Age

I got a good laugh the other day when someone saw some pictures from my wedding day and said that I had hardly aged.  Well, that was almost 12 years ago.  My wife was complaining the other day that I was the one who turned 40 but she was the one with all of the gray hair.  I've told her countless times in the last 2 years that I expect to wake up one morning to find that my hair has turned completely white (kind of like that old Crash Test Dummies song, remember?).

Age is kind of a funny thing though.  To be honest, I have felt that I have aged about 20 years in the last 2.  So much has happened to me.  I've lost both of my parents.  I've had another child.  I've been involved with a church split.  I've graduated seminary.  Losing my parents has sucked a significant amount of life out of me, but it's also grown me in leaps and bounds.  I am a very different person than I was 2 years ago.  I have changed.

Our experiences form and shape us.  I am a firm believer that God allows our circumstances to act as crucibles of sorts, causing us to be transformed by the heat of those circumstances as the heat is turned on.  They most likely aren't circumstances that we would choose for ourselves, I know that's the way that I feel.  I would not have wished these last 2 years on people that I don't like let alone people that I care deeply about.

It's kind of funny that the circles that I have run in for most of my life have equated age and years of experience as cause for expertise, wisdom, or knowledge.  While that might seem fairly accurate, I don't really think that it is.  It completely leaves the idea of personal experience out of the equation and discounts how traumatic and stressful experiences in life can do in short periods what it would normally take years to accomplish.  That's how I feel about my past few years.

In the church we make this error too often.  We look at someone who has been around for a number of years or been a "charter member" of our church and assume spiritual maturity or expertise.  The problem is, there hasn't been a significant change in them since they signed that charter so many years ago.  Chronological age cannot be equated with spiritual or emotional maturity.

I have friends whose heads have gone completely gray.  They're a few years younger than me.  I can't explain it.  My brother started going gray years ago and I thought that it was just a result of some of the difficult decisions that he had made earlier in life.  You know what they say about hard living, right?  Looking at me, it might seem as if I'm still "wet behind the ears" and lacking experience simply because of what you can see on the outside.  Don't always judge a book by its cover though.

While I don't know that I have come far enough in my own spiritual maturity to say that I am thankful for the last few years, I can say that I am thankful that God has used them to change and transform me.  I am bolder than I ever was before.  I am more compassionate than I ever was before.  I am kinder and gentler than I was before.  At the same time, I have been angrier than I have been in a long time.  I have been lonelier than I have been in a long time.  I have been sadder than I have been in a long time.  I guess there's two sides to every coin.

What experiences have you had that have shaped and changed you?  Have you resisted them or asked God to help you through them?  When we face difficult circumstances, we have a choice in how we respond.  How will you respond?

Big Faith?

As I continue to wrestle through my friend's loss of their 6 month old baby, I was struck by a comment that I saw on Facebook.  It had to do with faith being restored and it really made me think.  How do we restore our faith when it seems that we've lost it?  How do regain something that we know that we once had yet has seemed to wane?

Over the last few days, I've been drawn to Matthew 17, 18, and 19.  Jesus has many interactions in these chapters with children.  In chapter 17, Jesus heals a boy who is demon-possessed.  In chapter 18, Jesus invites a little child to stand before him and explains that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who become like little children.  In chapter 19, Jesus' disciples get a little testy when little children are brought before him.  But Jesus says to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

I have always been struck by the parallel passage of the demon-possessed boy of Matthew 17 in Mark 9 because of the difference in what Mark records there.  When the father brings his son and Jesus begins to ask him questions, the father says, "But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us."  Jesus' answer comes across a little brash as he reiterates the man's words and repeats, "'If you can'?"  He goes on to say that everything is possible for him who believes.  The father's answer, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief."

I can't even begin to recount how many times over the last few years that I have had to go back to this passage.  I've said or prayed the phrase, "I believe but help my unbelief" so many times that it's hard to count.  But Matthew's account of this story is an encouragement to me and should be to all whose faith seems insignificant and small.  Jesus says, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move.  Nothing will be impossible for you."

Once upon a time, I preached a sermon on this passage and I remember handing out mustard seeds to the congregation.  If you've never seen one before, you can see them in the picture here.  They are fairly small and insignificant, but elsewhere in Scripture, Jesus talks about how small they are and yet they grow to be fairly large trees (Matthew 13).

The thing is, that's all that we need, just a small amount of faith.  There are times that people might look at me and think that my faith is so large, and yet I feel that it's equivalent to the size of a mustard seed.  And Jesus says that's all that we need, because faith grows.  It might start small and insignificant, but over time, it grows and flourishes if it's fed and nurtured.

It's hard to muster up faith in the midst of trial and tragedy, but all that we need is a mustard seed's worth.  God can take that small seed and grow it into something magnificent.  We might believe and still feel overwhelmed with unbelief, but God can handle that, He can meet us there and handle those doubts, those questions, and that unbelief.

Where's your faith?  How big does it seem to you?  You don't need much, only a mustard seed's worth, and it can grow.  Mine has felt insignificant and small many times in my life, but it can always be restored, somehow, some way.

Room For Doubt

Reading through the Bible, there are books within my own that get a lot of wear and tear.  The Psalms are a constant source of comfort to me.  I find myself in Paul's letters a lot for encouragement and teaching as well.  There are some books within the Bible that, while I don't avoid them, they just don't get a lot of airtime.

A few months ago, I remembered a verse in the book of Jude, a very short 25 verse long book.  A friend had brought one of the verses in Jude to my attention years ago in a conversation.  Jude 3 says, "Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people."  After constantly stumbling upon this verse and remembering our conversation, I was led back to Jude to see what other insights that it might hold.

Over the past few months, I have read through Jude a number of times, at least once a month if not more frequently.  The beauty of Scripture, to me, is that there is new insight to be gleaned every time that I read it.  I am constantly amazed at how I can read something hundreds of time and one day, I read it and notice something that I had never noticed before.

That very thing happened to be this morning as I found myself again reading through Jude.  Jude 22 says, "Be merciful to those who doubt."  I really stopped on that verse and began to think about it.  There is an ancient practice of Scripture reading called Lectio Divina in which the Word of God is read, meditated upon, prayed upon, and then contemplated.  As I read through Jude this morning, I felt like I hit the brakes when I read this verse.  It was a moment for meditation, reflection, and contemplation.

I have wrestled with doubt in my life.  It was far greater when I was younger, but every once in a while, I still find myself having questions and doubts.  They are more to do with what I am doing and where I am going, though the occasional "existence of God" doubts can sometimes take center stage.

This morning as I read through Jude and stumbled upon this verse, I began to think about so many people who had decried doubt as if it were a sin.  As we read through the overall narrative of Scripture, we encounter many people who have had their fair share of doubt.  I recall the man whose son was possessed by a spirit who said to Jesus, "I believe, help my unbelief."  I recall the disciple, Thomas, who needed to put his hands onto the wounds of Jesus after he rose from the dead in order to fully believe.  Those are just two cases, but there were others who doubted, who struggled to hold onto faith.

It is a myth to say that the Christian life is all rainbows and roses.  While some may criticize me for having a "doom and gloom" approach towards life with a statement like that, I'm only basing it on what Jesus said to his followers.  He specifically told them that in this world they would have trouble.  He told them that he had been persecuted and they should expect to be persecuted just as he was.  But he never left it there.  When he told them that they would have trouble in this world, he told them that he had overcome the world (John 16:33).

Doubt isn't a bad thing, it's what we do with that doubt.  Do we let it plague us, pull us down, overtake us?  Or do we wrestle with it and seek answers in the midst of it?  Job went through a crisis of faith, rightfully so, who wouldn't experience the depths of loss that he experienced and not go through a crisis of faith?  He eventually heard from God who set him straight and restored what he had lost.

We will doubt.  When we do, be careful not to listen to the voices of those who would cry against it.  Amidst our doubt, we serve and know a God who can hold that doubt, who is big enough to handle when His children struggle with their faith and questions along life's journey.  There is room for doubt in this life, it's just a question of what we do with it.

We will also encounter others who doubt, and despite the journey that we have been through that has brought us to our current place, others have not necessarily had similar circumstances and experiences.  What may seem logical to one may seem impossible to another.  As we encounter those who wrestle with doubt, we aren't called to beat them over the head with our experiences or what we have come to believe and know as truth, we are called to love and to be merciful to them.  If we have doubts, wouldn't we hope to have others be merciful to us?

There is room for dialogue and conversation in doubt, if we would only stop and find the time to engage in these things.  As we talk and converse, wrestling with our doubt, the ministry of presence from others as well as the mercy that they are called to can help us through these doubts.  Remember Job and his friends, while they ministered to him with their presence, some of their advice was less than sound.  A conversation requires both sides to be engaged in order to be fully successful.

The doubts that I have experienced are not behind me, one day they will rear their heads again, but how I handle them is my choice.  If I handle them honestly, they can be used for strengthening, rather than weakening my faith.  May we allow our times of doubt the opportunity to strengthen our faith.  God is big enough to handle our doubt, don't let anyone tell you differently.

Painful Growth

At my church, we’ve spent the month of January looking at the idea of reflex. A reflex is an automatic response to something. Some reflexes are good, some are bad. We generally think about the idea of reflex when it comes to our bodies. When someone throws something at us, our reflex is to raise our hands and shield ourselves. When something comes close to our eyes, our eyes shut for protection.

As we prepare to wrap up our series, I have been thinking about the idea of training our reflexes. If we aren’t happy with the way that we react, the way we respond or reflex, can we change it? I think that we can. But we don’t do it alone, we don’t do it overnight, and it takes work.

Training is all about improvement and strengthening. In order to grow, we need to push ourselves. Most of us are probably not disciplined enough to do that by ourselves. I would guess that it’s a fairly small percentage of the population that is so self-motivated that they never need accountability in their training regime. The rest of us, we need all the help that we can get.

In order for growth to happen, we need to begin to experience breakdown. Training is painful, it hurts. We push ourselves to the point where our muscles actually experience trauma and during the rest that we give ourselves after a workout, the muscles repair themselves to be just a little bit more prepared, more strengthened than they were when they experienced the trauma, so that the next time they are faced with the same thing, it won’t happen again. That’s why we need to keep pushing a little bit more every time.

There are a few dangers in this process. We could push ourselves too hard, causing more than a slight trauma to our muscles which will not repair itself in a shorter time period. If this happens and we don’t give ourselves adequate time to recover, we may cause more severe damage. Even if we don’t push ourselves too hard, if we don’t give our bodies adequate time and resources to recover from the trauma, we also might cause problems. We need to provide our bodies with the best case to recover from the trauma that we have put them through, eating right, resting, and doing whatever we can to nourish them.

If we go through the process of working out and don’t really push ourselves, we won’t see any significant improvement. We will find ourselves on a plateau where we are continuing the same. There needs to be some pain associated with our growth. If we don’t push ourselves just a little bit further than we did the last time, we will just stay the same.

Whether we fully realize it or not, this process of growth applies not only to our physical bodies but our spiritual bodies as well. To be honest, it’s much easier to look out at a group of people and tell that they haven’t been working out physically than it is to look out at the same group and know that they haven’t been working out spiritually. It’s easier to hide spiritual “flabbiness.” But if anyone spends any time with you, they’ll be able to tell, it will come out in your conversations, your reactions, and your attitudes.

In some ways, the Western church has plateaued in regards to a spiritual workout. I am guilty of it myself. It’s easy not to push myself. It’s easy to do things the way that I did yesterday or the day before and not push myself. I don’t care which spiritual discipline that we’re talking about, if we don’t push ourselves a little bit more than we did yesterday or the day before, we will not grow.

If we’re not “feeling it” at least a little when we’re done with a workout, chances are that we didn’t push ourselves as much as we could have. I’m too satisfied with stagnancy, too satisfied with staying the same, too satisfied with not pushing myself. That’s why I need others in my life who can hold me accountable, who can kick my butt and push me more than I will push myself.

No workout will be successful if there isn’t an adequate amount of preparation as well. If I’m eating a lot of crummy food that doesn’t provide nutrients, vitamins, and minerals to my body, my body won’t be able to sustain the stress that I am putting it under. In the same way, if I am not eating and drinking from the source of God’s Word, getting a healthy diet, my workouts will be for naught.

It’s easy to look at the year ahead and makes a lot of plans as to what to do, how to eat, and how to live. The hard thing is the follow through. May we all commit and find others to hold us accountable so that we might experience true growth. May we all “eat” nutritious meals so that we might allow ourselves to be nourished by the Word of God. No growth happens if He is not a part of it