Notes from the dogeared pages of #32
Today I retired journal #32. It is always good to look back on the thoughts and reflections. The quotes and jots. The drawings and scribbles. So here are a few random notes from the dogeared pages of #32.
- A love letter from a stranger means nothing to us...but even a tiny note from my wife means the world...most of our not liking scripture is just not understanding or being in relationship with the one from who the letters were written
- Discipleship: action needs to be important, not just a Bible study...Application is a must throughout, but doctrine has to be important or at least clarifying of the essentials...contracts is necessary; this is a commitment you will only get what you put in...
-[vision casting] ENVISION a new culture SHARE vision with everyone GET ALIGNMENT with leadership MODEL the culture you want to create FORM URGENCY sense
- "Boredom is the natural byproduct of redundancy...and church ministry is redundant by nature." ... create new and fresh experiences with God instead of repeating the same stories over and over and over again..we tell the same old stories about God because we are having no new experiences with him...the pastor needs to teach and lead in a way that creates new opportunities and new experiences for the church family...but my teaching and leadership cannot be new, fresh, and alive if my personal experience of God is not new, fresh, and alive
- Pull away...look within...look around...Fill up...change it up
- "Greed is a sign of slavery; you have to hold on to something because you NEED it" - "Generosity is a sign of freedom." - Cody Cannon
- "People who don't know Christ do not get to OUT-SERVE Christians." -Cody Cannon
When I tell my students not to listen to their parents
As a college pastor, there are a few very common conversations I have always had with several students like it was the first time. One of those conversations walks students through following God's intent for their lives to the chagrin and often in the face of their parents' intent for them.
Acts 21:10-14 shows Paul being clear of God's intent for his life in the face of people who love him. They are people who deeply care for Paul, and he knows that is the reason it breaks his heart so much when he sees their advice and strong intent going against what he KNOWS God has told him to do.
This stress of the tension between disappointing those who care for you in order to follow God's intent for you is one I hear all the time.
There has to be a challenge here for all of us to answer God's call while realizing it is not what our loved ones will aways want for us.
You're Welcome: most highlighted quotes
A few days ago, I came across an Amazon page indicating the top highlighted quotes of all time on the Kindle. By no surprise, there were a ton of Hunger Games quotes. Either way, it was pretty interesting to see the things which stuck out to the most people reading ALL books found on the Kindle at this point. Here were some of my favorites:
#1 - "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them." - Catching Fire, Hunger Games
#4 - "It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it takes to fall apart." - Mocking Jay, Hunger Games
#8 - "Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." - Pride & Prejudice
#23 - "What is childlike humility? It’s not the lack of intelligence, but the lack of guile. The lack of an agenda. It’s that precious, fleeting time before we have accumulated enough pride or position to care what other people might think" - Heaven is for Real
#31 - “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.” - 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
#33 - "While the goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God." - Radical
#36 - "Those three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying." - Outliers
#38 - "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent." - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
#45 - "Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are." - Steve Jobs
About not being a Christian on account of the hypocrites
"I don't believe in Christianity because there are too many hypocrites." This is an objection to Christianity which I am tired of hearing. Essentially, this statement says that hypocrisy takes away the validity of Christianity. It says, "I will not become a Christian because of the hypocrites. I cannot believe Christianity because of the hypocrisy."
There are two reasons this statement and belief frustrate me;
1) Its true 2) It does not make any sense
First of all, to say Christians are hypocrites is absolutely true. In fact, most people are hypocrites. As long as you present an ideal lifestyle and belief system as the one you are to live to an imperfect humanity, we will always be hypocrites. Ideal lifestyles take work, and you generally have to work through our imperfect realities to make them happen. This means that mistakes will happen. This means that not everyone is prepared to be perfect, but we still more forward.
Second, I get frustrated with hearing the objection to Christianity on the grounds of Christians being hypocrites because it does not make sense. It literally does not make logical sense. In fact, this objection commits a logical fallacy (that of trivial objection); it focuses on the wrong thing. This statement focuses on insignificant things while ignoring the main point. The statement does not make sense, because to hear someone say, "I do not believe Christianity because there are too many hypocrites," needs only one response.
The main point is whether or not a person believes in Jesus. So you could say,
"Could it be possible that Jesus was from Nazareth? Could it be possible that God is a God of phenomenal love? Could it be possible that the cross was real and accomplished what it says it does? Could all of these things be possible EVEN IF Christians are hypocrites?"
Hypocritical Christians do not make Christianity false. Hypocritical and generally sinful Christians do not disprove the cross and what happened there. Sinful Christians do disprove Christianity; in fact, I would go on a limb to say it proves Christianity's gospel even more. This proves that imperfect people are still able to be Christians. That's pretty good news to me.
I love my family TOO much: father fiction part 2
We are told to "seek first His kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to us" (Matt. 6:33). We want to know our children will grow to love us and their hearts will turn toward us as they continue to grow, but too often we try to make our children our numer one priority. We make them our world, and then we wonder why our godly parenting has not yielded that closeness. Jesus was starkly clear when he said in Luke 14:26 "if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brother and sister, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."
Too many of us have made idols of our own children and spouses. We think we are loving them by doing this. We think we are raising and supporting good Christian families by doing that, but we are only idolaters. 
We are not going to build strong families by our own diligence, but only if we seek God and his kingdom first...and then all these things will be added to you.
The solution is seeing parents, and particularly men, seek to be Christ followers FIRST. It is seeing men love Jesus Christ more than their mothers, fathers, wives, and even their children.
Because when we do this, we have a fellowship and connection with the greatest love of all. When we make an idol out of our kids or family members, we lose connection and fellowship with the source of greatest love.
When we love Jesus MORE than anything and anyone, He gives us all we need. He returns children's hearts to their fathers and fathers to their children (Malachi 4:5-6).
Father Fiction
Though my dad never disowned me or walked away from me, I did do a lot of my growing up without my father around. He never wished for this, and I absolutely do not BLAME anyone for this life. Blaming anyone is a waste of time because I could be using that time and energy healing from the hole I had and have. I have done a lot of healing in my life, learning to be a man without having the constant input from a father. As Donald Miller wrote in his book Father Fiction, "wounds don't heal until you feel them." I began to feel the wounds years ago...probably in college. I began to ask myself questions about how I saw the absence of my father affected me.
Now again, I have to clarify that my dad is not some deadbeat dad who I am just now blaming for anything. He did his best to love me all he could from a distance. Divorce is crappy, and he did his best to love me throughout my entire life. That being said, truth still remains, I did a lot of growing up without a father, and of course that sucks...plain and simple. In that growth, though, I have learned a lot about who I really am as a man, but that only happened once I allowed myself to feel my wounds and grow through them.
I mean look at me now. I am a husband to my best friend, which is a fear [wound] I once thought I would never heal from. I am a father to 2 beautiful girls God has given to me, I am convinced, to wreck me each and every day. I am a man who desires to love my wife every single day with an integral outlook and dedication. I am learning to accomplish myself as a wounded healer. I am always healing wounds as I discover them, but I am much more of a man even now than I ever dreamed when I was younger. I can now resound with Miller:
"We are the ones who will wrestle with security who will overcome our fear of intimacy, who will learn the hard task of staying with woman and our children, who will mentor others through the difficult journey of life, perhaps rescuing them from what we have been rescued."
Okay, you're right! Prove it!
THE PROBLEM, though, is that our culture has moved on without us. We are still behind yelling about how we are right and everyone else is wrong. Our culture is ahead of us, and we stubbornly stay behind. Our culture, today, calls for action. Our culture and our world needs experiential proof. Now the word "proof" may spark our old attention, but we need to begin seeing "proof" very differently than we always have before.
We have exhausted ourselves at proving we are right and they are wrong, but we are only going to reach our culture today....NOW...when we learn to prove our Christian motives to love and serve when we actually go out in the world to love and serve.
Our world and culture no longer hear our words of "proof" for the right and wrong of Christianity; it has moved forward and awaits us to prove we are Christians by actually BEING Christians in the world around us.
Christians - by Carol Wimmer
Christians - By Carol Wimmer
When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin'." I'm whispering "I was lost, Now I'm found and forgiven."
When I say... "I am a Christian" I don't speak of this with pride. I'm confessing that I stumble and need Christ to be my guide.
When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not trying to be strong. I'm professing that I'm weak And need His strength to carry on.
When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not bragging of success. I'm admitting I have failed And need God to clean my mess.
When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not claiming to be perfect, My flaws are far too visible But, God believes I am worth it.
When I say... "I am a Christian" I still feel the sting of pain. I have my share of heartaches So I call upon His name.
When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not holier than thou, I'm just a simple sinner Who received God's good grace, somehow!
You and your selfish mountaintop experience
"Spiritual selfishness always wants repeated moments on the mount." - Ozzie Chambers Many of us are dependant on the mountain top experiences, and we get frustrated and disappointed when we go back down. We go to a camp or a retreat to get pumped up, and we want to stay there because everything is so good there. Our walk with God seems so amazing and we want to stay there. But as Ozzie points out, its such a selfish way to use the mountain. The mountaintop is intended for inspiration for the descent back into the valley. Life is intended to be lived in the valley; not on the mountaintop.
There are many people in the valley who need inspiration and rescue from the brokenness, but they will never be reached if we remain on the mountaintop.
Does that mean we should not have mountaintop experiences? Are we selfish because we are on the mountaintop? No! We are only selfish when our desire is to stay on the mountain.
The mountain experiences are necessary. We need those times for inspiration and rejuvenation, but we cannot be so dependant upon them that we want to stay there. We should be excited and ready to descend the mountain back down into the valley where life is intended to be lived. We have to take with us renewal and inspiration back down the mountain into our daily lives with our daily interactions with different people. Otherwise we are some of the most selfish people around.
We are told to go out into the world and spread the gospel unto all nations. When we go to the mountain, we experience the gospel once again. We take it in once again; allowing ourselves to be saturated in the relentless love of God. We grow closer to the heart of God with very minimal interruption, but we cannot stay there. We cannot live in this moment. We are not intended or called to live that way.
The mountain is intended to be inspirational, but we are intended to bring that inspiration and live in the valley.
Through the looking-glass [self]
There is a social psychological concept called the looking-glass self that essentially breaks down to theorizing we become more and more what the most important person in our life thinks we are.
You have seen the popular memes online reflecting what different people think we actually do for a living!
In life, there are many people who have different perceptions of who we really are. Exes are going to have a different perception of you than your momma. Co-workers are going to have different perceptions of you than your spouse.
The looking-glass self theorizes that we will often so strongly believe that we actually become the person the most important person in our life perceives us to be.
This brings up a couple vital questions:
1. Who IS the most important person my life? (and why is it not God?) Before you answer, realize we give certain people importance in our lives. Moreover, the most important person in our lives is not always the most 'positive-impact' person in our life. For many people the most important person in their life might be the abusive parent, and that impacts how that person really perceives himself. We may give too much importance to the person we are dating who perceives you as the one make him feel better, and she begins to believe she is only exactly that.
If you are a believer, this first question necessarily proposes a second question. Why is God not the most important person in your life?
Of course we say He is, but theory is different than practice. Can you honestly say (not on this page, but in your heart of hearts) that your relationship with Jesus is THE most important relationship you have and maintain? Can you say that God's perception of you is who you really are, or are you really becoming who some other person perceives you to be; someone to whom you have GIVEN more importance than God?
2. Who does God perceive me to be? If God is the most important person in our life and our relationship with Jesus IS the most important relationship we have, then the second question to answer is "WHO does God perceive me to be?"
Let me give you a couple verses to think of this.
1 John 3:1 is my favorite verse in all of scripture. "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are." Do you believe and KNOW YOURSELF as a child of the perfect Father who loves perfectly?
In John 13:23, the disciple calles himself "the one Jesus loves." What would change in your life if you actually believed enough to BECOME 'the one Jesus loves'? What needs to change for you to peer through the looking-glass and see what God sees?