Friday, February 26, 2010

Careful...

1 Cor. 10:12 (NKJV)
Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

Yesterday I got up, looked out the window and saw that we had received two inches of snow over the night. So, I got suited up to go start up the snowblower to clear my driveway. As I was on my way out the garage door, I remembered thinking, "be careful, snow on top of ice is very slippery". So, I thought I knew what I was doing, but alas, as I stepped on a very slight slope next to my shed, I slipped. I was thinking all the way down (6', 6" is a long ways to fall and it felt like slow motion) "how is there ice on a slope?" As I landed on my back I could hear my fifty year old bones crunch as if an overzealous chiropractor were taking out his frustrations on me. I was able to turn over but not get up so I laid in the snow until I could. I am typing this blog with a very sore neck and shoulders today.

The point is? You can't be too careful. I thought I knew where the ice was, and it was where I thought I was, it also was where I wasn't counting on it being. I should have moved slower, should have paid more attention. I should have put on the ice grippers. I should have... The context of the text I have cut and pasted to this blog is still great advice. Temptation is deceptive. It certainly shows up where we expect it many times, but it shows up too often where we don't expect it. You can't be too careful.

Just when we think we have the enemy all figured out, that we are safe and secure and we are sure we won't get duped, Satan sets a new trap for us. While we can spend our time avoiding the old temptatio, we walk into the new. We need to take time to arm ourselves with precautions like prayer, the Word and godly counsel. Just like ice grippers could have kept my shiny side up on the ice, so the Holy Spirit can keep our eyes open to the way of escape that is provided in every temptation.

So, I am taking my aspirin every four hours and vowing to be smarter in the future. I will take the time to avoid another fall, maybe next time it will be with older bones and more consequences. I will also continue to prepare myself daily to walk in the Spirit and avoid the trap of the enemy. On both accounts I will save myself a lot of pain.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Margins

Creating margins in our lives is an incredibly important subject, however, one that we perhaps do not often give enough thought to doing. We in some ways may do it intuitively but also run the risk of not paying attention to this important issue if we do not plan for it.

Margins? Margins are the spaces we need in life to renew, refresh and restore ourselves in between our busy moments in life. Some people create margin by sleeping in, some by going out and doing something they enjoy, others by reading or whatever gives you the opportunity to refill your spiritual, emotional or physical "tanks". When we are constantly booked up and running from one event to another, we use up our spiritual, emotional or physical resources much like a car uses fuel from the gas tank. At some point, we have to make a purposeful stop and fill it up again. Margin is when and where this happens for us on the spiritual, emotional and physical level.

Some may say that they actually like being booked up and running all of the time, that they wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they were not busy. Some people do find that activity does fill a need in their lives. That is, if everything continues to go smoothly. An analogy might be like the person who has multiple credit cards with maxed balances. They can keep up with the minimum payments just fine, so what's the problem? Well, everything is fine until something goes wrong. Illness, loss of job, an accident, you know, Murphy's Law applies to our lives. Something will eventually hiccup in our "running like clockwork" world and then it seems everything comes apart. This is the problem with not having margin in our lives. It is deceptive to think that everything is fine running at 100% all of the time until it isn't fine anymore. I have found that long periods of stability are always followed by seasons of instability. How we survive the seasons of instability is predicated on how well we create margin into our lives in the long periods of stability. Going back to the credit card analogy, if we use the long periods of stability to prepare ourselves as best we can to pay off our debt, the better we will weather the period of instability whatever it may be.

Jesus was an excellent model of creating margin. Often just before or just after a big event or significant moment, Jesus would retreat to a "lonely place" for prayer either with his disciples or alone. It must have been an important time for him to reconnect with the Father for renewing his spiritual, emotional or physical strength. David throughout his life also sought margin. A common phrase you will read as you follow David's life is, "he encouraged himself in the Lord". Many of the Psalms that David wrote also speak to margin, Psalm 23 is perhaps the most obvious as he speaks of "green pastures and still waters", "he restores my soul" and other illustrative phrases.

A friend of mine is going through one of the most significant emotional challenges of his life. His wife, one that was perceptively the perfect picture of health, experienced a catastrophic heart attack. He blogs about what a toll this has taken on him emotionally. She is miraculously recovering by the way thanks to God's grace. But because of his discipline of prayer, Bible study and a healthy lifestyle, he has had the margin to absorb the stress of watching his wife struggle to survive. Life just has too many unpredictable twists for us to live on the edge all of the time. We need margin in our lives.

We each need to inventory our souls and see if we are living too much on the edge, counting on the deception that life will always be manageable. What can you do to refill your spiritual, emotional and physical tanks on a regular basis? What can you do now in the stable moment of your life that will prepare you for less stable times? Wisdom comes from God as the Holy Spirit leads us and directs us if we take the time to listen. I encourage you to take the time.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Catching Up

Wow. I feel as if I have been through the wringer. I haven't been sick as I have been this past week in a long while. My wife, poor thing, had it worse than I, but I only pity her because of my love for her as I suspect she was the carrier of whatever bug that bit us. So, I didn't keep my goal of at least one post per week last week. I am sure there are legions of heart broken fans.

I did preach this past Sunday, I wasn't sure my voice would hold out, but with lots of help from others in the service, I was able to preserve my voice enough to preach my message. The weakness of my voice was incentive to keep the length of my message shorter which I am sure was appreciated by many.

By the way, my wife who was feeling too sick to attend church Sunday morning was able to watch via the internet through our church website. I am finding the internet webcast to be more and more amazing with the people it is reaching. We have had people watch our service while on vacation, at home sick, as visitors checking us out before they walk through the doors, and former members who live far away and like to keep in touch. Too amazing, too easy and too simple to not do. Technology opens some interesting doors.

I was also thankful that we had scheduled the Marriage and relationship seminar for this past Sunday and Monday evenings. Not only was the material presented in a very entertaining and humorous way, but the material was shared in a very effective and practical manner. The material that was presented is material that I have not heard shared before. It was important and needful information that the church needs to know and to share. We had a fun but important time the two evenings, the turn out was really great too.

Thanks for checking out my blog, I apologize I am not adding much this week. I hope to be back on task for next week's installment.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

LOVE - Is it give or take?

I was giving a lot of thought this week to what the difference is between real, true, love and well, you know, love. It's a word that we apply to everything from hot dogs to Jesus. There is something fundamentally wrong with that. So how do we explain the difference? What is the real thing?

It occurred to me that so often things or people that we "love" are things or people that we take from. The pleasure derived or the benefit to us causes us to "love" that thing or person. It's very self-centric. Being a pastor, it has been my experience to ask prospective young couples to be married, "why do you love _____?" The answers are always self-centric. Typically, the responses are; "They make me feel wonderful", "he/she does so many things for me", "I love the way take care of me", so on and so forth. The answers reveal the heart. The answers essentially say, "it is all about me."

God gives us a picture of what true love is all about. In perhaps the most memorized passage of scripture in all the Bible, John 3:16, the picture is very different.

"For God so loved the world that He gave..."

There it is right there. God's love gives, it doesn't take. God the Father gave us Jesus, His only begotten Son. He gave us forgiveness, He gave us eternal life. Real, true, love gives.

What a contrast to the world around us. It's all about what we can take from each other. In marriage it is all about how the other can please us. When our spouse no longer pleases us, we discard them. Real love? Not at all.

God's love gives and gives and gives. It never gives up! Maybe we ought to examine our "love" for others and be honest with ourselves about how much taking we do as opposed to giving. Real love gives.