One sign it will be a good day.

Posted on by

How does your day begin? Why on some days are we happy and free, and other days we wake up on the proverbial wrong-side-of the-bed? Perhaps there are many reasons, but consider a broader question first.

Where does generosity come from? We might tend to think we will be more generous with our time, talents, and treasure if only we had more. Or, if there were easier ways to ‘plug in’ and invest our time, use our talents, and give our treasure to others.

All of those opportunities are already before us. Everyday, and (just about) each moment. Being generous begins with being thankful. Gratitude is the key to changing our hearts to want to want to give our lives away for a cause much greater than our little lives.

Here’s a simple exercise we started doing a couple years back: on garbage day, watch the garbage truck pick up your trash. Seriously. Let’s pause our breakneck speed and consider the beauty of how someone drives by and picks up our trash. Better yet, when we hear the truck around the corner, say to our children, ‘Let’s watch the garbage truck!’ and rush to the window together to be awed.

Wait for the questions … this is a routine for us every Wednesday morning as my son considers important questions like “what do they do with all that garbage?” It has sparked many conversations on how the world works, our chores and responsibilities, why the recycling container is 4x the size as that garbage can, and how we can today choose to be thankful (aka “have a happy heart”).

Since the garbage truck circles around the back of our house, then up the other side of the street, back around on our side, and exits our neighborhood to the one behind us, there are four opportunities to say “there’s the garbage truck.” Of course, this may be a boy thing, and I’m doubtful our daughter will one day be as enthused. (We do the same thing with the street sweeper.)

Can you believe we are able to roll our garbage out to the curb? For about $20 a month? Are you kidding me? (Remember those old tin cans with the round lids that tended to blow off? Just remembered they didn’t have wheels, AND we had to purchase the cans ourselves.

I remember being jealous once as a kid that the neighbors had a fancy set of cans; they were colored plastic with special lids and built-in bungee cords that would latch them shut. They never had to be late to school because their cans tipped over with trash littering the street. We did.

There are people in developing nations walking trash across the city, barefoot, in the heat of the day, parched and yet not complaining about their lot in life. And I get to witness someone come by my house weekly and take our garbage out of sight and out of mind. In fact, there are two, as the recycling truck comes along later.

Sure there are opportunities for us to complain, worry, and get anxious. But if today the garbage truck stopped by to take your stinky heap of waste — that’s a good sign today will be a good day.

 

A parenting workshop for those doing pretty good (or even great) as parents.

Posted on by

Whenever we hear and announcement or see a 30-second commercial about a product or an idea, we subconsciously ask ourselves “Do I need this?” If we buy into what the marketers want — a want to want it, based our their projecting the ‘need’ we hadn’t realized before — we’ll buy what they are selling. Or, we’ll figure out the best version to get that is similar to what they’re selling.

Here’s the idea I’m selling you today:

You need to be at this Parenting Worship, on Saturday, January 22nd (9am-2pm).

As a friend reminded me this morning how all of us grew up with imperfect parents (bless them!). There was a year when we stopped communicating with and trusting them, and they were less effective in raising us. They were in many ways echoing the pattern they saw in their parents, living the same pattern out in raising us. So, let’s think about what age or year that happened in your family. Without wisely and godly counsel, you as a well-meaning parent (and me) will repeat this same pattern. We may be doing great right now, but there will be a day when we are not doing great. Let’s commit to planning for that day.
Continue reading →

 

7 Billion.

Posted on by

This preview for 7 Billion, a year-long series National Geographic is doing on overpopulation delivers some jaw-dropping facts in beautifully animated kinetic typography.

“In 1975, there were 3 megacities [>10 million people] — Tokyo, Mexico City and New York City. Right now, there are 21. By 2050, 70% of us will be living in a megacity.”

“But we don’t take up as much space as you think… Standing shoulder to shoulder, all 7 billion of us would fill the city of Los Angeles.”

So it’s not space that we need so much as sharing resources:

  • 5% of us consume 23% of the world’s energy
  • 13% of us don’t have clean drinking water
  • 38% lack adequate sanitation

[via Brain Pickings]

 

Welcome to Philippians: True Joy.

Posted on by

This Sunday we begin a journey as a church through Paul’s epistle (letter) to the Philippians. We’re calling it “True Joy,” for in Christ we find this true joy that will never fade. No matter our circumstances, we can stand in joy and embrace reality head-on. In Jesus we see the perfect Example and goal, and in Paul we see another one who lived in this joy. This joy becomes louder than his suffering.

The Apostle Paul wrote this God-inspired letter sometime around AD 60 from a prison cell (or house arrest) in Rome. He wrote to this faithful church in Philippi, because he loved them, and primarily as a thank you for their sending one of their best to his side, with a personal gift. He met them about a decade earlier (see Acts 16:14-40), and they received the Good News of Jesus as from God. In this letter, which is a short 104 verses, he outlines what the Christian life shall look like, and God’s plan for true community built around Jesus. There’s much in there about happiness, humility, holiness, and contentment. Sounds like a letter we all need to read. (Even memorize. Join me in memorizing it together between now and Easter Sunday.)

We learn in this letter some key things, which I’ll quickly summarize. But first, they all tie to the greatest event in history, which is actually a series of events: the Gospel. Jesus came, God as a Man, lived a sinless life, died the death of a crucified criminal, took on the wrath of God, and rose from the dead. These are crazy events, yet they really happened. This changes everything.

We learn in Philippians three simple things about what Jesus has done to Paul. Even from a prison cell this man is:

  1. really happy
  2. really humble, and
  3. really driven

(The Gospel is why Paul is happy, humble, and driven. He’s met Jesus and he’s now a new man being made new every day.)

So he writes in this happiness — a true and abiding joy — to a church that was doing many things right. Continue reading →

 

Feel!

Posted on by

Do you ever feel the real tension between duty and feelings? Like when we’re ‘supposed’ to do something, but just are not ‘feeling it’ that day? Sure, we go through the motions, if we can control ourselves and will our bodies through the routine. Question: is this how God envisioned the Christian life? Or did Jesus really mean it when He said to “love your enemies” — that He wanted us to genuinely feel something good towards other people, and towards God?

Read on:

The Bible talks about emotion just like we do in everyday conversation.

There is no special category for “Christian love,” that agape kind our Christian leaders like to talk about — intellectualizing an emotion into a philosophical ideal. Love, hope, joy—and even hatred—in the Bible are not lofty ideas and concepts; they are feelings and emotions, just as we know them in our own lives and talk about them with our families and friends.

There is a great example of what I am talking about in Romans 12: “Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other. Never by lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically. Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying. When God’s people are in need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them. Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with each other. Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don’t think you know it all!”

See what I mean?

In these eight verses, Paul mentions emotions or uses emotional words a dozen times or so. They are mixed in naturally with the normal flow of his writing.

Really love people.

Hate what is wrong.

Love with genuine affection.

Delight in honoring each other.

Serve the Lord enthusiastically.

Rejoice in hope.

Practice hospitality eagerly.

Be happy.

Weep

Enjoy.

Commands to love and to be in prayer and to be joyful and not to be lazy are all jumbled up together. In the midst of a plea to keep our spirits boiling passionately, Paul tells us to have great empathy for others, to feel what they are feeling. If we are going to be enthusiastic in serving God, we have better feel others’ joy and pain as if it were our own.

It occurred to me that our spirituality is all about how we are feeling — whether we are feeling life or numb to it. If we are not feeling as we should, something is wrong with our relationship with God.

Paul takes no time to explain what he means by love and joy and hope and hate and sorrow. He doesn’t try to tell us that joy is not a feeling or that love is just a choice. He speaks in plain language and assumed that emotions are simply recording our feelings — the stuff of life that God has given us. Paul assumes we will know that joy and love feel like, and he exhorts that if we live by God’s standards, there are certain kinds of feelings that will fill our lives.

This is not rocket science to Paul; it’s clear and normal. He has no embarrassment, no hesitation, no theological barrier to putting pure emotion front and center. He tells it like it is in real life.

I wondered at all the sermons I’d heard and if I’d ever heard a pastor say, “Feel!”

Without any qualifications.

Without any theological rhetoric.

Without any attempt to redefine the word.

Feel!

I wondered how I’d react if I went to church one Sunday and heard, “God is telling you that next week you should be filled with happiness and good cheer; you need to give genuine, warm hugs every night to your family, and if something really bad happens to a friend in the church, you need to be over at their house crying with them. No, I don’t mean dropping by a card and a casserole for dinner, your Christian duty. I meant entering into their pain and really crying with them.”

Paul is that preacher. And that is what I learned from him in Romans. To him, a Christian’s emotional life is all rolled up in and with and around how we should behave and how we should think. For Paul it’s not different to say “cry with the grieving” than to say “don’t lie.” Duty is there, but not devoid of passion and true emotion. It’s all one.

So feel. And feel deeply.

—Matthew Elliott, FEEL: The Power of Listening to Your Heart, pp. 23-25.

 

Welcome to 2011: You Can Change.

Posted on by

This week we each resolve to embark on a personal change project. This is a good thing. Perhaps there is much wisdom in trading one dramatic resolution for 10,000 little ones.

And since January is a great time to pause, reflect, and start a new course, let’s do it right with some true character development. (Hope and perspective win over cynicism and living in defeat any day. What we need is hope-filled perspective on reality and the future.)

In the last year I’ve come to trust and recommend a little book by Tim Chester, You Can Change.

Here’s the table of contents, along with a free chapter of You Can Change: God’s Transforming Power for Our Sinful Behavior and Negative Emotions:

  1. What would you like to change?
  2. Why would you like to change? (free PDF)
  3. How are you going to change?
  4. When do you struggle?
  5. What truths do you need to turn to?
  6. What desires do you need to turn from?
  7. What stops you changing?
  8. What strategies will reinforce your faith and repentance?
  9. How can we support one another in change?
  10. Are you ready for a lifetime of daily change?

Some quotes:

“Jesus is the perfect person, the true image of God, the glory of the Father. And God’s agenda for change is for us to become like Jesus.” (p. 14)

“Making us like Jesus was God’s plan from the beginning. God ‘predestined’ or planned for us to be like His Son (Romans 8:29). Before God had even made the world, His plan for you and me was to make us like Jesus. And everything that happens to us is part of that plan. One day we will share God’s glory and reflect that glory back to him so that he is glorified through us (v. 30).” (p. 15)

‘The Puritan Thomas Watson said that sanctification, the process of change, “is heaven begun in the soul. Sanctification and glory differ only in degree: Sanctification is glory in the seed, and glory is sanctification in the flower.’” (p. 20)

“You will cleanse no sin from your life that you have not first recognized as being pardoned through the cross. This is because holiness always starts in the heart. The essence of holiness is not new behavior, activity, or holiness. Holiness is new affections, new desires, and new motives that then lead to new behavior. If you don’t see your sin as completely pardoned, then your affections, desires, and motives will be wrong. You will aim to prove yourself. Your focus will be the consequences of your sin rather than hating the sin itself and desiring God in its place.”

“Many people change their behavior, but their motives and desires are still wrong; so their new behavior is no more pleasing to God than their old behavior.” (p. 28)

“God sent His Son to buy our freedom. We’re no longer slaves with a slavemaster. Now we’re children with a Father.” (p. 31)

“We become Christians by faith in Jesus, we stay Christians by faith in Jesus, and we grow as Christians by faith in Jesus.” (p. 43)

“Telling a slave to be free is to add insult to injury. But telling a liberated slave to be free is an invitation to enjoy his new freedom and privileges.” (p. 49)

“The Father is intimately involved in our lives so that our circumstances train us in godliness. The Son has set us free from both the penalty and the power of sin so that we now live under the reign of grace. The Spirit gives us a new attitude toward sin and a new power to change. The combined forces of the Trinity are at work in our lives to set us free and make us holy.” (p. 53)

“Justification is a change of my status in God’s sight; sanctification is a change of my heart and character.” (p. 56; both because of Jesus and ours through faith in Him)

Live in the words of Paul in Romans 8:32—

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us, how will he not also with him freely give us all things.”

Identity is the key to change. Who are you? Who has God designed you to be? How will you embrace His will in 2011, linking your little story to His Big Story?

 

Hello, fifth day of Christmas.

Posted on by

Today is actually, with reference to history, the fifth day in the Twelve Days of Christmas, which begin in the Christian calendar on December 25th and extend through January 5th. This is followed by the Feast of Epiphany on January 6th (commemorating the visit of the magi in the Gospel narratives). My wife broke the tradition and celebrated the nearly two weeks leading up to December 25th as some gift recipients named a “stealthy Christmas angel ninja.”

C.S. Lewis had an interesting thought in an essay, “What Christmas Means to Me” (in God in the Dock, a compilation of essays on ethics):

“Three things go by the name of Christmas. One is a religious festival. This is important and obligatory for Christians; but as it can be of no interest to anyone else, I shall naturally say no more about it here. The second (it has complex historical connections with the first, but we needn’t go into them) is a popular holiday, an occasion for merry-making and hospitality. If it were my business to have a ‘view’ on this, I should say that I much approve of merry-making. But what I approve of much more is everybody minding his own business. I see no reason why I should volunteer views as to how other people should spend their own money in their own leisure among their own friends. It is highly probable that they want my advice on such matters as little as I want theirs. But the third thing called Christmas is unfortunately everyone’s business.

“I mean of course the commercial racket. The interchange of presents was a very small ingredient in the older English festivity. Mr. Pickwick took a cod with him to Dingley Dell; the reformed Scrooge ordered a turkey for his clerk; lovers sent love gifts; toys and fruit were given to children. But the idea that not only all friends but even all acquaintances should give one another presents, or at least send one another cards, is quite modern and has been forced upon us by the shopkeepers.”
[Source: Q Ideas]

What happened to the “Christ” in Christmas? Which “Christmas” are we talking about?

 

A song for the ages, about the King of Everything.

Posted on by

Tonight we will sing a great hymn, a song for the ages, about the King of Everything:

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing [listen]:

Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled”
Joyful, all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim:
“Christ is born in Bethlehem”
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Christ by highest heav’n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin’s womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris’n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”

“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” is a worship hymn and Christmas carol written by Charles Wesley in 1739. Charles along with brother John Wesley was a founder of the Methodist church movement, birthed out of the Church of England (Anglican). The younger Wesley requested slow and solemn music for his lyrics and thus “Hark the herald angels sing” was sung to a different tune initially. Over a hundred years later Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) composed a cantata in 1840 to commemorate Johann Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. English musician William H. Cummings adapted Mendelssohn’s music to fit the lyrics of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” already written by Wesley.