I was really encouraged by this post by Blaine Smith:
http://nehemiahministries.com/keepingmotion.htm
Ryan Smyth (see his comments under this post). should take a look at that one and see what he thinks.
Keep moving forward,
Greg
Spirituality
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I have had a great time this summer spending time with the Lord in the mornings on the lake. The routine has been getting up around 6:30-7:00am getting on the water quickly, Arrowhead for coffee and a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich, and then off to a spot to read, pray and memorize. I have spent most of that time memorizing Colossians 3, listening for God and trying to relearn how to to pray in the spirit and develop a prayer language.
The memory work is relatively easy and just comes from consistent effort. Learning a prayer language has been much more challenging. I spent most of the summer asking God for the gift, and the last few weeks speaking sounds. I don’t know what they are, mean, or even if they are real. After having talked to Keith and Paul and others about it I just decided to keep on speaking and see what happens. I honestly don’t feel particularly like the Spirit is speaking through me, or that something is happening other than normal sounds that don’t make sense to me. I definitely haven’t felt the release feeling that I have felt in other places where I have been broken and yielded myself, or in dreams or at times when I felt like I was going to speak in a tongue.
This has been a good opportunity to simply trust. I don’t know what is happening, I just know that I want to be fully yielded to God, I believe this gift is available to all, and it takes our initiative to cultivate. I’d like the feeling to go along with it because that makes things easy, but where is the faith in that. Faith in Jesus is enough, I’m going to continue to speak in faith.
I am going home quite full from this time with the Lord. He also gave me a word while I was out through a Bebo song called Walk Down This Mountain. It is about Peter and his experience at the transfiguration where he was wanting to create houses for Jesus and Elijah and Moses. He wanted to stay on the mountaintop. I find this to be true all the time in my life. I want my mornings on the lake to last forever. I want to stay in places where I have heard God speak, felt his presence, or been in sweet communion with someone in His presence.
However, as great as those times are and as filling in the spirit as they can be, the daily battles and plays of life are played out in real time, in the work world with employees and clients, in families with parents and children and siblings, in churches and other organizations, and with my neighbor every day. Staying on the mountain wasn’t an option for Christ, Peter, James & John, and it isn’t an option for me today. I need to remember this frequently. As Henri Nouwen said, “nothing conflicts with the love of Christ like service to Christ”. If I’m not careful I will make mountaintops my life and my life irrelevant to my faith.
Time to walk down the mountain.
GSR
That’s a big statement. Honestly it disturbs me. I have this understanding that I think is how followers of Jesus are to operate and this doesn’t fit. This was a statement that Trent said while we were talking Tuesday night. I got a lot out of our time with Trent. He’s a great example of a guy who is living a great life following Christ. But that statement bothered me.
It’s not that I disagree. I asked him if that is the way it is supposed to be and he just said “that’s the way it is”. I think in practice he is right, Trent’s a realist and I think that is reality.
But it doesn’t mean it has to be that way. To tell the truth, I still want to be cared for and care for others. I want to be loved and to love. I’ve heard a local say for a long time that in the final analysis the thing that matters in life is who we love and who loves us. Now that sounds more like the way of Jesus that I know. It also sounds like what I want.
I recently spent some time with a friend and mentor who was encouraging me in the faith. I was talking about some particular relationship issues that I was dealing with. It’s been a a painful situation and has produced a lot of struggle in me. Very early in the conversation I was struck that the root of the problem was simply that I wasn’t loving the other parties.
Dallas describes love as intending the best for someone. This seems like a simplistic way of viewing love, but as definitions go I think it stands nicely. When I look for the best of the other person I am willfully looking for what is best for them and that is truly what we all want isn’t it?
When I realized the position I was in I was able to change my attitude and realize that the problem was that I was really looking out for my best and not the best of the others in the relationship. It doesn’t make it easy but it does make it clear. Clarity means a lot.
So what does this have to do with the fact that nobody cares about you after 25? For me, it means that I will stand against that reality as is currently is. I still want to be loved and to love deeply. That takes a lot of effort and time and energy. That takes extra-ordinary effort really. But it is more of the way that I want to live than any other way.
When Jesus said “love your enemies” he wasn’t saying that as a punishment or consequence to being a Christian. It isn’t that when you’re a Christian you have to do these difficult things that no one on earth would really want to do. He is saying that loving others is the best way to live. Period.
I want to be a man like that. At 25, 45, 75 or 105. I still want to love and be loved. I’m going to do it.
Greg
When I was a kid my image of Mary, Jesus mother, was of a shy schoolgirl dressed in the classic church play costume. The girl was usually a little ackward and undercomfortable in her own skin and was scared looking even in the play carrying a cheap baby doll Jesus. I often wish the images I learned in Sunday School could be gotten rid of. Often the flanel boards and simplistic plays left a western culture, suburban image of the heroes of scripture.
The truth is that Mary was one of the greatest heroes in all of scripture.
Just after after she finds out that she will bear the Son of God in her womb, at a young age, and will be shamed by those around her she says:
“Behold I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
These words may be the most instructional words for any follower of Jesus in all of scripture. Mary clearly humbles herself (I am a servant of the Lord) and completely submits herself to what God wants (Let if be to me according to your word). In remarkably simple language Mary makes clear her position: regardless of what I want and even in circumstances that are sure to be seen as scandalous, I would have you do what you want in my life.
If you want the essence of the faith in Jesus I would argue that this may be it. I am a servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word.
John tells us another part of who Mary is. When she and Jesus were at a wedding and then ran out of wine she tells the servants
“Do whatever he tells you to do”
Mary clearly understands her son to be the miracle working son of God that he is.
In two more parts of scripture we see insight into Mary. The first is when she is at the foot of the cross watching her son die. How much pain this must have been. As a parent I can’t imagine watching my son being treated this way. I can’t imagine a more painful thing to happen. But there is Mary sitting at his feet.
“but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.”
The other is in Acts when we read about the followers of Jesus including the twelve and others:
“All these, with one accord, were devoting themselves together with the women and Mary mother of Jesus, and his brothers.”
My most admired part of Mary’s story though is when she goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit and says:
“Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
Then Mary says:
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
He has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”
This description, coming from a teenage jewish girl who was scandalously pregnant from the worlds perspective is one of the most faith filled description of God and his kingdom in all of scripture. Mary is speaking this magnificat while in the most difficult of situations and knowing that she has a long and difficult road in front of her. Even in this Mary is proclaiming that God will right the wrongs in this world. He will bring the rich down and the poor up. He will exalt the humble and humble the exalted.
I know I can often talk a good game. I can make myself look smart and wise occasionally. I can motivate people sometimes. I can call something out of people that may encourage them. I can get people to follow me. I can sometimes see strategic things that other people can’t. I can help peoples vision become action.
But in the end, I often rely on my own abilities and purue my own purposes rather than the mission of bringing the kingdom of God to this earth. Mary’s words and deeds are the ones that I want to embody in my life. Not the self serving way that I often go about using my gifts, abilities, talents and treasures on this side of eternity.
Mary’s words and actions inspire me. Aside from Jesus, she is hands down my hero of the men and women in scripture. These words and actions are the ways that I want to respond to what God does in my life:
I am the humble servant of the Lord
May it be according to your word
Do whatever he tells you to do
Stand at the foot of the cross
Devote yourself to prayer
Even in my struggles and scandalous situations proclaim the kingdom
MAY IT BE ACCORDING TO THESE WORDS.
grace.mercy.peace.truth.love.action
I have been struck a lot lately by the amount that our desire and deciding what our story will be determines where we go and what we do with our lives. Two thoughts that I ran into this week made me stop dead in my tracks and think about what kind of a man I am becoming. One was a quote from a book I am reading called Sacred Rhythms by Ruth Haley Barton:
“The depth of desire has a great deal to do with the outcome of our life. Often, those who accomplish what they set out to do in life are not those who are the most talented or gifted or who have the best opportunities. Often they are the ones who are most deeply in touch with how badly they want whatever they want; they are the ones who consistently refuse to be deterred by the things that many of us allow to become excuses.”
The other was a talk by Donald Miller about Our Story. It was a great reminder to me that each day every action is part of the story line of my life. The final quote by Miller was this:
“Our stories get written by what we do. Not by what we think or what we feel or what we want. That doesn’t count when you write a story. Its only written by what we do.”
What kind of a story am I creating? What will my legacy be? How will my wife speak of me when we are old and grey? How will my children speak of me when they are grown and gone? Who will I love and be loved by? What friends will I go the distance with? Who will exeperience God’s goodness as a result of my actions?
At the end of the day, when my life on this side of eternity ends and I pass on to the other side. What I want, my deep desire, what I want to determine my actions, is to be known as a man who was sold out for the mission of Jesus Christ on this earth – willing to lay down everything for Him. I fall way short most of the time but what I desire is to be that kind of man and to create that kind of a story.
I was talking to a good friend in Hawaii last night on Skype and he quoted a teacher he had learned from this week who said:
“Is the life that your living worthy of the death that Jesus died?”
This is my one and only life. My one chance. I want to lay it all out there and love people and be loved in it. Someday I’ll go home and my deep desire is to hear “well done Greg, your a good and faithful servant”.
grace.mercy.peace.truth.love.action
