discipleship

be a king…ask a question

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I regularly encourage my children as they go to school to ask a good question.  Questions accelerate learning.  Questions can take us into the frontier realms of the universe and our souls.  The failure to ask questions is evidence of decay and death.  King Solomon, author of many of the Proverbs in the Bible, says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”  (Proverbs 25:2)  So be a king; ask a question; see where the pursuit of understanding leads you.

Here are some questions that I use; they are listed in no particular order.

1.  What does _________________ (put in the person’s name) need from me in order to grow?

2.  How can my wife and I work together to advance the vision of family we have adopted?

3.  Why am I feeling the way I feel?

4.  What could I add in or take away from my work patterns/practices that would create more effectiveness?  or What small adjustment made as a habit  in the right direction would deliver an accumulative increase in effectiveness?

5.  What is the story and who are the main characters behind the sucess or failure I am observing?

6.  What adjustments in earning, saving, giving, or spending will make the greatest contribution toward my family’s values and vision?

7.  How does what I am doing fit into the Kingdom values, vision and mission of Jesus Christ?  and a related question:  Am I remaining obedient and faithful to the last word I had from Jesus?

8.  Did I honour Jesus Christ in everything today?

OK, your turn.  What questions or types of questions do you regularly ask?

nice churches and mean truths?

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Outrage calmly erupted at my breakfast table when, after reading from James 3:1-12 on the tongue, I addressed every person sitting there with me, “Your tongue is evil.”  The retort was, “That’s mean.”  My response was, “No, the Truth is not mean.”  

I feel that we are inundated with a cultural tide of tolerance that denies the truth for the sake of nice.  Our ability to take a stand within these rising waters will be directly related to our ability to hear God’s prophetic voice in His Word as a Word that reveals the truth about us.  Just as we may say in organizations, “Facts are our friends,” in the depths of our souls, “Truth is our friend.”

Daniel joined the ranks of the great prophets when he interpreted the dream of the great King of Babylon,  Nebuchadnezzar, and called on him to “Renounce your sins.”  The dream terrified them both.  Yet Daniel respectfully and fortunately with a liberty granted by the King pronounced the judgement and hope in God’s graceful vision to Nebuchadnezzar.  Then, he says, “Therefore, O king, be pleased to accept my advice:  Renounce yours sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed.  It may be that then your prosperity will continue.”  (Daniel 4:27)  King Neb did not heed the warning and suffered the full extent of the vision, but he also became the poster child of God’s sovereignty and grace.  He experienced the humbling power of God to bring down the proud, but he also experienced the graceful power of God to exalt the humble.   As Nebuchadnezzar shares in his testimony contained in Daniel 4, “Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just.  And those who walk in pride he is able to humble.”  

For the follower of Jesus, Truth in the Word of God becomes intensely personal for it is the sword of the Spirit.  Declaring it does not exempt us from the challenge of “bearing fruit in keeping with repentance,” as John the Baptizer says in Matthew 3:8.  But if we value nice we will treat truth as meanness, and we will join in with the throngs who seek a broad road rather than a narrow path.  We will abandon our birthright of authority that is intended to accompany the obedience that comes by faith and the sacrifice that comes by love and the endurance that comes by our hope.  We will be nice churches–and no one will listen.

The call to honour the Living Trinue God by renouncing sin sounds mean when it challenges the accepted norms of our own goodness, but it is the sound that gracefully invites us to enter the fullness of life.

redemptive stories and success

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I am reading the Summer 2008 publication Perspectives on Language and Literacy of The International Dyslexia Association.  This issue is dedicated to stories of people who have struggled with dyslexia and how they grew through the struggle to achieve success.  I love what Michael Ryan has to say about redemptive narratives from D. P. McAdams’ perspective.  I believe both Ryan and McAdam’s observations have implications for how we each meet God through the Gospel narrative and actually become part of the story of Jesus’ kingdom.  Ryan writes:

McAdams is this country’s preeminent researcher in the area of personal narratives.  He believes that personal narratives (the stories we tell about our lives) are critical to our self-image and our ability to function as successful adults.  He has studied the personal narratives of thousands of individuals and found that the most socially minded people in our society share common themes in their personal narratives.  He labels these themes, “the Redemptive Self.”  These stories of redemption are not necessarily religious in nature, but their essential theme involves overcoming a struggle or a tragedy and growing from it.  McAdams asserts that much of these individuals’ successes are due to these redemptive narratives.  In fact, he goes as far as to suggest that part of our success as a nation grows out of the fact that we have, as a group, many redemptive narratives, such as taming the wilderness and overcoming discrimination and segregation.

It seems to me that one of the major tasks of discipleship is to help people retell the story of Jesus and also tell how their intersection with Him has helped them overcome the world.  They now live His-Story.

“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God… This is love for God: to obey his commands.  And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world.  This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.  Who is it that overcomes the world?  Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”  1 John 5:1,3-5 (NIV)

17 observations from 1 John on the difference knowing Jesus makes

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The writer of 1 John observes differences that knowing Jesus makes in the lives of people.

1.  Loving relationships with God and with other people.   1:1-4
2.  Honesty about sin(s), purfication and forgiveness from sin.  1:5-2:2
3.  Obedience to the commands of Jesus as a lifestyle that reflects that character of Jesus.  2:3-8
4.  Loving “your brother” rather than living in the darkness of “hating your brother.”  2:9-11
5.  Progressive growth;  new beginnings–the delight of being forgiven by your heavenly Father; youthful zeal–the delight of overcoming the evil one through the strength of God and His Word; parental joy–knowing God and passing on the life of faith to others.  2:12-14
6.  A willingness to do the will of God that triumphs over the desire to possess the stuff and powers of this world.  2:15-16
7.  An annointing from God that leads into the truth and ultimately into confidence before Christ.
8.  An Intense desire to live purely and abandon sin, in response to the love of God through Christ that creates a child of God.  2:29-3:10
9.  Love for others even when it brings the Christian into conflict with the world.  Love for others even when it costs.  3:11-20
10.  Effectual prayer life.  3:21-23
11.  Personal awareness of the presence of God via the Holy Spirit.  3:24
12.  Discernment regarding the “source” of messages and their messengers.  4:1-6
13.  Growing maturity in loving and receiving love in and out of the church. 4:7-21
14.  Overcoming the world through faith in Jesus, the Son of God.  5:1-5
15.  Deep conviction of the divinity of the incarnated Jesus Christ and the necessity of knowing Him for eternal life.  5:6-12
15.  Confidence in prayer.  5:13-15
16.  Concern when a brother is caught in sin.  5:16-18
17.  Persistent devotion to Jesus in a world devoted to the evil one.  5:19-21

meeting God daily

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Meeting God daily keeps us from running on empty.  Meeting God daily keeps us connected and fruitful.  The writer of Psalm 1 creates some urgency to make every day a decision day:  will I meet God or not?  Will I delight in His Words or the word and way of someone else? 

When I was serving in a church in Texas during seminary, I was regularly blessed to hear an older women, Lily White, stand in our services and quote Psalm 1.  As she spoke I felt that every word had weight and pierced through the shallowness of our daily lives.  “Blessed is the man who does not walk int he counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.  But his delight is in the law of the LORD and on his law he meditates day and night.  He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.  Whatever he does prospers.  Not so the wicked!  They are like chaff that the wind blows away.  Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.  For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”

To fail to choose God and His Word is presented by the Psalmist as a drift into a unrooted and unfruitful life.  The perishing life is progressive:  to walk in the counsel of the wicked is to be taken in by the words and way of seeing the world that constantly seeks to edit out God; to stand in the way of sinners is to increase one’s association, even flirt with the lifestyle of rebellion against God, so that one may blend into the crowd; to sit in the seat of mockers, is to have developed great comfortability even an unconsciousness of how removed one is from God-His character and His way.

The mocker is one who acts surprised when presented with a view of life that includes God, delights in His Word, and lives with an awareness of the full-bodied character of God which raises such a high view of Creation and people that injustice and lovelessness matters.  The mocker says, “Where’s God?  What can God do?  He can’t touch us?  It doesn’t matter how you live as long as you survive happily.”

Perhaps the mockers biggest problem is that the internal order for of belief and behaviour has been turned on its head.  No longer does conviction of what is true guide their behaviours.  Instead, truth through God’s revelation has been tossed in favour of their truth shaped by the behaviours the mocker has adopted and now must justify.  The mocker will not tolerate the discontinuity of belief in a God who cares when their behaviours and the related crowd and comfort are more important. 

We can all drift into the seat of the mocker–it is the fruit of a long series of choices.  However we are presented with the option of responding to God’s invitation to meet Him and to delight in His Word.  The consequence is dramatically different.  To delight in the Word of God brings us into a life that is rooted into God Himself.  When the season requires fruit our lives can bear it:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, goodness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).  When others are blowing dry in the wind of life, we can keep our leaves–display the evidence of an interior world that is connected to The Source of all life.

Meditation on the Word of God is the choice to meet God daily.  Christian meditation does not require us to empty our minds of the realities that face us: darkness, pain, suffering, awareness of injustice or even the evidence of grace to enjoy–beauty, nature, relationships, good food.  Christian mediation is the taking in and digestion of God’s Words in response to Him.  To delight in His Word is to chew it up and digest it as a message that connects what is most important-God, to life. 

Begin simply.  10-15 minutes a day.  We have been using the SOAP acrostice and a series of questions to help us connect God’s Word to our lives.  It’s His Word, ask Him to help you.

Scripture:  Open your Bible to the reading following your reading plan.  Take time reading and allow God to speak to you.  When you are done, look for a verse that particularly spoke to you that day, and write it in your journal.

Observation:  What do you think God is saying to you in this Scripture?  Ask the Holy Spirit to each you and reveal Jesus to you.  Paraphrase and write this scripture down in your own words, in your journal.  Is there a:  Sin to confess?  Promise to claim?  Attitude to change?  Command to keep?  Example to follow?  Prayer to pray?  Error to avoid?  Truth to believe?  Something to thank God for?

Application:  Personalize what you have read, by asking yourself how it applies to your life right now.  Perhaps is it instruction, encouragement, revelation of a new promise, or corrections for a particular area of your life.  Write how this Scripture can apply to you today.  Prayer:  This can be as simple as asking God to help you use this Scripture, or it may be a prayer for insight on what He may be revealing to you.  Remember, prayer is a two-way conversation, so be sure to listen to What God has to say!  Now, write it out.

Here are some question for personal examination built from Galatians 5:22-23.  (These can be found in Principle 7 of Celebrate Recovery)  I have found them useful at the end of my day, to meet God and review the day with Him.  Since God watches over the way of the righteous, I want to watch over my way as well.

  • How did I show love to others?
  • Did I act in an unloving way toward anyone?
  • Did others see in me the joy of having a personal relationship with Jesus?  If not, why not?
  • How was my serenity, my peace?  Did anything happen that caused me to lose it?  What was my part in it?
  • Was I patient?  What caused me to lose my patience?  Do I owe anyone amends?
  • Would anyone say that I was kind/good?  In what ways did I act unkind?
  • How was my faithfulness?
  • Did I keep my word with everyone?
  • How was my gentleness and self-control?  Did I lose my temper, speak a harsh or unkind word to someone?