Sandpaper or Sloth?

I'm reading through a book for my devotions by Gary Thomas entitled, Thirsting for God: Spiritual Refreshment for the Sacred Journey.  It is a wonderfully challenging book that rightfully insists that the follower of Jesus must be committed to spiritual advancement through disciplined training.

In chapter 8, Cultivation of Virtues, Thomas writes:

"Cultivating virtues is a necessary part of the Christian life.  'That's just the way I am' is a confession of sloth, not humility.  It's admitting that we are too spiritually lazy to change, too selfishly indifferent to the way our weaknesses and lack of virtue hurt people.  Whether we have a bad temper or an overly indulgent lifestyle, we injure others, weaken our witness, and grieve our Lord." 

How many times have we faced a difficult truth about a personal rough patch that God wants to smooth out, only to turn our back on the challenge because it's just too difficult?  We receive grace and strength to help us in our time of need, and sometimes what we need is to grab some sandpaper and go to work!

The Prideful Cliff

This past Sunday in our series The Cliff: Living on the Edge, we explored the deadly sin of pride. 

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.”            1 Peter 5:6 

Avoiding pride is only possible when we embrace humility.

So how do we humble ourselves?

 

First, undertake a sober self-assessment. 

God creates us with strengths, and weaknesses.  The scripture exhorts us to be aware of both.

“ For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.”             Romans 12:3

                                           

Think honestly about your strengths and weaknesses.  Be grateful for your strengths, they are a gift, and honest about your weaknesses, they are a reminder that we need God and others to help us along the way.  Acknowledging dependence fosters humility. 

Second, embrace the discipline of service.

 

Humility demands self-forgetfulness.  There is no better way to forget self than to submit to service in two ways. 

We should commit to serving in secret.

In his brilliant book The Celebration of Discipline, Richard J. Foster writes…

Of all the classical spiritual disciplines, service is the most conducive to the growth of humility.  When we set out on a consciously chosen course of action that accents the good of others and is, for the most part, a hidden work, a deep change occurs.

Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness.  The flesh whines against service, but screams against hidden service.  It will devise subtle, religiously acceptable means to call attention to the service rendered.  If we stoutly refuse to give in to this lust of the flesh, we crucify it.  Every time we crucify the flesh, we crucify our pride and arrogance. 

We should also submit to being served. 

Even a prideful person can schedule a time of service, but it is much harder to sit still and be served.  Therefore in putting down pride and cultivating humility we must be willing to let others serve us of their own volition. 

Third, speak graciously to others. 

“Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.”                                                                         Proverbs 16:24

When we speak words of grace to others, we resist the temptation to build ourselves up, and instead choose to build them up.  Our words are sweet to their soul and they provide us with the healing of humility.   

The Envy Cliff

 

This past week we began our series, “The Cliff: Living on the Edge,” by looking at the deadly entanglement of envy.  The Envy Inventory is a short test that reveals the presence of envy in your life.  Take the test and if you find that you are entangled by envy, follow the steps listed below to begin eliminating it.

The Envy Inventory

1>          Do you daydream about or fixate on something that belongs to someone else?  It could be possessions, admiration, jobs, family, position, perceived happiness, etc.

2>          Do you want to knock someone down a few pegs or put them in their place? 

3>          Does someone else’s abundance or prosperity affect your ability to relate to them and enjoy their company? 

4>          Can you celebrate the blessings of someone who is aiming at the same target you are?

5>          Are you quick to explain away or rationalize the reasons for another’s success? Do you diminish their accomplishments? 

Eliminating Envy

1>          Bring your envy into the light through confession. 

2>          Schedule regular sessions of thanks-therapy.

3>          Find someone else’s victory and celebrate it. 

4>          Find a need and meet it.

5>          Practice positive pondering. Philippians 4:8-9

Getting Your Bearings

The New Year gives us an opportunity to stop and evaluate where we are going.  We do it for our work, hopefully for our family and our most important relationships, but we should also work through the exercise regarding our relationship with God.
 
Once, when the people of God had become careless in their relationship with Him, the Lord rebuked them through the prophet Haggai. "Consider your ways!" (Haggai 1:5) he declared, urging them to reflect on some of the things happening to them, and to evaluate their slipshod spirituality in light of what God had told them. 

This past week one of our Skycrest Team members gave me a list of questions that will help guide you through the process of "considering your ways!"  
 

1.     What's one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?

2.     What's the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?

3.     What's the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?

4.     In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?

5.     What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?

6.     What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?

7.     For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?

8.     What's the most important way you will, by God's grace, try to make this year different from last year?

9.     What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?

10.  What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

New Year Mulligan...a prayer

I love the fresh start opportunities that come with the a new year.  It's like a built in mulligan on the first hole of a round of golf...no matter how good or bad your first shot was, there's always hope for improvement, so you tee it up and take a swing.

I always wake up motivated to get the year off to a good start.  Bible reading and prayer is certainly part of the program.  According to my reading plan I was to begin with Genesis 1-3. Like a golf course I've played a thousand times, I knew exactly what to expect.  God creates the perfect place and then he invites a couple of people to move in.  They aren't very good roommates.  They are messy and selfish and most importantly have a hard time distinguishing between what's theirs and what's God's.  They cross the line and wreck the place.  God REALLY likes them, but unfortunately He has to kick them out.   Outside they find out just how good they had it. 

Looking at what went wrong for Adam and Eve, it occurred to me that I often have a hard time distinguishing from the fruit that God made for me, and the fruit that he wisely keeps from me.  When I consider the garden of my heart, I think I know enough to stay away from the obvious seductions of the serpent, but I'm also foolish enough to ask God to provide me with some of the fruit that's not for me.  Can you imagine Adam and Eve parked outside the fence that encircled that tree, continuously begging God for a taste?

As I think about what I really desire, and even the things that I ask God to provide, I wonder how frequently my wish list includes forbidden fruit?    

This year my prayer is that God will give me the desire to celebrate and cultivate the fruit he has provided for me, resisting the temptation to focus on the fruit that grows on the other side of the fence of his protective wisdom. 

Faith and Science

I was recently studying the topic of belief when I came across a story that I’m compelled to share.  It’s about a man who doesn’t believe and went to great lengths to confirm his doubts. 

In April of 2006, National Geographic published an article entitled—and I’m not kidding—Jesus May have Walked on Ice, Not Water Scientists Say!  This is a direct quote from the article…

"A rare set of weather events may have combined to create a slab of ice about 4 to 6 inches [10 to 15 centimeters] thick on the lake, [making it] able to support a person's weight," said Doron Nof, an oceanographer at Florida State University in Tallahassee."

"Our models show that there was a cold snap at that time, which lasted a few days and drastically lowered the temperature." 

This article leads me to two assumptions:  

1. Dr. Nof has waaay too much time on his hands
2. The cold-snap created the ice necessary for Jesus to walk across the lake

 

Honestly I understand that Jesus could possibly have walked on ice.  But what about the disciples and the boat? 

I did some research of my own through the help of Google.  Apparently there was a photographer there who captured the moment on film. 

So…I guess it’s possible that it got cold and Jesus walked on ice.  But this brings up several questions: 

·               How were the disciples rowing in the storm?

·               Where did the waves come from?

·               Maybe most importantly…how did Peter sink?

When God graces us with eyes to see the truth, we choose to believe it all.  We don’t have to be able to explain it all, and we certainly don’t have to be able to prove it all.  But what happens as we walk with God is that our faith in His truth is strengthened no matter how diligently the unbelieving scientific community works to discount and discredit our convictions.   

So what about this supposed battle between faith and science?  Are the two really incompatible?  For those who are willing to look at the facts—the real facts—good science always supports God’s truth. 

Dr. Soren Lovtrup, Professor of Zoo-physiology at the University of Umea in Sweden, made this observation about what he called “blind chance” biology, in his book Darwinism: Refutation of a Myth. 

“I suppose that nobody will deny that it is a great misfortune if an entire branch of science becomes addicted to a false theory, but this is what happened in biology…. I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science.  When this happens, many people will pose the question, ‘How did this ever happen?’” 

Here's a man who looked at the facts and let them speak for themselves.  Now that's good science and it supports the truth that will set us free!  

Lessons from the Olympics

Watching the Olympics with my family this summer has led me to think about the 2004 Summer Games in Athens.  Just prior to the start of the games, I was privileged to be a part of a mission team of about 700 high school and college athletes from the U.S and Europe.  Our mission was to conduct camps and clinics in Olympic sports for local kids, and using that platform, introduce them to the gospel of grace. 

It was a great experience for many reasons, but one that stands out was a lesson I learned from two of the group leaders on my team. Their names were Jeff and Lindsey and they were virtually newlyweds. While they were wonderful leaders, what I remember most was the way that Jeff and Lindsey communicated with each other about how they were going to spend their discretionary time. 

As you might imagine, they were continually being pulled in 30 different directions, and it would have been quite easy for them to put their relationship on hold as they kowtowed to the whims of their teen-aged team.  But that didn’t happen because they had a plan. 

Their operating system was what they called, “Team Us.”  Whenever a decision was to be made, Team Us came together to determine direction.  In just a matter of moments, they were able to discuss all the options, talk about how they felt, and when Team Us broke huddle they were on the same page. 

Not surprisingly Team Us flourished relationally.  Their commitment to each other, and to honest communication kept them at peace in a very stressful, chaotic environment. 

Going into that trip Jeff and Lindsey established a plan that enabled them to thrive relationally.  No matter the challenge, they stuck to the game plan and it worked. 

I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that adopting a page out of the Team Us playbook would pay dividends in our relationships as well.