I’ve known for a while that I’ll be turning 24 in a little less than a week, but I just decided that I need a little challenge before I get to the 24 mark on the years of living list. So I’ve made a bucket list. 24 things I need to do before I turn 24. (The things are pretty simple, seeing that I have less than 6 days to complete the list) but here goes nothing…
1. run a mile
2. try a new food
3. watch a movie
4. send someone a note
5. sing karaoke
6. drink a glass of wine
7. say something to every friend on my facebook
8. download new music
9. tell a joke
10. buy myself something special
11. have coffee with a friend
12. sing at the top of my lungs
13. skinny dip
14. call my mom
15. give someone else a gift
16. learn a new song
17. blog (got one!)
18. star gaze
19. get ryan to give me love circles
20. watch the sunrise
21. get a guy to buy me a drink
22. read a children’s book
23. buy a lottery ticket
24. have breakfast with the roomies
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
I'll keep my shoes off for a while...
How you label God and how you label yourself will determine a lot of things about your world.
Every time you get a clarified vision of who God is, that is a sacred moment.
Every time you get a clarified vision of who you are, that is a sacred moment.
You're on holy ground.
Take your shoes off.
I had to take my shoes off at church this morning.
I have been hearing the Lord whisper in my ear that my perceived and actual realities were in conflict. I have been feeling nudges by the Holy Spirit, turning my ear from the lies of the Evil One toward the heart of the Saving One.
Today it stopped being a sweet whisper and a gentle nudge. It turned into a shotgun blast of truth. I have been utterly bombarded by God's sweet words of truth and life.
I have been reminded that the whole of me is in the process of becoming more like Jesus. The whole of my life has been a training ground for big work to be done in the Kingdom of God.
As God declared to Moses that he was the one that would lead his people into the promises of God. I have been hearing the voice of God declare to me that I would lead my people into the promises of the Most High. There is work to be done.
He is calling me.
The important label of "called out one" has been suppressed and dismissed because I've been holding so tightly to the lies and schemes Satan has been playing with my heart. I rest secured in the mislabeled false reality that are the lies of the Enemy. I take stalk in the miserably wrong words about my heart and spirit.
The important label of "beloved" has been disregarded as falsehood because I have clung so tightly to the lie that I am not only unloveable, but unworthy of the love that is so freely given to me.
The important label of "beautiful" has been torn from my heart because I have become so calloused to the truth, making lies sound more believable than the truth. Ugly, unworthy and unwanted ring true in my spirit.
I'll pause here... the wrong labels are ugly and big and sticky (if you picture them like real labels from a label making machine) there might be 100 more that I don't even want to think about right now. I've been listening to the lies of the Evil One for far too long...
Important people in my life have labeled me, wrongly during very vulnerable seasons of my journey. Important people have unfortunately been used to advance the schemes of the father of lies.
Instead of these awful lies. Instead of these misperceived fabrications. Instead of what is wrong or broken or messed up, in me...
God. Jahovah. Yahweh. I AM.
Is relabeling me today.
He is making beautiful what is already beautiful in his eyes.
He is making confident what lies have made uncertain and unworthy.
He is making loved what feels unloveable.
He is making strong what is weak.
He is making his beloved what was dirty and shamed.
He is making right what was wrong.
As I type I realize, this journey may be long, it may be hard and full of tears and pain...
but my shoes are off.
I'm on holy ground. I don't want to forget this moment where I'm beginning to find a clarified vision of who God is and consequently who I am in light of that....
I'll keep my shoes off for a while!
Every time you get a clarified vision of who God is, that is a sacred moment.
Every time you get a clarified vision of who you are, that is a sacred moment.
You're on holy ground.
Take your shoes off.
I had to take my shoes off at church this morning.
I have been hearing the Lord whisper in my ear that my perceived and actual realities were in conflict. I have been feeling nudges by the Holy Spirit, turning my ear from the lies of the Evil One toward the heart of the Saving One.
Today it stopped being a sweet whisper and a gentle nudge. It turned into a shotgun blast of truth. I have been utterly bombarded by God's sweet words of truth and life.
I have been reminded that the whole of me is in the process of becoming more like Jesus. The whole of my life has been a training ground for big work to be done in the Kingdom of God.
As God declared to Moses that he was the one that would lead his people into the promises of God. I have been hearing the voice of God declare to me that I would lead my people into the promises of the Most High. There is work to be done.
He is calling me.
The important label of "called out one" has been suppressed and dismissed because I've been holding so tightly to the lies and schemes Satan has been playing with my heart. I rest secured in the mislabeled false reality that are the lies of the Enemy. I take stalk in the miserably wrong words about my heart and spirit.
The important label of "beloved" has been disregarded as falsehood because I have clung so tightly to the lie that I am not only unloveable, but unworthy of the love that is so freely given to me.
The important label of "beautiful" has been torn from my heart because I have become so calloused to the truth, making lies sound more believable than the truth. Ugly, unworthy and unwanted ring true in my spirit.
I'll pause here... the wrong labels are ugly and big and sticky (if you picture them like real labels from a label making machine) there might be 100 more that I don't even want to think about right now. I've been listening to the lies of the Evil One for far too long...
Important people in my life have labeled me, wrongly during very vulnerable seasons of my journey. Important people have unfortunately been used to advance the schemes of the father of lies.
Instead of these awful lies. Instead of these misperceived fabrications. Instead of what is wrong or broken or messed up, in me...
God. Jahovah. Yahweh. I AM.
Is relabeling me today.
He is making beautiful what is already beautiful in his eyes.
He is making confident what lies have made uncertain and unworthy.
He is making loved what feels unloveable.
He is making strong what is weak.
He is making his beloved what was dirty and shamed.
He is making right what was wrong.
As I type I realize, this journey may be long, it may be hard and full of tears and pain...
but my shoes are off.
I'm on holy ground. I don't want to forget this moment where I'm beginning to find a clarified vision of who God is and consequently who I am in light of that....
I'll keep my shoes off for a while!
Friday, July 31, 2009
being spiritually formed
Don't be overwhelmed but this here is my paper for Christian Spiritual Formation... it's long and intense and about the deepest parts of my heart. You've been warned...
The most frightening part about spiritual disciplines is the discipline part. For most of my spiritual life I have been pretty content in my lack of discipline. I have enjoyed many blessings, I have encountered God in big and small ways, and I have felt good about my Christian walk— without being very intentional about spiritual formation. What is thoroughly unfortunate is that it has been simple to live life as a Christian without much discipline. A few weeks before I signed up for a course in Spiritual Formation, God began to stir within me discontentment with the way I had been living my life. He began to show me the places in my life where I had become complacent and content in mediocrity; lacking movement, health or discipline. At the time, I had no idea what was going on or how I was going to combat the painful feelings I was encountering. I immediately placed blame on others, declaring the community around me flawed for missing the point of the Christian walk. I began to retreat and shut down in relationships with others, figuring that if I was going to draw closer to the Lord I needed to do it alone. After blaming and retreating, it became easy for me to not only blame others, but I began to truly despise and disregard my personal abilities and strengths. I found myself in a deep hole with no understanding of how to overcome. I could not stir within myself the ability to comprehend the depth of brokenness I was feeling. I had nothing to rest on. No anchor. No hook.
In the middle of this season I found myself immersed in books that were littered with stories about the experiences other believers were having with the same or similar struggles I was facing. I found myself reading about ways, which pillars of the Christian faith, remained anchored in the Lord despite their situations or life circumstances. I began pondering the necessity of community, people to join me on this life journey, as I do the work of praising, serving, resting in and following hard after God. I began to consider the idea pondered by Jean Vanier, that says;
To be in communion means to be with someone to discover that we actually belong together. Communion means accepting people just as they are, with all their limits and inner pain, but also with their gifts and their beauty and their capacity to grow: to see the beauty inside of all the pain. To love someone is not first of all to do things for them, but to reveal to them their beauty and value, to say to them through our attitude: “You are beautiful. You are important. I trust you. You can trust yourself.”
Without my permission or consent, because this reading and pondering was required of me, I found myself encountering God every day, encountering him in ways that I have never even imagined before. I have always known that God wants to speak to me and hear me and draw me near to him, I have not always experienced that in such big ways at one point in time. Beginning with A.W. Tozer himself, I began to understand the problem of mediocrity and complacency. In his book, The Pursuit of God, Tozer declares, “The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted.” Throughout the weeks leading up to class, my heart began to be softened to the idea of not only participating in spiritual disciplines and loving spiritual formation, but more so longing for more of the Lord through those disciplines and subsequent formation.
I am convinced that this season of my life was designed uniquely by my creator, that I might really take to heart the knowledge and lessons set before me in this course. I am also convinced that had I not had the experience of struggle and brokenness before this course, I would not have consumed the information the way I did, nor would it have had the same affect on my life as it has. I am hoping that as I dissect and dive deeper into the things that stood out to me in this course, I will be able to better integrate the things I have learned and am learning into my daily life, my relationships and subsequently my ministry.
Intensive is a perfect word to define the courses taken at Tozer Theological Seminary during the summer session. Four hours of lecture, conversation, and experience every day for two weeks is, intense. As I began my experience in Christian Spiritual Formation, I was overwhelmed and intimidated by the course content and participants. I was unsure of my place in the group, I was unsure of my ability to contribute to the experience, and I was unsure of my ability to hold my own in such a spiritually demanding learning incubator. Each day required some kind of processing, the sheer volume of information I was gathering required that I took time each day to figure out what I was learning and how I would implement the information into my life, ministry, and relationships. The discipline I began to develop during the two week intensive allowed me to move forward into my regular schedule and figure out ways to be disciplined and teach discipline to people around me.
A few things that have found their way into my daily Spiritual formation include; Lectio Divina, self-evaluation, and staying current with God. Becoming a person who is centered, daily, on the word of God is something I believe to be essential in the Christian life. In today’s culture, meditation has become the thing to do. Professional athletes, celebrities, and common folk alike enjoy the common practice of meditation. Though Lectio Divina is a very specific form of centering, one can easily look at the spiritual and health benefits of any form of meditation and recognize how life can be transformed by practicing the art of centering, especially when focused on the God of the Universe. Studies have shown that “meditation techniques are being implemented in management of life threatening diseases; in transformation of molecular and genetic structure; in reversal of mental illnesses, in accelerated learning programs, in perceptions and communications beyond the physical, in solving problems and atomic and nuclear physics; in gaining better ecological understanding; in management of lifestyle and future world problems. ” If meditation, on no one thing in particular can cause such profound enlightenment, it should be easy for a Christian to see how the discipline of meditating or centering on God can be a vehicle for spiritual transformation. We need not forget the truth that, “God wills that we should push on into His presence and live our whole life there.” God wants us to be with him, in his presence; he wants to bring blessing and peace and the assurance that we are secure in him. Lectio Divina, in its many forms and alterations has been a profound space where God is changing me.
Beginning each day being centered in the Lord through divine meditation on scripture becomes a catalyst for a few other disciplines to become a part of my daily routine. The practice of creating room for the movement of the Holy Spirit, really does allow for change, with this change oftentimes comes room for evaluation of personal practices and the practices of others. I have found that the discipline of self-evaluation has become one of the most important experiences in my walk with the Lord, especially as I note that the Evil One usually attacks my self-worth, whenever he gets the chance. Dallas Willard says, “The hidden dimension of each human life is not visible to others, nor is it fully graspable even by ourselves. We usually know very little about the things that move in our own soul, the deepest level of our life, or what is driving it. Our ‘within’ is astonishingly complex and subtle…” I have found it increasingly important to figure out, come to terms with, and embrace the deepest parts of myself. If it is difficult to even grasp the hidden dimensions of ourselves, how much more intentional should we be about our movement toward self understanding. I have found that as I dive deeper into understanding the heart of God and his heart for me, I am drawn to the depths of myself in order to understand what and why I experience deep sorrow, pain, life and joy. Being deliberate about why I think and feel the way I do has been vital to my moving forward in a life transformed into the likeness of Christ. Knowing my gifts and strengths and using them to the glory of God is a catalyst for change in me and in the people around me.
An offshoot of self-evaluation is staying current with the Lord; this includes asking forgiveness and praising God daily for blessings and growth he works in me. The beginning of staying current with Christ is healing past pain. The models of doing this can vary, but as I sit down to evaluate what has been left to fester, unrepented, I have found that what works for me is intentional prayerful reflection; taking whatever comes to my mind to the Lord and requesting forgiveness and healing. A.W. Tozer makes note that “we must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us… It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful.” And like the saying goes, ‘no pain, no gain!’ We need to be willing to feel, in order to experience true and lasting healing. Sometimes this sounds much better in theory than in practice, but I am beginning to understand the rewarding benefits of healing and staying current with repentance and praise.
As important as these things have been in my personal daily life, I have found prayer, encouragement and forgiveness to be essential disciplines when it comes to improving and developing and maintaining healthy relationships. Community has become an essential part of the way that I live due in large part to the theological evaluation of community by Dallas Willard in his book, Renovation of the Heart. He declares, “Our ties to one another cannot be isolated from our shared relationships to him, nor our relationship to him from our ties to one another. Our relations to others cannot be right unless we see those others in their relation to God. Through others he comes to us and we only really find others when we see them in him.” With this thought shift came my desire to be disciplined in areas of my spiritual life that could essentially have an impact on the way other people experience and encounter the Savior.
Prayer has been the most impactful discipline that I have been cultivating since the completion of the two-week intensive course. I agree with Henri Nouwen as he declares, “Prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions where we are totally one. There God’s spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place. There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, within us.” This has proven itself true, as I have encountered God through prayer this summer. Ministry has been difficult, to say the least, throughout the summer months. Usually, I get the opportunity to go to camp with my leadership team and students, or I get to volunteer for a few weeks at the local Young Life property, because of the increased responsibilities and commitments I have in my life, the option to do the fun things I am used to in the summer months has dissipated. At the beginning of the summer I found it to be extremely difficult to hear stories from camp. During class the Lord began to change my heart as he began to teach me the power and responsibility of prayer. As I have enjoyed the discipline and privilege of praying for my friends and others, doing the work that I would like to be doing, I find the impact threefold. First, the Lord is molding my heart and making me a faithful warrior in the spiritual realm. Second, I am enjoying the way that the Lord so clearly thwarts the physical boundaries of time and space as he goes about his business of listening and responding to my prayers. Finally, as people’s lives are busy and communication has been difficult during this season of growth in my life, I have found that prayer and listening to the Lord has allowed me to remain connected to my community of friends. I believe that through the discipline of prayer I have been encountering the miraculous nature of God, every single day of my life.
Being one who is filled with courage at the depth of my being, by abiding in the Lord, has become a cultivating power behind being able to place courage in the heart of others. The story of Paul and Barnabas as found in Acts chapter 15, is a story of profound movements to the call on all Christians to embolden and empower others with the truth of God’s Word as well as the truth that God places on our tongues to give away to the people around us. The discipline of encouragement has become less and less a discipline and more and more a praise response to how good God is. The piece of the act that is discipline is the being intentional about encouraging even when it feels awkward or I become self-conscious. The process of moving Christians from a life that is dominated by fear is a process empowered by encouragement.
The personal discipline of staying current with Christ has made its way into the corporate response of forgiveness. “At the heart of community, as we learn to care for our brothers and sisters, there is forgiveness. Reconciliation is at the heart of community. To grow in love means that we become men and women of forgiveness, of reconciliation.” As we discussed in class, I believe that forgiveness can and will be the transforming power of Christians to alter and make new the relationships between believers and non-believers alike. The necessity of right relationship in order to encounter true and healthy community has over and over again drawn me back to the principle of forgiveness. In class we discussed a number of reasons to practice the discipline of forgiveness, the idea that we should give up our right to be angry, hurt and disappointed (to name a few emotions related to unforgiveness) makes the practice of forgiveness a little easier for me. It allows me to understand that I have room and space to be and feel the way I do. But by giving those rights up I am empowering myself and the people I forgive to move away from the prison of unforgiveness toward a place of healing and wholeness.
As I’ve thought about and practiced the divine gift of forgiveness, I was reminded of a story found in the popular book Blue Like Jazz. The author and a few of his friends found themselves at a very secular, almost anti-Christian festival, Ren Fayre. They decided that they would build a confessional, not for the festival goers to confess their sins, but where this group of Christians would, on behalf of millions of others, confess sins and request forgiveness. Donald Miller states that they (he and his friends) would participate in the following activity;
We are going to confess to them. We are going to confess that, as followers of Jesus. We have not been very loving; we have been bitter, and for that we are sorry. We will apologize for the Crusades, we will apologize for televangelists, we will apologize for neglecting the poor and the lonely, we will ask them to forgive us, and we will tell them that in our selfishness, we have misrepresented Jesus on this campus. We will tell people who come into the booth that Jesus loves them.
The power of forgiveness will know no bounds if we, as forgiven ones, go before the world as John the Baptist did “in the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of sins, because of the tender mercy of our God.”
Discipline is being redefined in my spiritual life. I have never had a very good taste in my mouth when I think about the word discipline. It has always had such a negative connotation in my mind. I have decided to redefine spiritual disciplines to be abiding in the Lord, creating space for him in my life. As I step forward into creating space and abiding in the Lord, I find myself with something to rest in. I rest in the Lord, centered on him every day. I find an anchor for all of my relationships as I intentionally converse with my savior, being filled with courage and forgiveness, so that I may be able to give that away in relationships with others. I find, also, a hook from which to hang my ministry. A hook to keep me focused on God and not on rules. A hook to keep me grounded in the Word of Life, provided as a perfect gift to those who would choose to look and listen. Because, “the facts are that God is not silent, has never been silent. It is the nature of God to speak.” I vow to abide and create space to listen to the voice of God speak in my daily life, my relationships and my ministry. I rest in the truth that, “the more you actually know him, the more you will desire to know him. Since knowledge is a measurement of love, the deeper and more intimate you are with him, the greater will be your love for him. And if your love for the Lord is great, then we will love him as much during grief as in joy.” I look forward to loving more and enjoying joy every day of my life.
The most frightening part about spiritual disciplines is the discipline part. For most of my spiritual life I have been pretty content in my lack of discipline. I have enjoyed many blessings, I have encountered God in big and small ways, and I have felt good about my Christian walk— without being very intentional about spiritual formation. What is thoroughly unfortunate is that it has been simple to live life as a Christian without much discipline. A few weeks before I signed up for a course in Spiritual Formation, God began to stir within me discontentment with the way I had been living my life. He began to show me the places in my life where I had become complacent and content in mediocrity; lacking movement, health or discipline. At the time, I had no idea what was going on or how I was going to combat the painful feelings I was encountering. I immediately placed blame on others, declaring the community around me flawed for missing the point of the Christian walk. I began to retreat and shut down in relationships with others, figuring that if I was going to draw closer to the Lord I needed to do it alone. After blaming and retreating, it became easy for me to not only blame others, but I began to truly despise and disregard my personal abilities and strengths. I found myself in a deep hole with no understanding of how to overcome. I could not stir within myself the ability to comprehend the depth of brokenness I was feeling. I had nothing to rest on. No anchor. No hook.
In the middle of this season I found myself immersed in books that were littered with stories about the experiences other believers were having with the same or similar struggles I was facing. I found myself reading about ways, which pillars of the Christian faith, remained anchored in the Lord despite their situations or life circumstances. I began pondering the necessity of community, people to join me on this life journey, as I do the work of praising, serving, resting in and following hard after God. I began to consider the idea pondered by Jean Vanier, that says;
To be in communion means to be with someone to discover that we actually belong together. Communion means accepting people just as they are, with all their limits and inner pain, but also with their gifts and their beauty and their capacity to grow: to see the beauty inside of all the pain. To love someone is not first of all to do things for them, but to reveal to them their beauty and value, to say to them through our attitude: “You are beautiful. You are important. I trust you. You can trust yourself.”
Without my permission or consent, because this reading and pondering was required of me, I found myself encountering God every day, encountering him in ways that I have never even imagined before. I have always known that God wants to speak to me and hear me and draw me near to him, I have not always experienced that in such big ways at one point in time. Beginning with A.W. Tozer himself, I began to understand the problem of mediocrity and complacency. In his book, The Pursuit of God, Tozer declares, “The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted.” Throughout the weeks leading up to class, my heart began to be softened to the idea of not only participating in spiritual disciplines and loving spiritual formation, but more so longing for more of the Lord through those disciplines and subsequent formation.
I am convinced that this season of my life was designed uniquely by my creator, that I might really take to heart the knowledge and lessons set before me in this course. I am also convinced that had I not had the experience of struggle and brokenness before this course, I would not have consumed the information the way I did, nor would it have had the same affect on my life as it has. I am hoping that as I dissect and dive deeper into the things that stood out to me in this course, I will be able to better integrate the things I have learned and am learning into my daily life, my relationships and subsequently my ministry.
Intensive is a perfect word to define the courses taken at Tozer Theological Seminary during the summer session. Four hours of lecture, conversation, and experience every day for two weeks is, intense. As I began my experience in Christian Spiritual Formation, I was overwhelmed and intimidated by the course content and participants. I was unsure of my place in the group, I was unsure of my ability to contribute to the experience, and I was unsure of my ability to hold my own in such a spiritually demanding learning incubator. Each day required some kind of processing, the sheer volume of information I was gathering required that I took time each day to figure out what I was learning and how I would implement the information into my life, ministry, and relationships. The discipline I began to develop during the two week intensive allowed me to move forward into my regular schedule and figure out ways to be disciplined and teach discipline to people around me.
A few things that have found their way into my daily Spiritual formation include; Lectio Divina, self-evaluation, and staying current with God. Becoming a person who is centered, daily, on the word of God is something I believe to be essential in the Christian life. In today’s culture, meditation has become the thing to do. Professional athletes, celebrities, and common folk alike enjoy the common practice of meditation. Though Lectio Divina is a very specific form of centering, one can easily look at the spiritual and health benefits of any form of meditation and recognize how life can be transformed by practicing the art of centering, especially when focused on the God of the Universe. Studies have shown that “meditation techniques are being implemented in management of life threatening diseases; in transformation of molecular and genetic structure; in reversal of mental illnesses, in accelerated learning programs, in perceptions and communications beyond the physical, in solving problems and atomic and nuclear physics; in gaining better ecological understanding; in management of lifestyle and future world problems. ” If meditation, on no one thing in particular can cause such profound enlightenment, it should be easy for a Christian to see how the discipline of meditating or centering on God can be a vehicle for spiritual transformation. We need not forget the truth that, “God wills that we should push on into His presence and live our whole life there.” God wants us to be with him, in his presence; he wants to bring blessing and peace and the assurance that we are secure in him. Lectio Divina, in its many forms and alterations has been a profound space where God is changing me.
Beginning each day being centered in the Lord through divine meditation on scripture becomes a catalyst for a few other disciplines to become a part of my daily routine. The practice of creating room for the movement of the Holy Spirit, really does allow for change, with this change oftentimes comes room for evaluation of personal practices and the practices of others. I have found that the discipline of self-evaluation has become one of the most important experiences in my walk with the Lord, especially as I note that the Evil One usually attacks my self-worth, whenever he gets the chance. Dallas Willard says, “The hidden dimension of each human life is not visible to others, nor is it fully graspable even by ourselves. We usually know very little about the things that move in our own soul, the deepest level of our life, or what is driving it. Our ‘within’ is astonishingly complex and subtle…” I have found it increasingly important to figure out, come to terms with, and embrace the deepest parts of myself. If it is difficult to even grasp the hidden dimensions of ourselves, how much more intentional should we be about our movement toward self understanding. I have found that as I dive deeper into understanding the heart of God and his heart for me, I am drawn to the depths of myself in order to understand what and why I experience deep sorrow, pain, life and joy. Being deliberate about why I think and feel the way I do has been vital to my moving forward in a life transformed into the likeness of Christ. Knowing my gifts and strengths and using them to the glory of God is a catalyst for change in me and in the people around me.
An offshoot of self-evaluation is staying current with the Lord; this includes asking forgiveness and praising God daily for blessings and growth he works in me. The beginning of staying current with Christ is healing past pain. The models of doing this can vary, but as I sit down to evaluate what has been left to fester, unrepented, I have found that what works for me is intentional prayerful reflection; taking whatever comes to my mind to the Lord and requesting forgiveness and healing. A.W. Tozer makes note that “we must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us… It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful.” And like the saying goes, ‘no pain, no gain!’ We need to be willing to feel, in order to experience true and lasting healing. Sometimes this sounds much better in theory than in practice, but I am beginning to understand the rewarding benefits of healing and staying current with repentance and praise.
As important as these things have been in my personal daily life, I have found prayer, encouragement and forgiveness to be essential disciplines when it comes to improving and developing and maintaining healthy relationships. Community has become an essential part of the way that I live due in large part to the theological evaluation of community by Dallas Willard in his book, Renovation of the Heart. He declares, “Our ties to one another cannot be isolated from our shared relationships to him, nor our relationship to him from our ties to one another. Our relations to others cannot be right unless we see those others in their relation to God. Through others he comes to us and we only really find others when we see them in him.” With this thought shift came my desire to be disciplined in areas of my spiritual life that could essentially have an impact on the way other people experience and encounter the Savior.
Prayer has been the most impactful discipline that I have been cultivating since the completion of the two-week intensive course. I agree with Henri Nouwen as he declares, “Prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions where we are totally one. There God’s spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place. There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, within us.” This has proven itself true, as I have encountered God through prayer this summer. Ministry has been difficult, to say the least, throughout the summer months. Usually, I get the opportunity to go to camp with my leadership team and students, or I get to volunteer for a few weeks at the local Young Life property, because of the increased responsibilities and commitments I have in my life, the option to do the fun things I am used to in the summer months has dissipated. At the beginning of the summer I found it to be extremely difficult to hear stories from camp. During class the Lord began to change my heart as he began to teach me the power and responsibility of prayer. As I have enjoyed the discipline and privilege of praying for my friends and others, doing the work that I would like to be doing, I find the impact threefold. First, the Lord is molding my heart and making me a faithful warrior in the spiritual realm. Second, I am enjoying the way that the Lord so clearly thwarts the physical boundaries of time and space as he goes about his business of listening and responding to my prayers. Finally, as people’s lives are busy and communication has been difficult during this season of growth in my life, I have found that prayer and listening to the Lord has allowed me to remain connected to my community of friends. I believe that through the discipline of prayer I have been encountering the miraculous nature of God, every single day of my life.
Being one who is filled with courage at the depth of my being, by abiding in the Lord, has become a cultivating power behind being able to place courage in the heart of others. The story of Paul and Barnabas as found in Acts chapter 15, is a story of profound movements to the call on all Christians to embolden and empower others with the truth of God’s Word as well as the truth that God places on our tongues to give away to the people around us. The discipline of encouragement has become less and less a discipline and more and more a praise response to how good God is. The piece of the act that is discipline is the being intentional about encouraging even when it feels awkward or I become self-conscious. The process of moving Christians from a life that is dominated by fear is a process empowered by encouragement.
The personal discipline of staying current with Christ has made its way into the corporate response of forgiveness. “At the heart of community, as we learn to care for our brothers and sisters, there is forgiveness. Reconciliation is at the heart of community. To grow in love means that we become men and women of forgiveness, of reconciliation.” As we discussed in class, I believe that forgiveness can and will be the transforming power of Christians to alter and make new the relationships between believers and non-believers alike. The necessity of right relationship in order to encounter true and healthy community has over and over again drawn me back to the principle of forgiveness. In class we discussed a number of reasons to practice the discipline of forgiveness, the idea that we should give up our right to be angry, hurt and disappointed (to name a few emotions related to unforgiveness) makes the practice of forgiveness a little easier for me. It allows me to understand that I have room and space to be and feel the way I do. But by giving those rights up I am empowering myself and the people I forgive to move away from the prison of unforgiveness toward a place of healing and wholeness.
As I’ve thought about and practiced the divine gift of forgiveness, I was reminded of a story found in the popular book Blue Like Jazz. The author and a few of his friends found themselves at a very secular, almost anti-Christian festival, Ren Fayre. They decided that they would build a confessional, not for the festival goers to confess their sins, but where this group of Christians would, on behalf of millions of others, confess sins and request forgiveness. Donald Miller states that they (he and his friends) would participate in the following activity;
We are going to confess to them. We are going to confess that, as followers of Jesus. We have not been very loving; we have been bitter, and for that we are sorry. We will apologize for the Crusades, we will apologize for televangelists, we will apologize for neglecting the poor and the lonely, we will ask them to forgive us, and we will tell them that in our selfishness, we have misrepresented Jesus on this campus. We will tell people who come into the booth that Jesus loves them.
The power of forgiveness will know no bounds if we, as forgiven ones, go before the world as John the Baptist did “in the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of sins, because of the tender mercy of our God.”
Discipline is being redefined in my spiritual life. I have never had a very good taste in my mouth when I think about the word discipline. It has always had such a negative connotation in my mind. I have decided to redefine spiritual disciplines to be abiding in the Lord, creating space for him in my life. As I step forward into creating space and abiding in the Lord, I find myself with something to rest in. I rest in the Lord, centered on him every day. I find an anchor for all of my relationships as I intentionally converse with my savior, being filled with courage and forgiveness, so that I may be able to give that away in relationships with others. I find, also, a hook from which to hang my ministry. A hook to keep me focused on God and not on rules. A hook to keep me grounded in the Word of Life, provided as a perfect gift to those who would choose to look and listen. Because, “the facts are that God is not silent, has never been silent. It is the nature of God to speak.” I vow to abide and create space to listen to the voice of God speak in my daily life, my relationships and my ministry. I rest in the truth that, “the more you actually know him, the more you will desire to know him. Since knowledge is a measurement of love, the deeper and more intimate you are with him, the greater will be your love for him. And if your love for the Lord is great, then we will love him as much during grief as in joy.” I look forward to loving more and enjoying joy every day of my life.
Monday, July 27, 2009
difference between me and You
Some things I’m learning…
When I think you’re small, you remind me how huge you really are.
When I consider you unknowing, you remind me how much you know before I do.
When I believe you’re not with me, you touch me at my depths and speak to me about our secrets.
When I can’t imagine things working out right, you work things out with perfection.
When I wonder about people and motives and relationships, you provide flawless love.
When I live in fear, you are my perfect peace.
When I count my failures, you count my faithfulness to you.
When I wander aimlessly, you are my destination and guide.
When I are weak and hungry, I seek you and lack no good thing.
When I fix our eyes on the world and the things of the world, you catch my eye with your beauty.
When I forget, you remind.
When I neglect, you pursue.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
the good life.
i drove up to woodleaf for a couple of reasons yesterday.
1. to see my friend Matt Barton, who is really cool, who was enjoying his first week at Young Life camp.
2. it was my friend Jackie's birthday. I love birthdays
3. dinner at Woodleaf is delicious
4. Mandy's gonna do an assignment there next month and it was cool to just go check it out with her before she moves there for a month!
5. Woodleaf may very well be my favorite place on the planet.
i was extra blessed while i was there. i had so much fun and it was just a really cool day, evening, time...i think we were on property for 5 hours. I'll try to keep my list as short as possible. (but i was really blessed)
1. Matt was pretty excited when I saw him. I love to surprise people.
2. Just being on that property brings life to my soul. Nothing needs to happen. I don't need to see anyone. I just love Woodleaf!
3. The drive was pretty sweet. Good tunes. Good company. Good conversations. Good fresh air. Good ICEE's.
4. Like I said before, I love to surprise people and Jackie, Bri, Heather, Tony, Matt... everyone was surprised. It was really cool.
5. I saw the best program I have ever seen. (that's saying something, people i know are really funny, these people were HILARIOUS!!)
6. Special music... Awesome. We got to hear a super sweet song. broken and beautiful, such true words.
7. Sin talk: heavy- so dang good. AND the speaker was a woman. Made my heart real happy
8. Listening to the high school boys behind me sing was really fun. Santa Cruz kids are pretty cool!!
9. Being in a position to pray for high schoolers as they wrestle with the idea of sin in their lives and the world. I cannot think of a better time to be free to pray.
10. Sitting on the dock of the lake. Praying with my roommate. Being reminded of the work that the Lord has allowed me to join in this summer. I'm learning to be a prayer warrior on behalf of those working on the front lines of the YL ministry. Really cool.
11. Tableau. Funny!
12. Dinner. Delicious.
13. Sweet new YL t-shirts
14. Stars :)
15. driving home. ice cream with the tiny-baby brother. so great.
ONE AWESOME 10 HOUR STRETCH OF MY LIFE.
o the good life.
Monday, July 20, 2009
o my word.
Has a word ever captivated your imagination? Have you ever come across a concept that when you take the time to really think about it, you cannot be the same? A few years ago I was mulling around the idea of the Lord being sufficient for me. It was a pondering that began in my Spiritual Formation class with Mark Carter. It was a very important season of my formation in the Lord. I learned a lot about myself and about God and His heart for me. Such a sweet time, but more importantly out of that time, I found myself a word. A word so captivating that it has continued to change me throughout my life journey. I’ve probably written about it in my journal 396 times.Beloved. I am the beloved. I rest secure in Him who calls me the beloved. My lover is mine and I am his beloved. He gives to his beloved even in her sleep. I bear the same name as The Beloved of the Most High. I am her who was not beloved, now beloved! I obey as one loved, I persevere as one loved, the beloved.
It’s a lofty concept. A big grandiose picture of who I am in Christ. Thinking about it makes my heart glad and draws me deeper into relationship with my King. Knowing that I am the beloved, considered lovely, loved deeply; belonging to love itself makes me different. Changes the way I go about my business. Changes the way I think, the way I act, and the way I live.
This lofty idea would come to my mind every so often and I would have to respond. I would have to look at the scriptures and think about what it means. Whenever the word would enter my mind, I would have to pause (usually a big pause, rather than a small thinking pause) and consider its truth, in the deepest parts of me.
Then one day (after years of consideration) I decided to transform this lofty concept into daily truth; remembered with my every step. It had to be big and elaborate and it had to mean all of the things it has ever meant to me. It had to be extra fancy and beautiful and big and lofty like the concept has been to me for the last few years of my life.
The day this permanent reminder came to be, I didn’t think it through too much. I was worried that if I had thought about it too much I wouldn’t follow through. So in not thinking about it, I decided that instead of big and elaborate, the truth of my belovedness had to be simple. Well, really, I didn’t think about it, I just pulled up the word (in its original Greek) on my friends iphone and let Sammy take over from there. He created something beautiful something so simple and perfect that I cannot help but love every inch of it! Now, every day, with each step, I am reminded of my belovedness. I’m reminded of the security found only in my Savior. It might be the coolest thing that has ever happened to me.
Before, the pausing that took place for me to remember my belovedness was big and elaborate. Requiring extra time spent; I would have to stop my day and think.
Now, it’s still big and elaborate, it just happens everyday, even multiple times a day. I stop and think. I look at my right foot and read a word that means beloved: dearly loved, worthy of love, dear, lovable…It’s simple. It’s elaborate. It’s true. O my word.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
this one last night
I just realized that I am lying in my bed in the "big room" at 2452 Marlene Avenue for the last time ever. I've experienced so much life here. If I tried to tell you all the things I've learned I wouldn't get to sleep in my bed for the last night. So i'll just say this...
I love this place. As crazy as things get here sometimes. As expensive as the water bill would get in the summer. As many times as I had to move out, only to move back in. As many bb's I found in the carpet (even one today). As many high schoolers and junior highers that have sang so loud in my living room. As many parties. As many dinners. As many friends. I'm never going to forget this ridiculous house.
I miss it already so I'm just going to try and go to sleep... this one last night!
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