A Little Survey

Recently I was listening to a friend's podcast. He mentioned a survey he had read sometime back. The study surveyed 50 people over the age of 95.

The main question was this: "What is your greatest regret?"

The responses were as follows:

#1    I wish I had taken more risks in life…started that business, taken that trip, got that education, etc.

#2    I wish I had reflected more during the different seasons of life…lived more in the moment rather than rushing through life.

#3    I wish I had left something that would live on after me…something with eternal purpose.

I decided to do my own unscientific survey via facebook. I listed the three answers above, and asked for my friends 55 years old and above to vote for the response they most identified with. I believe all the answers were very valid. I really expected the results to be similar to the original survey. However, overwhelmingly the respondents chose #3.

It seems to my way of thinking that #1 and #3 almost go hand in hand. In order to leave something lasting, there are inherent risks. When we initially moved to San Antonio to work in the inner city, Alisa and I visited all the A/G churches in San Antonio. We asked for people to help us with the ministry. Out of the hundreds maybe thousands we spoke to, only a couple responded. Two years later, we went back through all the churches to give an update. Over and over, at every church individuals would come to us and say, "We really felt like we were supposed to work with you, but we just never took the step." It was quite depressing for us! All that help just setting out there, but no one acting on the opportunity. These folks had every opportunity to leave something that would have an eternal impact, but they weren't willing to take the risk.

So my analysis of my little survey? #3 may be your biggest regret, but you'll never get to #3, without going through #1.

 

Knowledge vs. Wisdom, Power vs. Strength

Finishing my grad degree was a wonderful thing. It has elicited a number of comments from colleagues and friends. The most often and most notable comment has been, "So, do you feel any smarter?" I understand the joke behind the question, however, it got me to thinking. My answer to the question may be surprising. Education has not made me feel smarter, quite the contrary It has opened my eyes to so much I still don't know… so much I still need to learn.

I have heard the oft repeated phrase, Knowledge is Power. I've come to see the correctness of the phrase in some instances. Knowledge is Power if power is what you are looking for. The problem seems however, that both knowledge and power are fleeting. I may have knowledge in a specific setting that gives me power over others. Nevertheless, things change, knowledge today is tomorrows history. I sat at the funeral of a lady yesterday who lived 95 years. The minister said, "she lived from horse and buggy to International Space Station." The knowledge of horse and buggy gives no power today.

It seems to me, having the wisdom to know what you don't know, may be in the end more powerful than knowledge and the power it brings. I think maybe real strength comes more from knowing what you don't know, than knowing what you know. Awkward sentence I know. Let me try it this way. I can bluster with power through a situation I may not know everything about just to get to the end I want. However, I tend to leave a bloody trail. People get hurt, things get blown down and damaged in my wake of power. I get what I want, but to what expense? Rather, if instead of barging in with power, I step back, assess, find my weaknesses, admit my weaknesses. Then either personally strengthen the area, or allow others with appropriate knowledge to come along with me on the journey, I still get the result I want, but I have brought others with me, built bridges, and left construction rather than destruction in my wake.

Writing this blog has been a process over several days. During this process I heard a concept worth noting in this context. My friend Malcolm commented in a meeting I was in about leadership. He said, you can approach leadership as a king or a father. A King uses his subjects to build his kingdom. However, a father uses his kingdom to build his subjects. Wow.

I have been reminded of my teenage and twenty something self several times lately by a teenager and a twenty-one year old in my life. I was so smart back then. Had an opinion and information on everything. I also felt it was important for me to express that knowledge and opinion to everyone. I have chuckled at myself as I have listened to the knowledge of the teenager several times the last few weeks. Frankly I've been annoyed at myself and the twenty-one year old who thinks he knows it all. I guess it boils down to it is cute when they are young, but irritating the older they get. As a forty something I have seen the trails of damage knowledge used for power can create. It is very irritating, no it's downright aggravating to see. This is especially so in the context of ministry.

Unfortunately some concepts of the secular business world have crept into the church, where indeed knowledge is power and the perception of weakness is dangerous. We've developed this idea, that Christians must know it all (especially those of us in ministry). If a Christian doesn't, he should act like he does. Wouldn't it be better if we could just confess our weaknesses to each other, and allow our weaknesses to be made strong by one another. Add to that the freedom from prosecution by others and we've got a great way to live. I guess I should mention, that idea is not original with me. I'm really not even good at it myself. It may even seem a quixotic notion. Maybe it's not possible this side of Heaven. Sure sounds nice though.

 

Charis,

Kell

Wild Goose Chase

It has been quite a while since I've posted a blog. Over a year infact. Grad. school tends to take the fun out of writing. Now that it is behind me, I hope to become more regular with posting.

Several weeks ago, Alisa came home from a trip talking about an excerpt she had read from a book. She then purchased the book and read it. At one point she read some to me. I confess, I really did not like what it had to say. It affected her very strangley. She started behaving very uncharacteristically, and I really didn't like that either. She started being nice to people she had no business being nice to. However, at her insistance, I began reading the book. To be honest, there are parts I still do not like very much.

I am reminded of a scene in A Few Good Men. Tom Cruise playing the young and impetuous Lt. lawyer is pushing for Jack Nicholson to tell the truth on the stand. Jack in his blustering way playing the part of Col. Nathan Jessep replies "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"

Quite honestly, I couldn't handle nor did I want the truth the book spoke. Mark Batterson (2008) writes in Wild Goose Chase, "If you want to impact someone's life, love them when they least expect it and least deserve it" (p. 104). I'm sorry, I've been through some things that leave me shaking my head at this quote. I'm just being transparent here. I'm mad at some folks, and I like my mad. It gives me comfort and more importantly control... or at least the perception of control.

Then Batterson has the audacity to go and reference Jesus in relation to love and forgiveness. The problem with holding back love and grace is it's propensity to produce large amounts of guilt for me. Guilt is no good for anyone. My counseling professors taught us the incredible effects of guilt on individuals seeking counseling.

Batterson puts it this way, "Guilt has a shrinking effect. It shrinks our dreams. It shrinks our relationships. it shrinks our hearts. It shrinks our lives to the size of our greatest failures.
Grace has the opposite effect. it expands our dreams. it expands our relationships. It expands our hearts. And it gives us the courage to chase the Wild Goose (the Holy Spirit) all the way to the ends of the earth" (p. 114).

So suffice it to say, I'm working on getting my mind and actions around this truth. I still don't like it mind you. But just as I don't like the taste of the medicines and vitamins I take daily, I know they are good for me and so is this nugget of truth.

Dirty, shabbily dressed Urchin that I am

I've just completed reading the fourth chapter of Brennan Manning's book Ragamuffin Gospel. The fourth chapter, Cormorants & Kittiwakes, found me crying simple tears from page 102-105. I think this was the culmination of the three previous chapters crescendoing into the fourth. Though I have a great desire to finish the book, I have to stop and digest what I have read. Like eating a muti-course meal, I must stop and allow the fullness to dissipate.

As I've said before, at 30 years of age, I set out on a quest to determine what it is that I believe. Not what have I been taught by my parents, grand parents, teachers, professors, denominational dogma, but what is the real truth without these filters.

Reading Manning before going to bed last night left me remembering a childhood of fear. Fearing a great God who was coming like a thief in the night to rapture only the purest of the pure away. Leaving the rest of us to suffer the intolerable pain and scourge of the "end times".

I thought of the agony of laying in bed in the same room with my brother. Recalling the scripture that says two will be in bed, one will be taken the other left. Knowing that I would be the one left because I was the older more sinful of the two. How grateful I was when I got my own room!

If that sounds silly to you, it only gets worse. In my child mind, I thought that the animals would be taken in the rapture. I could not imagine God leaving them to suffer with the humans. Many times through the day I would run to the cages of our birds, or call for our dogs, to make sure they were still there and the rapture had not occurred yet. Imagine the horror I felt when finally someone told me..."the animals aren't going in the rapture, just the humans." I had no way of knowing if I had been left or not?!?

I am able to laugh heartily now about my childhood OCD. But was I alone, or were there others in my generation who suffered the same fate? How have they been affected by learning of the god of wrath rather than the God of grace. Are there yet others today being taught this horrible gospel? The unfortunate answer is yes.

The last eleven years have served to displace and dislodge the god of wrath from my mind, and install the God of Grace into my heart. The incredible freedom that has come from understanding God as loving and gracious has been amazing. Realizing it is not what goes in that defiles, but what comes out. Christ came for me and all the other theives, liars, whores, and "dirty shabbily clothed urchins".

As I read Chapter 4 this morning, I was sitting on my back porch with a cup of coffee in the 40 degree air, living in and loving the "now". Loving the cold, loving the creation and creator. The culmination of time, place, words, thoughts, & feelings made the moment extremely real.

I love the conversation between William Wilberforce, a disciple of John Newton, and his house man in the movie Amazing Grace.

Wilberforce caught outside his home sitting in the grass tells his house man, "I have 10,000 engagements of state today but I would prefer to spend the day out here getting a wet ass studying dandelions and marveling at bloody spider webs.

His assistant replies, "You've found God sir."

Wilborforce answers, "I think he found me...do you have any idea how inconvenient that is? How idiotic it will sound? I have a political career glittering ahead of me and in my heart I want spiders webs."

The assistant sits on the grass beside him and says, "It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself...Frances Bacon..." Then in reply to Wilberforce's wondering look... "I don't just dust your books sir."

That's how I feel, I have 10,000 things to do today, but I just really want to sit in my backyard and read more of the grace and goodness of God for terribly sinful people like me. So that I can share that grace with my fellow dirty, ragged dressed children.

Grace Based Parenting

I just read the last page of one of the most incredible books I've ever read. Dr. Tim Kimmel's Grace Based Parenting is a must read for every follower of Christ. Whether you are a parent, grandparent, or none of the above, this is not just a book on parenting, it is an insightful teaching on grace. As I read it over the last few weeks, I found things I wanted to quote here in this blog. There is no way I can do that. There are too many good things. the best thing I can do is whole heartedly recomend you get a copy and read it cover to cover.

In a nutshell, Kimmel helps us deal with our own sinful nature and our own need for grace as a prerequisite for dealing with our children and others we have relationships with. He teaches us how to respond rather than react to our own faults and failures and those of our children and others.

Much of what I wrote in my last blog was influenced by reading this book.

I wish this book had been published 20 years ago before Micah was born. However, it's never too late. This book was an assignment for one of my counseling classes. It has changed the way I look at my kids and hopefully the way I deal with them. It will also shape the way I deal with kids and families in the future in therapy.

Grace Based Parenting
Dr. Tim Kimmel
2004, Thomas Nelson Publishing

The Bar

No not the lawyer test, or the whiskey place. Especially not the salad thing.

I've been thinking quite a bit about the phrase used often in business, academics, sports, music, politics, etc. "Raising the bar." This is a cliche' used figuritively to represent the fact that someone has reached a level in one of the above mentioned catagories not reached before. "She really raised the bar with her sales this month." It implies that those coming after will have to at least reach that level, if not move it higher. I've used the phrase myself after watching certain incredible feats.

Lately I've seen this phrase come into the church. This is a troubling concept to me. I guess in many ways the concept has been there for as long as I can remember. We've used the descriptors, "Great man of faith," "Incredible woman of God," "Mighty Man of God," to describe individuals we see as having a achieved some "status" in their journey. These have been very acceptable titles to those of us in the faith community. They sound righteous, and noble. They imply a level of spirituallity only a few chosen people can or have reached.

Lulled by these "titles", I guess it took actually hearing the words "raise the bar", in the context of a friends christian walk to get my attention. A great deal of my thinking has been captured by the fact that this concept has creeped into the church to the point that we now embrace it even in its rawest and most blatant terms.

I'm not one of those guys who says we can have nothing in Christianity that resembles "the world". I also admit to being a very competitive individual. I hate to lose. My grandfather taught us, a good loser is just that, a loser. Infact he was famous for changing the rules in the middle of a game if he was losing. We affectionately called these the "D.G. Council rules." However, it seems to me that Jesus himself, and several of the New Testament writers had a different concept altogether.

For centuries "the bar" had been the law, given by God, handed down by Moses, reinvented, added to, reworked, and harshly enforced by the Pharisees. Jesus, the juxtaposition to the Pharisees, came to deal with "the bar" once and for all (Heb. 7:27, 9:12). He did so by placing it so high no one can reach it on their own. (Eph. 2)

It is interesting to me that rather than boasting in their own spirituallity, or bragging on one another, the authors of the New Testament not only down played their lives, but were almost insulting. Paul called his own righteousness dung in one place and filthy rags in another.
In I Corinthians 1, he reminded the leaders that they were not wise, mighty or noble, but foolish, weak, and despised. He went on to explain that God chose them to show His greatness, His power, His grace, not ours.

It is a scary thing when we challenge one another to look to another person and attempt to live according to their standards. Peter tried that with Jesus. He said, "What about John?" Jesus' reply was classic, "What about him? It's none of your business." Paul said, no man could judge him, only God. It scares me when young believers are challenged by well meaning older believers to "strive to be like so and so", or live up to the standards others have set. We are only setting them up for failure. Jesus put the bar in a place we could not reach it so that we would have to rely on His grace.

God deals with us as individuals with individual journeys, individual calls, individual pasts, presents, and futures. He does not rank us against one another. He only looks for the presence of the covering of grace of His son. He does not look on the pastor of a mega church and rank him over the bivocational pastor of a small rural church. God does not rank the person who has followed him for 80 years over the one who has followed him a week. We are all special to him as individuals.

Following Christ is not a competition. It's not a race to be first, best, highest, most favored, most righteous, most church attendance, most accomplished, most read, most followed, most listened to, most anything. It's not a golf score to have the lowest total sins, lowest wrong choices, fewest unsaved friends, fewest years of unbelief. History (including current history) is littered with men and women who "achieved greatness in the Kingdom," but fell hard because they saw the Kingdom through the eyes of a competitor.

Following Christ is just that. Following. Following is accepting. Accepting His grace in our lives and the lives of others as sufficient. Accepting his call as adequate. Accepting his work as complete. It's not about achieving, it's about accepting.

Last week Alisa was in Texas at a Cowboy Church. 80% of the people are not just from unchurched backgrounds, but plain ole heathen backgrounds. However, they've found and accepted the grace of God for themselves and their fellow followers. One man during a testimony time seemed to wrap up the gospel in a 3 point nutshell. He was an old leathered cowboy, who still had whiskey on his breath. He stood before the congregation on a make shift plywood floor under a big tent next to a roping arena. Tears filled his eyes as he said, "The first time I came here the pastor told me God loved me. The second time I came here the pastor told me I could belong, The third time I came, the pastor told me to get my my head out of my ____ you dumb ___ __ ____ __ _____." The pastor explained, that was the Cowboy's interpretation of what had been said, not an exact quote. You can imagine the reaction of some of the "competitors" in the crowd.

I think it may be one of the most incredible testimonies I've ever heard.

If I were to use this as my outline, It would sound something like this. God loves you so much, he allowed his son to take the punishment you deserve for the way you live (past, present and future). He loved you so much that he wanted you to belong to him and his group of followers who will love and support you on your journey. Now it's up to you to recognize that it's a very simple thing to accept his grace for your life. He'll help you get your head on straight no matter your intelligence, status, or abilities.

Thanks cowboy for reminding me of God's grace.

ARK

Acts of Random Kindness

It's been quite a crazy few days. After numerous complications Alisa finally made it to Texas and is working with the RC Team doing disaster response work.

Things have been crazy at home getting the kids where they need to go, keeping up with the laundry, house cleaning, meals and trying to study. (Don't know how single parents do it?)

I have class today @ 1:30. I arrived at McAlister's Deli around noon to have one of their incredible pot roast spuds, and study using their wireless internet. Studying has been a challenge all weekend long, my mind has just not "been there". Too many other things happening at once.

I now had some time to just dive in, (to both the spud and the studying.) I finished my spud, and moved the plate to the other side of the table. A few minutes later a lovely African American lady in a McAlister's shirt came by, looked at me for approval and took the plate away. I didn't give it a second thought.

A little while later, she approached again. She reached for my near empty large glass of sweet tea. When she did not speak but rather looked at me questioningly, and made a little noise, I realized that she was deaf & mute. Taken by surprise, I nodded for more. She pulled out a little pad from her pocket. Written on a wrinkled page were the words "sweet or unsweet." I pointed to the sweet. As she walked away, I pondered the encounter. Years ago as a teenager, I took a course in sign language. Later my skills were expanded a little with a friend and collegue I was on staff with at a church. However, it had been years since I had used sign.

I had only seconds to decide if I should give it a try. My vocabulary was rusty, and I decided to use the word sweet as an opening to communicate with her. When she returned, I began to sign, "I know a little sign, but what is 'sweet'". Her face suddenly beamed with shock and pleasure. She smiled widely. Her response let me know that placing my hand to my lips and directing it down was the correct sign for sweet. Then she asked me with quick hands, where I learned to sign. I explained half signing half finger spelling (drat my old mind) that I had learned as a boy.
She beamed again. She started to walk off, but turned back to me and with a huge smile, gave me the sign for "thank you". It was my turn to beam.

Often I get so busy doing life, I forget to live life. Part of living life involves those little moments some call "devine appointments." Times when God wants to use us to act randomly with grace and kindness to impact in small and large ways, people he puts in our path.

I have a new perspective as I get ready to leave and head to class. I feel a bit lighter. It's a good feeling to make someone else's day!

Kell