I’m celebrating a relaxing 49th birthday today. Later, our family will go out to get some dinner at a favorite place of mine. (I haven’t decided which favorite place yet!).
Today, perhaps you’d enjoy this good word from Gerald May on the theme of a spacious Sabbath. It was a nice way to start my day:
Read more of “A Spacious Day”
Click the “play” button above for an audio version of this post.
I don’t think I’m much different from anyone else in my struggle with self-discipline. I’ve learned that I tend to be a “one-at-a-time” practitioner of this virtue. From October 2008 until Spring 2009, I was riveted on exercise disciplines, so focused that at one stretch I didn’t miss my hour-a-day regimen over ninety days. It was great!
But then I started a daily blog post discipline in May 2009 (that I have continued to the present). Since then, my physical exercise has been spotty. It’s as though I see self-discipline as a limited commodity. I act as though it is as scarce as diamonds. If it was only a matter of will-power, that perspective might be right. But my self-discipline is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23), and He is not dispensing it drops at a time. I have a limitless resource of self-control at home in my heart through faith. I can practice self-discipline in any and every area of my life, not but sheer human force, but by gentle persistent divine power. I’m reminded that “His divine power has given [me] everything [I] need for a godly life through [my] knowledge of him who called [me] by his own glory and goodness (2 Peter 1:3 TNIV).” Everything. Period! I’m not lacking anything I need to live the glorious and good life God so wants for me.
I celebrate my 49th birthday tomorrow. I’ve been working on some hopes and goals leading up to next year’s half-century birthday. I’m encouraged that I can practice self-discipline throughout my life. (And I give you permission to remind me of that whenever you want!)
Self-control is a limitless resource of the infinite God. What ideas to the contrary are banging around my mind and heart? And yours?
I’m quick-posting this link to an email I just sent to a few hundred leaders involved in the practice of spiritual formation. The theme of the retreat is “Embracing Abba,” and it will occur on Thursday, May 13, 2010 at the Center for Spiritual Development in Orange, CA. This retreat day is open to anyone who desires to go deeper in their communion with God, whether or not you are in a formal or paid ministry role.
In my continuing reading and research for Unhurried Time, I came across this word of counsel from David Bosch in his A Spirituality of the Road (a great little book on themes of spirituality and mission):
“Because the ambassador’s role is so crucial he has to undergo a very careful preparation. It therefore amazes me that many churches and missionary agencies seem to think that the preparation of the missionary is not so terribly important. If he has received a call, that is all that matters. He should go off to the mission field as soon as possible, especially in view of the chronic shortages in personnel and the urgency of the missionary task. Yet, from the New Testament record, one gets a different impression. After Paul’s conversion, he disappeared into Arabia, where he spent three years. We know little of that period in his life, but on the basis of the New Testament evidence we may surmise that those years were essentially years of preparation. Paul then spent a short period in Jerusalem and subsequently many more years in his home town of Tarsus. It was only after some fifteen or more years of relative obscurity that he became the missionary we know. In fact, our Lord’s own earthly life reveals the same emphasis on preparation. He spent about thirty years in obscurity, while His public ministry lasted three years, at the most.
I often wonder whether our modern mission work would not have proved itself to be vastly different if we had laid a corresponding emphasis on preparation. I am not thinking of a theological preparation only—in Paul’s case he already had that before his conversion!—but also of what we may call a psychological or missionary formation.” (Bosch, David J.. A Spirituality of the Road. Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1979, p. 43.)
How long does it really take to prepare a leader for the ministry to which God calls him or her? Something to think about…
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The blog has been pretty quiet, visitors-wise, over the extended weekend, so I’m posting links to the last six posts and inviting you to choose one that sounds fitting for you today. If you’ve already read them all, I’ve included a good word from my recent spiritual reading at the end of this post:
And, as I promised, here’s something I came across in my recent reading on the theme of unhurry:
“It is related of St. Catherine of Siena that one day she asked Our Lord why it was that God has so often revealed Himself to the patriarchs, prophets and Christian of early times but rarely did so in her own time. Our Lord replied that it was because they were devoid of self-esteem and came to Him as faithful disciplines to await His inspiration, allowing themselves to be fashioned like gold in the crucible or painted on by His hands like an artists canvas, and letting Him write the law of love in their hearts. But the Christians of her time acted as if He could not see or hear them, and wanted to do and say everything by themselves, keeping themselves so busy and restless that they would not allow Him to work in them. Note that Our Savior has already tried to warn us against such excess in the Gospel when He said When you pray, do not multiply words as the Gentiles do; for they think that by saying a great deal they will be heard. So do not be like them for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” (Saint-Jure, Fr. Jean Baptiste and Claude de la Colombière, S. J. Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence. Rockford: TAN Books and Publisher, 1983, p. 77-78.)
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“We must not forget that, in the Roman Empire, Christ won, and won against tremendous odds. He won because the faith in Christ really changed the lives of countless weak men and made them bold as lions. He has taken poor creatures who could not even understand the language of moral philosophy and shaken the world through them.” (Elton Trueblood. The Predicament of Modern Man. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944, pp. 62-63.)
But Christ and his way did not win by the usual path of overwhelming human power. He won the adoration and devotion of people, and their changed lives won over the world. The testimony of others was, “See how they love one another.” Is our faith community as transformed as those earliest Christ followers? Do our lives powerfully recommend the reality of Christ and His way—not only in words, but in lifestyle and character? Were we weak and now strong in Christ by grace?
The way of Christ won through those with little worldly capital to their credit. They were not sophisticated. They were not humanly impressive. They were not captains of industry. They were not world-class athletes. They were mostly poor, mostly small, mostly uneducated, mostly weak. It wasn’t their greatness that won the world, but Christ’s.
So what do I think contributes most to my own influence? Is it my physical stature? My education? My experience? These are certainly God-given, but my greatest source of spiritual influence is Christ making Himself more and more at home in my heart through tested faith. It is only as I am coming to more fully trust the goodness, the power and the real presence of Christ with me, in me and through me that my life has lasting influence.
For Reflection:
In what ways has Christ already changed your life from those earliest moments of entrusting yourself to Him? Take time to reflect and thank Him.
Where in your life do you feel need for further transformation—your spiritual habits, your response to temptations, your engagement in extending the word and compassion of Christ to others? Talk with God. Invite His Spirit to bring about the change for which your heart hungers.
In August 2008, I posted a wonderful quotation from Thelma Hall’s Too Deep For Words, a wonderful book on the theme of lectio divina. She suggested that “the great saints and mystics have been those who fully accepted God’s love for them. It is this which makes everything else possible.”
Read more of this post at “Love as the Only Starting Point”
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I’ve always enjoyed and appreciated Brother Lawrence and his insights into practicing the presence of God. Back in September 2009, I shared one of his counsels about stopping occasionally, even in the midst of our spiritual disciplines, to adore and enjoy God in the midst of our activities.
Read more of this post at “Practicing God’s Presence in the Midst”
Buy a copy of The Practice of the Presence of God: Writings and Conversations
(This is the scholarly edition of his works, and my favorite version)
One expanding arena of our work in The Leadership Institute has been in organizational transformation. Recently, Paul Jensen pointed me to a quotation in Evil and the Justice of God (Intervarsity, 2006), where N. T. Wright says, “As Walter Wink has argued strongly in his major work on the powers, there is a great deal to be said for the view that all corporate institutions have a kind of corporate soul, an identity which is greater than the sum of its parts, which can actually tell the parts what to do and how to do it. This leads to the view that in some cases at least, some of these corporate institutions-whether they be industrial companies, governments or even (God help us) churches–can become so corrupted with evil that the language of ‘possession’ at a corporate level becomes the only way to explain the phenomena before us (p. 18, emphasis mine).”
Wright and Jensen are careful about explicitly referencing the demonic in relation to Christian organizations, but there can be patterns in any organization that look more unholy than holy, unloving than loving, ungraced than graced. Christian organizations may find themselves desiring a deeper integrity as it relates to practicing God’s presence in their individual and shared life together. One of the tools that has proven fruitful is remembering and telling founding stories. In any church, ministry, mission, movement or denomination, there are stories about how it came to be. There are often powerful God dynamics illustrated in those stories. Over time, a community may lose touch with those God stories. When this happens, a community forgets who they are and Who God is among them.
A basic biblical version of this dynamic is the way in which Israel told and retold their own Exodus story, remembering together (and often) how God had delivered them from centuries of slavery in a miraculous way through the Red Sea. Whenever they lost track of that story, they lost track of their unique relationship with God. So the story needed to be told and retold.
What are some of your own earliest God stories? How well do you remember them? How often do you remember them?
If you are in any kind of ministry leadership, what are some of the founding stories of your organization? How might remembering them be a source of renewal and encouragement for your community?
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