Perspective

It has been an interesting season.

Boy, if those aren't loaded words. Terry Pratchett wrote a book called Interesting Times. I haven't read it yet, but if I understand correctly one of the greatest curses that you can invoke on a person on Discworld (the Yoknapatawpha County of Pratchett's imagination) was that they would live in interesting times - which are always a bit more interesting in retrospect than they are when being lived out. Ask Frodo if his times were interesting, and he would have most likely responded, "No, they were bloody awful." Yet for the Hobbit urchins gathered around him listening to the stories of his adventures they were fraught with intrigue and fascination.

I love the way John Eldredge put it,

Twenty clear days a year - that sounds about like my life. I think I see what's really going on about that often. The rest of the time, it feels like a fog, like the bathroom mirror after a hot shower. You know what I mean. What exactly are you perfectly clear on these days? How about your life? Why have things gone the way they have? Where was God in all that? And do you know what you ought to do next, with a deep, settled confidence that it will work out? Neither do I. Oh, I'd love to wake each morning knowing exactly who I am and where God is taking me. Zeroed in on all my relationships, undaunted in my calling. It's awesome when I do see. But for most of us, life seems more like driving along with a dirty windshield and then turning into the sun. I can sort of make out the shapes ahead, and I think the light is green.
- Waking The Dead p. 5

Yeah, that pretty well sums it up.

Lately I have asked the Lord - at the encouragement of my significant other - what the future might look like for me. Not some sort of crystal ball inquiry, but a real frank discussion with Him about direction and destiny. I was surprised to have some answers and to see some really disparate puzzle pieces put into context with each other. It was really nice to see how these vastly different interests could possibly work together. It was encouraging to see that even pieces that I received years ago were not "misses" but are still a part of the plan.

I won't say that I have the road map, but at least I have a good general lay of the land now. That is comforting. I hope I can remember that when journeying through Mirkwood. All journeys seem destined to pass through its depths, don't they?

I have friends plumbing some of the same depths that I have over the past 20 years. It is hard to see them struggling. I hurt for them, but I am also encouraged by their struggle, for it shows me that the Lord has taken notice of them, and He is in the process of disciplining them to make them more like Himself and to help them love Him better.

So often we look at discipline (at least in the United States) as something that is for those who have done something bad. Yet God's discipline is not like that. See, those whom He loves He disciplines. It is kind of hard to understand until you experience it. Often what God is after isn't some great sin pattern in our lives. The thing that often brings His discipline is wrong thinking and wrong heart attitudes that keep us from knowing Him and loving Him correctly. These are almost never our fault, but are the result of woundings that we receive throughout the course of our life.

It is nice to have a little perspective. It makes the discipline a lot more bearable.

So, to my friends who are hopelessly lost in Mirkwood's haunts (now or in the future) my prayer is that you will quickly discover that you are not alone, that God is right there with you, and that God is GOOD. You aren't as lost as you seem. God knows right where you are, and none of this surprises Him. He's got you right where you need to be. Rest in these truths.

Conviction

I read an incredible story on the Bound4Life blog about a courageous young woman who bucked the pinheads in her school to do a speech on abortion. You should check it out. And here is the speech that she gave:



Oh that God would raise up millions of young people like her. This is what it means to be salt and light.

Barna Survey Results...

Thanks to Bill Reichart over at Provocative Church who reported about a new survey completed by George Barna's organization.

Here's an excerpt from the report:

"People were more than 50% more likely to say that their church’s congregation is their most significant group than to say that God represents their most important personal connection. That certainly reflects the interpersonal comfort that millions of people have developed at their church, but also indicates that people may have forgotten the ultimate reason for belonging to a Christian church."

The author of more than three-dozen books about faith, culture and lifestyles also noted that most Americans - even a large majority of born again Christians - struggle to think of God as a living partner in their life. "There’s an intellectual and even theological assent to the notion that God is real, He’s alive, He influences their life, and that they owe their eternal security to Him," Barna commented. "But when you get people at ease, rather than in a religious setting or in a theological context, and explore the relationships that define and direct their life, the born again public does not seem to share much intimacy with God. Perhaps one of the greatest gifts Christians could get this Easter is a deeper or renewed sense of connection with God, and a passionate determination to make more of the opportunity they have to know and be known by the living God." (emphases mine)

These are some disturbing and intriguing results. As I stopped to consider how I would have answered that survey, I really wasn't sure. I guess a lot would depend on how the questions were worded. If I thought that God was included in the group that the questioner was asking about, I think that I would have probably pointed to Him as my most vital relationship, but I also think that it would be easy to separate God from consideration in the question.

Personally, there probably isn't anyone that I talk to more than God. I'm really not bragging (trust me, I have no room to brag), but I have found that I have a constant stream headed His direction.

I remember one time I was angry at God and had determined that I wasn't going to talk to Him. Then I caught myself blathering on and on just like always. My mad self reminded my talkative self that we weren't talking to God, to which my talkative self replied, "Says you!"

Still, I understand the disconnect that many born-again, evangelical Christians experience. So often that conversation seems one-sided. So often our experience as born-again evangelicals is vastly different from the experiences of those that we read about in the Bible. Where is the power that we are supposed to have? Why aren't we changing the world? Why does it so often seem like when we pray we are talking to ourselves? WHY DO WE LOOK SO MUCH LIKE THE WORLD?

Oh boy. I'm afraid that the answers to those questions probably won't fit into one sentence - probably not even one blog post... written by someone really clever, who is really in touch with God, and has figured out that whole "walking on water" thing. (Er, in case you were wondering, that's NOT me.)

But where do we start to unravel this puzzle? Perhaps Barna's comment is a good starting place: "the born again public does not seem to share much intimacy with God."

Intimacy with God. That's a tough one. I have been a Christian for 20 years this month (happy birthday to me!) and I have yet to achieve a lasting, utterly fulfilling, truly deep CONSISTENT AND ENDURING friendship with God. I have had moments of it, caught the briefest fragrance of it during different seasons, but it is something that has eluded me. How does someone become a friend of God? How do you achieve that place of deepest intimacy where God speaks with you face to face as He did with Moses and Abraham?

Certainly it must involve spending time with God in prayer and in Bible study. That seems assured, but there are people who do these things religiously and are no more intimate with God than I am with the wife that I don't have. (The Pharisees of Jesus' time come to mind.) There must be more to it than that.

Of course, I have also experienced God by doing acts of charity and evangelism. This also seems a reasonable course, but then again there are many altruistic folks out there who are not in any kind of relationship with God and many evangelistic practitioners that don't seem to have a particular depth of relationship with God.

Perhaps another factor in this whole problem is our culture's addiction to entertainment, materialism, and hedonism. These things seem to cause more distraction than benefit. How many church folks wouldn't dream of missing the ACC basketball tournament, and wouldn't think twice about missing church to go? How many Christians allow work to become so all-consuming that they sacrifice prayer time or devotional or even family time to it? How many believers would rather spend 3 hours watching TV than 1 hour praying and reading the Bible? Our lives are so filled with stuff and activity that there is no time for us to be still enough to hear God's voice in our lives. When we do sit still we either fall asleep or can't focus our thoughts because our minds are over-stimulated.

One other key was also raised by Barna: "people may have forgotten the ultimate reason for belonging to a Christian church." We aren't supposed to go to church to develop business connections. We aren't supposed to go to church to meet boys or girls. We aren't supposed to go to church to do our religious duty for the week. Church is all about worshiping God and experiencing Him through the interactions that we have with each other, the songs that we sing, the prayers that we offer, and the messages that we hear. Yet I fear that worshiping God has taken a back seat to all of the other stuff going on.

Of course, I could push it a little further and suggest that the ultimate reason for being a human, let alone a Christian, at all is to worship God. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it:

Q. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.
(or as brother Piper says, "Man's chief end is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.")

We are saved to set us free from the bondages that keep us from fulfilling our purpose in life. It is time that we took full advantage of the grace afforded to us by Jesus' death and resurrection and pursue the enjoyment of God as we were created to do.

Gone Home...

Perhaps you remember my post a little while ago about Pete? He was a man who came to know Jesus late in a life that had been ravaged by the devil. According to a post on Chris Elrod's blog, Pete got to meet Jesus face to face yesterday.

I think this testimony from an earlier post written by Chris is awesome:

Last week we took a large print Bible to him and he’s been falling asleep with it on his chest every night…he’s been reading it all day…every day. Our visits have mainly consisted of conversations about doctrine, what certain verses mean and what Heaven is going to be like. There was a question he asked me about Scripture that had me stumped…Pete said, “That’s okay…I’ll just ask God in a few weeks when I get there!!!” He’s in a lot of pain…but he still has a joy and sense of humor about him that just lights up the room.

It is astounding to me that God can overcome a life that seems wasted by sin and the destruction of satan and rescue that individual late in life. If that were all it would be shocking. But what is even more amazing to me is that in the very few weeks that this man lived as a Christian, God caused him to even bear fruit.

It is just like Aaron's rod. The stick was completely cut off, identical to all of the other 11 rods, but overnight God caused it to grow leaves, flowers, and almonds. Is there anything God cannot do?

I serve a RADICAL God.

Long Time, No Write

Wow, it has been a long time since I posted anything here. The real estate world is a pretty busy place, and I found that I just couldn't keep up being a full time agent and a closet writer. By the end of the day it was just too much - especially after a nasty bout earlier in '05 with appendicitis.

So, what have I been doing? My dad has retired from the real estate business (lucky him) and is moving on with his well earned life of freedom. That means that the business has fallen to me, and I must admit that it has proven to be more than I want to handle.

I guess when you sit down and analyze everything, and look at the core competencies of what you are doing, and you realize that you absolutely HATE doing about half of those things, that you realize that it is time for a change.

This realization, of course, begs the question, "So, what do I do now?" See that has kind of been the question since middle school. When someone asked me what I wanted to be then, I wanted to be an officer in the US military - preferably a fighter pilot. However, with pretty horrible vision, and not quite making the cut at the Air Force Academy, that dream (forgive the pun) crashed and burned, leaving me with the burning question that has haunted me since: "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

So far, I've pretty well just gone with the flow. Fresh out of college I went into insurance sales. Then I tried software testing. And finally I have given Real Estate a shot. I guess most of these jobs have had some good points - except for insurance. That TOTALLY sucked.

I kind of wish that I had known about career surveys and stuff like that before I went to college. Perhaps then I may have been able to pick a track that would have put me into something more like a permanent career. I have taken a couple of these surveys since I came to the decision to get out of Real Estate. And I have actually been somewhat surprised by what I found out.

It turns out that I am a bit more artistic than I had thought. I mean, you can't be a conservative AND artistic too, can you? Anyway, it has got me to thinking about some possibilities that I hadn't considered. I did look at teaching VERY briefly, but the income from that is less than I'm making now. Even with 2 months off in the summer, that is not an acceptable option. (Even though I think that the teaching part would be pretty fun.) I am considering writing though. I know it is a long shot, but what if I could write the great American novel?

I suppose that means that I need to find something to pay the bills in the meantime. I will probably go back into software testing because I enjoyed that for the most part. I guess time will tell.

So here's to all of you out there who don't know what you want to be when you grow up. I feel your pain!

The Search for Significance

I heard a pastor on Saturday saying that there is nothing sadder than seeing someone who is middle-aged who still can't figure out what they want to be when they grow up. I kind of wanted to smack him. (And he is probably one of my favorite pastors in the whole world.) It was like he was insinuating that there isn't any excuse for not knowing what you want to be or do.

I have been wrestling with that question for years and years and years. It isn't like I haven't been seeking God to figure out what I'm supposed to do. I have begged God many times to show me what I was supposed to become, but have never been given a clear-cut direction. At times I thought my destiny was ministry - maybe even world missions - but every attempt to follow that path has brought me up short. At (almost) 35 years old, the runway isn't as long as it used to be, and I'd really love to be doing the thing that I was created to do.

I guess it all comes down to a question of significance. When I leave this world I want to be able to say that I have made an impact. It is hard to see any impact or any prospect of one when it seems like I am constantly starting over from zero every 5 years or so. Yeah, you build up a good bit of wisdom through all of the experiences, but how do you make an impact?

I look at Ronald Reagan and think of how he transformed this world and wonder if I will ever be able to make that kind of a difference. Then again, whose measuring stick am I using? Does my definition of significance match God's? All I can hope for is that somehow He is going to get me from point A to point B and somehow get me to accomplish everything that He has planned for me to do in the process. God help me!