What’s Required

I was invited to speak today at a luncheon at a church member’s workplace. Folks have been inspired by the Life @ Work sermon series that has been going on the past few weeks at Seacoast, and they want to share some of that with co-workers. One of the things Maria asked me to hit on was "Your Worth at Work", so I’m spinning off of that a little to share something that’s been meaningful to me.

When it’s all said and done, what really makes ___________________ worthwhile? Whatever is in that blank, what makes it worth doing, or worth doing well? I get reminded over and over that it’s my interaction with others that is the most meaningful part of anything I do. So I took this time to parse through Micah 6:8 – "… and this is what He requires: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God" (nlt).

• To "do what is right" (or "act justly") is to be about doing the right thing for the right reasons. It’s a right motivation towards others, actively trying to do right by them.
• To "love mercy" is to be merciful – we tend to love mercy when we need it, but we generally respond slowly and judgmentally when others have messed up. Again, it’s about interacting or reacting with others in a way that naturally gives the benefit of the doubt.
• To "walk humbly" is to be grounded – not too high, not to depressed, but even-keeled. In relationships, it’s seeking to lift the "other" up, encouraging and challenging and honoring. "Love doesn’t seek its own" is lived out humbly, mercifully and justly with the friends, co-workers and family around us.
• "with your God" – when this phrase is attached to the "walk humbly" part, it’s a statement of our standing with God, before God. But if this idea is used with each of the three active verbs, it now means that our sense of justice and love of mercy and attitude of humility is under-girded and ultimately fed by God. There has to be an outside source, because life doesn’t keep going on totally fair, totally forgiving, totally pride-less. We have to have that real interaction with God in order to live out these "requirements" in a way that’s meaningful and lasting.

After that, I ate some turkey, drank some sweet tea, and enjoyed a wonderfully prepared sweet potato. I was really encouraged, and thankful to Maria and the others for the opportunity to speak and share and hopefully tweak/challenge ever so slightly the common sensibility in us all.

Crisscross

What I started here, I’ve continued in thought here. Might be a little on the schizophrenic side to have to sites, I’m not sure. For now, just considering it another opportunity to spill my beans, spill my guts, put my foot in my mouth. Figuratively speaking.

Brick Walls

I’m doing a fair job this evening of shutting everything else out and just doing some work, watching some NFL, losing some fantasy games. If I let my mind wander back onto the things that are really weighty on my heart right now, it is very much like knocking my head against a wall. I find that I am not nearly as confrontational as I have been in the past – mainly, the battle is usually not worth the wounded. But sometimes, the stretching and the angst are just… If I push any further, I become what I’m trying to work against. And it is that frustration that gets to me most, not the confrontation – it’s the lack of a real conversation.

And what do I try to work against? In me, it’s the need to be right over all else. We find no shared ground because we have to be right. I find nothing else to say because so often I feel I’m so right. And when the pushback keeps pushing back – it’s then in frustration that I lay down my sword and stop fighting.

My head hurts again. Back to football.

Unchecked

For the Church to have any lasting and real impact today, we’re going to have to stop being stuck on ourselves, our definitions, our judgments. And we’re going to need to love people as we re-learn how to really love God. I see a huge "checklist mentality" in people, in the church culture itself, that keeps track of all the good things and all the bad things and checks the tally on the balance sheet at the end of the day to see if we’re deserving of blessing or drubbing. We take this checklist everywhere, applying it to everyone, marking it every time we think we sense evil in our midst, making ourselves the overseers of everything righteous and good.

But the problem with the checklist is that we get swallowed up in the pride of the knowledge of what’s right and what’s wrong. It puffs up – either to arrogance in looking down on others, or in guilt and shame in thinking God can’t save (typing this is puffing up even now, in one direction or the other, isn’t it?). Whatever the outcome, it places us in the seat of judging others, and we are historically and hysterically poor judges. I have shown time and again that I am barely (un) able to keep myself straight. Throw on top of that the need to be more of my brother’s keeper than just trying to to well by him – and I fail miserably. I miss out on relationship because I am quick to speak and slow to listen, quick to judge and slow to show mercy.

One of the definitions that needs tweaking might in fact be mercy. What if more than giving you the right to make a mistake – what if me giving mercy means that I also release myself from having to be right all the time? You know, I might be wrong about this – I’ll show mercy, and we both move ahead one space together instead of tripping each other up over things that are usually inconsequential to the game board anyway. But instead, we are too often like Emperor Commodus, asking pridefully and willfully, "Am I not merciful?" (Gladiator), while showing no mercy in heart or in deed, while burdening people with our own weights and measures and checklists.

Storms

When He got into the boat, His disciples followed Him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being covered with the waves; but Jesus Himself was asleep. And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing!” He *said to them, “Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?”Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm. The men were amazed, and said, “What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?” – Matthew 8:23-27, nasb @ eBible.com

With rain coming this afternoon, thunder about to scare my little girl and make my son worry about losing power – it’s comforting to me to see that in the midst of this storm, Jesus was asleep. When the frightened disciples woke up the Lord, He rebuked the wind, the waves, and His followers.

What should they have done? What would faith do? My picture here is that if the Lord was asleep in the hull, the best place would be next to Him, sleeping – resting for whatever was coming next. Can I find that kind of peace in the storms? Can I wait it out and take a nap in Christ? Only if I trust Him to save more than the waves to destroy, I think. And if we’ve got a good pillow somewhere handy.

Seeking God

So I’m looking at Psalm 63 this morning – nothing major, don’t know why I was there except that my pocket Bible was marked on that page. The psalmist is seeking God – "O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water." And I self-ask, do I long for God that much? Do I see Him with that thirst?

"Your lovingkindness is better than life" – if this is true, why do we seem to lose sight of His lovingkindness and focus more on His wrath and justice?

"My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness" – knowing how to eat, and knowing that my soul can be just as satisfied as this, do I really know what it means to be satisified in Christ alone?

"But those who seek my life to destroy it, Will go into the depths of the earth. / They will be delivered over to the power of the sword; They will be a prey for foxes." – it’s like we know we’re satisfied with God, that He wants the best for us. But sometimes we really want the bad guys to get theirs, don’t we? Why is that? Can I get past that to the point that the overriding feeling of the last verse is more promiment?

"But the king will rejoice in God; Everyone who swears by Him will glory, For the mouths of those who speak lies will be stopped." – well, can the leader be one who rejoices in the Lord? one who live for His glory? one who speaks truth and quiets the lies?

When I read something like this, the pull between the writing of an emotional spiritual feeling human being and the inspiration breathed from the Spirit of God comes out to me. I don’t have a pretty powerpoint set of four easy ways to live or something coming from this passage. All I’ve got is what I’ve written – scattered thoughts and challenges about my own life, my own leadership, my own challenges, and my own need for falsehood and junk to be thrown down.

That’s all I got, and frankly, it’s enough, isn’t it?

“Kobayashi Maru”

In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, Admiral James T. Kirk is asked how he beat the "Kobayashi Maru", Starfleet’s unbeatable no-win scenario for testing its leaders. We find out that he is the only one to ever defeat the test, by changing the parameters of the test in the simulator. "I don’t believe in the no-win scenario" led to Kirk’s idea that changing the definition of the problem actually provides a solution. He passed with commendation for "original thinking".

I am reading through some of the responses on our Small Group Leader training, and one thing that has jumped out of Session #1 is "growing in the Lord daily". If there’s a majority of leaders self-judging a need for more consistency in their spiritual growth, I’m inclined to think that would come up in a majority of the fellowship would have this in the back of their minds, too. And I’m also inclined to think that maybe our idea of "growing daily" might be in need of re-programming, somehow.

So I asked my brother Jeff what he thought – did he have a book or something to study together, first thing to pop to mind. He said something I hadn’t considered: that maybe the folks leading were only "getting fed" as part of their preparation time. Maybe they’re doing most of their study time only in the attempt to share, with only an eye to the context of group discussion – and maybe they were missing out on "what’s God saying to me?" kinds of moments.

I asked another friend in the ministry what his first thoughts were, and Blake said that, "people have to make sure that God is important enough to give Him time in the day to help us grow in Him". We both remembered the NOOMA|Noise dvd, where Rob Bell asks some pointed questions like, "does our schedule show how important God really is?"

My first response to seeing so many similar responses (in the training) was to ask "how have we defined ‘growing daily in the Lord’ in the first place?" I think I’ve got these three similar-yet-disjointed tacks to take in addressing the overall issue of growing spiritually, with my first one being that maybe we need a re-definition of what that should look like in the first place. After re-setting the proper perspective, then I would think we still have the tools to address "why am I doing this?" and "is this priority?" – I don’t want to let guilt and legalism enter this picture, but instead something meaningful and true.

Thermometer

It struck me from something I read that I might be "sick" – well, not really physically ailing, but maybe according to my thermometer at the moment, I’m ill. Where Jesus said to "Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself" – it’s like I can use my love of people as a measure for my love of God; or I should be able to reflect a love of people by the love I am living out for the Lord. If that’s the case, lately I feel like I’m sick.

By that thermometer, I’ve got something wrong. People get on my nerves way too quick, where I should be giving them lots of loving merciful leeway, where I should be remembering that we are all in need of grace, where I need to recall that I’m the worst sinner I know. We’re getting ready for church this morning, where "love God, love people" is the name of the game. And I feel that I fall way short on at least one of those, meaning I’m mostly falling short on both at a time when I really should know better and should be…

Well, I’m encouraged that God continues to give grace, that He continues to rain on both the wicked and the holy, that He doesn’t show favorites. And I know that if my heart can rearrange and refocus in a way that loves God in a deeper, more meaningful way – then my love for people will be a more natural outflow. And this post can be a "before" that leads to a much more positive "after". I hope.

Raining

Last night and tonight, we’re getting heavy rain. By "heavy", I mean the kind that falls sideways, making the loud pelting noise on our metal-roofed sunroom, washing small pets down the gutters out in the streets. Heavy rain – where the post-precipitation sky is a pale red and the thunder continues to roll long after the storm passes east.

I’ve received a few new books for review this week. One of them, what the heck am I going to do with my life?, is just a title that seems all too apropos, doesn’t it? It’s by Margaret Feinberg, a neat author and a really neat person. Another set of books is the Coffee Cup Bible Series – I’m going to work my way through Mocha On The Mount, just to see how this study might work for someone individually, how it might play out in a small group setting for our fall semester.

So what does the search for meaning in life and the study of the "discourse on the hill" over a cup of coffee have to do with me? with spirituality? with growing up or getting through the stuff of life? I don’t know, and I’m okay with that. It seems that things resonate with me all the time, matter of the moment kind of thing. Might be a song or a commercial or the way light is coming through the window during a storm – sometimes, it’s like everything comes through everything else to say something, anything, that might be meaningful for what needed at just that particular point in time.

But I don’t hear it all the time. Does that make sense? I don’t want it to sound like I’ve got a tuner in my head that is constantly tuned to the right channel to hear from God. Sometimes I intentionally ignore whatever’s coming; other times, I’m sure I’m too busy to be bothered. But when a moment clicks – wow. I can live off one of those "wows" for weeks, and I’m sure I’ve missed a few "wows" because I’m still basking in the lightness of the last pertinent "wow" that "wowed" me before.

The rain has stopped, and I’m not going to add any spiritual significance to it beyond that fact that rain has stopped. For me right now, in the flow of this moment, that’s spiritually significant enough. If I stretch it out, if I lay hold of it too tightly, I’ll lose my "wow" – and I don’t like doing that if I can help it.

“We”

"God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. ‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’  / "Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone…"
- Acts 17:27-29 (22-34, niv)

It’s a beautiful Sunday morning – nice outside with lots of sunshine, and nice inside because I know there’s humidity out there and air-conditioning in here. But Trace and I are getting ready for churh this morning while the girls have gone to visit another congregation, witnessing a friend’s baptism, before swinging back by here to pick us up.

Paul says "we" – in the passage above, often used to talk about how Christians can use the cultural icons and ideals as starting points for talking to others about Christ, he uses the term "we" to describe himself and his listeners together. I don’t think he’s saying "we here on this side who are saved versus you on the outside who are not" – I’m reading it this morning as casting his lot with these Gentiles. He’s affirming their place in God’s plan and family, even before they are "saved", isn’t he? It’s like he’s telling them, "you’re more a part of this than you realize, and with all that God’s doing to reveal Himself to you – what’s stopping you from joining in with Him wholeheartedly?"

What if that’s the gospel? What if Jesus’ message, "repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand", means that it’s here now for all of us, and it’s in the repenting and in the "live like it" of following God that we find real life together? Instead of looking at Christians and non-Christians, instead of setting up a dichotomy like that – what if real evangelism looks more like Paul, showing that we’re more the same than different and then living out this new reality together in Christ?

Time to shower and get pretty. Gorgeous day outside.