Growth

What do you believe about stress?

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For the most part my friends at UBC are not too stressed… yet. However, I’ve been thinking that before it gets tough it might be good to pre-load some different thinking about stress.

How you think about stress even what you believe about stress makes a difference.

Jesus was straightforward with His disciples on the matter encouraging them not to think that following Him was the end of stress. He said, “In this world you will have troubles.” Through the Gospel of Jesus we are encouraged to consider our troubles as an opportunity to grow in our faith. James writes,

“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.  James 4:2-4

Activating our faith in Jesus gives meaning and resets our outlook to being God-centered rather than self-centered.

I have wondered if our faith affects us physiologically, all they way to a cellular level.

In the talk below Kelly McGonigal, who has been talking about how bad stress is for us, shares how recent studies have changed her message.

 

 

 

God’s Spirit and the Frontiers of Your Soul

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Years ago I read Dallas Willard’s phrase “the unexplored frontiers of the human soul” and his encouragement that we go there as pioneers. I want to go there with God. The Apostle Paul joyfully reminds the church in Corinth of God’s gift of the Spirit to take us into the expanse of God’s love, His thoughts, and His free gifts for us.

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined

what God has prepared for those who love him.”

10But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. 11No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. 12And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.  1 Corinthians 2:9-12

Crowd-Sourcing Obedience

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Waiting for the crowd is tempting.

Who’s in your crowd? You know… its the people you worry about and give energy to managing their approval.

Crowd-sourcing obedience to Jesus is deadly.

Jesus warns against waiting for the crowd before responding to His grace and call to follow Him.

13“You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. 14But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.  Matthew 7:13-14

Thankfully Jesus assures us of His Presence as we seek the grace to obey Him. The conviction to obey Jesus over the approval of people is sourced by our acceptance of  His Lordship and His promise to be with us.  See John 14:15-21:

15“If you love me, obey my commandments. 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. 17He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. 18No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you. 19Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Since I live, you also will live. 20When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.”

 

Following Jesus and Busy

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Last night at our community vision night our speaker Tyler Miley taught us that the sense of stress & anxiety grows as the distance between our responsibilities and our  capacities grow.  Finding the right balance for life in order to reduce that space and to find our individual and even seasonal balance is essential.

I was reminded me of another reflection I had on the growth of the church in Philippi. In Acts 16 we hear about a business woman named Lydia:

13On the Sabbath we went a little way outside the city to a riverbank, where we thought people would be meeting for prayer, and we sat down to speak with some women who had gathered there. 14One of them was Lydia from Thyatira, a merchant of expensive purple cloth, who worshiped God. As she listened to us, the Lord opened her heart, and she accepted what Paul was saying. 15She was baptized along with other members of her household, and she asked us to be her guests. “If you agree that I am a true believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my home.” And she urged us until we agreed.

 

Lydia was a business woman.

She ran a household. And was clearly influential  — she created the space for others to hear the Gospel and respond.

Her expensive purple cloth business was likely quite successful and connected her with the upper levels of society.

As there was not a synagogue in Phillipi (it required 10 Jewish men) they had a place of prayer.

 

Lydia was probably a busy person. But her pattern of life created the space for thoughtful engagement with God. Her pattern of life was influenced by the Sabbath and she created space for rest. Her pattern of life included her extended family and community so she created space for support. Her pattern of life had margins so she was able to extend hospitality.

 

And now God had opened up her heart to Jesus and brought salvation to her and her circle of influence. She says, “I am a true believer in the Lord.”

 

I wish we could observe in the Scripture what the pattern of her life looked like in the days following her baptism. But this thought remains with me: to think I’m too busy for Jesus misses the mark.

Doc reads the Bible with new appreciation

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In the venture of bringing water to all people in Darfur region, Doc Hendley had come to the edge of a violent death at the hands of bloodthirsty men. In the midst of incredible beauty he had also encountered the foreboding power accompanying the wildness of nature. His spiritual journey evident throughout his book, Wine to Water, A Bartender’s Quest to Bring Clean Water to the World, takes another turn. He writes:

I started reading the Bible–it’s pretty much unavoidable when your dad is a preacher man–but when I was a kid, reading the Bible was always something we were required to do.  This time, reading the book again smack in the middle of one of the most beautiful mountain ranges I’d ever seen, I began taking something different away from the Bible.

I loved reading about how Jesus hung out with drunks and hookers, and that his first miracle, as I could best calculate, was making approximately a hundred and twenty gallons of wine so that a wedding party could continue rocking out instead of ending early because there was no more booze.  And I was fired up when I began to learn the uncensored versions of those Bible stories that I heard as a child, like when David, after knocking Goliath out, took the giant’s sword, cut off his head, and proceeded to carry it around for the rest of the day, wielding it as a trophy.

Instead of making me feel like I as being preached at or judged, the stories spoke to me. And what I read made me feel hopeful. It encouraged me that I didn’t have to be a perfect do-gooder to actually do something good in this world.

It also made me yearn for the opportunity to one day become a husband and a father.  I can’t explain why exactly.  Maybe it was Ismael hounding me about why I wasn’t married yet, or seeing Amir playing lovingly with his children.  Or maybe all that desert living just finally gave me some clarity, telling me it was time to grow up.  Whatever it was that last night in Jebel Marra, I prayed out to God, asking him to spare my life and to get me out of that crazy place so I could one day experience firsthand the love of being a husband and a father.  What I didn’t bargain for was the fact that from that day one, I was for the first time legitimately scared whenever I went back into the field. Before, I was younger and reckless. Suddenly, I guess, I had a real reason to stay alive.  p.212-213

Learn more about Doc Hendley and the work of Wine to Water.