Drifting Off Course

“By your words I can see where I am going, they throw a beam of light on my dark path”  Psalm 119:105

How quickly my ship can sail off course.  It’s never the dramatic shift…the proverbial iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic but rather a slow drift off course.  A failure to guard my heart…taking comfort in worldly things…seeking the approval of others to fill up those empty places in my life.

I, like many men I know, lean toward self-absorbtion.  We grab the reigns of our lives in a vain attempt to control our out-of-control circumstances.  But Jesus calls us to loosen our white-knuckled grip and humble ourselves to the point of weakness because it is in that weakness that His strength is made real in our lives.  It is completely counter-intuitive to what our culture tells us to do.

I went away this past weekend to hike, fish and camp in the Linville Gorge Wilderness Area.  I had been looking forward to this as a time of refreshing…a respite from the harsh details of life that seemed to be slowing swallowing my joy.  As the day approached, I had dreams of catching huge trout and time hearing from God…but, none of that happened.  I realize that I had created an idol out of this trip.  I exalted it in my mind as a path toward the peace and answers that I had been pressing God for. 

Reflecting, I recognize that I had fallen captive to the dreaded “if-only” myth.  If only I could get away to the mountains, I could gather my thoughts and get some direction for life.  If only I had a few more real estate deals in the works, I would feel more at ease financially.  If only I could get this damn work done around my house, I could sell it, downsize and move onto the “next thing” God wants me to do. 

There are a multitude of these myths that take us captive and lead us away from intimacy with Jesus.  If only I could change my circumstances…if only I could change my behavior…if only I could change my thinking….

So, as I lean back into my booth at my favorite coffee shop, reflecting on the status of my heart and what Jesus might be speaking, I recognize (again) that it is only in my connectedness to Him that I have anything.  In my own strength, I will wander off course again.  In my own strength, I will surely be lead by my flesh toward some dark expression. 

But, today’s manna from heaven has been found is his WORD, which is a “lamp unto my feet and a light for my dark path”.

Shalom…

Trees

  I was taking a camera safari this week around Lake Higgins looking for”creation images”.

I was struck by the hard right angle that this tree had to take and how ultimately, it did what it was created to do.  It’s life, much like ours, is dependent upon the light.  It would have withered and died if it had been forced to live in the relative darkness of the forest floor.

And so, we too are to seek the light…and “that light is the light of men!”

 

 OK, this one was obvious.  The Trinity…three in one!!

 

Ever gone through a painful time in your life when it feels like your guts have been ripped out?

 

What happens to us with unconfessed sin in our lives…it eats us up from the inside.

 

 

Prayer

It perplexes me as to why a intimate relationship with Jesus has become such an afterthought for so many Christians.  He is often brought in as some sort of consultant when our lives are falling apart or implored to deliver us from a crisis.  Better yet, we get out the laundry list of prayers like some grocery store checklist. 

Aldous Huxley puts it this way, “the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer is repeated daily by millions who have not the slightest intention of letting anyone’s will be done but their own.’

Our prayers, when made available to Him, were meant to be a means of developing an intimacy with Him as our loving Father so that a deep well of trust exists for when the inevitable trials of life surround us. When the shit finally hits the fan, your only hope in dealing with these calamities is the solid rock of Christ.

Begin cultivating weekly time for prayer, study and self-examination.  Make time spent in the Word as regular as your trip to the gym or your local Starbucks.  Seek out relationships with others who are also seeking a deeper intimacy with the Son. 

Put First Things First…

Lessons from Lazarus

“…and Jesus called to him, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ and the dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.  Jesus said to them, ‘Take off his grave clothes and let him go’  (john 11:43-44)

Everything changes when we move from death to life and whether we realize it or not,our movement into the light is tainted by the stink of death.  Yes, we are a new creation when we accept Jesus as our Savior but we move forward into our new Christian life, like Lazarus, still wearing our grave clothes.  We continue to stink from the habits of the flesh that have corrupted us for years.

Just as we are called to make a decision, so too were the witnesses to this miracle who were not unaffected.  John tells us that “many put their faith in Him” but some of them “went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done“.  When faced with the life and death call of Christ on your life, how do you respond?  Do you put your faith in the life-giving One or do you choose the things of this fallen world?

The religious leaders of the day responded as we so often do…with self-preservation in mind.  After calling a meeting of the Sanhedrin, they exclaimed “what are we accomplishing?  Here is this man performing many miraculous signs.  If we let him go on like this, the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation”

God told us in the beginning that he would place before us life and death…blessing and cursing and he urged us to choose life.  He knows the utter depths of our hearts and allows us all to make a choice…each day – between life and death…between His good path and the one of destruction…between one of selflessness or one of radical self-absorbtion.

A path has been placed before you today – which do you choose?

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

…Robert Frost

The Habit of Jesus

I used to smoke Marlboro Lights – the short pack…not really sure why I chose that particular brand but, even after giving up the habit almost a dozen years ago, I can still recall how I disgusted I felt when Bubba behind the convenience store counter would tell me, “we’re out of Lights pardner…but we got 100’s”.   What?  Smoke 100’s?  You’ve got to be kidding!  So, off I would go to the next Circle K in search of “my smokes”

Like so many other human beings, I am a creature of habit. 

Habits provide a source of consistency in a tumultuous world.  They may be as benign as putting on your pants the same leg each time to sitting in the same seat at church each week but dont doubt for a minute that your life is ruled by a myriad of these habits.  It’s estimated that out of every 11,000 signals we receive from our senses, our brain only consciously processes 40.

What allows a certain behavior to become habitual?  Why does a smoker continue to puff away even when told he is suffering from emphysema and heart disease?  Why does the obsese person continue to shovel food into their mouth even after being told it will lead to death?   “We have found that people aren’t changing their behaviors,” said Cindy Jardine of the University of Alberta. “But it’s not because they haven’t gotten the information that these are big risks.” She added, “We tend to sort of live for now and into the limited future—not the long term.”

We live for the here and now…we are rebellious to the core…we want unlimited personal freedom.

Blogging  is a recent phenomonon in my life.  It is a habit I have developed that pushes me to examine my life and the undercurrent of my heart.  In doing so, I find myself cultivating a life of prayer, study and self-examination.  It is making Jesus a habit.

And it is in making Jesus my habit that I have found the source of strength and encouragement to address those other less desireable habits that I had used to manage my life.   I have replaced evenings of drinking alcohol with attendance at Samson Society meetings where I am encouraged and sharpened by being in the company of other men who no longer wish to settle for the diseased habits that have haunted them for years.   We make it a habit to meet weekly to confess our junk and seek strength from each other.

Examine those things that have become habits in your life.  Reflect on why they exist in your life and if they have control over you.

Do you use your habits as a coping mechanism?  Are they beneficial or profitable to you in any way?  Would you be comfortable having your habit manifest itself when others are around?  Do your habits have a socially acceptable slant but cause you private angst?  Do your habits make others uncomfortable…are you sure?

So…dear friends, as creatures of light, cultivate the habit of Jesus.  Immerse yourself in those things that build you up…chew on those things that strengthen you.

A letter to Jesus

Today is my birthday Jesus.

I know this comes as no surprise to you, being Lord of Creation, as you had a hand in the whole thing, knitting me together and all. 

I have much to be thankful for…the blessing of a loving wife…the depth of true brotherhood.  But on this 44th birthday, I sip coffee and peck away at my laptop, thankful for the loving, almost surgical way in which you are revealing a new heart in me.    

I’ve settled for so much less than what you intended for me Jesus.  I admit that I had no idea what you were calling me to and that I have overlooked not only my own glory but also of those that you have put in my path.

I am broken in so many ways Jesus and I so desperately need you as my Father.  My fractures and fissures are deep and my enemy’s stronghold well fortified.  But…thank you for answering my unspoken pleas for rescue and coming after that young boy in me…healing the broken places and ushering me forward toward the man that you intend for me to be. 

Jesus, take my face in your hands, even in my active rebellion…when I refuse to listen and follow your good path and speak tenderly to me.  Look deep within me Lord, to those areas where rebellion has found refuge and illuminate the healing path.  Do not leave me alone on this path Jesus as the terrain is unfamiliar and I quickly find myself lost in the thicket.

Around each corner, my “old life” beckons to me…promising what it cannot deliver.  The truest part of me does not want to go back to the safety of my “old life” as it really offers no security at all but my flesh is conniving and tempts me with a sense of familiarity and comfort.

At times, I admit that I feel like a caged bird who can see the freedom of the forest from my perch but has grown comfortable with the perceived safety of my small existence.  Jesus, rescue me from the smallness of my thinking.

I know you’ve ransomed me but like a prisoner held captive for so many decades, it is hard to recognize liberty.  The doors of my cell may have swung open and the light of your presence in my life has pierced the darkness but what is in the light is unknown.  In the darkness, there was constancy and security.

Years of the enemy’s propaganda against my heart have planted seeds of doubt in my mind, saying that you cant be trusted…that your liberty really isnt freedom. 

I recognize that, while you have freed me from the bonds of captivity, you wont force me to leave my prison cell but merely call me forth like Lazarus from the grave.

Keep calling me Jesus…help me recognize that its you who beckons.

The Desert

What causes a man to lose hope?  To despair so greatly that he would rather die than wade into the deep waters of his pain to discover what God is doing?

A friend of mine tried to take his life this week by swallowing a hand full of sleeping pills.  He has been living in a toxic marriage for the last 5 years and along with a job loss, sent him over the edge.  I cannot imagine what must have run through his mind as he wrote a suicide note to his wife and kids and lifted a handful of little blue tablets to his mouth.  Thank God he was spotted by some passers by at the park who called the police in time.

Why does one person choose to wade into the depth of the pain of life while another chooses to be swallowed up by it?  I have had difficulty reconciling that this week.  It struck me how selfish the act of suicide really is.

Author and counselor Dan Allender says that “suffering can move us toward God or it can move us away from Him and consequently, away from being fully human and alive…if we see our difficult circumstances as a set of problems to be solved as painlessly as possible, then we miss the potential to grasp the nature of the event (and what God would want to bring about in is as a result).  God promises us redemption but his sacred path leads away from safety, predictability, and comfort.  Any attempt to fly over the dangerous terrain or detour to safer ground is doomed because it will not take us to God”

I was reading the story of Hosea this week as I processed what had happened to my friend and the words took me into the desert as well.  I spent many days exploring the Sonoran desert as a boy near by home in Arizona.  It was a place of great beauty and danger as well.  So, why did God use the desert as a place to speak to his beloved? 

Is it because in the silence of the desert we discover our dependence on the noise in our lives?  Is it in the vastness of its landscape that we find our  attachment to the comforts and conveniences of life – the belongings to which we cling for security and pleasure?  Allender says that the desert “shatters our souls arrogance and leaves us crying out in thirst and hunger”   Our soul’s arrogance?  That prideful and self-righteous place we retreat to where we take on life on our own terms.  That defiant and independent stance that puts our agenda ahead of the one that God might have for our lives.

I do not profess to have the answers for the depth of pain that my friend is experiencing but I know that he finds himself far from Eden…in a dry and arid desert where all that he has come to rely on has been stripped away.  I hope that he chooses not to run from the pain that he is experiencing but rather, to persevere in his journey until he discovers the oasis that has been prepared for him just around the corner by a God that has wooed him there…to speak tenderly to him…to let him know that, while the path maybe difficult, it is one of healing when walked with Jesus.

Are you available?

What does this question conjur up in your mind?  Openness…receptiveness?

If you were asked this question, in a social context, you might think the person was making a pass or coming on to you in some way.  The dictionary describes it as “being present and ready for use” and “qualified and willing to be of service“  

Are you present each day to the needs of your family?  Are you willing to be of service to the friend that is struggling?  If I were to ask you the same question in context to your relationship with Jesus, would that change your perspective at all?  Do you find yourself present to Him each day…ready and willing to be used?

The latest book to grace my nightstand is from counsellor and author Dan Allender who writes…

 “There is a door to every heart and every experience in life is either invited in or turned away…we hear the knock, or we ignore the noise and turn our attention more deliberately to other stimuli.  The decision to hear the knock and open the door is a stance that determines how much we are willing to change and grow.”   

Over the past year plus, I have been confronted with a host of long-standing sin patterns and I have reached the point of asking the Lord…so, why now?  Why not 10 or 15 years ago?  Is it that God wasnt ready to put these things in front of me or was it more that I was not truly available to Him until the past two years?  It is certainly no coincidence that, as I have grown in intimacy with the Lord, I have been both wooed and disciplined in the most extravagant ways.

Recently, I have been chewing on Paul’s statement that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”.  It’s a mind-bending statement that I have glossed over for years in my reading of the Scriptures.  However, I do not think Paul is waxing philosophic here but is, in a very real sense, telling us that we no longer have a right to our lives and that as we submit to the indwelling Spirit, we see the fruit of His life being expressed in us including the death of ingrained habits and sinful thought patterns that have plagued us for years.

As Allender writes, “..stepping on to the healing path is both a choice and a mystery…and God meets our desire with His presence and then dances with us - but only as wildly as we wish…many moments in life, we simply dont want to dance or choose not to make ourselves available”

So much of our walk with Jesus boils down to the decisions we make…a choice to carve out intentional time for reflection, study and self-examination or to induldge our flesh in its craving for food, alcohol, mind-numbing hours of television or work.  In other words, do I make myself available to God to hear his voice, reflect on his counsel and relax in his company.

Paul tells us in Col 3 (the Message), “So if you are serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it.  Pursue the things over which Christ presides.  Dont shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with things right in front of you.  Look up and be alert to what is going on around Christ – that’s where the action is.  See things from his perspective.  Your old life is dead – your new life, which is your real life – is with Christ in God”

So… I find myself this day as I do so many others, making myself available to my Father.  How about you?

On Being a Pirate (part 1)

I’ve been meeting with a group of guys for a year now. 

We call ourselves the Greensboro Pirates – our merry band of miscreants grew out of a great book “Samson and the Pirate Monks” by Nate Larkin (for more on Nate’s story, click this link)

That, in and of itself, may not sound remarkable but was is remarkable is the raw honesty with which these guys share their struggles.  We talk about addiction, infidelity, anger…Jesus.  

And while the suggested topic may change from week to week, what doesnt change is the opportunity each man has to bring his crap to the circle and, without being judged or fixed, let the destructive nature within him be exposed to a few brothers.

Below is a note from one of our brothers in Georgia – just one of many meetings of the Samson Society that take place all across America. 

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On Monday nights, I learn how to die.
Sometimes that tiny room in the church feels like an old-time surgery auditorium: the light harsh and unforgiving, the table alone in the center of the room, the overhead windows crowded with faces. I climb up on the hard table.
When I ask after the surgeon, a faceless nurse presses the scalpel into my hand. “I’m afraid it’s you, sir. Good luck.”
I hate Monday nights.
“Welcome to this meeting of the Samson Society,” someone intones.  This weekly ritual has become a lifeline for me and my friends, for that is what we are, friends bound not by strength but by weakness. We have all said, “I never knew what friendship was before this.”
Our Monday meetings began as a few square feet of sanity in a life that felt out of control. Mine is not the “worst” story in the room but trying to categorize our lives in terms of best and worst is an exercise in futility. One of the cardinal truths of this group of men is that we are all broken, we have all wandered, we all hang by a thin thread.
I love Monday nights.

We have learned together that this thread is a cord stronger than anything we imagined for the gospel occupies center stage. Together, we experience life as it should be this side of Golgotha. We confess our sins, let other men know our weaknesses, and hear not advice or admonition, but just “thanks.”
It may sound like the stuff of nightmares. In one sense, it is my nightmare. I lay open my chest and expose my heart—fierce, fragile, faithless—to other men. After the time we’ve spent together, they see through my charades. Still, they are kind, understanding. They smile and nod when it’s my turn to talk.
I need Monday nights.

 My life doesn’t revolve around our meetings but they provide a touchstone, a waypoint for my journey through life. I have forged friendships with traveling companions too and they constantly remind that no matter how dark my path, I am not alone.  For all this, I’m more grateful than I imagined possible. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without the men in that group, and the Monday nights we’ve spent talking and listening to one another.
It’s Sunday as I write this. I dread Monday nights.

I want Monday nights. On Monday nights, I remember how to live.

Random Acts of Violence

OK…I need to blog about this while it’s fresh because if I wait and try to digest tonight’s events, I probably won’t ever write about it.

As is the custom after our Monday Samson Society meeting, I was on my way to meet my buddies at the Mellow Mushroom.  I was looking forward to a slice or two and some fellowship after our evening discussion on powerlessness of all things.  It was raining (as it has for 4 days straight) and I wasn’t paying much attention as I got out of my car but as I was walking down a side street toward the restaurant, two assholes tried to rob me at gunpoint.

Just moments before, I had passed them on the sidewalk so I only got a glancing look as I hurried toward Elm St, trying to keep as dry as possible but I heard one of them running toward me and as I looked back, I saw a gun in his right hand as he yelled “Give me all your money”. 

Instinctively, I bolted…trying to make it around the corner of the building.  In that instant, I thought about how I could easily get shot in the back so I did my best impersonation of a baseball player sliding into second base and “hit the dirt” as I slid around the corner. 

I grabbed for my phone as I neared the entrance to the restaurant as my friend would have just about been getting out of his car on the same dark street.  Breathless, I told him what had happened and that he should stay put when he told me that he had just seen the two hoodlums run past his van.   Of course, I hung up with him and did the requisite thing, calling the police but the punks were long gone by the time they arrived.

As I write this, I am both thankful and pissed off (not an uncommon mix of emotions in me I might add).  I am thankful that God protected me and angry at the ridiculousness of the situation.  I had a $1.27 and a Starbucks card on me at the time which isnt the issue.  The issue is the brazen entitlement attitude by these thugs (an issue for which I already have a real thorn in my side).

Why these two jerks think they are entitled to my wallet is beyond me.  Get a fucking  job and work like the rest of society…make a contribution to what ails our city instead of contributing to its mess!  So what…I lose a wallet and maybe a few teeth but again, that isn’t what angers me.  I am sick to death of our society’s air of entitlement.

AIG gets bailed out and then spends $165Million on executive bonuses…advertising that tells us how much we deserve the new car or the exotic vacation…a US economy in recession due largely to corporate greed and homeowners who bought a house they knew they couldn’t afford.  It’s a cancer that has spread into all areas of our society!

So, I’ll take a look at the log in my own eye.  How often do I expect that God owes me a blessing for my good behavior?  C’mon…”Lord, I’m serving men and trying to grow in my faith…couldnt you just bless my business since I’m such a great guy?”  Who hasnt thrown one up to heaven like that in the past year?  We often approach God with an attitude of entitlement.

God owes us JACK!  

He ransomed us from the gates of hell and gave us a heavenly advance in the form of  His Spirit.  He loves us to a depth that we’ll never understand this side of heaven and yet…we want more!  We wander…we prostitute ourselves at the alter of consumerism, thinking that “we’ve worked hard so we deserve the new flatscreen”.  None of this crap provides any lasting relief to the ache in our hearts that only He can satisfy.

Be reminded that you are entitled to absolutely nothing….regardless of what Obama and his $800 billion has to say about it.  As dead men (and women), it is no longer us who live…it is Christ who lives in us.  We are entitled only to the next breath and the next heartbeat that He gives to us…nothing more.

Ok…time to get off my soapbox and get some sleep.  I am certainly entitled to a good nights sleep after the evening I had, right?