excellent at pattern recognition. Except, that is, when we’re looking at the patterns of our own lives.

The premise of Henry Cloud’s latest book, “Never Go Back”, is that successful people come to a point where they see a pattern in their lives that is not working out. When they see that pattern “they go through a door and never go back.”

Or, to state the inverse, Proverbs contains a statement, “A fool returns to his folly.”

It seems like every time I’m in some sort of transition period, Cloud releases a new book that speaks directly to my condition.

It was four years ago this week when I found myself in the hospital for the first time since I was born with a painfully torn quadriceps muscle.

That event seemed to be the start of some necessary transformations, and Cloud released “Necessary Endings” which spoke directly to the situation. I needed to find a end game and start something new.

But then I repeated a pattern by getting drawn into another dysfunctional business relationship. Andy Stanley recently talked about decision-making–if you feel a tension stop and reflect. I felt the tension, but I didn’t stop. That was a pattern repeating. It had happened several times before.

I’ve gone through that door, hopefully to never return.

Sometimes the pattern is breaking a habit–more properly stated as replacing a dysfunctional habit with a new, healthier one.

There is a spiritual pattern we can fall into where we sort of “lose” the spirit. We can leave that situation through intentional spiritual practices–reading the Bible, prayer, join a small study group.

Others we break when we realize the dysfunction and never go back.

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How To Come to Understand Righteousness

August 28, 2014

We find in Proverbs 2:

making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding

leads to:

For The Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding;

concluding:

Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path;

This is like one of those “if…then” statements in computer programming. Only in this case, it is God teaching us about our programming.

If we tune into God, because God gives wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, then we will understand.

Henry Cloud, speaking last Sunday at Willow Creek Community Church, told a story about “Joey” and his dad.

Seems dad owns a very large business. He is thinking about succession planning and wants Joey to take over. But Joey doesn’t seem to have the fire in him to run a big company. Dad wanted to keep on providing experiences for Joey in the hopes that he might eventually catch on. Henry told dad, the fire must come from Joey. It can’t come from dad, or anyone else.

God is that way. He is always out there ready for us. But we must be the ones to catch on and ask.

If we tune in to God. How do we do that? First we decide. We’ll do a 15-minute “chair time” with God, reading from the Bible and listening for what God is saying. Then we find a small group of like-minded people with whom to share. That would be a great start.

Oh–a forewarning to you poor readers. I just got my sweaty little hands on 1,500 pages of N.T. Wright’s “Paul and The Faithfulness of God.”

In my college years while full of the liberalism of the time, I had great dislike for Paul and his supposed dislike of women and his preaching conformity to the state. (Hey, it was the late 60s. Need I say more?)

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate Paul greatly. I can look beyond all the vast misinterpretations that have been spouted as theology. Romans is the greatest spiritual formation book I’ve ever read.

So, there will be more of Paul to come.

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Getting Outside Yourself

August 15, 2014

When I was younger, I tried writing poetry. There was a recurring theme that just happened. It wasn’t planned, necessarily. The theme was getting outside yourself to get to know yourself.

Leo Babauta, in a recent blog post, talked about living in a little personal bubble and how we need to get out of that bubble.

What was it, 30 or 40 years ago, when Time magazine labelled my generation as the “Me Generation”? Books have been written over the past few years about the age of Narcissism. I recently counted more than 10 recent books on living with or relating with a narcissist.

I don’t think that “me first” is unique to this generation, though. When I reflect on literature of every age even into the most ancient texts, I read men and women full of wisdom teaching about getting out of that “personal bubble” and living first for God and then for others.

One of the top goals I had for leading people into missions is to get them to see the plight of others and perhaps get outside their personal bubble and begin to think of others first instead of themselves.

One of the reasons to practice Spiritual Disciplines such as study, prayer, celebration and service is to put yourself on the track of placing your attention on God and others.

One of my small groups is studying Twelve Ordinary Men by John MacArthur. The author takes us into the personalities of Jesus’ inner circle of disciples and look at how he changed them. Regarding Phillip, he writes that Phillip was the sort of person who needs a list. But Jesus gave guidelines. Jesus gave him the freedom from lists to go out and concentrate on other people.

Jesus guidelines? Love The Lord your God with all your soul, and heart, and mind and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.

It’s all about getting out of your bubble and living for others. What actually happens is the joy and satisfaction and fulfillment you were seeking from within your personal bubble doesn’t arrive until you get out of your bubble.

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You Give Christians A Bad Name

August 11, 2014

Shot through the heart.
And you’re to blame.
Darling, you give love a bad name.

Apologies to Bon Jovi, but I heard a comment recently describing several people known to the commenter. He basically said, “They give Christians a bad name.”

While always ready with a supposedly Christian moral platitude or accusatory word, the private lives of many of that type of Christian often reveals that all-too-human gap between what we believe and how we live.

I mentioned before that I’m studying (with a small group) a book by John MacArthur called Twelve Ordinary Men about how Jesus trained the various apostles. Tomorrow, I’m leading discussion on John.

Have you read the gospel of John? He is one of those “truth-tellers” who divide everything up into black/white, light/dark, right/wrong, spiritual/earthly. John was ready to call down fire on a town that had rejected Jesus. He was one of those people.

MacArthur traces through the Gospels to show how Jesus gradually taught this fierce, fiery, politically tapped-in leader to temper truth telling with love. Not a mushy, sentimental love. But a love that understood people and sought to meet people not to talk at them but to talk with them.

That is something we all need to learn and incorporate as a Discipline–the ability to relate to others and meet them where they are. It’s not about us. It’s about them.

That is the lesson John learned–and taught.

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You Become What You Worship

August 8, 2014

“You become what you think about.”

Earl Nightingale, a writer and radio broadcaster, researched what made people successful in life for his entire life. His thought had a great impact on me.

After many years of reading the world’s greatest thinkers, it occurred to him that over and over he read that our thoughts determine our actions. We become what we think about.

The Menlo Park Presbyterian Church is replaying “Best of…” messages this summer. This week I listened to a conversation with theologian N.T. Wright. I’ve only read one of his books, but he’s now on my shopping list for more.

He dropped this comment into the conversation, “You become like what you worship.” Sound familiar?

Jesus taught that you cannot worship both God and money. Do you worship power (Mars in the ancient world)? Love/sex (Aphrodite)? The ancients knew psychology.

If your thoughts, like the prevailing worldview of the Romans, dwell on power and how you can obtain power over others, you may or may not become powerful in the eyes of the world, but you will become shallow, cynical, not liked, and apart from God.

Many of the objects we worship–even if we don’t call it worship exactly these days–lead us to personal places of loneliness, despair, unhappiness. We just go from experience to experience looking for the next high.

Focusing on God through the disciplines of study, prayer, meditation, service, and so on lead to a personally fulfilling life.

We become like God.

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What Spiritual Discipline Is Hardest

August 4, 2014

I was wondering which Spiritual Discipline I found hardest to do. Which one is hard for you?

Study? Worship? Pray? Meditate? Service?

For me, I think it’s Celebrate.

This might be personal. I’ve been somewhat frazzled over the past four years as my life changed a lot after about 20 years of stability. So, I may not always be in a celebrating mood.

On the other hand, you sort of need a reason, place and friends to celebrate. The worship service I regularly attend could hardly be called a celebration. It’s almost boring, to be frank.

Most of the people I know have quite low-key celebrations. Gather, eat, chat. Doesn’t seem all that celebratory.

Maybe I don’t know how to celebrate? Maybe I expect too much?

What about you? How do you celebrate? Or, do you? Or what is hard for you?

People regain their relationship with God through practicing Spiritual Disciplines. We call Yoga a “practice” not a “workout.”

Maybe I should practice celebration.

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Cause and Effect

August 1, 2014

If…Then…Else

This is a basic statement in computer programming. It is also a basic statement in life.

On a machine in a factory, for example, I could tell the controller “If switch A turns on, Then start the motor, Else remain in wait mode.”

But there is a universal Law of life.

The old prophets of Israel can all be read as, “If you continue to do as you are doing, Then destruction will come, Else you can live with The Lord and be saved.”

Wisdom literature such as found in the book of Proverbs can be read, “If you do this, Then you are a fool, OR If you do that, then you are wise.”

This is the Universal Law of Cause and Effect. Or, as it was stated in the Bible, “As you sow, so shall you reap.”

Now, not all illnesses or calamities that strike people are caused by themselves. But an amazing amount of bad things happen to us because of our lifestyle choices. Many of the chronic diseases in America today are a direct result of things we do to ourselves–smoking, lack of exercise, unhealthy diet.

The Willow Creek Foundation did a study several years ago of more than 10,000 people. One question asked if the person had ever drifted from God. The follow-up question was, how did you return.

Those people all said they practiced some form of Spiritual Discipline–usually reading from the Bible every day.

As you sow…. If you rise early in the morning and spend at least 15 minutes reading spiritual and motivational material, especially the Bible, then you will change your life for the better.

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There Are Consequences

July 25, 2014

“There was an old lady,
who swallowed a fly.
I don’t know why
she swallowed a fly.
Perhaps she’ll die.”

I was visiting my son’s house and one of his kids said something about swallowing a fly, and I sang that verse.

“You can’t say that anymore,” my son said. “It isn’t PC [politically correct].”

He was being mildly sarcastic about the PC crowd. I didn’t train one of those. He couldn’t remember the revision that someone put forward so that we wouldn’t mention death to a child.

Kids know things die. Bugs die. Animals die. Sometimes they know humans who die. It’s just a fact of life.

There are consequences to actions.

In fact, Jesus followed an ancient teaching about thoughts preceding actions by teaching that what we think about is as sinful as the action. And there are consequences.

Kids must be taught if…then logic as early as possible. If you walk into the street without looking, then you may get hit by a car and die…oops, something bad might happen. If you touch the flame…. If you tease your sibling….

The Bible is full of if…then logic. Almost the entire Old Testament talks about people of God telling the Israelites, If you keep living in this way, then God will do something or allow something bad to happen.

Jesus also taught us about consequences for our actions.

The earlier we learn the truth of that logic, the better off we’ll be.

If I swallow a fly, perhaps I’ll die. Well, not really. Sometimes things are just silly.

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Changing Others

July 23, 2014

When was the last time you tried to change someone? How did it go for you?

Leo Babauta doesn’t write as often at his blog as he did a few years ago, but he recently posed that question at Zen Habits.

He proceeded to discuss ways that you can change rather than getting that other person to change.

You can change your attitude toward them. Become more forgiving, perhaps. Recognizing that you, yourself, do not change easily (when was the last time you tried to change your eating habits in an attempt to lose weight?).

You can change your intention for them. Stop trying to remake them in your mind.

But then I thought, “I write from an evangelical Christian point of view. We believe we can change people.”

It’s not simply “bringing Jesus into your life.” How many people do you know that have an addictive personality? They became Christian and switched their addiction to Jesus? It’s a far better addiction, but they still haven’t truly lived into the peace and joy of a life fully lived in Jesus.

But many of us truly have changed. But we did it not so much through urging of others (although that may have prodded a few of us), but maybe more through the example of others.

As we changed our focus and attitude, we began to live more in prayer and study. We slowed down our inner processes a little. Began to recognize others–their needs, desires.

I’ve not only seen that happen, I’ve experienced it.

But it didn’t come because someone else tried to change me by force of will. I just lived into an example. How Jesus lived, and how some of his followers lived that I thought was pretty cool.

So, check out Leo’s list. But then look at how two of his ideas for accepting the other’s problems actually, over time, can help them grow. Not reflecting back to them their bad habits (say, anger) and providing an example of a better way to live.

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Practicing Humility

July 15, 2014

On United Airlines, I have many perks. Early boarding, TSA pre-check line, free checked baggage. We flew American.

At home, we eat a variety of fresh foods. In the desert we had tortillas and refried beans. Well, other food, too, but the staple was beans and rice.

At home we have toilets that we flush every time. In the desert with limited water supply, maybe the kids seldom flush the toilets. Not to mention hot water for showers.

We all prepared for our mission trip–intellectually. But some had more trouble than others with appropriate humility.

I started out grumbling that my TSA Pre-check went to someone else. But then I had one of those moments of realization. Here I am on a trip to serve an orphanage and I grumble about having to go through the normal security line. Wow, tough.

Most everybody adapted to the conditions quickly. But I had continual reminders about the need to be humble in all circumstances.

Being humble means to put others’ interests above our own. In whatever the circumstance, it’s not our desires that count.

I guess there exist people who are naturally humble. I know there exist people who seldom think of others. Most of us just need reminders at times to help us practice the discipline of humility.

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