With Thanksgiving upon us and with some help from my pastor just recently speaking about gratitude, I had something confirmed that I have been thinking about for a hot minute.
Gratitude is simple but hard. I could just stop right there but that wouldn't be worth posting so I will continue. I admit that maybe this is more of an issue for realists/pessimists rather than optimists, but I have found that it is easy for me to look back on my life with gratitude over the difficult things that happened long ago. Sometimes it is hard to weigh the current good over the current bad. It is hard to be grateful when I am overly bothered by the difficult.
Unfortunately bad things sometimes are more memorable than good things, but
amazing things are more memorable than all. The problem is I tend to
forget the amazing things God has done for me, and I remember the
difficult challenging things.
When I do this I fail to apply Paul's message in Philippians. I can do all things
through him who gives me strength. This is not a boast for being awesome
and getting things done, but a realization that contentment is about
focusing on Christ and not on our poor circumstances.
11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.12 I
know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every
circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Thanksgiving is a time to return and look on the good things God has done in our lives, to celebrate them. It unfortunately also reveals how often I simply tend to focus on the bad the other 364 days of the year.
This year God has been impressing on me his activity that I tend to overlook. I needed to recognize God's hand in my life. Further I needed to decide to recognize God's hand in my life. I fail to be grateful when I don't choose to recognize God's hand in my life, which leads to my worship of him to be poor. It is a vicious cycle that ends in bitterness that can be hard to come back from. This year God has invited me to enjoy him again, to look beyond myself and see him.
God has blessed Kimberly and I with Raphael, he is worth celebrating more than just on this day of remembrance. Raphael is a way that God has caused me to celebrate the goodness of God when I can't see a clear sky on a dark day.
Thanksgiving is a time of much needed realignment. Realignment is a much needed practice for gratefulness to take root. This is another reason why Paul calls us to renew our minds in Romans. In my messes God has graciously allowed me to be able to lift my head and say God is good.
So this Thanksgiving think of the things that God has done for you beyond this simple day of celebration, raise your head and say God is good all year long.
thanks
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Blessed Be
Sometimes God does and sometimes God doesn't, blessed be the name of the Lord.
This can sound like easy Christian speak, but at the end of the day it is all we have. Sometimes when we are counting on God to come through, sometimes, he doesn't. I think of the mindset of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from Daniel 3, even though God does deliver them out of the flame, they had a mindset that is able to speak faith. A mindset.
16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. 17 If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. 18 But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”
They acknowledge that God is able to deliver, but despite the outcome they will still serve him. This is also similar to what Job says when he has had his whole world taken from him.
"The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord."
Job had lost everything and he decides to worship. Throughout the course of the book, while reflecting on the matter Job does start to want answers from God, but God never gives them.
This is when the fight of faith begins, it always seems to involve a "why?".
I believe this is what Paul means when he says fight the good fight of faith. He is referring specifically to defending good doctrine, but good doctrine usually comes into challenge when it is hard to hold onto. It is easier to come up with simpler more forgiving doctrine, which demands less and promises more. It is harder to hold the line when everything is falling down, it is harder to keep believing and trusting when everything seems to have failed. This is when we start to ask why? These are the situations when a call to fight is important. Later in chapter 6 Paul writes to Timothy telling him to guard that which was entrusted to him.
Fighting for and guarding his faith. Fighting implies opposition, guarding implies an attack to be fended off.
It is easy to talk about faith, but it is difficult when we need to fight for it.
I have been thinking about the line from Johnny Cash's song Unchained:
It's so hard to see the rainbow,
Through glasses dark as these.
Maybe I'll be able,
From now on, on my knees.
Fighting the fight of faith always begins on our knees.
Job started here but as he kept looking at his circumstances, discussing it with his friends, running it through his mind, he began to desire an answer. He stood up a bit. I have found myself standing up a bit.
But just remembering the words helps me lower my stiff neck. Paul knew it, Job was reminded of it, and Johnny Cash sang it. I need a reminder too.
Returning to our knees is the best way to say Blessed Be.
thanks
This can sound like easy Christian speak, but at the end of the day it is all we have. Sometimes when we are counting on God to come through, sometimes, he doesn't. I think of the mindset of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from Daniel 3, even though God does deliver them out of the flame, they had a mindset that is able to speak faith. A mindset.
16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. 17 If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. 18 But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”
They acknowledge that God is able to deliver, but despite the outcome they will still serve him. This is also similar to what Job says when he has had his whole world taken from him.
"The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord."
Job had lost everything and he decides to worship. Throughout the course of the book, while reflecting on the matter Job does start to want answers from God, but God never gives them.
This is when the fight of faith begins, it always seems to involve a "why?".
I believe this is what Paul means when he says fight the good fight of faith. He is referring specifically to defending good doctrine, but good doctrine usually comes into challenge when it is hard to hold onto. It is easier to come up with simpler more forgiving doctrine, which demands less and promises more. It is harder to hold the line when everything is falling down, it is harder to keep believing and trusting when everything seems to have failed. This is when we start to ask why? These are the situations when a call to fight is important. Later in chapter 6 Paul writes to Timothy telling him to guard that which was entrusted to him.
Fighting for and guarding his faith. Fighting implies opposition, guarding implies an attack to be fended off.
It is easy to talk about faith, but it is difficult when we need to fight for it.
I have been thinking about the line from Johnny Cash's song Unchained:
It's so hard to see the rainbow,
Through glasses dark as these.
Maybe I'll be able,
From now on, on my knees.
Fighting the fight of faith always begins on our knees.
Job started here but as he kept looking at his circumstances, discussing it with his friends, running it through his mind, he began to desire an answer. He stood up a bit. I have found myself standing up a bit.
But just remembering the words helps me lower my stiff neck. Paul knew it, Job was reminded of it, and Johnny Cash sang it. I need a reminder too.
Returning to our knees is the best way to say Blessed Be.
thanks
Monday, November 10, 2014
A Tale of Two Fathers
So now that Raphael has come I am a father, I have been thinking.
I know that God is our father, but I have been grappling with a full translation of that means. When talking with people about what this looks like, it is easy to simply say that out father in heaven will take care of us and not allow bad things to happen and always come through, which are comforting things to say. But things do not always play out in this way. What I mean is that yes I understand that God is our father, but do we really understand what a good father is? I read verses like Mathew 7:7-11
7“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
I read that and I think it does seem quite simple. But in reality it rarely seems to work out that way.
I am sure that in a few years Raphael will come to me and ask not for a fish, as we tend to avoid seafood, but more appropriately for a burrito, and I being a great father, I will happily agree, assuming it is meal time and not spoiling any other planned food. I understand how the transaction/relationship works and yet I do not find that it is that simple with my heavenly father.
Things do not always seem to be given, get answered, get better, or become immediately clear.
I have spent many hours, days, years even asking for things that I do not see the answers to of yet. I know the qualifiers in James about not asking in selfishness and asking in doubt. Yet I still see very little answers to specific prayers and requests that this passage in Mathew makes so simple.
Is it my understanding of a good father that complicates matters? I would agree any good father would give something to a son that was within reason and relatively ease as the verse in Mathew seems to indicate. This jives with a human understanding of what a father would do, the verse even implies that evil fathers do this. But often my experience with God is not that simple. I ask and do not receive and after enough time my requests start to seem like they are being ignored. Sometimes though they do seem like they are answered, but with stones, and sometimes sharp ones that were hurled in my direction.
This would makes me conclude that God is not a father or at least not a good father, but, these are unacceptable options to a Christian. So perhaps my idea of what a father is, is not quite right.
So is it possible that when the Bible uses the term father that it is trying to communicate some theological truth to the way God loves and interacts with his creation rather than giving a label to how things actually work based on our limited knowledge of fathers? God after-all put his own son to death and asked a similar thing of Abraham. And Christ tells us that to follow him is meant to mean taking up our own crosses and following him to Calvary, death. Death seems more like a stone than a fish.
Perhaps my ideas of good parenting falls short of what God actually does with his people. Perhaps my idea that a father would do everything in his power to help his child avoid pain is wrong. Perhaps my idea that a father would give a child something that was easily within his power to do so is wrong. Perhaps my idea of even answering a child in what appears to be a timely manner is wrong. Perhaps my demanding that God act in a way that I interpret any good father would act towards a child is wrong. And that, is hard.
God has his own will that I am supposed to seek. I can ask but often my will is probably not what is best. I think the metaphor of the father does not always communicate what we think it means. I know that there are a lot of positive ways to answer the question of "well why not?" A parent will obviously refuse a child who asks a request that will cause them harm, I get that. The rub again is when the request is just for help or for a job or for relief or for direction or for protection, and they simply seem to go unanswered.
Answers come in his timing and will, now this is different from an earthy father. God our Father is sovereign, he is just, he is love, he is God. He has more behind the meaning of father than my limited understanding. His timing and will are perfect, our earthy fathers are not. It often feels like he is more interested in my growth than my happiness, and that is also different than an earthy father. In the asking, in the waiting, God is with us. Maybe he is not offering immediate relief. Maybe he is offering his presence. This is something much more than any earthy father can offer. I cannot always be there for Raphael simply because I will not always be present.
So maybe there is a better way that God fathers than I can manage, a way I can't fully understand, and that is good thing. He fathers by causing me to grow and being present with me. He fathers better than I can hope or imagine. He loves me.
thanks
I know that God is our father, but I have been grappling with a full translation of that means. When talking with people about what this looks like, it is easy to simply say that out father in heaven will take care of us and not allow bad things to happen and always come through, which are comforting things to say. But things do not always play out in this way. What I mean is that yes I understand that God is our father, but do we really understand what a good father is? I read verses like Mathew 7:7-11
7“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
I read that and I think it does seem quite simple. But in reality it rarely seems to work out that way.
I am sure that in a few years Raphael will come to me and ask not for a fish, as we tend to avoid seafood, but more appropriately for a burrito, and I being a great father, I will happily agree, assuming it is meal time and not spoiling any other planned food. I understand how the transaction/relationship works and yet I do not find that it is that simple with my heavenly father.
Things do not always seem to be given, get answered, get better, or become immediately clear.
I have spent many hours, days, years even asking for things that I do not see the answers to of yet. I know the qualifiers in James about not asking in selfishness and asking in doubt. Yet I still see very little answers to specific prayers and requests that this passage in Mathew makes so simple.
Is it my understanding of a good father that complicates matters? I would agree any good father would give something to a son that was within reason and relatively ease as the verse in Mathew seems to indicate. This jives with a human understanding of what a father would do, the verse even implies that evil fathers do this. But often my experience with God is not that simple. I ask and do not receive and after enough time my requests start to seem like they are being ignored. Sometimes though they do seem like they are answered, but with stones, and sometimes sharp ones that were hurled in my direction.
This would makes me conclude that God is not a father or at least not a good father, but, these are unacceptable options to a Christian. So perhaps my idea of what a father is, is not quite right.
So is it possible that when the Bible uses the term father that it is trying to communicate some theological truth to the way God loves and interacts with his creation rather than giving a label to how things actually work based on our limited knowledge of fathers? God after-all put his own son to death and asked a similar thing of Abraham. And Christ tells us that to follow him is meant to mean taking up our own crosses and following him to Calvary, death. Death seems more like a stone than a fish.
Perhaps my ideas of good parenting falls short of what God actually does with his people. Perhaps my idea that a father would do everything in his power to help his child avoid pain is wrong. Perhaps my idea that a father would give a child something that was easily within his power to do so is wrong. Perhaps my idea of even answering a child in what appears to be a timely manner is wrong. Perhaps my demanding that God act in a way that I interpret any good father would act towards a child is wrong. And that, is hard.
God has his own will that I am supposed to seek. I can ask but often my will is probably not what is best. I think the metaphor of the father does not always communicate what we think it means. I know that there are a lot of positive ways to answer the question of "well why not?" A parent will obviously refuse a child who asks a request that will cause them harm, I get that. The rub again is when the request is just for help or for a job or for relief or for direction or for protection, and they simply seem to go unanswered.
Answers come in his timing and will, now this is different from an earthy father. God our Father is sovereign, he is just, he is love, he is God. He has more behind the meaning of father than my limited understanding. His timing and will are perfect, our earthy fathers are not. It often feels like he is more interested in my growth than my happiness, and that is also different than an earthy father. In the asking, in the waiting, God is with us. Maybe he is not offering immediate relief. Maybe he is offering his presence. This is something much more than any earthy father can offer. I cannot always be there for Raphael simply because I will not always be present.
So maybe there is a better way that God fathers than I can manage, a way I can't fully understand, and that is good thing. He fathers by causing me to grow and being present with me. He fathers better than I can hope or imagine. He loves me.
thanks
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Proverbs 3 five and six
This was my life verse for awhile and then I realized I really was really poor at doing it.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart. I used to think I knew what this meant. I've taught it to students confident it had to do with salvation. It sounds very easy, at least theologically speaking. I do trust in the Lord with all my heart because I trust him with my soul, right? I used to think it was that easy. I have prayed the sinner's prayer and therefore I do trust him for the securing of my heart and the very safety of my soul. But this I've found fails to help at all with not actually leaning on my own understanding, as the next phrase of the verse reads. Doesn't trusting God for my eternal life mean I am not leaning on my own understanding?
Well a bit. I am not leaning on my own understanding as far as salvation goes, but what about the rest of life? I believe I have a bit of understanding about life. This is the rub. I think that at this point in my life I do have some understanding, but more often than not it probably flies against what is God's understanding. This is what this verse seems to be getting at. If I was trusting in the Lord with all my heart, I shouldn't be leaning on my own understanding because my understanding is limited to my experience. Worse than this limiting is that my experience is skewed by my own ideas of right and wrong and where I place value and how I judge pleasure and pain. So my understanding is limited and my preferences are selfish and thus my understanding is not a useful barometer for the way things actually are. But thinking not in my own understanding is really difficult.
This is why the verse calls us away from our own understanding. So I may think that I am trusting and leaning but I actually keep getting caught up by what I feel about my experiences. This is why I have the problem of why my path seems not so straight or not so directed, depending on the translation. My path seems crooked, which does line up with my experiences, which makes my trusting in the Lord difficult.
It is silly, but I only just realized that I was poor at trusting, really trusting.
I wasn't paying attention to the fact that I find it very difficult to not lean on my own understanding. Leaning only or leaning mostly on my own understanding is another way of saying that I am piss poor at faith. Not faith in God strictly speaking. I think of the verse where faith requires not simply that I believe that he is, which is fairly easy to do as a Christian, but the second part which says that we must believe that he is also a rewarder of those whose diligently seek him (Hebrews 11:6).
This is difficult because I haven't seen much reward. I feel that I have been diligently seeking him my whole life, but this may be more of that my understanding thing again. And while I do not think of the reward as cash and prizes, I still do feel more reward should have arrived by now. I have heard it taught that the reward is simply more of God himself, which I can appreciate, but this would lead me to believe that if I did have more of him I would be better at leaning on his understanding rather than my own.
This is mostly to say that I realize that I have probably been affecting my enjoyment of God because my skewed perspective of my circumstances. Good theology cannot speak to the trials in life if I am only looking at myself, or at least barely staring above myself.
So in the end maybe I have just revealed my poor faith when it comes to looking above my understanding of my circumstances to trust in God. But I am aware of the problem and I can only continue walking before him as humbly as possible as I attempt to get more of him and alter or have my perspective altered.
thanks
Trust in the Lord with all your heart. I used to think I knew what this meant. I've taught it to students confident it had to do with salvation. It sounds very easy, at least theologically speaking. I do trust in the Lord with all my heart because I trust him with my soul, right? I used to think it was that easy. I have prayed the sinner's prayer and therefore I do trust him for the securing of my heart and the very safety of my soul. But this I've found fails to help at all with not actually leaning on my own understanding, as the next phrase of the verse reads. Doesn't trusting God for my eternal life mean I am not leaning on my own understanding?
Well a bit. I am not leaning on my own understanding as far as salvation goes, but what about the rest of life? I believe I have a bit of understanding about life. This is the rub. I think that at this point in my life I do have some understanding, but more often than not it probably flies against what is God's understanding. This is what this verse seems to be getting at. If I was trusting in the Lord with all my heart, I shouldn't be leaning on my own understanding because my understanding is limited to my experience. Worse than this limiting is that my experience is skewed by my own ideas of right and wrong and where I place value and how I judge pleasure and pain. So my understanding is limited and my preferences are selfish and thus my understanding is not a useful barometer for the way things actually are. But thinking not in my own understanding is really difficult.
This is why the verse calls us away from our own understanding. So I may think that I am trusting and leaning but I actually keep getting caught up by what I feel about my experiences. This is why I have the problem of why my path seems not so straight or not so directed, depending on the translation. My path seems crooked, which does line up with my experiences, which makes my trusting in the Lord difficult.
It is silly, but I only just realized that I was poor at trusting, really trusting.
I wasn't paying attention to the fact that I find it very difficult to not lean on my own understanding. Leaning only or leaning mostly on my own understanding is another way of saying that I am piss poor at faith. Not faith in God strictly speaking. I think of the verse where faith requires not simply that I believe that he is, which is fairly easy to do as a Christian, but the second part which says that we must believe that he is also a rewarder of those whose diligently seek him (Hebrews 11:6).
This is difficult because I haven't seen much reward. I feel that I have been diligently seeking him my whole life, but this may be more of that my understanding thing again. And while I do not think of the reward as cash and prizes, I still do feel more reward should have arrived by now. I have heard it taught that the reward is simply more of God himself, which I can appreciate, but this would lead me to believe that if I did have more of him I would be better at leaning on his understanding rather than my own.
This is mostly to say that I realize that I have probably been affecting my enjoyment of God because my skewed perspective of my circumstances. Good theology cannot speak to the trials in life if I am only looking at myself, or at least barely staring above myself.
So in the end maybe I have just revealed my poor faith when it comes to looking above my understanding of my circumstances to trust in God. But I am aware of the problem and I can only continue walking before him as humbly as possible as I attempt to get more of him and alter or have my perspective altered.
thanks
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