From Fans to Followers. Jesus calls us out of the crowd.

/ Craig / Leave a comment

IMG_5767

Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me. Luke 9:23

 

Its great to blend in and disappear in the crowd sometimes. There is an almost cellular compulsion to just be like the other. Part of maturing is the acceptance that I’m a lot like and a lot different from folks in a crowd. I can be a part of crowd, enjoying the music, the art of another, or the vibe of a public event. Most artists are going to be just fine with that. But, when Jesus gets in front of crowd he calls people out. He doesn’t seem to be content with “fans.” He wants followers.

His invitation is winsom. He truly does assume the best about the crowd. “If any of you wants to be my follower.” I like that. Jesus knew that being about the Father’s love-work would create attraction. You like hanging around together in this movement? So, you want to be a follower? Jesus is actually looking to move people from being “fans” to becoming “followers.”

Jesus also clarifies what its going to take to be a follower. Followers of Jesus have a disruptive calling: “You must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily and follow me.” People who have become fans like to look at and observe The Gospel at work. People who have become followers like to become participants in The Gospel work. It starts in them. Jesus transforms all of life and relationships through HIS life, death, burial, and resurrection. The Gospel changes everything.

I’m naturally resistant to the Gospel changing everything. We all are! We are all infected with this resistance. So it does take the work of the Spirit to move us into a sacrificial, submitted-to-God, kind of life. There is an ease to the Christian life — Jesus said it himself — “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly.”  But there is also a narrowness to the Christian life that does constrain against my selfishness— “Enter through the narrow gate for wide is the gate that leads to destruction and many enter through it.” Selfishness — the desire to be lord of my life when Jesus is the Lord — will be against what Jesus wants. Fans can do what they want. Followers do what Jesus wants. So, when I’m trying to live the Christian life in my own strength because “its what I should do” its really going to be a slog! On the way to the new life that comes from Him, I’m going to have to also attend to the death and burial of a “thing” resisting Jesus. That’s the cross of discipleship — the movement into obedience. There’s so much blessing on the other side of being aligned with Jesus! There’s no other way to be in His joy.

Beating sloth and eight other thoughts on discipline.

/ Craig / Leave a comment

IMG_2480

If you love sleep, you will end in poverty. Keep your eyes open, and there will be plenty to eat! Proverbs 20:13

1. Discipline harnesses your capacity to focus in order to bring about a sustained change.

2. Discipline about the “right” things in life is as important as having the capacity to focus.

3. You can’t be disciplined about everything at once in life at the same time; so discipline multiplies itself through the creation of habits; habits are disciplines and systems built into your life or organization over time. Disciplined people have lots of “good” habits.

4. Discipline is the capacity to delay gratification in order to achieve greater success. (Bill Hybels)

5. Excellent people with sustained discipline tap into deep wells of reverence for what matters most in life.

6. Reverence beats sloth’s reluctance to embrace pain associated with discipline and brings honour and love to our relationship with God, self, people, and the stuff of earth.

7. Disciplined people decide ahead of time on how to use their focus, time, and resources in order to advance an area of their lives. They “research” best practices and experiment along the way.

8. Discipline in some areas of life will mean you disappoint people for a time because you will be unavailable for everything. Discipline is a kind of purposed and selected neglect. Wisdom required!

9. Discipline at its best accepts scarcity for a time in order to tap into the abundance of God’s provision.

Looking for Loyalty in a Culture of “just interested.”

/ Craig / 1 Comment

photo

“Interested” is now viral. I see it everyday. It shows up on my Facebook feed as “so and so is interested” in an event near you. My friend’s interest is meant to spark my interest and now I too can join the search for applause by marking my interest. Its tempting to just cast dispersion on the interest button with “Really? Are we really going to reduce the levels of our engagement in life to ‘she was interested?’”

The INTERESTED button is a bid.

Now the ironic part of the interested wave is that sometimes that expression of interest does get turned into action, especially if there are other folks “interested.” Thus, I see the “interest” button as an expression of our search for loyalty. The button expresses our longing for deeper friendships with whom we might share life. My suspicion is that when my friends are pushing the “interested” button they are actually putting a bid out there for someone to reach back to them  and say, “Hey I’m interested in that too, lets do it together.”

The problem.

The problem here is that most of us were really “just interested” when we clicked the button. The button exists because we think its ok, to be just interested. There is no intent. There is no adjustment. There is no commitment. Just interest. So we don’t show up. But we got credit for being interested. I think this is a problem. As Saint Bernard of Clairvaux observes, “Hell is full of good intentions.”

When we settle for just interest we are settling for a life without loyalties. Loyalty in relationships is a reciprocating experience. And loyalty as part of my character is built on making commitments known and then making the adjustments required to fulfill them. This is not to suggest that loyal people never miss the mark on their words. Rather, when loyal people do miss the mark, they acknowledge the fact, and will give an account for their absence.

Loyalty as Steadfast Love

The Scripture captures loyalty in the phrase “steadfast love.” Its part of the nature of God. Its meant to be part of the lives of those who know him. The friendship of King David in the Old Testament and Jonathon, son of King Saul, is marked by “steadfast love.” When we read of their friendship in 1 Samuel 20 we must see it through the lens of the Law, covenant making and God’s steadfast-love. Under the strain of King Saul’s murderous intentions, Jonathan and David are at a cross-roads in their friendship. The reader is confronted with the tensions created by loyalties to family, to friends, and even to God. In the text below, David is already convinced of Saul’s intentions but Jonathan is not.

12And Jonathan said to David, “The Lord, the God of Israel, be witness! When I have sounded out my father, about this time tomorrow, or the third day, behold, if he is well disposed toward David, shall I not then send and disclose it to you? 13But should it please my father to do you harm, the Lord do so to Jonathan and more also if I do not disclose it to you and send you away, that you may go in safety. May the Lord be with you, as he has been with my father. 14If I am still alive, show me the steadfast love of the Lord, that I may not die; 15and do not cut off your steadfast love from my house forever, when the Lord cuts off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth.” 16And Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the Lord take vengeance on David’s enemies.” 17And Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul.  1 Samuel 20:12-16

Loyalty that resists evil and seeks the godly benefit of another is steadfast love. Both Jonathan and David understood the quality as one rooted in the character of their covenant-making God. Throughout the Scripture the steadfast love of God is celebrated and commended to us as what we need and as what we long for in relationships.

Meditation

Take some time to meditate on the following:

Lamentations 3:17-26
17 My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is;
18 so I say, “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.”
19 Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall!
20 My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.
21 But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
26 It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

 

2 Thessalonians 3:5
May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

 

1 Corinthians 15:58
Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

 

Questioning our Desire

/ Craig / Leave a comment

IMG_1632

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12

A desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul, but to turn away from evil is an abomination to fools.
Proverbs 13:19

 

Disappointment.
It can crush the soul and ruin us for a time. This kind of heart sickness generates its own dis-ease and apprehension. It’s an internal crisis that ripples into every relationship.  I remember a season in leadership and life over a decade ago when “hope deferred” felt like the absolute loss of a dream — even the death of a dream. I thought I was finished, undone, and of no use! God met me through that season by reshaping the desires of my heart — particularly God reshaped my understanding of those dreams. Essential to my own growth, even my own survival, through that season was the willingness to acknowledge and enter into the pain of these unmet and shattered expectations.

 

A desire fulfilled.
The wisdom teacher in Proverbs says of a desire fulfilled, “It’s a tree of life” and “It’s sweet to the soul.” Sounds like success and perhaps it is. But when our desires sit only on the surface of production, achievement, or the applause of people it doesn’t last. It is not a tree of life and cannot be a tree of life for us. Sweet to the soul — only for a moment. So what kind of desires fulfilled can be a tree of life? I believe these tree of life desires must be rooted in relationships and a deep purpose planted in our hearts by God. Love and the delight of God must be at the root of “tree of life” desires.

 

To turn away.
The teacher uses the phrase “to turn away” identifying a capacity to discern between our desires. A fool refuses “to turn away” from an evil desire. The fool, considers such deferral and refusal to be “an abomination.” In other words a fool considers it to be the last thing in the world she or he would consider doing — choosing not to fulfill a desire.  Ugh — foolish moments. We’ve all had our foolish moments.

The danger looms when such foolishness becomes the habituated pattern of our lives and the very nature of our character. Its important that we learn to discerning the evil in desires. The desire may be wrong in the eyes of God — it may be a perversion of something He made to be good. The desire may be inappropriate for the nature of our relationships. Or perhaps the desire may have to be deferred for a season because of other commitments in this season of life,fulfilling the desire would actually wreck havoc. This is a timing issue and is truly at the heart of wisdom.

I have a theory about spiritual formation and the seasons of our lives.  Perhaps each major developmental movement from being a child to young adult, from young adult to adulthood and then the seasons of re-evaluated adulthood coming almost every decade, must be accompanied by a renewed commitment to the process and an expansion of our capacity to discern and sift desire. Maybe we must relearn aspects of this process over and over because of the changes that take place in us and in the world around us. Here’s my process:

Naming: Acknowledge the desire.

Binding: Discern the desire’s impact in relationships – to God, to self, to people, and to the stuff of earth; reshape and limit accordingly as a disciple of Jesus in the grace and truth of His Lordship. This may actually be a binding process that comes from God as He brings healing to us in regard to our desires.

 

Loosing: Take steps to move toward a desire fulfilled. This is probably not a straight line as it may involve: prayer, conversations, partnering, a long series of small steps in the right direction, and then absolute surrender to God for Him to accomplish something that’s actually bigger than we are and beyond our capacities.

 

Personal Reflection — What do you think?
Have you had any experience with these two proverbs?
Have you gone through a naming, binding, and loosing process before? What have you learned in the process?
How has Jesus redeemed deferred desires?
Are there desires that you have “nailed to the cross?”
How has God shown up to do more than you thought possible?
Are there desires that you have been ignoring?
Are there desires you have been gracefully fulling with Jesus for the glory of God?

Following Jesus into science

/ Craig / Leave a comment

IMG_1639

I’ve been reading through Walter R. Hearn’s book, Being a Christian in Science. He spent twenty years as a researcher and professor of biochemistry. Below are some of his thoughts on science as a “calling.” Perhaps his thoughts will generate some consideration and appreciation of a scientist or a budding scientist close to you. At UBC I have been getting to know several students who aspire to the research scientist lifeform. Most feel the tension between the lab and the draw of other possible loves. Christian faith enters right into this tension with them but learning how to navigate it does seem to require wrestling with what we call “calling” and the ability to hold onto several ideas at the same time.

Dr. Hearn writes:

It is not improper to speak of having a gift for science. To test that gift, take all the mathematics and science courses you can, and work hard at mastering them. Think of your studies as mind-building, the way athletes and bodybuilders benefit from physical exercise at a gym. For most of us, the challenge of mastering science courses in school will either develop our interest or reveal that God has another direction for us. Good grades in math and science courses serve as reasonably good indicators of our attitude toward science as well as our aptitude for it.

As a rule of thumb we can expect God to call us into a life’s work that we will enjoy. Scientists generally work extremely hard, partly because it is expected but also because they tend to enjoy what they do. Any scientist needs emotional resilience, determination and self-discipline to keep going through long periods when joy is hard to come by. Sometimes theoretical calculations just will not come out right. The most carefully planned experiments can keep going haywire. The atmosphere in a lab can be discouraging because we may be surrounded by colleagues with similar frustrations.

Few Christians in science would expect to solve problems in the lab without putting in the same amount of effort as anyone else. Yet many testify that at least on occasion they have experienced God’s special present in the laboratory. Sometimes that means seeing the breakup of a mental logjam that has held back progress. More often it means being sustained by hope when things are not going well.

 

The apostle Paul referred to faith, hope and love as the “greater gifts,” with love being the greatest of all. Any individual able to exercise those gifts can make an outstanding contribution to a scientific laboratory. A Christian who demonstrates resilient hope biased on an abiding faith, and who can lovingly pass a spirit of hope on to coworkers, can have a salutary effect on the morale of a whole research group.

 

Flexibility is another important characteristic. Studies of psychological profiles indicate that successful scientists have a strong desire to find solutions, but can tolerate a lot of ambiguity and delayed gratification along the way. The most creative scientists can carry around in their heads a dozen competing hypotheses, seriously considering ideas that may turn out to be false or even ridiculous. Scientists must able to play with ideas even when they know that not everyone of them can be correct.

 

Thoughtful Christians often display that same kind of intellectual flexibility. Anyone who has grappled seriously with apparent theological paradoxes comes to realize that each extreme position may hold some partial truth but neither tells the whole story.

 

Scientists are trained to withhold judgement, to remain objective until all experimental results are in. Of course all possible results of all possible experiments are never in . Flexibility can harden into overarching scepticism, reluctance or inability to commit ourselves to any position. In practice, scientists will vigorously support an appealing hypothesis, the one they consider least likely to be falsified, because they believe in it.

 

In theory, at least, a scientists’ commitment to any hypothesis remains tentative. Yet no one gets to be a scientist without making a serious commitment of his or her life to the scientific community. Those who disparage religion caricature it as taking blind leaps of faith. Those who actually live by faith generally keep our eyes wide open — to see where we are going to land.