Bearr of God

Why no writing?

2010-03-14T18:58:00.000-04:00

It has been nearly a year since I wrote anything on this blog. Here is the last post that I started and never finished:

OK, I have been on hiatus for a long time. There has been a reason for this. It is because I hate myself.

Sorry. That is, perhaps, an overstatement. But any time I thought about posting, the thought soon came to my mind "who wants to read what you have to say?" Which kind of put a damper on my motivation.

I'm sad that I recognized this feeling a year ago and yet didn't see that it was something that I needed to work on to get past or to overcome. That's part of the problem of self-hatred; I assume that it is justified and just the way it is. I thought that my self-loathing was something that I had dealt with fifteen years ago. But I guess like many personality flaws or emotional issues or whatever, there are layers.

I did do something about it recently. I got some prayer for it. And I realized something: self hatred is a coping mechanism. It is a way of dealing with big scary feelings in a way that seems safer to me. Like depression, which is what I used to run to instead of get angry in general, self hatred is something that I turn to when I want to avoid getting angry at other people. People ignore me, treat me like crap, walk all over me, don't answer my emails, don't laugh at my jokes? Well, getting angry at them is just petty, so I don't want to do that. But I'm still angry! Where do I put this emotion? I'll just turn it toward myself! "Why should they answer your emails/treat you nice/send you flowers and candy? You're not worth it anyway!" Something like that. Makes the world make sense without me having to deal with blaming other people for anything.

But, like all ungodly ways of dealing with pain, this coping mechanism gets in the way of the truth. And whether I am the best blogger in the world or just one of the crowd, it is wrong for me to totally despise what is in me. There is good stuff in me, stuff that it is good to express. Acting as if there isn't gets in the way of the Spirit.

This isn't a promise to start posting again. Not sure what will happen on that front. It is just an explanation for why I stopped.

Sing Praises

2009-04-05T07:53:00.000-04:00

Psalm 47:5 God has ascended amid shouts of joy, the Lord amid the sounding of trumpets. 6 Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. 7 For God is the King of all the earth; sing to him a psalm of praise.

I have the honor this day of continuing the tradition of praise and worship at my church. This is something that my church is known for, and many people remark on the intensity of the worship at my church. It is exciting and humbling to be able to continue this tradition.

I read the above psalm this week, and I noticed something that I had never seen before. You know how in the Bible, if the speaker wants to emphasize something they say it twice ("Truly, truly I say to you"), and if they really want to emphasize it, they say it three times ("Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty")? Look at verse 6 above. Twice the psalmist says to sing praises to God, and twice he says to sing praises to our King. But in verse 7 he ties it together that God is our King, and so he told us four times to sing praises to Him! That's emphasis!

For God is King of all the earth. He is certainly and undeniably worthy of all of our praise. Sing praises!

Jessica Latshaw interview

2009-03-31T07:56:00.004-04:00

Continuing in my role as a member of the Jessica Latshaw fan club, here is an interview that Jessica gave to Joan Dylan at radio station WRCH.

Thankful

2009-03-25T07:57:00.000-04:00

For the first time in ten days, I slept through the night and got woken up by my alarm clock. You might not think that being woken by your alarm clock is something to be thankful for, but what has been happening is that I have been waking up from my throat hurting or from coughing and going downstairs to sleep sitting up somewhere. Last night I slept all night in my own bed through the whole night. I feel like a parent with a baby, except, of course, I'm the baby.

So, I'm thankful that I was able to sleep the whole night.

Mindful of him

2009-03-23T22:37:00.000-04:00

A verse for my birthday:

Job 7:16 I loathe [my life]; I would not live alway: Let me alone; for my days are vanity. (ASV)

You may laugh, but there was a time when this was the type of thoughts that I used to have on my birthday. In those days, my birthday was a day of mourning and sorrow.

But I digress. I found this verse in the ASV because I was looking for the word "vanity" in Ecclesiastes. The verse above is followed by these verses:

Job 7:17 What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him, And that thou shouldest set thy mind upon him, 18 And that thou shouldest visit him every morning, And try him every moment? 19 How long wilt thou not look away from me, Nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?

The NIV puts it thus:

17 "What is man that you make so much of him, that you give him so much attention, 18 that you examine him every morning and test him every moment? 19 Will you never look away from me, or let me alone even for an instant?

This put me in mind of another Scripture:

Psalm 8:4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? 5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. (NIV)

I found this remarkable - that the same idea ("what is man") led to two different expressions, one of despair, and one of awe:

What is man that you, God, make so much of him, that you pester him so?
What is man that you, God, make so much of him, that you lift him up so high?

David redeemed Job's thought. He took the same idea, and changed it from a reason to despair to a reason to rejoice. A good reminder that perspective and attitude matter.

Even concerning ones' birthday.

Jessica on Washington DC Local News!

2009-03-21T01:28:00.005-04:00

I found two cuts of this video, this one is a little longer but the other has the sound drop out at one point.

Here's the link.

Ill again

2009-03-20T19:12:00.000-04:00

This week, I am ill. I felt it start Saturday, but foolishly decided to go to the church work day anyway. Last Sunday I got a sore throat and lost my voice. Monday morning around 1AM I woke up with my throat in so much pain that I couldn't sleep - it hurt all the time, and when I swallowed it was like swallowing razor blades.

(Swallowing became this mean little game for me. On the one hand, I didn't want to be in pain. On the other, I became very conscious of a need to swallow, and of an obsessive little curiosity about the pain - was it still there? Will it decrease if I swallow a lot? Gulp. OWW! I guess not.)

Tuesday wasn't any better, and so I called my doctor - or, rather, had the wife call, since I couldn't carry on a conversation. First opening was Wednesday morning, so I got over there.

"Yup, you're ill. Might be strep. If it is strep, here is a prescription for antibiotics - you can take it now, or wait for the strep test to get back. If it isn't strep, not much to do besides numb the pain, lower the fever, drink fluids. Strep test should be back Friday."

Wednesday night I developed a cough - my throat was so raw, it tickled all the time. Then I couldn't sleep because of the cough.

Finally, here, on Friday, I feel like I am getting better. I am still running a slight fever (about a half degree), but the pain when I swallow is tolerable, and I can sleep without waking myself up from swallowing or coughing.

But what is it with this illness? I don't normally get this ill. I was also ill for 10 days over the last Christmas holiday as well. It's just weird - I feel like a little kid again, with these long illnesses. It's also a little nerve-wracking to be out of work this long these days. Fortunately, I got a lot of big projects out of the way just before this happened.

I often feel distant from God, but when I am ill I have little interest in spiritual things, other than to throw up a "please make me well" prayer. I pull in, just wanting to be by myself, conserving resources, comforting myself.

I'm glad that he sticks with me anyway, though I don't understand why.

Submission

2009-03-10T17:59:00.000-04:00

I have about three posts-in-progress, but I've been so busy that none of them have gotten to a stage where I can actually post them.

So, instead, I will submit this thought.

I've been reading the Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. I first read it about 25 years ago (yes, I'm old). One thought that came to me as I'm reading it is that one of the greatest dangers to the soul is that we are able to function quite nicely without being submitted. Rather than be afraid of a God who is too tyrannical, we should be concerned lest we take his lax and distant rule too much for granted. Because one day our unconditional surrender will be demanded of us, and we will need to be able to give it. And not just "yes, you are Lord" - but true surrender, acknowledgement of His headship over every aspect of our lives. No sin held onto, no pride allowed to stand, no unforgiveness retained. Give it all up, in a moment.

I guess, in one sense, that is why it is good to work on that submission here and now.

But maybe we will get a second chance, like in the Great Divorce.

Creationists and Theory

2009-02-26T23:41:00.000-05:00

Isaac Asimov is one of my favorite authors. I loved his stuff when I was a kid, and still enjoy reading and re-reading his science fiction.

Here is a quote by him which I find amusing because it is true:

Creationists make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
— Isaac Asimov

The illustrative tale of Charlie

2009-02-25T13:52:00.001-05:00

Every two weeks I have a creative writing project, which other people might refer to as "Peaj's email reminder about Bible Study this week." I try to make it interesting because, you know, who needs to read another "Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel"-type of email? Since the post I have in the back of my mind about Jesus as a priest in the order of Melchizedek isn't really going anywhere (I have, maybe, two sentences), I thought that I would repurpose (fancy corporate-speak for "ripoff") the email I wrote this morning for the blog.

One day Charlie was just kinda bopping along, in that bopping-along way that he had.

So who is Charlie?
I'll get to that. Just go with it.
I think you should establish your characters before you tell stories about them.
Quit it, will you? Gosh! You're so judgemental!
You spelled "judgmental" wrong.
Shut up!

Anyway, Charlie was bopping along, minding the business that was his, when a large piece of paper floated down toward him.

Oh, like that would happen.
Just listen, will you? It will make sense.
Whatever.

This large piece of paper had writing on it. "Ark" and "lampstand" and "Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here." Yes it was a copy of Hebrews chapter 9.

Just floating out of the sky?
Yes, just floating down. Now quiet, or I'll send you away!
Ooh, I'm scared.

Unfortunately, Charlie didn't realize that it was Hebrews chapter 9, and so he moved on by it. You see, Charlie couldn't read.

Is this some sort of strange public service announcement?
Will you quit it?
I'm just trying to get where you are going with this.
Can't you take a break from analyzing everything for just one minute?
You know, mom never really liked you either.
Arrgg!

A few seconds later, a large shape loomed out of the fog, and swallowed Charlie in one gulp. A huge fish had eaten Charlie. You see, Charlie was a fish too.

That's weird. And there is no fog under water.
I'm ignoring you. La la la la.

So, the moral is clear: Come to Bible Study, and avoid being eaten by a fish. Bible Study will be this Sunday at about 12:45 PM.

That's your moral?
Can't hear you.

Sorry, Charlie.

OK, that was cute, if a bit obscure.

I think that this was a little bit inspired by the self-heckling comedy of Jim Gaffigan.

Judging

2009-02-21T11:39:00.000-05:00

This post was sparked by this post from friend and fellow blogger, Jessica.

First, some Scriptures:

Jesus said:
Mt 7:1 - Do not judge, or you too will be judged.

Lu 6:37 - "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

Paul said:
Col 2:16 - Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.

1Co 5:12 - What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?

1Co 6:2 - Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life!

God said:
Genesis 2:16 And the Lord God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

I pulled just a few Scriptures on judging - trust me, there are many more. As you can see, they are kind of a mixture. Jesus seems pretty absolute: "Do not judge." Paul says "Don't allow yourself to be judged." However, then he says that we are to judge those inside the church (while adjuring us to not judge those outside the church). He then later says that we are to judge things of this life.

So why did I include the Scripture from Genesis 2?

My theory is that our propensity to judge goes back to the original sin. I think that the knowledge of good and evil drives us to judge - to divide everything into this black and white thinking of "this thing is good, this thing is evil." We weren't meant to handle this ability, and that's why we mess it up so much. I think that it is because of this propensity to judge that Jesus made the strong statements that he did.

Paul, on the other hand, is talking to the church, and part of his concern is church administration. In this context, it is appropriate to judge what is right and wrong, so that correction can be brought. How can a church leader speak against lying or stealing or slander if he or she is not allowed to judge these actions to be wrong? Isn't it necessary, then, to judge in some contexts?

Here is how I reconcile these ideas. I think that as a Christian that we are to discern right from wrong. But I think that what Jesus is saying is "Love, do not despise." I think that he is speaking against is the separation of our heart from a person that we have judged, but not against recognizing what actions offend God. This is similar to the idea of judging the action, not the person. The sin, not the sinner.

Easy to say, in theory. Very difficult in practice. What I have found is that the roots of the original sin are so deep in us that we fall into the practice of judging very easily. How easy it is to just dismiss a person, to classify them in our minds as "one of those people." How easy it is, too, to spread these judgments to other people for noble ends, "to warn them, to protect them." How often do we see prominent or not-so-prominent Christian leaders or sites on the web rendering a judgment on this or that person, to inform their viewers? How often they claim to be doing this for Christian reasons! Sometimes I think that if these discernments want to be seen as Christian that they should include a disclaimer, like:

"WARNING: The preceding discussion is given for informational purposes only, to inform your prayer. You are not to judge the person or persons named therein. Judgment is a sin. If you say to the object of this message 'You fool!', you will be in danger of the fire of hell. (Matt 5:22). You are not to use this information to gossip about this person(s), defame them, or despise them. Instead, your goal should be to pray for this person(s) and to love them. Again, love them. Anything less is unworthy of Christ."

Another thing that Jess's post brings up is our American concepts of what a spiritual life looks like. To many, a spiritual life is one spent in total service to the church. Anything else is second (or third or fourth) best. I think that the person that wrote to Jess probably saw her as someone who was on a trajectory to have a career in the church, and that she "settled" or got distracted into something less. Want to be a dancer or an actor or a screenwriter or a computer support person? Do it for the church!

I confess that I fall into this trap as well, sometimes concerning other people, but mostly concerning myself. I judge myself as being less spiritual because I work a corporate job. But really, I, like Jess, feel that God opened doors to get me to my current position. And I do not see a precedent in the New Testament for every person who became a believer to give up their current occupation to do Christian ministry. Instead, there is an admonission to remain in your current situation (1 Corinthians 7:17-21). Truth is, Christians can be true Christians without working jobs within the church.

President's Day

2009-02-16T10:19:00.002-05:00

It's President's Day, and I am off work. In honor of our Presidents, here are some fun facts about our Presidents. These are drawn from the book Stupid History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions Throughout the Ages, which my daughter, showing a keen insight into the interests of her father, gave me for Valentines Day.

Some people claim that David Rice Atchison was President of the United States for one day. James Polk's term of office ended at noon on Sunday, March 4, 1849. Zachary Taylor was due to be sworn in that day, but he refused to be sworn in on the Sabbath, and his Vice President followed suit; both of their inaugurations were scheduled for the next day. Since Atchison was President pro tempore of the Senate, he was thus next in line and was therefore President for one day. Family legend has it that he slept through the day, making this a great lead in for me making a crack about him being the most effective President ever, if I were inclined to disrespect the office of the President.

From no president to two: Rutherford B. Hayes (I guess we always include the "B." to distinguish him from all the other "Rutherford Hayes" who have been President) had been beaten in the general election by Samuel Tilden (losers don't get a middle initial), but Hayes was elected President by one electoral vote. Tensions were high and there was a fear that supporters of Tilden would disrupt the inauguration, so Hayes, then-President Ulysses S. Grant (I guess we include the "S." blah blah blah) and Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite (I guess blah blah "R." blah blah) snuck off to administer the oath of office to Hayes the day before the inauguration, which also happened to be several hours before Grant's term ended. Does this mean that Rutherford B. and Ulysses S. were both President until Grant's term expired? I'm no lawyer, but if it doesn't, it doesn't really matter; it's still an interesting piece of history.

President Franklin Pierce was arrested in 1853 - during his term of office - for running down a lady with his horse. He was probably drunk at the time.

The Chicago Times didn't like the Gettysburg Address. Here is what they said about it:

The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dish-watery utterances of the man who has been pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.

Stupid History also informs that President Lincoln did not have the deep, resonant voice that the movies would have us believe, but that he had a high, shrill voice - a voice perfect for being heard long distances during open-air debates with no amplification.

So there you have it. Happy President's Day!

The unexamined life

2009-02-15T17:45:00.000-05:00

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates

I used to always examine my life. How was I doing? Where was I going? I almost always found my life to be lacking. I seemed to be full of, even defined by, my shortcomings. Everywhere I looked in my life I found failure, deficiencies, and squandered opportunities.

Accordingly, I was often depressed. And, oddly enough, neither the poor personal report cards nor the depression led to a better life or better behavior.

Somewhere along the way, I learned two things: 1) That God doesn't want me to sorrow over my failures, unless it is the type of sorrow that leads to righteousness (2Corinthians 7:10 - Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death), and 2) a lot of bad feelings have a biochemical source.

Let me explain the second one a little: I discovered that I often feel depressed after eating a lot of sugar. Before I realized this, when I felt this way I would cast about, looking for the cause, and inevitably hit upon what was bad in my life or what I had recently failed in. I would then conclude that the reason I felt bad was because of the things that I had identified. But they weren't the cause; the sugar low was.

What I have learned, then, is that there are some ways in which it is not so good to examine my life. If I feel bad, I don't have to hunt around for a reason. If I feel less than peppy, I don't have to conclude that it is because I am awful or unloved. Sometimes, it is better to just say, "I feel bad. I don't know why, and I am not going to search for why. I am, instead, going to trust that if God really wants to tell me something, he will let me know explicitly, and won't just give me a bad feeling."

I had this experience this morning. I dragged into church. I felt tired, unloved, unspiritual, and fearful of people. Many people really got into worship today, but I was not one of them. I had the luxury of not leading worship today, and I felt that to force myself to worship hard would do violence to my soul, and so I just sat. Initially I started down the route of blaming my shortcomings, but then I realized that this was that type of generalized down feeling that is related to consuming lots of sugar the day before. So I just accepted where I was at, and waited it out. I thought about different things (I'm little ashamed to say that one of them was television shows I've recently seen) and resisted the urge to flee the room.

And hey, I made it. Here I am, not caught up in depressing thoughts, and ready to lead worship tonight. So it seems that holding off from examining myself was a good thing.

1Corinthinas 4:3 I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. 4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.

Dreamless

2009-02-10T13:16:00.052-05:00

I've been thinking about Sunday's teaching on dreams for the Kingdom. If you missed it, what I got out of it (and this is probably totally wrong) is that God gives us visions for what we'd like to see happen in the Kingdom, and that we should pursue dreams in the knowledge that God will give us the power to fulfill them.

Now, maybe I'm wrong, but when I hear dream, I think something along the lines of big accomplishment, with the dreamer at the center. Like, ending poverty in the tristate area or being the motive force behind ending slavery worldwide. So, when I was asked Sunday afternoon what my dreams were, I said that I didn't really have any.

Possibly that isn't exactly true. There are some things that I have passion for, but they are sort of nonspecific. I have a desire to worship and to aid other people in worship. I don't really have a vision for the endstate of what I want worship to be like or to become - just that I want to do it and gather more people into doing it. I love talking about the fundamentals of the faith and of helping people understand them, but I don't have a specific goal in mind with this. Do these qualify as dreams?

I don't know. I know that this isn't what Jonathan said on Sunday, but the whole idea of dreams and goals as believers smacks to me as an Americanization (or, maybe, an American Idolization) of the Gospel. It makes me feel like the church is saying something like "you can be a star, too, just in the church!"

In the New Testament we certainly have the examples of Paul and Timothy and Barnabas pursing their individual destinies in the Kingdom - but what about the thousands and thousands of other believers? Did Paul exhort them to pursue their dreams? Is saying "pursue your dreams" the same as saying "now in the Body there are many parts"? Isn't the emphasis in the epistles much more on community and not on individual accomplishment? It seems to me that what Paul emphasized was more sacrificing of the individual to the greater good.

Maybe I am reading too much into this, or misinterpreting this. I look forward to your take on this.

Fireproof

2009-01-29T23:41:00.076-05:00

The missus and I saw the movie Fireproof last fall during our anniversary. If you are not familiar with the movie, it is the story of how a couple was on the brink of divorce, and how a challenge of self sacrifice from the husband's father led to the husband's conversion to Christianity and the eventual winning back of his wife.

I thought that it was a well done movie. It might not sound like it from the above description, but I thought that the movie was convincing in the way it portrayed the reality of the relationships involved. There were no magic answers, and the characters were believeably selfish, short-sighted and resistant to change. The solution wasn't as easy as saying "Now I shall be self-sacrificing" - there was real struggle involved. I found the movie very, well, moving. I'm pretty easily affected by any movie or TV show where the characters actually show humility and say "I'm sorry," and so I cried several times during the movie.

The wife loved it so much that she preordered the DVD, and is organizing a private party of friends and our kids to watch the movie together. I heard her on the phone asking people to this showing, and apparently she thought that it would be a great selling point to relate how I had to fight "openingly sobbing" during the movie. Now, come on, I know that a man being able to express and embrace his emotions is a good thing. But does anybody, guy or not, want to be known to all his or her friends as the one who couldn't keep it together during a movie, whether true or not? I finally asked her to stop selling the movie that way. Sheesh.

Now I need to face all these people when we watch this movie together. Will I cry a lot? Will they be watching me to see if I cry? Will I embarrass myself? Maybe I should go on the offensive before the movie starts. "Where are the Kleenexes? Watch out, I'm going to start bawling like a baby during the previews!"

Anyway, it is a good movie. I do recommend it to anyone who wants to see what sacrificial love can do.

Oh, and just so you know: I love my darling wife. If anything you read here seems to imply that I don't completely respect her or that I think ill of her, then you read it wrong.

Obey him

2009-01-06T20:42:00.003-05:00

At my Sunday Bible Study, we worked over these two verses, which speak of Jesus:

Hebrews 5:8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered 9 and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

Obviously, verse eight is a bit of a puzzle (how can Jesus, the perfect image of God, be deficient in any way, such that he needs to learn obedience?), but I want to focus on verse nine. Most of my contemporaries either grew up in or are familiar with Protestant theology, with its focus on salvation through faith. Having grown up Lutheran, I am very familiar with the idea of Sola fide - that salvation is through faith alone. These verses are often used for justification of this position:

Ephesians 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.

Yet here, in Hebrews 5:9, it says that Jesus is the source of salvation for all who obey him. (Incidentally, this verse is to me evidence that the writer of Hebrews was not Paul.) Though not a necessary interpretation, one possible interpretation of this verse is that obeying Jesus is a prerequisite for salvation.

If so, what obedience is needed for salvation? Is it the Law? Is it the Greatest Commandment? Well, I immediately thought about what Jesus said in John 15:

John 15:10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. [...] 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

So, to put it together, Jesus is our source of salvation if we obey his command to love one another. Note that he is speaking to believers, so I think that it is reasonable to say that his command is to especially, if not exclusively, love other believers.

If this is so, think of how critical it is that we love each other. It is the foundation of our relationship with God. Our very salvation depends upon it! And yet, how often do we sacrifice love to other things, like moral standards, perfect theology, or even our own comfort. Don't we judge and hold ourselves apart from those who have publickly sinned or whose theology we find flawed? Think of how many times you have heard or read vitriolic criticism of a prominent or famous person from someone not personally acquainted with that person. Do a Google or YouTube search of Benny Hinn, or Rick Warren, or other prominent Christians, and you will find pages dedicated to their faults and failings. Is this loving? Is this how we should treat other believers? Is this how we want to be treated? Jesus gives very specific instructions on how to deal with other Christians who have sinned:

Matthew 18:15 "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 "But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. 17 "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (NAS)

If we think someone has sinned, Jesus wants us to try and settle it quietly between us first. To do otherwise isn't obeying Jesus guidelines for how we are to treat each other, and so I think that this means that our actions are unloving.

Are we putting our salvation in jeopardy if we don't follow this model for dealing with the sins of other believers?

How important is it to love other believers - is it necessary for salvation?

Titanium Baby

2009-01-03T19:50:00.003-05:00

In an earlier post, I wrote about how I was focused on the fragility of a newborn baby and how this demonstrates the humility of God.

I've been thinking about this idea, though, and I wonder how fragile Jesus really was. A cursory web search brought up the statistics that during Roman times that 5-10 percent of all births ended in the death of the mother, and infant mortality rate was about 20%. I don't know if things were significantly different for practicing Jews, but I doubt that it was much different. Obviously, both Jesus and Mary survived his birth, despite this statistic and despite what may have been extremely unsanitary and otherwise unfavorable conditions.

Later, God derailed Herod's plan to kill Jesus by warning Joseph in a dream, so that the family could escape. During his ministry, Jesus avoided stoning and other physical harm several times, seeming to be able to slip through angry mobs at will (see John 10:39, Luke 4:29-30). In addition, there is a scripture (Psalms 91:11-12) that says that angels will protect the Messiah against him striking his foot on a stone; this Scripture is quoted to Jesus by Satan during the temptation in the wilderness (Matthew 4:5-6).

All this to ask: could Jesus be hurt before his trial? Does it make sense that God would allow the possibility of harm coming to him? And even if he could technically be hurt (say, by soldiers killing all of the children in a town) and yet avoided that fate through supernatural means, wasn't it the same, practically, as if he couldn't be hurt? Instead of fragile and weak Jesus, was he, instead, invincible?

Was Jesus the Titanium Baby? I think that it is an interesting philosophical question. However, even if Jesus was incapable of being harmed, I still think that his birth as a human baby continues to show the humility of God.

On being ill

2008-12-30T09:24:00.000-05:00

For the last few weeks I have been moderately stuffed up. I'm not sure if it was a cold, or some allergic reaction. Then, Christmas Day, I woke up with a sore throat. It got worse over the next few days, finally leading to me missing church (and my chance to be on worship team) on Sunday.

Yesterday, I felt really terrible. I don't know if I had a mild fever, or if it was from so frequently blowing my nose, but I felt light-headed, woozy and exhausted. I think that I was awake for only ten hours yesterday, which, since I usually fight sleep, means a lot of sleep for me.

Being ill is tough on me spiritually. First, I usually feel like being sick is my fault, a result of my being overweight. Second, I find it hard to pray when I am ill - it seems like it takes too much effort. Third, I usually just want to be left alone, which isn't too great for my darling, relationship-oriented wife. Fourth, my thoughts are often drawn to more, shall we say, disbelieving viewpoints.

I feel like I'm doing okay on items one and four of that list this time around. But being ill makes me more appreciative of those who handle illness, even prolonged illness, with greater grace and faith. I'm thinking particularly of Pam (no last name in the comments, please), who through her long illness was ever faithful, ever hopeful, and ever praising God.

Psalm 103:1 Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. 2 Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits-- 3 who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, 5 who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

There are those that believe that being ill means a failure of faith - if we are really in the Lord, then we won't ever get sick. But how do you know if you have been healed of a disease if you don't ever experience it? I think that the verse above is talking about people experiencing illness, and then getting better through the Lord's beneficence.

But I also believe that there will be a time when there will no longer be any illness that we experience. That will be great!

Okay, using the word "beneficence" in a sentence has pretty much exhausted me, so I think that I will end here.

The meaning of Christmas

2008-12-25T10:00:00.002-05:00

In a recent teaching, Christian talked about the meaning of Christmas. I remember thinking that it didn't match what I have felt about Christmas this year.

What I have been focusing on this year is the fragility of a newborn baby. A baby is tender and small and helpless. Back in first century Palestine, it wasn't very certain that any child, or its mother, would survive childbirth. A child can easily succumb to disease, exposure, or the malicious intent of others.

And yet, this is the package that God chose to put Himself in. He decided not just to disguise Himself as human, but to become fully human, and so to risk all the dangers that other babies do.

Why did he do this? Because He is shameless in his pursuit of humanity. Because, like an obsessed lover, He was willing to do whatever ridiculous thing is needed to win His love. Because he saw the gap between us and Him that was created by our sin, and He was willing to condense Himself down and undergo the indignity of babyhood to bridge that gap.

The baby. Eight and a half pounds of the most valuable flesh the earth has ever seen. All of our hopes and aspirations for redemption, life and fulfillment, in one tiny child.

To me, this year, Christmas is about the humility of God. It is about what God was willing to do and to endure in order to make a way for us. We are that important to Him.

Note: Why is this post showing up the day after Christmas? Because I have learned that the best way for me to endure Christmas is to ignore it as long as possible. This means that it also lingers a bit after the actual holiday for me - my tolerance for Christmas peaks right around the actual holiday. So sue me.

Christmas Eve

2008-12-25T09:17:00.001-05:00

So here we are, finally, at Christmas itself. The big event.

For my family, there is no frantic gift unwrapping this morning. In fact this morning, the girls are at Blue Waters Farm feeding horses, and my son just woke up about nine.

Our main Christmas activity was last night. We gathered around the dining room table, turned down the lights, and lit some candles. I turned on Christmas music. Those who wanted made tea and hot chocolate (I had some yummy Chai tea). The wife brought out five copies of the Joy to the World Christmas catalog. I prayed, thanking God for His provision for the year and asking that He guide our decisions that evening so that we would choose what was on His heart. My son then prayed in a similar vein, and the wife concluded.

I have been praying about how much to give this year through the catalog and had arrived at a figure last week, so at this point I told the family how much money each would have to give. Last week I had asked the kids to consider contributing some of their own money if they wanted, and so at this point last night I invited them to add in that amount if they so chose. Calculators appeared on the table, and then we all got quiet as we read through the catalog and decided how to give our money. As we made our decisions, we tallied our choices on our individual worksheets.

As I skimmed through the catalog, I looked for items that tugged at my heart. I also looked for what seemed to be good "values" - ways to give money so that it did the maximum good. I had initially thought that I would give more money locally this year, because of the economy. I did give a good chunk locally, though a lot of that was for what I might call "ministry advancement" and not directly to support the poor. However, I also found myself drawn to give to works overseas, where I know that things are bad no matter what the economy is like. Orphans in Cambodia always have a rough time of it, whether the credit markets in the US are in disarray or not.

I mentioned above that we had five worksheets, even though there are four people in our family. A friend had given us some money, asking us to decide where the money would go. After we had been working on our own sheets for a while, I suggested to the family an idea for a large chunk of our friend's money. Everyone else agreed that my suggestion would fit with that person's desires and heart, someone suggested a similar item for the rest of the money, and so that is how we filled out their worksheet.

After we had finished, we consolidated our worksheets. I then prayed a blessing prayer over our choices - that our money would not only physically bless people, but also spiritually bless them so that they were drawn to God and praised and glorified Him.

And then we were done, our pleasant labor complete. The whole process took about one and a half hours.

Merry Christmas to you, and to all the people that we contributed to.

A Chorus Line

2008-12-21T21:58:00.000-05:00

One of my best friends in high school was Christopher Patrick Mullen. He was then and is now an actor (he is performing in Cinderella at People's Light & Theatre through January 4). Back in high school he was of course very interested in Broadway, and spoke often about shows that he had seen and was interested in.

One of these shows was A Chorus Line. Chris infected another friend of mine, Gerry, with excitement about the show. Gerry bought the original cast album (which you can still find on Amazon, though now you have to buy it as a CD and not as an LP). I remember Gerry excitedly showing me this album just after he got it. Now, my memory gets a little fuzzy here - I'm not sure whether I borrowed the album, or made a cassette recording of it - but I remember listening to this album. A lot. I loved the music, and the songs became pretty familiar to me.

Friday night I saw A Chorus Line with Kathie in Philadelphia at the Forrest Theater, and all the joy of that music came rushing back to me. Of course, I loved the jokes, and the dancing was sparkling, and I enjoyed cheering for our own Jessica Latshaw Copeland as much as possible. But hearing those songs performed live is what gave me goose bumps. Take, for instance, the song One - the curtain call song of the musical, and the big production number of the musical within the musical. It is one of those hokey, over-the-top, woman-on-a-pedestal numbers that thankfully went out of fashion sixty years ago. But there is something about the fantastic melody and grand production that make the eye-rolling lyrics work. I loved it - in fact, I got annoyed that the audience was clapping so much because I wanted to better hear the singing at the end! I have been singing that song (and, for some reason, Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love) ever since Friday night.

I really enjoyed the show Friday night. The ticket was expensive, but I am glad that I went. Jessica was great, and very funny during her song.

I have to tell on her, though. I caught her, toward the end, shifting her weight on her feet - probably because her shoes were hurting her. And we did hear her voice above the others for about two measures in the first rendition of One. Nothing bad, mind you - most people probably wouldn't have caught it. We were actually glad that we got to hear her really sing, instead of act like she can't sing as she does in her song Sing! (make sense?)

But one thing that I really enjoyed was seeing Jessica after the show. You see, we were there the night a large group from the Delaware Dance Company was there. At one point after the show I looked across at Jessica, surrounded by all these girls from the Company. She was smiling and talking with them in her very animated way. And it was just sweet to see the way that she was so gracious and generous with them. She really looked to be in her element speaking with them, as much as she looked to be in her element while she was dancing during the show. I'm glad that she is finding success.

Reminder: A Chorus Line is pretty much R-rated, for language and thematic elements. If you need a flavor of what you will run into, listen to some of the samples of the soundtrack album available at Amazon.

No room

2008-12-17T21:26:00.000-05:00

Luke 2:1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to his own town to register. 4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Familiar story. Here's your common everyday comprehension question: Why was Jesus (presumably) born in a stable? Answer: Because there wasn't any room in the inn. Simple, right?

OK, so how about this one: Why were Mary and Joseph looking for a room in an inn, anyway? Think about it: they are traveling back to Joseph's ancestral home town. Surely there were still some relatives hanging around the place, willing to take in a couple imminently expecting their first child, right? And if not, all of the relatives that he did know were also traveling to the same place about the same time, to take part in the same census. Surely some of them could have made a little room for them, right? So why were they even going to an inn at all?

Well, as you know, there was this large matter of a suspicious pregnancy. It's likely that their relatives didn't want to have anything to do with this man and his young wife with her strange story of visions and angels. Or maybe, Joseph himself didn't want to make his presence known to them. Maybe he had gotten grief about Mary from relatives in Nazareth, and so he had decided to just not contact his relatives in Bethlehem. Whichever it was, it resulted in him scrambling for some place for his wife as she gave birth to her first born.

Now, here is an interesting twist. When Jesus was born, an angel appeared announcing that the Savior had been born, and then a whole company of angels appeared at the announcement, praising God. Pretty impressive, huh? That would make a believer of you, huh?

Wouldn't it have been so just if the angels had appeared to Joseph's family? "Hey, go down and see the son of the man whom you rejected! He really is the Annointed One! Go offer them a room, or at least make a meal for them!" But of course, that didn't happen. The angels appeared to poor shepherds, men who didn't have much in the way of influence in the community but who had great metaphorical relationship to the Messiah.

But, as low on the economic scale as they were, many people believed and were amazed at their testimony. It is likely that Joseph's relatives eventually came around to see the child of which this remarkable story was told. Maybe, evenually, they thawed out a bit. Maybe, even, the house that Matthew 2:11 says they were staying in was that of a relative.

I mention all this because it is so easy to lose sight of all the messiness of Jesus's birth (not like that) in the sanitized version of the story that we are familiar with. The matter of Mary's pregnancy likely caused great passionate responses in Joseph's family. It might have caused such an uproar that they were planning to stay in Bethlehem and away from Nazareth permanently (remember that they may have been there for as long as two years) until they were warned off to Egypt. I'm amazed at God's humility, as he allowed all of this drama to accompany the birth of His Son in order that Jesus could be made perfect through His suffering (Hebrews 2:10).

What is an adult?

2008-11-20T00:15:00.000-05:00

I have a great son. Sometimes, though, I want to convey information to him (some might say "lecture him") on subject areas that he may find uncomfortable to discuss face to face. Accordingly, I sometimes send him emails on this information. This has the advantage of avoiding what he might consider embarrassing conversations. It also avoids any ambiguity on what exactly it was that I said.

The below essay is mostly taken from one recent email.

What is an adult?

A child is ruled by their passions and their appetites. They want, and they try to get what they want. For a child, there is no judgment or filtering between desire and action. A child says, "I want it, so I will try to get it."

An adult, on the other hand, manages and mediates their desires and appetites. They may feel the same wants as the child, but they evaluate them against long term goals and values, and then act based on a decision, not merely in response to their desires.

Because a child cannot or does not manage themselves, a child is managed by other people. An adult manages themselves. You can probably see that by this definition, some who are physically and legally adults still act like children, and that there are physical children who can act like adults, at least in some areas.

Some children see adulthood as a way to be freed of the constraint of management, but this is just an illusion. If their parents are not managing them, and they are not managing themselves, then they are being manipulated by someone or something else. There are many people who thought that they were following a way of freedom once they hit their 20s, only to find years later that they had been enslaved by their appetites and, ultimately, to sin and the Enemy.

Another aspect of adulthood is that an adult embraces their self-management responsibilities. They take responsibility for themselves and their actions, even when something unexpected happens. They "own" the results of their self-management, even when they fail.

For example, suppose that a person makes a commitment to arrive somewhere at a certain time. Then they misjudge how heavy traffic is, and they get there late. A childish response is to blame the traffic and say "it wasn't my fault." An adult may explain that traffic was heavier than expected, but they also admit that they failed in their commitment and they take responsibility for making it right.

A classic example of this is when people say that they "fell" into sexual impropriety, arguing that the inappropriate actions "just happened" or that they got "swept away" by great desire that they didn't expect. The truth is that they should know that once they hit puberty that there will always be a sexual awareness that responds to the sexual attractiveness of other people. It is in a way nonspecific (though it may feel differently) and it is often not respectful of circumstances or of prior commitments. They thus need to manage this sexual awareness, and make decisions on how to respond to attraction based on long term goals and values.

By this I mean not just that they need to reserve sex for their present or future spouse. There are other ways in which people need to manage their sexuality. For example, people need to ensure that they don't lead others on through excessive flirting, giving them the impression that there is an exclusive commitment to that person that isn't really there. On the receiving end, people also need to guard their hearts from the flirtations of others so that they do not emotionally commit themselves to someone that they do not have an intention of committing to in marriage.

My encouragement to you is to work toward managing yourself as much as you can, while accepting our instruction and guidance while you still have the chance. This can be a frustrating time, when you are between our management of you and your management of yourself. It may happen that at times you manage yourself well, and we "steal" this victory from you by giving you advice that you are already aware of. It may happen that at other times that we restrict you in areas that you feel that you can manage. Against these frustrations, be assured that your goal and our goal is the same: for you to be a functioning adult. Our timetables may look different sometimes, but we both want the same thing. Let's be careful to preserve our relationship during this sticky "in-between" time so that we will keep it long-term.

With great affection,

Dad

The Persecuted Church

2008-11-09T17:54:00.002-05:00

Today is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.

I have a vision of a woman. She is in a cell. The cell is about 4' by 6', made of block walls. The walls are smooth and painted white. The long walls are plain and unadorned. On one short wall, very high up, is a window. The window is small and covered by a grate, but it lets in some air, light, and, occasionally, rain. On the opposite wall is a steel door. There is a slot in the door near the floor for food to be passed through, and a slot higher up for observation. The woman is afraid of the door. The door does not represent freedom for the woman. The door represents pain, sorrow, and degradation. When she leaves through the door is also when she is most aware of the suffering of her fellow prisoners. She does not like when that door opens.

The floor of the cell is wet, and dirty. Besides the woman, the cell contains a mattress along one wall, a bucket in the corner, and a porcelain bowl from her last meal. The woman is kneeling on the mattress. The sun is shining through the window onto her. Though the air is crisp, her clothes are thin, summer-weight.

The woman's hands are clasped. Her head is bowed. She has been praying. It has been some days since they last opened the door, and she thinks it likely that they will come for her today. She stops her quiet prayer. She throws up her hands and begins to sing to God. She worships him, thanking him for his gift of eternal life and for the sacrifice of Jesus. She recommits her heart to him, declaring that she relies on his mercy and believes in his justice.

She continues to sing, as she hears the sound of booted feet walking in the hall.

Today is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, and I am so humbled and honored to be counted a brother to those who are imprisoned, beaten, harassed, shunned and otherwise injured and yet who continue to praise God in such circumstances. This praise is especially sweet and significant to God, given as it is in great faith and, sometimes, at much personal cost. And I feel for those who fail in these times, who fall away or who don't stand up for the faith and who feel ashamed of their failure. We owe such brothers and sisters a debt of love and of prayer.

Happy Birthday, John

2008-11-07T12:07:00.004-05:00

Today my son turns 17.

I remember working on my computer, and my wife of five months coming up to me and quietly leaning her head against me. I asked her what was wrong, and she asked, "What if we're pregnant?" And even though I was just as scared of being a parent as she was, the Spirit quickened this answer to me: "That would be great!" He also gave me this gem in the ensuing conversation: "Our baby won't be scary, because he won't be a stranger. He'll be part of us."
I remember driving to the birth center, praying furiously for my laboring wife in the back seat. Suddenly, I felt that we should call our baby John. Later, after his birth, I asked my wife what she thought we should call him, barely holding back the knowledge that I had the right answer. She said - almost apologetically, like she was forcing something onto me - "Well, I think his name is John."
I remember following the only route that I knew to the birth center, and finding a tractor trailer jack-knifed across the road. As I pulled up to the scene, a police officer stepped up to wave me off. I rolled down my window and said, "Officer, how do I get to the birth center? My wife is having a baby!" How classic is that?
After he was born, I remember looking at that tiny little body, and seeing that he was perfect. When he was born, there was not a blemish on his skin; aside from some bruising around his eyes, he had this perfect white smoothness.
And he was strong! His one-minute APGAR score was a 10, which I think the midwives downgraded to a 9 just because they felt that no baby should get a score of 10.
I remember having to dress a baby for the first time in my life at the birth center, under the gaze of the midwife. It seemed to take forever. I was so afraid of hurting him! I think that the midwife eventually took pity on me and helped out.
I remember our time of resting at the birth center being over far too quickly. They kicked us out and told us to go home! The morning was bright and sunny, but very cold. I was afraid that this fragile baby would get frostbitten in the ten feet between the building and my car.
I remember driving home trying to grasp the concept that I was now a father and that we had a baby.
I remember getting back to our apartment, and seeing some construction workers. I wanted to yell over to them, "Look! Look at my son! Isn't he wonderful!" I thought that this is how evangelism ought to feel - just an overwhelming joy that you have to share.

Thank you, Father, for the gift of my son. Here's to my guy, all big and tall now. Happy Birthday, John!

The elections

2008-11-05T21:59:00.003-05:00

I am glad that this round of elections is finally over. I got so used to ignoring the campaign that it seemed like the actual election really snuck up on me. But now it is done. Congratulations, President-Elect Obama!

I'm not surprised that Obama won. Maybe this is the height of regional arrogance, but I run in fairly conservative circles, and so when I began hearing many people talk about their support of Obama or of their reluctant or embarrassed support of the GOP candidate, I felt that it was likely that Obama was getting a lot of support in similar communities. I thought that it didn't bode well for the GOP when usually staunch supporters expressed shame from and weariness of the current administration, and were unexcited by the centrist McCain.

Now, however, we can leave campaigning behind and leave the elected officials to fight out what kind of government they will have. Will it be marked by bipartisan cooperation to do the right things, or will it be marked by obstinate showboating parading as principles? Will there be goodwill and generosity toward our new President, or will other elected officials flaunt their power by undercutting his efforts?

Fortunately, we do not have to wait on such things. We do not have to depend on government to improve things and set things right. People are not made righteous by good laws, nor do they prosper through government programs. Yes, these things can made a big difference in the things of this world - but we are not of this world, and I am not speaking of worldly righteousness nor of worldly prosperity. We are a chosen people, citizens of the kingdom, whose King works no matter who sits in the White House.

I urge you to do two things. First, pray for our elected officials. Pray that they would hear the voice of God, and follow his wisdom. Pray especially for our President-Elect. I fear for his physical safety in this dark world. I fear also that he would be frustrated by people who want to see him fail through bigotry or other mean desires. Whether you agree with his goals and philosophies or not, the country does not need an ineffective President at a time like this.

Secondly, don't wait for the President-Elect or the new Congress to make things right. They can help with some things, yes. But remember that your Father in heaven values you, knows your needs, and hears your prayers. He wants to bless you, and through you, to bless others. Focus on his government, not on the world's government.

Tuesday is the Cusp

2008-10-26T22:02:00.006-04:00

Tuesday is coming. It's almost here.

On Tuesday, either all of our country's problems will be solved, and we will stand, hand-in-hand, our chins lifted high as we look toward a bright, wonderful future...

... or we will tumble down that long slide of economic and moral decay that has been threatening our country for years, pulling us down from our rightful place of prosperity and righteousness that was so presciently foreseen by our Founding Fathers.

We will either as a nation grasp our destiny and ride it to the heights of intrinsic spirituality and financial stability, with cake for everyone; or we will be overwhelmed by the forces within and without that seek to destroy anything that ever was good and noble about America.

Either all will be great, or all will be awful. There is no in between. But whatever happens, rest assured that nothing - especially nothing about they way we are governed - will ever be the same.

All to be determined on a single day. Mark your calendar.

Anniversary vacation, and the return

2008-10-21T22:39:00.003-04:00

I just returned from exciting Lancaster, PA., from my anniversary vacation with my darling wife. We have been married 18 years. I think that we have had an anniversary vacation for 17 of those 18 years; we missed one year due to an impending birth.

We had a great time. On the surface, much of what we did for five days would seem pretty mundane to most people: walking, shopping, bowling, playing games, driving, watching movies. But we did them together. We fed each other (mostly emotionally, not physically). We discussed the Bible together. We worshiped together (she has a pretty voice). We talked about parenting, and reaffirmed that we are on the same side.

I highly recommend an anniversary vacation to renew and recharge the relationships of married couples. Time alone together is wonderful.

Today was the first day of returning to homeschooling for my wife and my kids since our vacation. I was home, since I like taking a day off between being out of town and returning back to work.

The wife had it rough today, as she got a bit of attitude from both kids. Several times I had to comfort her and brainstorm ideas with her about how to respond and cope. At one point our daughter was being pretty short and cheeky with my wife in the dining room, so my wife came into the kitchen where I was to ask for suggestions. We talked about strategies and possible consequences, all within earshot of our daughter.

After the missus and I finished our conversation, I went and sat next to my daughter in the dining room. She glanced at me and continued her schoolwork.

"Did you hear what Mom and I were talking about?" I said.
"Yeah," she replied.
Calmly, I said, "I just spent four days helping Mom feel loved and peaceful, and I don't appreciate you undoing my work in one day. OK?"
"OK," she said.

I left it at that.

Adding MP3s to Blogspot

2008-10-04T10:55:00.003-04:00

BlueBearr has a tutorial on how to host MP3 files on Google Sites and embed them into a Blogspot page. It's kind of technical, since you have to edit the HTML of your page, but I think that with a little care it is doable.

Pure

2008-09-28T10:08:00.004-04:00

Worship used to be pure for me. I remember when I first attended the Barn, I would get lost in worship. It could never be long enough. I felt that worship was a sacred place where I (and also we) could do no wrong. I loved it because I felt that I transcended my normally unfocused, mixed life, to a place where I was pure. Like white marble, without any marking. Like gold, clear as transparent glass.

Over the years, that has changed. Depressions that I endured altered that somewhat. Joining worship team certainly did that. One disappointment that I faced when I first joined worship team was that these beautiful, meaningful songs could be treated lightly and irreverently by the people who sang and played them. I know now that this was part of their learning process, and that they meant no dishonor to the Lord in their playfulness, but it was a big shock for me.

Later, I spent years on worship team when I wanted to escape church at the earliest possibility. When I knew that if anyone suggested that I shouldn't be there that I would leave the team in a heartbeat. When I would force myself to not look at the clock until we had done two songs because I didn't want to look up and see that we were only five minutes into worship. When evening worship would take so much out of me that I would feel horrible afterward. When people would say "wasn't worship great?" and I would have no clue that it had been any different than usual. During those times, I forced myself to lead worship, and act as if I felt what I sang. I sang in faith.

Those were hard times, but they taught me some things. I think that they have made my worship more sure, because I have learned to lead worship whether I feel like it or not. Leading worship is work, and like other work it can be fulfilling or it can be difficult. The important thing is to get the work done. And worship is a good and honorable work.

Despite the good things that I now see coming from this time, the hard times have still left a mark on my worship. It is no longer the pure place it once was for me. Because worship is no longer just a place of joy for me but has all of this other history to it, it is not as pure as it once was.

So what is pure? Oddly enough, Scripture has been feeling pure to me. I say "oddly enough" because Scripture used to be the place I avoided because there I was condemned by how bad a Christian I was. I don't know when the change occurred, but lately, and particularly when I have been worshiping and my spirit is open, Scripture has been a balm and a marvel. I can feel the richness, the beauty of it. It feels like it is pure.

Because Scripture deals with both God and man, some Scripture feels more pure than others. I don't mean that some Scripture is better or worse on some absolute scale because it talks about man's sins. I mean that some portions of Scripture stand out more as being filled with that sweet goodness of God, and when I read it with my spirit, I feel like I am in that place of focus and purity that pushes out everything that is lesser.

Last Thursday we sang Revelation Song at our kinship group. Afterward, with my spirit all opened up, I read Revelation 4, where many of the words of the song come from.

I read it in the NIV, but here it is in The Message. Go ahead and read it; it's short. I'll wait.

Oh my Lord, my Lord! High and lifted up!

This Scripture is pure and full of rightness. This chapter is all about the exaltation and unassailable sovereignty of God. You don't get anywhere near the throne of God - or this Scripture - with thoughts of rebellion or dishonor or deception. He is King, He rules, and the most amazing creatures ever made worship Him all the time. And He is so spectacularly beautiful, so shockingly splendid that if we were to be suddenly in His presence, any pretension of independence that we might imagine we could have before His throne would be swept away. We would quickly be on our faces in adulation and worship, and glad of every second that we could spend like that.

Can I find superlatives enough for Him? Can I say enough to lift up His name?

Saturday

2008-09-27T15:52:00.002-04:00

Yay, rain! We need it.

I tried to see if I could duplicate Thursday's feat. Alas, with the temperature near 75 and 95% humidity, I could not (or, I chose not, because I felt that I was pushing myself too much).

Temporary setback. I'll get there again.

2.6 mi - 30 min - 5.2 mph.

Thursday morning

2008-09-25T07:17:00.002-04:00

I have an 8am appointment this morning, so I was out jogging while it was still dark today. Bright, fingernail moon. It was clearly morning by the time I finished today, but it felt kind of cool to go out while it was still dark.

Today was a red-letter day. For the first time since I started jogging at the beginning of July, I went the whole distance jogging; I didn't drop down into a walk the whole time. This has been one of my goals all along, but I'm kind of amazed that this was even possible for me. God made our bodies good, didn't he? Even in middle age.

3.0 miles - 35 min - 5.1 mph.

This seems to be turning into my workout blog, which I didn't want to happen. I have some ideas for other posts that I am working on, I promise. But I appreciate your encouragement, which is why I wanted to share this success with you.

Monday morning

2008-09-22T11:09:00.002-04:00

Back to work today. Yay! No one has yet shown up at my cubicle holding a box, so I guess that I am still employed. God is good!

3.0 miles - 37 minutes - 4.9 mph.

I am really sore today from Saturday's and this morning's jogs, so I may need to take an extra day to recover.

Anxiously awaiting Oct 1

2008-09-20T23:55:00.003-04:00

I am so looking forward to October 1st, 2008. I ought to be counting off the days on the calendar (but I'm too lazy to). But I will be so happy when that wonderful day arrives. Maybe I will treat myself to an ice cream treat, or to the alcoholic beverage (consumed in a safe and responsible manner) of my choice.

What happens on this wonderful, wonderful day? Is it an anniversary? A birthday?

No. It is the day on which I no longer have to hear about how the General Motors company will offer me their wonderfully generous employee discount on their typically overpriced new cars. Said offer expires on September 30th. This information has been pumped to into my brain through several media outlets ever since the Olympics.

In other words, on October 1 I no longer need to worry about seeing this commercial again:

I guess this is an indication that I am watching too much TV if something bothers me this much.

Dark Humor

2008-09-20T19:47:00.002-04:00

3.0 mi - 37 min - 4.9 mph

After working out with barbells today and then going for a jog, I imagined the following conversation:

"Man, my muscles are sore."
"Why, what have you been doing?"
"Oh, I took up jogging."
"Really. Why did you do that?"
"Because I hate myself."

...not, you know, "I hate how I look and I want to change" or "I hate how I feel and I want to get more fit." No, it's kind of a conclusion based on the evidence: "I must hate myself to make myself feel this amount of discomfort on a regular basis."

Kidding! Hate's a strong word and I don't like to use it a lot, and I don't want to alarm my wife by using it regarding myself, so let me just assure you, Gentle Reader, that I am Just Kidding.

Before and After

2008-09-19T19:55:00.004-04:00

I wanted a picture of Hawk Mountain for my desktop, but I didn't want all the people in the picture. So I used the free Paint.NET to remove the people from the picture.

Here is the picture before editing:

And here is the picture after:

I think this turned out pretty well. I had fun with this project!

Today we went to Lums Pond to play disc ("frisbee") golf. We had a great time. My son had the lowest score, and while I could tell he was pleased, he didn't gloat or abuse anyone else, including his sister. I did the next best, I think, though I may have tied with my daughter. My darling wife has a tough time with frisbee physics, but she didn't seem upset. We cheered each other on, helped each other out, were generous with each other. My son even called "do over" for my wife at one point when she had a particularly bad tee shot. We just had a good time with each other.

Afterwards we went to Applebees, where I was kind of quiet as I imagined a story where a time traveler from the future shows up on Mars and shows himself to one of the Mars explorer's cameras, warning Earth of his pending arrival. then I thought about him coming to Earth with all kinds of cool technologies to help people. I was thinking "How would he be received? Would this ultimately be a blessing, or a curse? Would this benefit only the rich, or everyone?"

So that was a lot of my day.

Back from Hawk Mountain

2008-09-18T22:49:00.007-04:00

We just got back from a few days of family vacation in Pennsylvania. We spent a few days camping and seeing some sights. Our main goal was to visit Hawk Mountain, so named for all of the raptors that swing by there in the fall on their migration south. A mild hike up the mountain from the visitor's center yielded this spectacular view. We did get to see a lot of raptors - mostly turkey buzzards, but at one point we got to see through binoculars a "kettle," or rotating column, of several dozen birds as they caught thermals several miles from the mountain. Quite an impressive sight. Views like these just lead me to spontaneously start praising the amazing Maker, and cause me to thank Him for allowing me to experience such sights.

We also stopped by French Creek State Park. The picture is of Hopewell Lake.

We had a good time together. My wonderful kids seemed to enjoy the slow pace of our vacation, away from the computer and any console games. We "camped" in a cabin; it had real beds and a futon, electric, a refrigerator and a heater. This seems like cheating compared to our earlier tent camping experiences years ago, but we all agreed that we enjoyed this experience better. In the spirit of camping, though, we did cook two meals a day over a fire. They were great meals, planned (but not all executed by) my darling wife. She asked that each family member take main responsibility for building one fire and cooking the meal. She let me make chicken soup one night, which was pretty straightforward - I was glad for that! My darling kids took responsibility for their meals (my son made great hamburgers), helped set up and tear down camp, did dishes when asked, and just generally contributed to a great time.

The last picture is of some random beautiful scenery, as taken by my daughter as we sped by. I just love being in such places, where there are trees, and hills, and old buildings. It calms my soul.

Christophany or Theophany

2008-09-15T08:49:00.008-04:00

Refer to this post.

Well, the poll has been closed for over two weeks, so I ought to talk about it. The question was: Who or what was the theophanic angel in the Old Testament?

With ten votes, the results are as follows:

Christophany	2 (20%)
Theophany	7 (70%)
Mistaken identity (they thought it was God but it was just an angel)	0 (0%)
Angel was an emissary or envoy for God	7 (70%)
Something else	1 (10%)

So it looks like the poll bears out my own opinion: that it really was a theophany (God appearing as an angel), or it was the angel acting as an envoy for God with all the attendant rights and powers that we, in our democratic society, don't really understand.

Funny that the poll should end up matching my own expectations. Wonder how that happened. ;-)

Review: Jim and Casper go to Church

2008-09-14T21:02:00.004-04:00

Summary: Jim Henderson, a Christian and former Pentacostal minister, and Matt Casper, an atheist, visit some of the largest and best-known Evangelical churches in America, and also some churches of other flavors. Much of the book is given over to their recounting their experiences at these churches, and of how Casper reacted to what was done in the church. You can find the Amazon description here.

For the most part, Jim allows Casper to speak. He allows Casper to relate and criticize what he has seen and experience without trying to interpret or "spin" it for Casper. Here are some of the criticisms that Casper levels against the churches he visited:

The church spends too much time and money on a professional production on Sunday.
The church treats the things that it does on a Sunday morning - lifting hands in worship, talking about physical healing- with too much familiarity for someone who has never experienced them before.
The church spends too much of its Sunday meeting on feelings and belief and not enough on talking about what they do to aid their community.
The church is given to celebrity worship.
Most churches lack a "call to action."
The church should be more racially integrated.
Too much of what happens on Sunday seems scripted and false.
Most people in church lack the courtesy to greet strangers.
Most of what the church does on a Sunday doesn't seem to have much to do with what Jesus taught.

Throughout the book, Jim injected little parenthetical sections about "defending the space." His basic message in these sections seemed to be that Christians should defend a space where they can talk to atheists on equal terms, instead of defending the faith to them. Basically, defending the space entails respecting people and their beliefs enough to listen to them and not be anxious to point out where they are wrong.

I mostly didn't enjoy this book. However, I don't like most Christian nonfiction books, so it is in good company. I find that a great majority of Christian nonfiction books spend their time telling the reader or, worse, the church at large what they are doing wrong. I dislike such books because I criticize myself frequently, and I find it too easy to accept the criticism of strangers. Reading such books often leads me to a sense of hopelessness and despair. This book in particular led to feel like what I've been doing in church for the last twenty-five years has been in vain.

(If you know of good Christian books that don't take this tact, please, let me know. Note that I've never really connected with Max Lucado.)

As I began reading the book, I had the suspicion that Jim had an agenda - that he had particular things that he wanted to say to the Christian church, certain criticisms that he wanted to bring, and that he felt that he had an ally in Casper who would lend weight to his criticisms. As I went through the book I began to wonder why Casper or any atheist should determine how we run church. Isn't our Sunday meeting for believers? Why should a nonbeliever determine how we do things? I got my answer at the end of the book: Casper evaluated Sunday morning meetings because those are the ones that are advertised, and those are the meetings that we are encouraged to bring "our unsaved friends" to. As long as this is the case, Jim asserts, it is reasonable to have a nonbeliever come and evaluate the Sunday morning meeting.

I finished this book about a week ago, and so my irritation with it has diminished somewhat and I have been able to gain a little perspective. There are things that I desire in church that Jim and Casper would appreciate - for example, greater simplicity in our Sunday meeting. I thought that their idea of joining with nonbelievers in existing service projects, rather than starting our own, an intriguing idea.

However, what I am left with overall is the sense that we try to put too much on Sunday morning. We try to make it both a believer's meeting and a meeting sensitive to the needs of seekers and outsiders. These two goals seem to be in conflict. I think that it is very important to preserve a whole-church believer's meeting, and I can't realistically see this happening outside of Sunday morning. I don't think that it is right to steal from the church for the sake of some potential outsiders, because the church needs to be strengthened so that it can help outsiders.

What I think we should do is provide a separate meeting for seekers and outsiders. As part of this meeting, they can be instructed in what we do on Sunday and why we do it. If they decide to attend the Sunday meeting, the seeker's meeting could be a place where they return to ask questions or argue issues.

I'm not sure how well this idea would fly, or whether seekers would skip the main meeting in favor of this explanatory one. However, I think that it makes sense to not force seekers to only learn about our church through a believer's meeting that they may find confusing or strange.

How NOT to annoy your support person

2008-09-09T08:07:00.001-04:00

Head on over to BlueBearr to read the post How not to annoy your support person.

Monday morning

2008-09-08T07:57:00.002-04:00

2.5 mi - 30 min - 5 mph.

Doing church

2008-09-05T12:42:00.005-04:00

Church obviously means different things to different people. To some, it is where you worship God. To others, it might be where you get refreshed, where you find fellowship, where you find sanctuary, or where you get equipped to meet the world and properly follow God.

Church is all of these things. But I think that the base characteristic of church is that it is where the people of God stick together. This idea may seem a little laughable or guaranteed to bring frustration in our mobile, independently-minded society. A lot of people seem to treat church like supermarkets: they say "If I don't like the prices here, I'll just go to the supermarket down the street."

But I really see no escape from the idea that doing church means being unified, despite our culture. Jesus, in his so-called High Priestly Prayer in John chapter 17, prayed that we believers may be one. This was His heart as He faced crucifixion. In First Corinthians chapter 12 Paul explains at length that we are one body, whether we recognize it or not. In Ephesians 5 he says that we are Christ's body, whom He gave Himself up for. Notice, Paul doesn't say that He loved individuals and gave Himself up for individuals, but that Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for the church. Not to say that Christ cares nothing for individuals, but that this was His heart, to sacrifice Himself for the church.

In so many other letters in the New Testament, attention is given to how to live together, how to be at peace with one another, how to hold the body together. Now, in the previous Scriptures I mentioned the writers are talking about the Church of all believers (the Church Universal), but in the specific instructions in the epistles it is clear that it is the local fellowship that is the subject. The heart of Jesus and the Apostles is that believers should stick together.

However, even though it seems to me to be obvious that unity is what Jesus wants, it isn't easy. Unity requires love, it requires commitment, it requires forgiveness in great measure. In other words, unity is directly opposed to the consequences of sin, which scatters and isolates us. And we know that we are still dealing with our fallen natures, which sometimes lash out to hurt and other times hear hurtful things where they are not intended.

I have seen many, many people break fellowship over things big and small. Now, I know that the Spirit does move people on, and I believe that He can direct people to leave their present fellowship and join with another. But to leave in pain and anger, to sever the body, to leave relationships in tatters and to no longer acknowledge that your brothers and sisters in Christ are in fact your family - well, that just hurts the Spirit.

I have had the opportunity these past two weeks to be peripherally involved in a circumstance where some believers have struggled to maintain fellowship. At a glance it looked like it might have been merely a misunderstanding, but there was the potential for it to end in hurt, anger and discouragement. Through love, humility, and some brave choices it appears at this point that some confusion has been cleared up, some affirmation has occurred, some forgiveness has been extended, and the bond of fellowship has been restored.

Though I was not directly involved in this circumstance at all, I feel like I worked hard on healing this rift. Usually I endeavor to respect people's privacy, but I feel like this time I pushed beyond my comfort zone in order to lobby for unity. I also prayed about this circumstance a lot. I write this not to pat myself on the back, but to say that I am becoming convinced that the cause of unity is more important than a lot of things that we consider our right. The word to me was that we should not just going to roll over this time. It is worth it to get a bit into people's faces and push for unity. It is worth it to risk someone's anger at us in order to mend fellowship.

This is what "doing church" means to me - working to maintain and deepen unity amongst believers. It is a wonderful work and it brings me a lot of joy to see that our tendency to separate and scatter can be overcome.

2.5 - 31 - 4.8

The Final Song

2008-09-03T18:57:00.001-04:00

In my mind there is the idea of a Final Song. I've had this a-Scriptural idea for a long time, mostly without even recognizing that this is how I felt. I even wrote a short story about it in college. It is the idea that at the end of time all of God's People will gather and will together sing together a song of worship to the Lamb on the throne of God. There could be dancing. The song will last forever, or least for a very long time. The Lord will be honored and lifted up and exalted and we will feel the bliss that we have all experienced in awesome worship. Forever!*

Through the years I have identified various songs that could be sung in this way. On the end of a Petra album they sang a chorus to Jesus that had wailing guitars in the background that they repeated and repeated and then just faded away. I can't remember what song it is, but at the time it sounded like a good candidate. Holy Holy Holy (maybe this song?) was also one of those. A lot of the old Jewish choruses that we would sing were also like that. God of all Glory by Jeremy Riddle is a modern one that works, too. Our God is an Awesome God by Rich Mullins sounded like it would work, though I'm not sure about the verses. Maybe we just put it on Brother Rich to keep coming up with snappy history lessons about God and we can antiphone "Our God is an Awesome God" until we get back to the chorus.

OK, I know antiphone isn't a word, but doesn't it sound like it ought to be the verb form of antiphony?

Anyway, this concept came to mind again because Revelation Song, mentioned in my earlier post, is a definite candidate for the Final Song. So get used to it, you'll be singing it forever.*

What do you think of the Final Song idea? Do you have any candidates for songs?

* or at least for a very long time.

It's dark

2008-09-03T08:57:00.002-04:00

I set my alarm for 5:30 this morning, because I had to take the girl to the farm this morning. If you don't know, we are leasing a horse for my daughter to ride. Part of our payment is to have my daughter do feeding of all the horses three mornings a week; she also gets riding lessons after she is done feeding. I had to get her there by 8 am, so I got up at 5:45 and was outside warming up by 6am.

I tried something new today: I tried to jog the whole time and to not walk at all. I got through the first mile, but I ended up walking three times during the 2 ½ miles. I was surprised to see that I was a little behind pace on the first mile - 11 ½ minutes, versus the 10 ½ to 10 minutes that I have been hitting.

At 6am, it's pretty dark outside. It lightened up fairly quickly, and it was clearly day when I came in at 6:45. Even so, I felt bad for all the kids who were outside waiting for their school buses at 6:20 am.

I remember waiting for the school bus as a kid. I remember especially the year that the U.S. observed daylight savings time all year long, in order to conserve energy. I remember being at the bus stop when it was still clearly night, and the school buses using their headlights not as daytime running lights but because it was so dark. Now, that seems like a recipe for disaster - kids walking on the street and in front of a bus in the dark, dozens of kids riding a bus when it is night and the only responsible adult can't see anything that is going on.

After I dropped off the girl, on the farm just outside of Chesapeake City, I stopped on the road and rolled down the windows. I heard birds, and many, many crickets. It was so peaceful. I wanted to just sit there and listen and feel the peace all day. But I had to get to work.

2.5 mi - 33 min - 4.5 mph

Visiting the cousins

2008-09-01T10:16:00.004-04:00

I often have this idea that I would like to "visit the cousins," meaning visit other churches. For a long time I felt that there was no church but The One True Church of NCF ^TM, so why would I visit another? Over the years, though, I have come to realize that there are different bodies and different expressions for different people, and there is a lot to learn and enjoy from these other expressions. Then, there was the period of time a few years ago when I was on worship team every Sunday, and had such difficulty struggling to my own church that the last thing I wanted to do was spend the effort to go to another one. I sometimes visit churches while on vacation out of town, but I have often been disappointed with the experience. I don't have a problem with traditional, hymn-based worship, but I do have a problem with it being perfunctory and merely something to break up the time between the weekly confession and the sermon. So, I haven't really visited many churches recently.

Well, last week I drove past Pike Creek Bible Church, and saw that they had an 8:30 service. Perfect - I can visit this place early, then go to the Barn, I thought. So that is what I and my bride did yesterday.

First, this place is beautiful. They meet in a pretty building nestled back against a woods of mature trees. I think that the woods belongs to the state park, because I saw a group of bicyclists in the parking lot that looked like they were ready to start a ride on the trail.

In the parking lot we were greeted by a kindly older gentleman who wondered to us if he had ever met us before. He hadn't, so we introduced ourselves. He cheerily escorted us to his wife inside, who seemed to be the "official" greeter. Later, midway through worship they had a time of greeting, and several people made the effort to shake our hands and say hi to us. We felt very welcome.

The worship center (I think that is what they called the room) was a large room, wider than deep, which allowed the seating to be arranged so that everyone was fairly close to the stage. It was lit by electric chandeliers. Carpeted floor and nice cushy chairs. At the front of the room was a large window that looked out on the trees, which I much appreciated. They had an overhead projector and screen for the words of the songs, and for the speaker's PowerPoint presentation. They had roped off one section of chairs, and the rest of the chairs were fairly full. I think that there were at least 200 people in the room.

They started with worship. Most of the songs were familiar - one of them was How Great is Our God by Chris Tomlin. Worship was somewhat subdued - no lifting hands or spontaneous shouts here - but, for the worship team at least, heartfelt. I felt that I needed to be careful to not lift my hands during worship or get too demonstrative. I don't feel that it is right to challenge or distract other people in worship when I am not committed to the fellowship, but constraining myself this way wasn't too hard. My only real frustration concerning the worship is that they paused worship about every two songs with activities such as greeting each other, announcements, etc. I like worship to be in a block; I think it allows the worship to have continuity and sweep. They ended the worship time with a familiar hymn, which I got to belt out despite it being pitched too low for me.

The worship team was made up of a male leader who played acoustic guitar and sang, a keyboardist, a bass player, I think two electric guitars, two female backup singers, and a poor drummer completely enclosed in a transparent cage. I keyed in on one of the female singers - she looked like she was truly enjoying herself, and even lifted her hand at one point. The male lead was also all smiles and joyful, but he was out of my line of sight for most of the service due to the rather tall man who stood in front of me. The worship leader had an interesting doohickey on - it looked like he had a tube microphone over one ear, and an earpiece in the opposite ear. I didn't see any other type of monitor, and I didn't notice if the other singers had any. I thought that the sound was very good and well mixed. The worship leader shared about some very tough times that he has gone through this summer that showed that he has definitely been living his faith and not just singing about it. He seemed like a really nice guy, and I would have been glad to get together and spend some time with him.

I thought about Jess getting nice comments on her voice when she last went to church, and when we initially found seats (three-quarters of the way back in the middle) there was an empty row in front of us. Good, I thought, I don't have to think about singing for the person in front of me, which is a constant struggle of mine. Then midway through the service Mr. Tall - I actually know his real name, it was printed on his Bible - and his family took the seats in front of us. He didn't end up telling me that I sing like an angel, though. :-(

The church is apparently having a missions summer, so the teaching was by the leader of the Sunday Breakfast Mission in Wilmington. This men's shelter seems like it is doing a lot of good things. They shelter only men, but they serve meals to anyone and they have a thrift store and career counseling. They will soon be breaking ground on a center where homeless families can stay together. Currently, a homeless family that seeks shelter is broken up - the men stay in one shelter, the women and children in another, and any boys over 16 stay at a third place. The speaker also talked about addiction, and its similarity to sin in general. It was a good talk, if hard to hear in some places. Not, because, you know, the sound went off or anything, but because it dealt with hard things. Like the tragic story of the guy who ruined his life over crack cocaine - he was introduced to it at a party in Wilmington and subsequently went through all his money and possessions in pursuit of it. About a month later he ended up at the shelter with no money and no job.

After the service they have coffee and adult Sunday School. Unfortunately, we had to skip out to get to the Barn. According to their announcements and their web site, they also have many programs for discipleship and Bible Study during the week. In all, it looked like a very active fellowship.

During the service I looked at the worship leader and had the strange thought, "Wouldn't it be great if we were all the time the way we appear to be on Sunday - faithful, joyful, godly?" Then I thought that our hope is that one day we will be.

I will be going back to Pike Creek Bible Church - um, because I left my Bible there. And not just any Bible - my good study Bible. Bummer.

Monday morning

2008-09-01T09:30:00.003-04:00

2.5 mi - 35 min - 4.3 mph

Saturday I jogged in the morning, then in the afternoon I worked on replacing the baseboards in the living room. When working on the baseboards I spend most of my time crawling around on the floor, for hours. I tend not to crawl around so much these days, so yesterday I was so sore that I resorted to taking ibuprofen (which I don't like to do).

This morning I was still sore, but I thought, what the heck, maybe jogging will loosen me up. However, after 1 3/4 miles, I could feel that something wasn't right. I just felt really bad when I was jogging. Since I have it as one of my present goals to not get injured, I ended up walking the rest of the way, hence the 35 minute time.

The spider, and Revelation song

2008-08-30T11:15:00.003-04:00

Once there was a pretty little spider. (I know that those of you who don't think the words pretty and spider ought to be near each other, but go with me here, OK?) She woke one morning, knowing that she had to spin a new web. She looked out from the bush she was in and said to herself, "I am going to spin a web all the way across to that bush over there. It will be a huge and glorious web."

So the spider anchored a strand to the branch she was on, climbed to the end of a leaf, and launched herself into the air. A favorable breeze took her out a bit and she floated, floated, slowly, gently falling to the earth...

...about half way to the other bush.

No problem, thought the spider. The sun was just lightening the sky as she began to crawl. She crawled and crawled, and then crawled some more. She finally reached the base of the bush. The pretty little spider started to climb the nearest branch, which soon ended. The spider squinted across at the point where the other end of the web strand was anchored in the first bush. Not high enough, thought the spider, and so she scrambled down the opposite side of the branch and started up another one. She repeated this process until she finally reached a high branch roughly level with the first anchor point. She then pulled the line taut and anchored it to the branch. She now had a bridge line. She then crawled to another branch, set another anchor, then climbed out onto the bridge line to the halfway point and tied off the strand, so that there were two strands out to the middle of the bridge line. She then climbed back to the first bush, crawled off a little distance, and set another anchor point.

Finally the spider rested and surveyed her work. She had a bridge line, reinforced on both sides. A good start, she thought. This will be a great web. I will catch many flies, and live in fat content for many days...

Wait, what is that blue and purple thing coming this way?

It was me, running right through her nascent web, catching it right across my forehead.

Around 70 this morning, and about 90% humidity. Bleh.

2.5 mi - 29 min - 5.2 mph

This morning I listened to one song on a loop during my morning jog - Revelation Song, sung by Kari Jobe. We are learning this song for worship team, and it is marvelous. It glorifies Jesus! Here is the video of the song:

Wednesday morning

2008-08-27T07:40:00.002-04:00

2.5 mi - 31 min - 4.8 mph

58 degrees(!) and sunny. Beautiful.

I lazed around this morning, trying to decide if I was going out today. I still have a bit of a sore throat, and I didn't want to stress my body if it meant staying ill longer. I finally did go out, and did OK. It seems like my muscles are getting used to this jogging motion - I jogged for most of the first mile without much of a problem. The last mile, though, is still tough, but not from a muscle standpoint. I just get tired.

New header image

2008-08-26T18:10:00.000-04:00

I think that you will see that I like blue and I like bearrs.

The self referential poetical entry

2008-08-26T08:07:00.002-04:00

The following sonnet was written in response to Josh's challenge on his blog.

I set my hands to keys to write
Dredge from my heart my inner thought
Turn round my gaze in this dark night
And knead my neck, my muscles taut

Look hard to left, and back to right
There must be something I can say
Some mem'ry cheer, or deep insight
To get the surfers here today

Some inside joke, some pithy word
Some story fun of Pastor Bruce
But nothing comes! It seems absurd
I hear not one thing from my Muse

Make floods of thoughts to now unclog
Dear God, please let them read my blog

Post service commentary; Moon day

2008-08-25T07:33:00.009-04:00

Yesterday was Sunday, and I had the privilege of singing on the worship team. Here are some of my experiences from the service. Note: there isn't a lot of spiritual commentary on the following. Hopefully this won't disillusion either of you two.

I was really dragging when practice started at 8:30am - tired, and needing coffee. I hadn't really warmed up my voice a lot, so I took it easy at the beginning of practice and, fortunately, never felt like I was straining. We started learning a gorgeous new song that just begs for harmony. I've been thinking about other music to write this entry, though, and I can't remember the song right now. After practice I got some coffee, which helped wake me up. Unfortunately I forgot that the coffee at church is really hot and it burned the tip of my tongue - not good for a singer. I had to cut it with water to cool it down.

After coffee I went to the prayer room before the meeting, and, seeing that it was empty, started to sing in tongues. I was startled thirty seconds later to see someone curled up behind one of the chairs in the room. They were either praying or sleeping, I couldn't tell. Whatever they were doing I didn't want to disturb them, so I went outside into the hot sun to continue singing. Singing in tongues helps get my mind and spirit straight. Leading worship is work and I don't know that I will be able to do the worship that I need to do personally during the corporate worship, so setting a baseline of honoring God myself before the meeting really helps me. If nothing else, I have said to Him what I need to say: He is Lord, and I honor Him.

Before worship, the worship team had a typically hurried pre-game prayer. I usually don't pray out loud during this prayer; I'm either not into it, have nothing original to add, or am too far into worship myself to want to speak (though I sometimes sing in tongues - that's a prayer, right?). But yesterday I prayed that we would do something real during the meeting - that we would forget about the week and lay ourselves down and acknowledge that God is our Master. That we would get some real work done. I got some amens to that, so I concluded that it resonated with other people.

We started with a song that we have done several times: "Give You Glory" by Jeremy Camp. This song was a little awkward to sing. See, when Paul pulls chord music off the web, he prints them as-is, which usually means small, thin fonts on the page. This makes it hard for us old guys to read, so I take them and gussy them up with larger, bolder fonts. Well, for this song, I ran out of vertical space, so I opted to move the second verse up beside the first verse. The lines of the verses are really short, so the verses fit fine with lots of white space in between. However, it is an odd place to find a second verse, so I had a few seconds of my eyes fumbling around on the page trying to find the words that I was supposed to be singing. Not so good.

We did a new song today - "In You", written by Joyce. We've been chewing on it in practice for a couple of months now and finally brought it out yesterday. I've had problems finding my part during the bridge (which I guess isn't technically a bridge but is more like a "Chorus 2", but what the heck), but yesterday during practice I finally found a counter-melody during the bridge that I was satisfied with. Yay for the Spirit of last minute things!

Usually, when we start a song I sing melody for the first verse. It's mostly to "hold something back" musically. When we do a new song I try to sing melody more because I figure people need to learn the melody. In addition, usually when Joyce sings I will let her have the first verse to herself, because she has such a pretty voice. However, I really wanted to harmonize with Joyce on this song, so I came in half-way through the first verse - but I couldn't find my harmony. I started on the melody and just couldn't seem to find the harmony line. I could have backed off from the mic and worked it out, but I opted to keep singing melody. It wasn't until the end of the chorus that I finally found my harmonic line. Very weird.

I eventually got it together, though, and did my part during the bridge. It felt like I should sing my part really strongly during the the last run through of the bridge, and I think it worked. I actually listened to a recording of this part yesterday afternoon, and had the odd experience of getting goosebumps at hearing my own singing. That has never happened before - like most people, I generally hate to hear recordings of my own voice.

I also remember a few instances of singing some basic patterns in between songs, including one with Joyce. I think it added and didn't distract. At one point someone started some free-form singing after a song, which I was glad to join. I don't think I sang in tongues at all during the meeting, which is kind of unusual for me.

Our last song was "Let the Weak Say", and I got to sing/hum/ooh a little bluesy descant to the keyboard intro while Neil was talking at the mic. I enjoyed that. Because of this descant I tend to think of this song as a more gentle-type song, though it is really very declarative. We had a little miscommunication with this song, though - one team member was adding in an extra measure after the end of the chorus before repeating, which was a little disconcerting.

Externally, worship appeared to go well - I heard some nice comments, and even apart from the free-form worship I mentioned earlier I heard some things that led me to believe that people in the congregation were getting into worship. Also, a cool guy that I know went up to the mic to deliver a word. I don't think he's ever been at the mic before.

Christian taught on James 5 and did his usual excellent job. After the meeting I wandered around a bit, trying to see which of the wonderful people there that I should spend my time with. I ended up hanging out with Rebekah, who was unable to escape because of a sleeping child ;-). We ended up praying together for someone who was looking for prophetic prayer, which was cool.

Then I went home and fell asleep.

2.5 - 35 - 4.3

Today I woke up to a sore throat and a sore back. I considered cutting it short today, but I got through the first lap OK and so I continued. No spider webs today, and I remembered to low-five the evil branch on both laps today. However, today was the first day of public school, and as I live near a school I got to pass all manner of young people that looked like they think they will never be 44 years old. I'm glad I started this six weeks ago, otherwise the prospect of having such an audience would have put me off. I guess I'm pretty vain.

Worship on Sunday

2008-08-23T07:51:00.002-04:00

I am helping to lead worship on Sunday, and so I have been thinking and praying about it. I've also been trying to actually worship my great God and Creator, rather than just think about it.

One difficulty with jogging versus walking is that with both, I listen to worship music. With walking I can occasionally sing along. This is right out with jogging. But this doesn't stop the urge to do so!

Yesterday I was listening to these words:

Let all the moons and all the stars, in all the universe
Sing praises to the Living God, who rules them by His word.

Hallelujah! Glory be to our great God!

I imagined myself on a high cliff, in the middle of the night. It was totally night, but it wasn't dark; the sky was blazing with the moon and the planets and the stars. Together, we were praising the mighty God who made us all - moons, planets, stars, cliff, earth, air, me. Together, we were doing the pleasing work of worship. Arms uplifted, I felt connected with all creation in honoring this amazing God of ours, who made such complex beauty, whose very words spun out into both the tiny intricate detail of cells and the vast distances between the fiery, blazing stars. Who reaches out to me and says that He wants to know me, take me into His family and call me son.

He is a very good God.

Jogging and not jogging

2008-08-22T07:33:00.004-04:00

Today is pretty. 60 degrees at 6:30am, with bright sun. Heavy dew. Is this really August?

During this morning's run (which sounds so much better than "gasping walk-jog thing"), I was thinking about the first time in my life that I tried to run for exercise. My brother had a book called Aerobics, which I think was the classic 1968 book by Kenneth Cooper. My brother had the book because he was interested in running; he eventually ran track in high school. I had already been overweight for a while, so I was probably about 12. Anyway, I took the test in the book, and I started jogging per the book's instructions. I took my bike and, using the odometer, I mapped out a course that I thought was about a mile. Now, using the Gmaps Pedometer, I can tell that it was more like three-quarters of a mile. I remember that I got to the point where I was running that distance in six and a half minutes, which is pretty good.

Then came the day that I got scared off from jogging.

I don't remember the incident too well. I just remember that toward the end of the day's run a girl from my school ran out at me and yelled at me. I don't remember her name, or what she looked like (other than a lot of tall black hair). I don't remember what she yelled. I just have this vague memory of being startled by having her run at me, and of being ridiculed that I (fat I) was bothering to exercise. Like it was ridiculous to think that I could change from what I was - which to her seemed to be "just the fat kid."

I never went jogging after that. I guess, really, this is the first time I'm trying to jog since then. I was afraid of being ridiculed. I was ashamed of being fat, and believed that everyone despised me for being fat. Anything that brought that feeling out into the open was to be avoided at any cost, and so I gave up the one thing that I was doing that could reverse the situation.

How would things have been different if I had been able to ignore her? Or if I had someone encourage me to continue? Or if I had given my parents a truthful instead of a mumbled answer when they asked me why I stopped? Or if I had known the Lord well enough to get help from Him?

Father, I choose to forgive - this girl, those around me, myself for giving in and giving up.

2.5 - 30 - 5

Wow, am I glad that I started timing my workouts! What an improvement! This is 9% better than I did on Tuesday! This is encouraging. To celebrate, I took an extended cool down over to the park near the creek, which is a pretty place to stretch. Then I ended up cleaning up some of the trash left in the park. :(

A show before a show

2008-08-21T14:21:00.003-04:00

Make sure you take a look at the new article that mentions Jess in the section Google: News about Jessica Latshaw over in the right hand column of my blog. This section searches Google News for articles about Jessica and A Chorus Line. The new article is called REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: A show before the show - Daily Pilot. There's a quote from Jess, and a picture of her!

Theophany, or Christophany?

2008-08-21T07:01:00.003-04:00

This Sunday our Bible study read Genesis 48. I was struck by this passage, where Jacob is blessing Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh:

48:15 Then he [Jacob] blessed Joseph and said,
"May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day,
16 the Angel who has delivered me from all harm --
may he bless these boys. May they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they increase greatly upon the earth."

I thought it interesting that Jacob calls God "the Angel." We know that Jacob saw angels several times - at Bethel (Jacob's ladder), at Mahanaim, and probably at Peniel (though the Bible says that he wrestled with a man). However, it doesn't seem that he is referring to any of these incidents when he says "the Angel who has delivered me from all harm."

I looked up the word translated "angel" above. It is mal'ak, and it is the common Hebrew word which is translated "angel" in the Old Testament. Here is how the Hebrew lexicon defines it:

messenger, representative

messenger
angel
the theophanic angel

Theophanic wasn't a word I was familiar with, though I should have been able to figure it out. It comes from the Greek theophaneia, which is from theos (god) + phainesthai (to appear). So the theophanic angel is an appearance of God as an angel. It is related to several other words you may know:

Christophany - an appearance of Christ
Epiphany - an "appearance" of the essential meaning of some thing.

In my searches on this subject, I ran across this page (warning: ugly page alert). It is a relevant page, because it gathers together many of the Scriptures dealing with the theophanic angel. I haven't completely read the page in depth, but it brings up an interesting argument that I have heard before:

In some appearances of angels (the theophanic angel), the angel is treated as God Himself - He is worshipped, sacrificed to, etc., all without apparent rebuke toward the person doing these things that are clearly reserved for God alone. In Exodus 3:6 (the burning bush), it appears that this angel even declares himself to be God, saying "I am the God of your father -- the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."
God the Father has never been seen (see Exodus 33:20, John 5:37, John 6:46)
Ma'lak means, at its root, "one who is sent." It doesn't make sense that God the Father would be sent - who would send Him?
Jesus is both God (John 10:30) and He has been sent (John 20:21).
Therefore, the theophanic angel is really Jesus. The argument of the page linked above is that this is Jesus in some pre-incarnate form. I have also heard that it could be Jesus in His post-resurrection body, which is possible since God is outside of time. Instead of a theophany, these incidents in the Old Testament are really Christophanies.

(Let me just say as an aside: despite what Doug Addison said at our recent conference about not using language that alienates the unchurched, I love using these theological words. Makes me feel all smart and stuff.)

So let me just throw this out there. What do you think? Theophany, or Christophany? Or was it a case of mistaken identity?

Day of Tyr

2008-08-19T07:42:00.004-04:00

2.5 - 33 - 4.5

Something happened over the long weekend - my muscles are protesting less, and I am back to my endurance and breath being the limiting factors.

More missionaries, and water

2008-08-18T07:33:00.006-04:00

Yesterday we had the pleasure of a visit from my sister-in-law, her husband, and two of their four kids. They came to church with us, attended our Bible study after, and hung out with us. Good folks. It was a sweet time.

It was good to see them. They have been in Ukraine for over a decade (I think; seems like forever), leading a Bible training school over there. Now, however, they have come stateside for the foreseeable future and will be living downstate to be near their son and his new grandson. Of course, this holds out the hope that we will see them more often than the every three years or so that has been the usual (though I don't know; for some reason I haven't seen my parents-in-law for about six months). Since they are stepping out of their full-time ministry, they are spending some time in the next couple of months to visit supporters and thank them for their assistance.

They had some miraculous stuff happen when they got here. One day after arriving my sister-in-law was able to get a driver's license (establishing residency through two letters that were delivered to her parent's house for her husband). Then the next day (or maybe the next) they purchased a car. By the end of the week they had found a house to buy and had had their bid on it accepted! Kind of makes your head spin!

While they were here I had a plumbing project go wrong. I worked on adding a new water filter to our kitchen on Saturday, and Sunday morning we woke up to warm water all over the kitchen floor. It had not only soaked through the floor to the basement in one place, it had also gotten into the ductwork and was dripping through several low points to form a huge puddle on the basement floor. My darling wife keeps old towels around for things like this, so we got to work and cleaned it up. We were mostly done before our guests got up; I'm glad I didn't have to deal with the embarrassment of having them help us sop up the mess. Ah well, someday I will laugh. Let's make it today. Hah!

Seriously, I'm thankful that the water didn't do any permanent damage, nor electrocute someone, nor ruin the kitchen computer (which rests on the floor).

Yesterday, I declared to my wife that she would have to get a plumber to finish the project. However, it occurs to me that this may cost a lot of money for someone to tell me "Yup, this filter is bad, send it back." So, I'll get back to work on it tonight. Or maybe tomorrow.

No numbers this morning, I'm too sore.

Too much blogging

2008-08-15T23:33:00.002-04:00

OK, so I had an idea for a blog entry that I wanted to do soon because it is timely. But it's technical - well, technical in subject matter but not in detail, so don't be scared. Since it is technical, it isn't here. Instead, I posted it over at BlueBearr. You can check it out there.

Playin' with templates

2008-08-15T18:00:00.000-04:00

I've been frustrated with the narrow format, since I am, well, wordy. I also added some stuff over to the right there (no, further - way over to the right). Feel free to lambaste or praise my efforts.

Friday mernin

2008-08-15T07:33:00.000-04:00

2.5 - 36 - 4.2

Man, it was hard to get out this morning. I was out last night until 11:30, having a wonderful, enriching, emotionally and spiritually pleasing time with dear, spirit filled people. 11:30 is usually early for me, but I went straight to bed. Maybe my spirit needs more of a workout too, because I was exhausted when I got home.

It was lovely out this morning, though. It rained hard last night, so it was about 90% humidity, but the temperature was a cool 62 degrees. I heard about a bajillion crickets and a kajillion birds, but otherwise it was so still. I saw a flash of black and yellow that Donna says was a goldfinch, and I saw something big and brown that she said might have been a brown thrasher. I am so thankful to live next to White Clay Creek. When we bought this house I thought that I might like the creek, and I was concerned about it possibly flooding, but I did not anticipate so enjoying the view out our front window and all of the birds that are about.

Amusingly, today I ran into a spider web. On my first lap around the neighborhood I missed the branch that always slaps my arm, but on the second go around I forgot and it got me.

I sit here and contemplate, and it seems to me that life is good. But not because I finished my week of jogging, or because I have a nice house, a wonderful wife and darling children and dear amazing friends. No, I feel good because God gave me a vision last night that showed me His heart, and He led me to pray for someone I don't even know. I feel honored to be so spoken to and used by Him.

"Don't forget me!" my heart cries to God.
"I will never forget you" He says in reply.

A parable

2008-08-13T07:51:00.000-04:00

Once there was a wealthy man, who left his home for a distant land to receive a great honor. Before he left, he divided his wealth into three parts. He put a different servant over each part, to manage and care for it and see to its needs.

To the first servant he gave charge of his house and all of the possessions therein. To the second servant he gave charge of his lands and all of the wealth that they produced. And to the third servant he gave charge of his wife and of his family and of all his other servants.

The first servant said, "This is a large and well-built house. All I need do is watch it and repair anything that goes amiss. This is a pleasant duty!" And so he (mostly) took his ease.

The second servant said, "My master has worked for many years to ensure that his lands produce great wealth. All I need do is let his wisdom continue on, and the wealth will continue to come in. This is a pleasant duty!" And so he (mostly) took his ease.

The third servant said, "My master has a large family and many servants, and though they are content enough now, if my master should return and find them in discord it will go ill for me." So unknown to the first servant the third servant sold off the house and all of its contents, and included the employment of the first servant in the deal. Then he waylaid the the second servant and stole all of his master's wealth. Then with the money that he had gathered he took all of his master's family and servants and took them to Disneyworld to vacation until his master should return.

After a time the master did return. Finding that the locks of his house had been changed, he went in search of the first servant. But the first servant had grown disenchanted with his new masters and had taken a job as the custodian at the local high school. The master walked around the house, looking for an open window, and saw that there were strange automobiles parked in the garage. So he opened the mailbox and saw mail addressed to someone whose name he did not know. With a sinking feeling he began to suspect the terrible truth.

Just then the second servant arrived, wearing around his head one of those blood-soaked bandages that you see on television. The master asked the servant how he had come to be injured, and the second servant told him of how the third servant had overpowered him and stolen all of the cash he had, as well as a great quantity of credit cards. The master then spoke thus to his servant:

Master: Servant, you should go to the hospital, to have your wounds looked upon.
Second Servant: Good Master, I have been to the hospital, and have just returned from thence.
Master: What?! What kind of hospital is this? Your head's still bleeding! Don't they know how to stop a wound from bleeding? Or how to change a bloody dressing?
Second Servant: um...

Eventually, the second servant got the master to stop complaining about the quality of the local health care, and told him of the whereabouts of the third servant.

Six days later the master caught up with the third servant beside the pool at the Old Key West Resort in Disneyworld. He was gratified to see his wife there as well, and more gratified to see that she was modestly dressed in a one piece swimsuit with one of those wrap-around skirts that women modestly wear at poolside when they are striving to be modest.

The master's wife greeted the master with a peck on the cheek.
Wife: "Hi Hon! How was the awards ceremony?"
Master: "Long. They served fish. And these little flowery carrots. Excuse me, oh wife. Third servant!"
Third servant: "Yes, master."
Master: "What is this that you have done?"

The third servant fell to his knees. "Oh master, I know that you are a hard man, reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have not planted. I was afraid of your wrath if I failed in my charge, and so I have taken all that you entrusted into my care and brought it to this magic kingdom, that it may be safe for your return."
The master replied, "So, third servant, you know that I am a hard man? Then why have you tried to bankrupt me by taking people to Disneyworld?"
The master's wife said, "He has a name, you know! You don't have to keep calling him 'third servant!'"
The third servant relied, "My name is Colegiala."
The master said, "I don't care about your name, I care...what? Your name is Colegiala?"
Third servant: "Yes."
Master: "Col-e-gi-a-la."
"Yes," said the third servant, a little sharply.
Master: "First or last name?"
Third servant: "First name."
Master: "Your first name is 'schoolgirl', in Spanish."
Third servant: "My mother loved Ernest Hemingway."
The master's wife interrupted: "Now dear, he was just looking out for us while you were away with your honor thing. We've had a lovely time! The children..."
The master rudely interrupted his wife to ask the third servant, "And why did you sell the house?!"
The master's wife looked at the third servant with shock. "Sell the house? You sold the house? You said you had just leased it while we were away!"
The master said sternly, "Yes, sold the house, along with all of its contents and the first servant! Whom, I might add, never went gallivanting off with his portion of the wealth!"
The third servant replied thoughtfully, "Hmm, well, I might have sold it. There was an awful lot of paperwork..."
The master interrupted again: "And why did you assault the second servant and steal all of his wealth?"
The master's wife said, in a voice full of dread, "Assaulted!? You said that he offered you the money!"
The third servant said, "Well, after I tapped him with that crowbar, he held his wallet out to me, so technically..."

Suddenly, the master turned as white as the napkins on the poolside tables: "Oh my gosh! Is that the gardener?"
The third servant said, "Yes, my master. I have brought all of your family and servants to this bounteous land."
The master squeaked, "All? All four hundred and thirty-seven?"
The third servant paused. "Okay, it's a little creepy that you have numbered all of your family and servants like that, but yes, I did purchase that many plane tickets to get us here. Well, and an extra ticket, so that the one hundred and eighty-seventh servant could bring his cello along."

The master strode determinedly to the gardener and a large, burly servant that he vaguely believed was in charge of making sure that he had enough paper clips. "You! and you! Take this untrustworthy servant, and cast him into the outer darkness!"
The two servants looked at each other. "The who? The where?" said the gardener.
The master shouted, "Just get him out of here! But get his wallet first!"

And so the third servant was thrown into the outer heat and humidity. The master gathered up all of his family and servants and chartered four buses to take them all home. He found the first servant and reinstated him, and he sent his second servant to a proper doctor who knew what's what and paid for all his medical bills.

As for the third servant, he was never seen at the house of the master ever again. However, he is suing the master for wrongful termination and back wages. The case is currently being appealed in the Court of Orange County, Florida.

Wednesday morning

2008-08-13T07:23:00.000-04:00

1.3 - 18 or so - doesn't matter

Not feeling so good this morning. May be stomach upset due to the antibiotics I am on.

Entertaining missionaries

2008-08-12T22:34:00.000-04:00

Fair warning: The countries and full names of the missionaries discussed below should not be mentioned. If you include them in the comments, I will delete your comment.

I spent the last two days with missionaries - one pair on their way out, and one pair on their way back.

First up were Pam and Vern on Sunday. They are on their way to a Western Asia country this month. It is always a treat to see them. I have such a deep love for Pam especially, and she seems to have an affection for me as well. Pam is so rich in character, so precious. She reminds me of the phrase that I have come up with for those whom the Spirit has especially put on my heart: my Golden People, people so rich in virtue and worth that it should be obvious to everyone how valuable they are.

After a little talk and a short video, we got to pray for them. I had two prophetic words for Pam. I was so glad that I got to see them, that I got to lead worship on Sunday, that I was able to pray strong, faithful prayers for them and that I had words for them. It was such a delight.

Second, Rob and Iris are back from their central Asia country. They have been in country for six years, and they are back for a year for refreshing and for education for Rob. They and their three kids stayed at our house Monday night; they are on their way to New England where Rob will go to school. Monday evening we had a get together at the Barn for them, and many people from the Webb Road house were there: Todd and Amy Trotman, Bill and Tracey Beck, Judy Hubbard, Rich Campbell, Jenny used-to-be-Fenton (can't remember her married name :-( ), Jeff Snyder. It was good to see them. I remember the last time they returned, how discouraged and burnt-out they were; it was good to see them doing better and more relaxed. They spoke about some of the amazing things that they have seen - people getting saved through their own and other people's dreams, religious leaders learning about Jesus and feeling that they can no longer teach from their own holy book. They also had a presentation, and we got to pray for them too.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to spend much time with Rob and Iris. We got back to the house late, and then they left shortly after I left for work this morning. But it was good to see them.

OK, so I am always very serious in my blog. I've been trying to think of something to lighten up a bit. So, in thinking about Rob, I remember one step along the way to him marrying Iris. He had been praying about it, and he was really conflicted because he knew he was dedicated to being a missionary and really wanted to know God's will - should he take a wife with him? Well, as it turns out NCF had a retreat at Black Rock, and a prophetic couple (the Downings?) were there to minister to people. Rob went for his turn, and it seems to me that I was in the room when he got prayed for. This seems strange to me, because it seems to break personal ministry etiquette a bit; maybe I just imagined the scene from Rob telling me the story. Anyway, the couple had a vision of a "smiling girl" that would be in Rob's life. When they said "smiling girl" Rob just beamed and and laughed; if you have ever met Iris, you know that she is very sweet and positive, and she is one of those people whose face just naturally seems to relax into a smile. It was a confirmation for him of what he was supposed to do. It was a very sweet prophecy.

Praising worship

2008-08-11T07:34:00.000-04:00

Worship was really good yesterday. I know, because many people came up to me and said so. Here is a composite of these conversations:

Them: "Worship was really good today.
Me: "Yes, it was."
Them: "I really enjoyed it."
Me: "Good. I'm glad"

Then they look at me like they expect me to say something more. In one such conversation, I successfully deflected by talking about Joyce and how much I enjoy her voice and admire her improvisational skills.

I know what people are looking for: they are expecting me to say "thank you." They feel like they gave me a compliment, and a thank-you completes the transaction. But they didn't give me a compliment; they commented on the worship itself. I don't have anything to do with whether a spirit of worship comes over the meeting. Well, maybe that isn't quite true; I have something to do with it, but I really don't have much more to do with it than the "ordinary citizens" of the congregation. Yes, I prayed for a good worship time, and yes, I personally worshiped before the meeting so that I could hit the ground running, so to speak. Physically, I tried to warm up so that I wouldn't crack or squeak on the high notes. But I've done all those things before, and more, and sometimes the worship time isn't so very good.

If you think about it, the idea that my lil ole voice could move the hearts and affections and the spirits of a couple of hundred people who are stuck in the doldrums or in unbelief is pretty silly. Worship was great because of the work of many people, so that when the music actually started there was a tipping point of more people focused on God and on His splendor and on the amazing love of Jesus than on the Olympics or the work they have to do around the house or whatever. Great worship is a corporate work - not the work of any individual.

I do say thank you when people compliment me on my singing. Or, at least, I try to; sometimes I revert back to an "aw shucks, I ain't that good" response, which stinks because I'm indirectly saying that they don't have any judgment. But I won't take credit for the spirit of worship that people feel during the meeting. I shouldn't; it wasn't my doing.

I know at least one of the two of you have led worship; what do you think?

2.5 - 36 - 4.2

Soreness for myself

2008-08-10T06:51:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty sore this morning. I spent about nine hours yesterday working on a continuing home improvement project. I've been replacing the ugly clamshell baseboards in our living room with some white colonial baseboards with shoe molding. I'm also trimming out the doorways, so that instead of just a drywall opening they have colonial molding. We've already done the dining room this way, and we just finished painting the living room. It all looks quite pretty - or will, once it gets painted and all the caulk and wood putty I used to fill in my errors get covered up. If you kin of squint when you look at it it looks pretty spiffy.

Last weekend, when I was on my knees pounding nails, I thought about how all of this work is for me. I'm working hard, and it is all to benefit my nice middle class existence. If I'm going to labor like this, shouldn't I be laboring for someone that doesn't have any baseboards? I could be doing this work for someone that needs it more desperately than I do. Of course, the work wouldn't be particularly fast or good-looking, but still.

I expressed this sentiment to my wife, and she wisely reminded me of what she always says: "Is God telling you to do that?" The idea is, the Spirit will tell me what I need to be doing, and I don't have to go running ahead trying to imagine what God's task list is for me.

It's a good question, and a way to keep me sane and to hold off the guilt that I seem to so often go looking for. But then I get thinking: how much am I listening? How much am I open to what the Spirit is asking of me? If He told me to go install some baseboards for someone else, wouldn't I just brush it off as a crazy notion, of work that I was unsuited for? Am I just fooling myself so that I can sit at home and watch FireFly some more?

How do you reconcile your middle class existence in the midst of the need of other people?

The meaning of numbers

2008-08-08T15:12:00.000-04:00

Susan asked what the numbers mean, so I will tell you: They are a summary of my latest workout.

Here is what the numbers mean: 2.5 miles, 35 minutes = average 4.3 mph. This is the end of my third week of three times a week workouts.

My goal to to reach, within no particular time frame, 2.5 miles in 25 minutes. Then I hope to increase that to 3 miles in 30 minutes, all without getting injured. This was inspired by this article. I'm not really following the plan they outline (keeping track of the times they list seems like a real pain), I'm just trying to do what feels right in alternating between walking and jogging.

If I can keep at this, I will reward myself with a nice piece of exercise equipment (pending wifely approval) so that I can continue to exercise inside during the winter. It seems logical that this would be a treadmill of some sort, but if anyone has a great favorite piece of equipment I'm willing to read suggestions.

I'm telling you this because I need prayer from both of you that I would keep this up and that I would get the sleep I need (yes, dear wife, I said it!) so that I can continue to get up in the morning and feel like I want to do something other than nap on the couch.

Oh, and if you ask me on a Sunday how the exercise program (or the sleep thing) is going and I grump at you? Sorry in advance.

Friday morning

2008-08-08T07:59:00.000-04:00

2.5 - 35 - 4.3

Advice on temper tantrums

2008-08-07T19:48:00.001-04:00

This is a special post for one person in particular (hi Susan! You can't see me, but I'm waving really hard over here!), but hopefully the other person who reads this blog will find it interesting too. Most of what I learned that is best about parenting I learned from my dear wife; this is definitely one of the things I learned from her.

Let's talk about temper tantrums. Most children will at some point try a temper tantrum to get their way. In doing so, they are trying to gain control through fierce emotions.

(Just to be clear, a temper tantrum is when a child cries and/or thrashes (or goes limp) in a seemingly uncontrollable manner, with the goal of getting their way. Crying because of physical injury or because the child is frightened is not a temper tantrum. Fortunately, at least the first few times a child throws a temper tantrum, it is pretty obvious that the cause of the tantrum is a desire for control and not some other emotional distress.)

Children will hit on throwing tantrums because they have noticed that when mom or dad wants something right away that they put emotion behind their request ("Stop that! Right now!"). They have probably also tried ramping up their own emotions, and may have noticed that parents jump a little quicker when the crying starts. So now they are full out trying to get their way by pouring as much emotion out as they can.

I think that stopping tantrums is really important, and it has to be a priority to train a child to stop them. In fact, I think that it needs to take priority over almost everything else, except things like imminent physical injury to another child. In throwing a tantrum, the child is doing several things wrong:

They are trying to dominate someone else through emotional force. This is bad when you are two; this is horrible when you are thirty-two. Teaching your child that dominating others through emotional force is wrong is a valuable lesson that will stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives.
They are challenging your authority as a parent. This always makes for a priority situation on my book.
They are training themselves to lose control. If a child rehearses tantrums enough, they may actually be unable to step away from the tantrum behavior in the way I describe below. This is why I feel that it is essential to take care of tantrums early.

Most parents (and it is usually parents who will see a child's first temper tantrums) respond to temper tantrums in one of two ways:

They try to get the child what they want as quickly as they can. This seems to be an almost unconscious or instinctual response. To paraphrase Bill Cosby, it's like there is a nerve at the base of the spine that starts jumping whenever the child starts wailing, and this nerve compels the parent to run to make the wailing stop!
They try to overcome the child's emotional barrage with one of their own. This reaction usually comes after the parent has fallen victim to several temper tantrums in the past and realizes that they are being manipulated. They may cajole the child to stop, or get angry at the child and threaten them with discipline or punishment ("I'll give you something to cry about..."). In extreme cases, the parent may throw a fit of their own.

I don't think either of these are effective responses. The first, of course, reinforces the tantrum behavior as an effective means of gaining what is desired. As for the second, as I said in my last post, it is very difficult to out-emotion a child. I think that in an escalation of emotions, most adults will give in first. Besides, this strategy also teaches, through modelling, that emotional control is an effective strategy. I don't think that either parents or children should dominate each other emotionally; I don't think that it is very respectful.

My recommendation for tantrums is to not to respond to them. Remember how in an earlier post I said that parents need to have a little corner of their hearts where they are indifferently objective toward their children? This is where you use that part of your heart. Calmly tell your child that you can't understand them when they are wailing like that, but if they can speak to you in a calm voice you would be glad to talk to them. Then ignore them a while. Every minute or two return to them, calmly tell them that you are sorry that they are upset, but that you can't speak to them until they can speak calmly. The goal is to train the child that if they want to be heard they will need to give up their strong emotional position and meet you on an emotionally level playing field.

Notice the two phrasings that I used: "I can't understand you" and "I can't speak to you". You may feel that saying "I can't understand you" isn't exactly honest, and may prefer to use the second wording. I like using "I can't understand you" because it makes it easier for me to maintain the position that I can't do anything until I am spoken to calmly. It really is amazing how quickly a child can calm down when they believe that they can't be understood.

Okay, so what if this happens in a public place, like a store? Well, children don't pick these places at random to throw tantrums. They pick them because they know that you are task-focused and are probably willing to take a shortcut or two in your parenting in order to get through with your shopping. In these situations, it is vital that you maintain a consistent response to tantrums; otherwise, the child will learn that in certain situations their strategy is effective. I think that if your child throws a tantrum in public that you can have your calm little discussion with your child as I said above. You can check that they are not where they are going to get stepped on and briefly move them if need be. Then you can step away a few feet and let them wail. Maybe you can look around with an expression like "where are the parents of this child?" like the rest of the adults. You can reassure your other children that little Jane just needs to let out some big emotions and she will be okay. You can comfort yourself with the knowledge that it takes a village to raise a child, and withstanding the uncomfortable sound of a screaming child is how the village of adults in the store is helping you raise your child today.

Now, maybe this is too much for you to deal with in public. Or, maybe your child throws a tantrum while you are in the middle of a transaction, like while you are paying for your items. Or maybe your child is clever enough to try and hurt themselves to get your attention. I've seen children who, when moved out of harms way, will quickly move themselves back again, or who will throw themselves on the ground in an apparent disregard for their physical safety. In these cases I recommend that you warn the child once, excuse yourself from any adults (I'm sure the store would be glad to hold or restock your selected items while you deal with your child) and then quickly transport your child out of the public place.

Whenever we had to take this step we used a special hold that we used only for discipline (mostly for tantrums and for disobeying commands to come). We called this hold "carrying [our child] like a sack of flour." This hold was basically draping the child over our forearm with them face down. It wasn't a particularly uncomfortable hold (in fact, as infants they liked being held that way), but because we used it only for discipline it signaled our displeasure and meant that they weren't being held, just transported.

Take the child to your car or other neutral place and then let them tantrum on until they respond to your even-voiced requests for calm conversation. Keeping your own voice calm and indifferent is key. Pretend that being asked to listen to a screamed request is like being asked to reverse gravity: it's a physical impossibility that you really can't do anything about.

Once the child is able to speak calmly, praise them for making a wise choice and comfort them over their big feelings. Then respond to their request (either yes or no or compromise) and hug that sweet little person. They've been through a lot!

Wednesday morning

2008-08-06T07:44:00.000-04:00

2.5 - 38 - 3.95.

Parenting thoughts

2008-08-05T23:26:00.000-04:00

Here are some thoughts on parenting.

Every parent has to reserve within their heart a little corner where they are indifferently, if not coldly, objective toward their children. This is where they can retreat when their affection for their child threatens to override their wisdom for what is best for their child.

In most cases a young child will win a battle of emotions - their emotions are undimmed by the years of shepherding that most adults have experienced, they are more willing to pour all of their energy into the battle, and they are not deterred by empathy for their opponent. The key to winning a battle of emotions is to not show up for the fight, and to instead compel the child to interrelate on the parent's terms.

It is a joy that children push limits. They are naturally drawn to exercise each new faculty that they gain, so when they push limits they show that they are growing. In addition, they will push only when they are in an otherwise secure environment - many is the child that was "perfect" for the babysitter and then fell to pieces when the parents returned home. Let us take joy in the fact that our growing children feel secure enough to test out the limits in our presence. Our job is not to condemn them for pushing limits, but to determine where they should meet up with an earthen bank that may be climbed and where they should meet up with a tall stone wall that may not.

A child's brain is the most amazing pattern recognition machine in the world.

Children are deceptive. When born, they appear to be little more than some type of helpless pet. Later, they learn and grow, but they are still easy to overrule, easy to physically move, easy to segregate. It is tempting to forget that their spirits are fully present at birth, and that they are true spiritual persons in the same way that any adult is. Because of this, they need to be treated like people and not merely directed to go here and do this and don't do this. They need to be treated like people, and not like clever furniture.

Children need interaction. They require response. They need to know that what they do matters, and that they can affect the world around them. A child will flower when given the great treasure of an adult that will listen to everything they have to say and answer all of their questions.

It is not defeat to admit weakness to a child. It will not utterly devastate a child to learn that their parents have doubts and struggles and don't know everything. It is not failure but victory when you confess to your child that you made a mistake and ask for their forgiveness.

My main advice to fathers: open yourself up to joy. Allow yourself to feel the wonder of being a father.

Personal update

2008-08-05T06:40:00.000-04:00

I pulled all my job-related posts from this blog because it wasn't really the focus that I wanted to have here - I wanted this blog to be more about my ideas about God and Christianity than personal updates. However, some (okay, maybe one and a half) people requested personal updates. Gotta respects my peeps, so here goes.

I was scheduled to lose my job July 11th. However, two weeks before this date, I received an email that stated that the layoff had been rescinded. That's it. No further explanation, no "welcome back and we're glad it worked out," and no apology.

I'm not real thrilled with how I was treated throughout this episode. However, there is much that I like about my job - it pays well, the work can be interesting, and I don't have a lot of oversight or pressure. In addition, it is a 9 to 5 job (well, 9 to 6), which is really unusual in IT - most Information Technology jobs require working or being on call on nights and weekends. When I realized all these positives about my job, I was thankful for the job that I have.

Last month I saw an interesting job with a smaller company. The pay range just barely covered my current pay, so that was a potential issue (if I give up 18 years of seniority, my pension and four weeks a year of paid vacation, I want to be compensated for it), but what really turned me off to the job was that it required nights and weekends. I suppose that I could view it as an investment in a better future - I think that I would have a better chance of advancing at a different company - but I'm not sure that I feel the need to advance at the expense of my time with church and family. I might be happier with new challenges, but I can find plenty of IT-related challenges on my own without making it a job requirement.

So the job hunt is in slow mode right now. That's what's going on.

Primoris Spiritus Sanctus

2008-08-03T18:33:00.001-04:00

Sweetly enough, I received comments to post something from both of the people who read my blog. So here goes.

I had Bible Study today. Actually, Bible study was only the first half. After we talked about Genesis 47 (and, once again, I had the marvelous experience of discovering something new in the Bible that I had never seen before), we spent as-much-and-a-half-as-much time talking about other things. All spiritually related. All uplifting.

One thing that we talked about I thought that I would get in trouble over, but I didn't. We were talking about how we should interact with people who say they are believers but are in some unrepentant sin. In this particular case, we were talking about people who say they are believers but who are in sexual sin. How do we treat them? Is how we treat them dependent on how well we know them or how much we interact with them?

We were focused on what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 5:

11 But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.

We discussed what this means for us today. Is discipline like this effective in today's America, where we are so independent and where, if we refuse to associate with someone, they can just go to the church down the street? Is "do not even eat" a cultural thing - what might the equivalent be today? One person was insisting "but if this is what the Bible says, shouldn't we do it? Shouldn't we forget about whether such an action is effective, and just do it, because the Bible says it?"

This is when I said what I feel is true, but I was nervous about saying. I was nervous because I know that many believers, some even that I respect, would say that I am off on this. What I said is that the Bible, and particularly the New Testament, is not a rule book. If we try to treat it that way, we will miss out. We have to account for the fact that this letter was written to a a specific community at a specific time 2000 years ago. Is some of what was said generally applicable? Yes. Are we to emulate everything? Not necessarily. So how do we tell what we are to emulate, what to apply, what to hold on to, and what to release? Only through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Now, many believers see this as a slippery slope. "If everything in the New Testament is open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit," they might say, "then anyone could do anything they want, or ignore anything they want, and claim the inspiration of the Holy Spirit." That's true. But the true believer would, I feel, be able to discern when someone is doing this. And I would also say that just because it is messy and may feel tenuous is not a real reason to not follow the Spirit.

I believe that the Spirit affirms the Bible, and speaks through the Bible, but ultimately we are to follow the Spirit for faith and practice and not an objective, cold reading of the Bible. The Bible is subordinate to the Spirit of God, and so it is the Spirit that guides into understanding what the Bible really means and how to apply it.

I could write a whole lot more about this, but I think that is enough. I invite your comments.

Jesus helps us with our imperfect faith

2008-07-01T06:42:00.000-04:00

In my long teaching on Hebrews 11:6, I concluded by saying that faith is the belief that God can and that God wants to accomplish something. Both parts are important for the faith that pleases God.

Jesus does not leave us to work up this belief on our own, though. He is willing to take us where we are, and help us with our belief. There are two examples in the New Testament where Jesus took half-formed faith and helped the person's faith by teaching the person about faith and by meeting their need.

The first is the example of the leper who comes to Jesus after the Sermon on the Mount. This story is recounted in all of the Synoptic Gospels. Here is the story in Mark:

Mark 1:40 A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." 41 Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured. (NIV)

The man came to Jesus, believing that Jesus could make him clean, but questioning whether Jesus wanted to make him clean. Jesus's response was not to scold the man for his unbelief, but to be filled with compassion for him. He then made a declaration of His will while He reached out and touched the man. He then plainly told the man that He was willing, and commanded the leper to be clean.

The second story is of the man whose son is possessed by a demon. This incident is also found in all three Synoptic Gospels, but the discussion about faith only occurs in Mark chapter 9. Here is the passage:

Mark 9:21 Jesus asked the boy's father, "How long has he been like this?" "From childhood," he answered. 22 "It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us." 23 "'If you can'?" said Jesus. "Everything is possible for him who believes." 24 Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" 25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the evil spirit. "You deaf and mute spirit," he said, "I command you, come out of him and never enter him again." 26 The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. (NIV)

The man believed that Jesus would be willing to help, but he questioned Jesus's ability to heal. Now, to be fair, it appears from the previous verses in this chapter that the man had already asked the disciples to help his son, and they were not able to remove the demon. They were subsequently arguing over the matter (the NAS says "discussing"). The Bible doesn't detail what they were discussing or arguing over, but perhaps the disciples were trying to explain why they couldn't cast out the demon. It's possible that this discussion actually harmed the man's belief that Jesus could heal and so he used the wording "if you can" when he spoke to Jesus.

In this case, Jesus challenges the unbelieving attitude and states that "Everything is possible for him who believes." In response, the father makes that great statement of unbelief and belief that resonates with so many believers. Jesus then casts out the demon through His commanding word.

It seems that Jesus treated this man more harshly in his imperfect faith than he did the leper. I've always thought that the man's "immediate" exclamation was a result of Jesus speaking sharply to him. But this may not have been because of the nature of his unbelief, but because of the circumstances. This incident appears to have been an emotionally charged one, with the disciples arguing with the crowd and Jesus exclaiming in seeming exasperation "O unbelieving generation [...] how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?" This incident comes right after the Transfiguration. Coming down from the mountain, Jesus may have been exultant yet emotionally tired, and He probably found it frustrating that He went from this glorious experience where His glory was plainly revealed to a squabble over why His disciples couldn't cast out a demon. So, His sharp challenge of the man's faith before healing may have been due more to the emotional nature of the incident than because his faith was worse than the lepers.

In both circumstances, despite imperfect faith, those who came to Jesus first had their unbelief corrected and then they received what they were looking for. God is gracious with us when we have trouble believing.

Faith teaching, part 3

2008-06-29T01:44:00.000-04:00

Here are the earlier parts of this teaching:

Faith teaching part 2
Faith teaching part 1

OK, so back to this verse:

Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (NIV)

We are talking about the type of faith that pleases God. Moreover, the type of faith that is necessary if we are to please God. We talked about the first aspect of this faith, which I termed the He can aspect of faith.

The second aspect of the faith that pleases God is to believe that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. This is an interesting contrast to the first characteristic of faith. The first aspect of faith talked about is belief in who God is. This second aspect talks about what God does. And of all the various activities that God engages in - creating, loving, judging, etc. - faith is the belief that he rewards.

Interesting word, reward. A reward is not an unmerited gift; it is a prize for having done something. In English the word is often used when the thing given is out of proportion to the actual work done, as in "a reward of $1000 will be given for any information leading to the capture of this dangerous criminal." However, in Greek, the word connotes being paid wages for doing work. There is a sense of duty in the giving, of obligation; that the reward given is in proportion to the work done. An amazing thing, this: to be paid wages for earnestly seeking God.

It reminds me of another verse, originally found in Genesis 15:6, but quoted three times in the New Testament. I'll quote it from Romans, because I'm allowed:

Romans 4:3: ...Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. (NIV)

Similar to Hebrews 11:6, a reward (credit) is given for belief. This word translated credited connotes in both the Hebrew and the Greek the ideas of calculating and counting. Again, there is the idea that there is a fair exchange here - on one side, the belief, and on the other, what is rewarded or credited. This is astounding, that one can receive a reward from God just for believing, and it is treated as his or her due to receive it! For this is what Paul goes on to say in Romans chapter 4:

4 Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. 5 However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.

Some people would say that God is obligated by the rules of the spiritual realm to credit our faith as righteousness. I don't like to think of it this way, because this makes God subordinate to what He has created. Instead, I believe that He has obligated Himself to repay our belief.

OK, so back to Hebrews. What is the reward given for belief? I think that there are many rewards, but the big one, the ultimate one, the one that really matters is given at the end of Hebrews 10:

39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved. (my emphasis)

This actually comes right before the "faith chapter" of Hebrews 11. We believe and are saved. The reward of our belief is to be saved. Lest there be any confusion over what it means to be saved, the New American Standard renders "saved" as "preserving of the soul." The reward of God, given to those who earnestly seek him, is that their soul may be saved to eternal life, that they may survive the great judgment that is coming and escape death.

Now here is another cool part. In the New Testament, God reveals a new name for Himself. It is the name of his son, who is God in the flesh. That name is Jesus. Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name "Yehoshua" (English "Joshua"), which means "Yahweh is salvation." More loosely, it might be said to mean "He saves," as from Matthew 1:21:

"She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins."

Above, we saw that salvation is our reward, so to say "He rewards" is similar to saying "He saves." So, in this verse of Hebrews 11:6, we have both of the personal names of God: Yahweh ("He is") and Jesus ("He saves"). Isn't that cool? Faith, then, is believing in the two major revelations of God's personal nature - that He is, and that He saves.

Finally, I want to talk more about this idea that rewarding is something God does. Because rewarding is something that God does, it is connected to the will or desire of God. He is not compelled to do anything; He is God! So God wants to save; God wants to reward. This concept was very important to my growth in faith, that I am pleasing to God when I believe that he wants to reward me. This shatters the idea that it is godly or holy to shrink away from God's provision, to say "oh no, God, you are so very busy, don't bother with poor lil ole me." I can ask God for what I need not only because He can give me what I need, but because He wants to give me what I need - and it pleases Him when I adopt this attitude! Part of the faith that pleases God is the belief that he wants to reward those who earnestly seek Him.

Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

So, finally, let me say that I think of these two portions of faith in this way: Faith is belief that God can, and that God wants to.

Application

I have found that when I lack faith for something, I can usually trace it to having a deficiency in one of these two aspects of faith. Either I am believing that God can't act (He isn't powerful enough, or He is prevented from acting, etc.), or that He doesn't want to. Knowing this allows me to focus in on the specific beliefs that I need to correct. I can then challenge those thoughts and feelings with what I know about God from the Bible.

For example, suppose that I have trouble believing that God will save someone that I am praying for. When I examine my thoughts, I find that I am failing to believe that God can. I am, instead, believing that God cannot violate that person's free will to ignore God. However, I know that God turned the heart of Saul of Tarsus, who was very much against Jesus. My friend is not that hardened against God, so certainly God can turn their heart to Him.

Or suppose that I am praying for my healing, and I find myself lacking in faith. In looking more closely at my attitudes, I discover that I feel that God doesn't want to heal me. Maybe I feel that He can't be bothered with my sickness because it is small compared to others, or that he considers my physical health a less important thing than my spiritual health.

But this isn't what the Bible says. The Bible says that Jesus healed a lot. In fact, the Bible says in several places (for example, Matthew 4:24, 12:15, and 14:36) that Jesus healed all that came to him - regardless of how big or small their illness. Also, in James Chapter 5 the author commands that the sick should be prayed over, and they will get well. James, who comes across as a pretty tough character in his letter, didn't offer up any nonsense about how the sick should be content to stay sick. Clearly, God wants us to be healed.

So, my charge to you is to examine your faith, to see if it is lacking in either of these areas. If it is, convince your heart from the Bible, or through the ministry of the Body of Christ, that God can and that God wants to.

"Do your job"

2008-06-23T07:47:00.000-04:00

I have a coworker whom I have often heard use this phrase in frustration when he hangs up the phone after talking to someone. "Do your damn job!" he'll say with feeling. It's kind of funny. He apparently has wanted to inform several people (or, maybe, one person many times) that this is their responsibility. Implied in his exclamation is "Do your job, so I can do mine."

This phrase came to mind after I heard Christian's teaching at church yesterday. Christian gave an impassioned teaching on evangelism. I'm sure that you can get it the VCF Barn site later this week, so I won't review the whole thing, but I found it unusual because it was so very personal. Christian didn't just give a theoretical discussion of why we should tell people about the Gospel; he clearly talked about his own passion for and struggle with evangelism. In his teaching I clearly heard from him "I need to share the Gospel more; we need to share the Gospel more."

The teaching was also unusual in that I didn't feel guilty while listening to it. See, evangelism and I have a long and not very pleasant history. In fact, when I first heard teachings at the Barn (in the early '90s) on evangelism, it was a trigger that started me into a long, terrible depression. I know that it wasn't the cause of my depression, but it was a trigger. So it was fairly remarkable that I wasn't overcome with guilt while listening to this teaching.

Instead, I felt affirmed in something that I have felt for a while: that bringing people in to the church isn't my job. However, I love to talk and teach about the fundamentals of the faith, so part of my job is to teach young or not-quite believers. So I was led to pray that the Father would send laborers into the harvest so that I would have some to teach. In other words, I prayed that the Father would help other people to do their job, so that I could do mine.

Quality of life quote

2008-06-18T17:56:00.000-04:00

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.

Alice Kahn
from Quotes of the Day

Faith teaching, part 2

2008-06-15T21:12:00.000-04:00

For part one, read here.

This is the verse that I am focusing on:

Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (NIV)

In this verse are two aspects of the faith that pleases God. First, the one who comes to God must believe that he exists. Now, this might seem like a weird sort of requirement - almost a given. I mean, if you are coming to God, then you obviously believe that he exists, right? You wouldn't come to God if you believed that he was a figment of peoples' imaginations or a plot of a domineering religious organization. As an analogy, suppose you wanted help with a computer problem. If you didn't think I existed, then you wouldn't ask me for help, would you? Also, isn't this a somewhat pale requirement? Many people believe that God exists, but they think that he is remote and uninvolved in their lives and thus their belief doesn't affect how they live their lives. Is this belief pleasing to God?

I think that this verse implies something about the type of belief in God's existence that you must possess in order to please God. I don't think that it is a great stretch to read this part of the verse as "must believe that he exists as revealed in the Bible." This means that faithful belief in God isn't belief that considers God to be remote and uninvolved. It is belief that God is the Creator of the world, that he is involved in his creations, and that as Creator he has power over the world. If he is Creator, then he can make or unmake any part of it that he wants. He is in control, and he is powerful. This is faithful belief in God's existence.

I term this portion of faith the "He can" aspect of faith. Because he is Creator, he can affect his creation. Because he has power over his creation, he can make changes. Faithful belief in God first believes that he is able to act.

Now, this is cool. When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3), Moses asked God what his name was, so that Moses could tell the Israelites the name of the God that had sent him. God answered "This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I am has sent me to you.'" A variation of this - "He is" - became the personal name of God for the Israelites; this name is the Tetragrammaton, which is commonly rendered as "Yahweh" in English. Notice, God's very name for himself proclaims his existence. This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "believe in the name of the LORD [Yahweh]". Believing in the name of God is believing in his existence. To believe in the name of the LORD fulfills the first aspect of pleasing faith in God, because it is belief that he is the capable Creator God.

Now I have to sleep so I can take my kids to the Barn early in the morning for their trip to Belize.

Awesome Worship

2008-06-13T07:28:00.000-04:00

Last night I was part of awesome worship. My church has meetings of small groups of people that meet in members' homes. We call these Kinship Groups. Here people get together for all sorts of Christian activities: worship (traditionally, to the accompaniment of a guitar), Bible Study, prayer, ~~eating~~, stuff like that. It is a great way to get to know a small group of people in the church better.

Last night we had Kinship, and we had a great worship time. How was it great? For me, it was great because I was so focused on God and on how good He is and on His glory. I was so offended and hurt that the majority of people in the world don't care about Him or acknowledge Him. It felt so unjust, that the person who was the best, who loved the most and was so good should not be treated that way. I longed for the day when justice would be done and God would be honored the way He should be, when everyone would look at Him and say, "Yes, we see, God does deserve to be honored." One day, God will receive all of the honor that He is due. I wanted so intently for that day to come soon.

Why was this worship so great? There are a number of reasons. The kinship is led by a couple who are "old worshipers" - not that they are old, but that they have been worshiping God for decades and they know how to do it. This couple is also accomplished musically, and so the music sounds good and includes improvisation. Improvisation in worship has its downsides - it can get people who know how to improvise focusing on what they are doing musically rather on their worship (this is where I tend to have problems), and it can leave people who don't know how to improvise feeling left out. However, when it works and is focused on worship, improvisation can combine to lift the spirit. When I truly worship while improvising musically, it feels like my spirit opens up and I really begin to believe that all things are possible. In this way jamming in worship is similar to tongues - which we were also free to use last night.

However, beyond these reasons, I think the simple fact is that God has ordained this group of people to be blessed with great worship when we get together. There is just something unique about our times together that I think is beyond our individual contributions. I mean, I could get together with some other strong worshiper (hi, Jess! hi, Kathie!), and it would be good, but it wouldn't be the same. I used to think that this great worship was God's way of giving my wife and I sanctuary during a time last fall when other relationships seemed spoiled, but the other relationships have gotten better and the great worship has lingered.

I said "blessed with great worship" above, but that makes it sound like my focus is only on what I get out of it. It is not. Yes, great worship is a blessing, but it is a blessing in the same way that helping out a friend move is a blessing, or like knowing that that long, emotionally draining talk you had with a friend helped them out. You feel good at what you did, but there is still work involved. In the case of this worship, I really feel that we are accomplishing some work, beyond just blessing God (which is definitely a good work). It is very humbling to be involved in something that feels so great.

Worship God!

Faith teaching

2008-06-10T20:13:00.000-04:00

I've had a teaching running through my mind for several months now. I know that it is a "teaching" and not a meditation because I think about it when I hear other people teach. It's like someone else using their teaching gift activates this teaching in my spirit, and I think about and ponder it and imagine how I would preach it. It makes it difficult to focus on what other people teach. On the other hand, it makes listening to teachings very enjoyable, because this teaching really revs up my spirit.

It's about faith. See, for a long time I didn't really understand faith. The word faith is thrown around within the church, until it seems to mean many things, so for a long time it wasn't really something I felt I understood.

The classic definition for faith - or at least, the one I heard all the time as a young believer - comes from Hebrews 11:1. Here it is in the Revised Standard Version, which is how I learned it:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Let's see, I said to myself. Assurance means to be reassured that something is true, right? Hmm, what are "things hoped for"? "Conviction of things not seen" - what does that mean? How does all this relate to having faith for healing and that God will make everything work out?

So, this verse didn't really make much sense to me for a long time.

The verse that I like as a definition of faith is just five verses later: Hebrews 11:6. This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible:

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (NIV)

This verse defines what faith is. Moreover, it defines a specific kind of faith: the kind that pleases God. I don't know about you, but if I'm going to bother with faith, this is the kind that I want to bother with - the kind that pleases God. Note, also, the converse: if you don't have this faith, you are not pleasing to God. In fact, this verse says that if you don't have faith it is impossible to please God. Gotta get me some faith, then!

Note also the God-centric nature of faith. Faith is not defined as that which allows us to get what we want, or to gain heavenly riches, or to overcome obstacles. No, faith is that which allows us to please God. Faith also allows a person to come to God. Faith in Christian circles is sometimes talked about almost as if it were an entity in and of itself. "You gotta have faith to push on through." "Exercise your faith to make it strong." Nice ideas, but the Biblical view of faith is properly focused on God. Faith is a means to get to God; faith is the way to please God. God is the center point and object of faith.

I'm going to end here for now and pick up the rest of this later.

Worship God

2008-06-01T19:04:00.000-04:00

Worship today was, for me, pretty intense. I have had a sense since Friday that this would be a significant Sunday. Saturday I did a little Bible study, but I spent most of the day relaxing and not really focusing on God.

I was on worship team this week, so I got to church about 8:45am for practice. Thing were pretty normal until we actually started worship. Then I had this feeling of "Let's go!" I felt like the church got into a slow start with worship, whereas I just wanted to sing to God as hard as I could. It is hard for me to reconstruct just what i was feeling, which sometimes happens when worship gets really intense. Then I had a word of prophecy to bring to the church, and so when my pastor gave a call for prophetic words I went up.

Here is what I said:

"You guys know I love you, so take this in that spirit. All morning I've had this feeling: what are you waiting for? Worship God! The Spirit is just waiting to do something among those who will worship God. I guarantee you, there is nothing more important that you will do today than to worship God."

After this word I felt that something significant did happen, but I felt disappointed because I felt that it took us so long to get moving. I felt that maybe I should have spent more time yesterday praying in preparation for today. I do want to see God glorified, to see His Name lifted up, to have the whole church worship Him together. I think that when we really give ourselves over to worship that marvelous things will happen among us.

Healing Service at VCF

2008-05-31T16:52:00.001-04:00

We had a healing service at church last night, though "healing" was somewhat loosely interpreted - it wasn't just about physical healing, but also spiritual healing. I wanted to just record my thoughts from last night, and some things I learned.

There was a lot of talk about the Lakeland revival. Many people who had been to Lakeland gave testimonies. Then my dear friend Craig Simonian got up to preach the message, and he talked about being hungry for the presence of God. He ended with a call forward to anyone who wanted prayer to have that closer relationship with God.

I went up, because I knew that so much other stuff is on my mind and I don't often hunger for God. Instead, I hunger for food, and surfing the web, and video games, and watching TV. I realized that I was reluctant to get prayer because it was like I didn't want to hope and be disappointed.

After I was prayed for I went for a walk, because I feel that I encounter God best by myself and I felt like I wanted to just open up to Him how I felt and what I wanted. I told him that I wanted to follow him, that I wanted him to be Lord, and that I wanted to want to open up to a deeper experience of Him. I told Him that though it seems hard, I would give up other stuff if it is what He asked me too. I felt good about the prayer, and after a bit I went back inside.

As soon as I got inside, I was so moved by all the wonderful people that God has put on my heart, and I was drawn to pray specifically for three people that were there in the room that are precious to me. After a while, I realized that I was feeling the Holy Spirit in me, through my prayers, and it struck me that this was "my version" of the spiritual blessing that God was bringing to the church last night. It wasn't falling out, or being emotionally overwhelmed, or laughter, or laying on the floor, or some of the other amazing things that we have come to associate with renewal and revival meetings and that some people were experiencing last night. It was, instead, God's Spirit moving in me in the way He wanted to. And that is good!

I was then moved to spend a bit of time explaining a lot of this to someone who was also feeling a bit left out of what was going on. I think I helped them.

Here is the frustration: it was said last night that we want people to have freedom, and we want to permit God freedom to act. Even so, I and my friend found ourselves expecting something very specific, and we wanted as much of it as other people got. But what if God has something different for different people, which my experience seemed to indicate? We should rethink what we mean by freedom in the Spirit, to realize that it isn't the freedom to be demonstrative. It is the freedom to pursue the Lord, whether that is quiet or loud, contemplative or ecstatic, emotional or intellectual or neither.

Here is the joy: I am amazed, in retrospect, that I was able to fend off depression or discouragement, even though I went off by myself to pray (going off to pray, 15 years ago, always ended up with my just digging into my negative thoughts deeper and deeper). I went from potentially self-condemning thoughts to helping someone else see the fallacies in both of our expectations. That is cool.

It is also cool that praying for amazing people seems to be where God has me right now. I gotta say, it is a pleasant duty.