Spiritual Growth

When I became serious about faith in my adult life, spiritual growth seemed to come easy for me.   I met with someone once a week who discipled me, I was memorizing scripture,  I wanted to read my bible every chance I got, I was excited about what God was doing in my life, I was growing in faith and building character and getting control of my thought life.  Every Sunday during the worship service I felt an emotional high and connection with God and I was praying with real fervency and felt Gods presence.  On top of all that I was asked to start teaching Sunday school and leading the youth in our church.   In short, life was good and I was full of joy!  

As the years wore on things started unraveling a little, most likely no one could tell, except maybe my wife.   I was still going to church, reading my bible and praying, but I was just going through the motions, checking off boxes on my spiritual “To Do list”.  We all will have dry times in our life when we don’t “feel” God, but that does not mean He is not present and working in our lives, but this was different.  On top of this I started fighting pride; I would look down my nose at other Christians who weren’t as good as me or working as hard as me.  And believe it or not I started fighting self-condemnation at the same time, because I didn’t feel like I was good enough or working hard enough either.  There was no longer much Joy in my life; just growing despair… this went on for years.

Now to be fair to myself, I was just doing what I was told would help me grow spiritually and most everyone else in the small church we attended seemed to be in the same boat. Looking back I can see two very large mistakes I made.

First:  I did not rightly understand that my whole life was a “Spiritual Life” I relegated my spiritual life to a select few areas and activities.  I did not understand that working hard and honest at my job could be and should be a form of worship to God.  That playing with my children and loving and serving my wife are all activities that bring glory to God and joy to his heart.  God wants our whole life to be lived in devotion to him, for our good and His glory.

Second:  I was devoting myself to “spiritual activities”. I was worshiping things like: My daily quiet time, Church attendance, a specific style of worship music, among other things.  And what I came to realize is that when we start worshiping “good” things and make them “God” things we start down a very bad road, the focus of my devotion shifted from Jesus to activities for Jesus.  Now don’t get me wrong; I think you should attend church, at least weekly and read your bible daily. But if any activity becomes our focus over loving and serving Jesus, we have totally missed it.  All these good things are designed to help us reflect Jesus more and to grow in relationship with Him.  But they must never become God things.

Let’s talk family... Part 2

Have you been to a family reunion lately?  Most of the time they are a lot of fun; you're reconnecting with extended family, catching up with cousins, aunts and uncles.  Now if your family is like mine you may have a Conspiracy theorist in the mix and maybe an Aunt that has a beard and dentures and who loved to take them out and gum when you were little…Please, don’t even ask … But besides that when I think of family reunions I have some pretty good memories.  After I met my wife I started going to her family reunions, they were magical experiences for me. The reunions were held on a secluded and gorgeous piece of land right on an arm of the Puget Sound, known as the Hood Canal. It is beyond beautiful there!  One of her uncles kept it in park-like condition, with the beach, mountains and forest it is a place I never wanted to leave.  There is an abundance of fresh seafood.   It has an oyster bed on the right side of the beach and a clam bed on the left.  Someone usually brought crab pots and set them out as well.  So if you love fresh seafood, (dipped in Garlic Butter), like I do, it is paradise.  On top of that, her family has always been exceptionally warm and friendly to me, and I was immediately made to feel like a part of the family from day one.  Now don’t get me wrong, her family is not perfect.  There are occasional hurt feelings and bickering uncles but for the most part they are very fun experiences.  In fact, I don’t think I have missed more than one in 24 years.   

But what if your only family experience was when you went to a family reunion?  What if all the family time you had were a couple of hours a year…?  Or even a week for that matter?  How hard would it be to grow, mature and figure life out without the support of a nuclear family?  Without loving parents and siblings (now I know that siblings aren’t always that loving, but work with me here.)  Life and learning are difficult and when we have the loving support of an immediate family, we can learn and grow, taking the hard knocks that are sure to come our way.  And when we are heading down a dangerous path a loving family can steer us right again and encourage us to head in a better direction.  Plus, we are more likely to receive it when we know they have our best interest at heart.  We can take almost anything life throws at us when we know we have a family in our corner that is there for us and really “gets” us quirks and all.

It’s the same with our church family; Sunday services are more like family reunions.  There is no real time to connect or “do life together.”  Seeing someone 2-3 Sundays a month gives us no real opportunity to become the family of God like the Bible talks about us becoming.   

That is why we encourage our people to connect with others in a small group of some sort.  In small groups you can develop relationships where people can “get you” and accept you unconditionally, just like a real family.  They can be a place where you can grow and mature in faith in Jesus, in an accepting environment, you can express doubts and fears without being criticized.  And learn to jump some of the hurdles life is going to throw at you.   And if life ever comes crashing down you have a ready-made support group to help you though the crisis.

Now you may be thinking, "I was raised in a Church Family, and it was not accepting, it was critical" or "I have been in church and it’s not a safe loving environment like you say it should be."  But if you read “Let’s talk family part 1” you know I said that many of Jesus’ followers have missed quite a few of the primary commands to be loving, forgiving, patient, gentle and merciful towards each other. Those are some things we are spending a lot of energy and prayer to correct in our church.  You see, most of us were messed up by our biological families… and it is only in relationship with Jesus and other believers that we will get healing, restoration and live life as fully developed humans… Christianity was never meant to be lived out in a solo act. It is only when we do life in concert with others that we will experience the blessing and fullness of all God has to offer his children.

Let’s talk family…Part 1

For almost all of us the word “family” holds vast amounts of emotion; for some there is great joy with the word, for others great pain.  However, for the majority of us it is pretty much a mix of the two.

Take me, for example; I grew up the youngest of 5 kids in a normal Middle American family… my dad was an alcoholic and my parents divorced when I was 5…like I said, normal.  Needless to say my childhood was a bit rocky.  Only because of a very loving and forgiving God and wife has adulthood been somewhat smoother.  I have, by the grace of God, been privileged to raise 3 somewhat normal, healthy kids who I love more than words can express.

But when I, even for a moment, stop and ponder all the emotions I have around the word family, they look something like this:  Joy, fulfillment, sorrow, longing, anger, hopelessness, guilt, shame, regret, past bitterness...just to name a few!

Now maybe you grew up in a picture-perfect family, if so, I am happy for you.  But for most of us our families are pretty broken and dysfunctional.  And whether we like to admit it or not, some of us had a little bit to do with that brokenness and dysfunction!  I have, greatly hurt and disappointed members of my family and in turn, I have been hurt and disappointed by them; especially those members that I have looked up to or been in authority under, like parents.

Now when I stop and think about my church family it’s pretty much the same. If you have been in the church for a while go ahead… go back and read the last paragraph with the church family in mind…does it read the same for you?

If you are new to the faith don’t lose hope.  You see as humans we live in a fallen world and we are all marred and stained by it.  All of us have been hurt and sinned against and if we are honest have also done the hurting and the sinning.  And it is no different in the church; it is made up of people who are fallen.

So where does that leave us?  Am I telling you that the family of God is no different?  By no means! What I am saying is that many of Jesus’ followers have done what God, many times, in the bible warns us not to do. And that is not to become like the world around us. This is a whole other subject.  But simply put, many of Jesus’ followers have mistaken that warning to mean, “Don’t look and act like the world”, and it does mean that to some degree.  But what God is really saying is, “Don’t THINK like the world around us”, don’t absorb the world’s ways of thinking. Don’t be; critical, power hungry, selfish, arrogant and don't act better than others; that is what the world does.

The Apostle Paul says that even though you might be able to do all kinds of great miracles; if you don’t have love for each other, you have and are… NOTHING!!!  True familial love is to be our constant and highest goal.

The Apostle John says about Christians, “You will know us by our love for each other…" Why does he say that?  Because it is really hard to LOVE… to be selfless, to overlook faults and to love each other unconditionally!  So if we REALLY love each other, the world will know that the power of Jesus is at work among us.

Jesus, who loved us when we were still his enemies and who died for us; his enemies, is the Gospel!  And that should be massively transformational.  Jesus calls us to form a new family, an “incarnational (Jesus in us) community” that is distinct and different.  It's to be known for its love for God and for each other. With a love so powerful, it transforms us into a new close-knit family, whose love for each other is so great that JESUS is the only possible explanation…

With this kind of love at work in our hearts, between us, in our Small Groups and Church gatherings, Jesus will become irresistible to those around us and we won’t be able to contain the flood.

The Collective

On occasion I would substitute teach for a school district near my home in Western Washington. For the most part I worked in the middle school and high school grades. I had worked with those age groups in the past and I was most comfortable with them. I actually like working with middle schoolers the most, crazy I know. I tell my wife it is because my mentality is about their level. There was this elementary school close to my home that needed a sub for P.E. and it basically consisted of letting six different classes of Kindergartners run around the gym for 45 minutes. Then all I had to do was send them back to their prospective teachers; piece of cake!

The year before this, my very first sub job was for a 5Th grade class at this same school. They ate me alive! I did make it through the day; barely. As a result of that, up until the successful kindergarten P.E. class, I had shied away from elementary school for obvious reasons of mental stability. However, fresh off the high of successfully teaching kindergartners P.E. I received a phone call from this elementary school indicating that they desperately needed a substitute teacher for kindergarten. I thought to myself; how hard can it be? They were so cute and harmless. When I was teaching P.E. they would randomly come up to me, wrap their arms around my leg, look up at me with their big eyes and say “I love you teacher, I wish you could always be our teacher” or some such similarly cute and endearing prattle.  So with this endearing memory in mind, when the call came in, I, in my weakened and self-delusional state of mind said, “Sure, I’d be glad to!

There are two things every teacher learns very early in their career (if they are to survive). First, you MUST stay at least one step ahead of the students and second; you must fool them into thinking that you are firmly in control of the class at all times! So when I excitedly arrived early to the classroom that day I looked over the teacher’s lesson plans and found them to be in some sort of Greek short hand. My confidence waned a little. I could not even understand half of what she had written and I could not locate any of the items the lesson plan referred to in the classroom. To make matters worse, all of the regular teachers were at a conference so none of the substitutes in classes around me knew any more than I did. When I found the principal and asked her for help, she gave me a look similar to the one a deer gives you when it’s in your headlights...so while she went off to try and call the teacher, little people started showing up. I knew I was in big trouble.

I won’t bore you with a detailed list of the day’s events...about how they destroyed the classroom, climbed all over the tables and filing cabinets; belly flopped off of tables into the stuffed animals, etc. . If I turned my attention away from the class for one second; when I looked back they would be dismantling furniture! But, I will share one fascinating insight I came away with. And that is what the Borg and Kindergartners have in common. “Resistance is Futile!!!” If you missed watching TV in the 90’s you may not know who the Borg are. They are a fictional race of cyborgs depicted in Star Trek, you know the ones; the collective… the race of pseudo-humans that all work in mindless unison. Like I was trying to say, the ones that reminds me of Kindergartners…

"Like Jesus"

I don’t know if it annoys you or not, but the “Like Jesus” button on Facebook really irritates me… It looks more like a picture of a fair-haired hippy than Jesus…

But I think it is safe to say that most Christians aspire to live “like Jesus” they try not to do bad things and in fact try to do “good things” or “right things”. But just exactly what those “right” and “good” things are don’t always seem to be so clear.

If you have attended church for a while you might feel like you have a pretty good idea of what Jesus expects of you. You might even feel confident that in most situations you know what He would want you to do… WWJD…after all… But if you look at the 3 billion plus people who claim to be his followers you can see that there are some differences of opinion…

Now here are what I consider to be often overlooked teachings of Jesus.

• The Samaritan woman at the well (John 4)
• The prostitute that washed his feet with her hair (Luke 7)
• The woman caught in the act of adultery (John 8)

The main reason that they are overlooked, I believe, is that they are sections of the Gospel where he taught by his actions and not so much with his words.

Romans 8: 29 Says: For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become *like* his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters… (NLT)

How do we become “Like” Jesus…?

Obey: Jesus on many occasions’ commands his disciples to obey his teaching.

Matthew 7:26 But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish…

John 14:23 … Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching…

Matthew 28:20 (the great commission) Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

What is often over looked by churches and preachers is when Jesus taught through his actions. If you study the accounts in the Gospels where Jesus taught by example you see that these examples had a profound impact on his disciples.

However, for us, the impact of these teachings can get lost in the two dimensional print and cultural translation

We will miss aspects of Jesus’ teaching if we don’t come to understand what he was trying to communicate in these parts of scripture. For these teachings are at the core of the mission of Jesus and how he wants his followers to act towards…others… the down and outers and marginalized of society

In fact I believe that because of ignorance regarding these teachings, many “Christians” over the years have acted more like his enemies …the very people that put him to death; rather than acting “like Jesus”

I am attempting to write in a blog…
I have always wanted to be a writer and have idolized many of them over the years, first it was Rudyard Kipling and then, C. S. Lewis, then Louis L’Amour, then J.R.R. Tolkien... (I know L'Amore should not be in that list) but oh if i could only write like Tolkien... Wow that would be great! To have the imagination and fortitude to write a whole language that does not even exist! I struggle to operate in a language that does exist and one I’ve used my whole life.