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Premeditated Ignorance

July 2, 2011 in church, Daily Life, God and us, Parenting with 0 Comments

When our oldest child was a toddler, my wife and I were baby bodyguards – never more than a leap away from rescue if she were approaching something potentially harmful.  My wife still has that instinct (she’s a mom).  I, however, have become a bit slower in my response time. Our 3rd child is now a toddler and if he is approaching something potentially harmful or messy, I first observe, assess, play out the possible outcomes in my mind, and THEN determine it’s worth getting up for.

Every now and then I pretended not to hear my kids speaking out of line or see them acting out of line.  This way I figure I cannot be held accountable for correcting them.  For example, if I leave the room at just the right time, I can plead ignorance when asked “Did you know the baby was in the cupboard?!”

You could call it pre-meditated ignorance. You can’t be held accountable for what you didn’t know, right?  And as long as you are NOT in the right place at the right time, you may experience this bliss of ignorance (for a brief time).

I have been faced with a challenging reality in my life.  In my church experience, I have not been held accountable.  How many sermons have I sat through, books have I read, prayers have I prayed, without being held accountable for the action steps I was compelled (or commanded!) to take?  When I go to church on Sunday morning and sit through a sermon and jot down some notes (assuming my notes are action steps, not interesting info points), who asks me later how I am doing on those things I wrote down? What consequence do I face if I fail to address problems in my life that God brings to my attention?

How many small group sessions or Bible studies have I sat through without anyone asking me “What are you going to do about it?” And then making me feel like I BETTER do something about it.

I find myself premeditating my ignorance.  If I never tell anyone what I think I should do, I don’t have to be accountable to take that step.  If I pretend I don’t hear God (or willingly plug my ears to Him) I don’t have to be held accountable to a command I never heard.   I think that’s probably a dangerous way to live.

I may premeditate my ignorance in order to dodge accountability.  But in the end, I will have to give an account for every deed and every word that came from us.  At times I think I am clever when I dodge accountability.  But I will one day find out it was not dodged, merely delayed. Accountability is inevitable.  I would be wise to take advantage of it now while it still has an opportunity to influence positive change in my life.


What Dreams May Come

October 6, 2010 in Daily Life, God and us, Parenting with 1 Comment

There are many messages out there for our kids. Some align with our values, some we hope they never cross our kid’s ears. These messages come through the media, peers, and parents, among other sources.

Lately I’ve been wrestling with choices in my life. I imagine this is a common struggle among men who are balancing their career pursuits with family. My life was thrown out of balance due to my recent growing passion that could easily develop into a side business. Now, if you looked at either my schedule or my to-do list, you’d think there’s no way you would be able to pursue a side venture! (unless it only required 5 ½ minutes a day)

I’m glad my conscience is active and I was sensitive to the imbalance which enabled me to make efforts to put things right. But this has gotten me thinking about the Christian life. Many things somehow keep boiling down to the simple concept of submission (or you could use the word obedience) to God.

Some messages in our culture can seem innocent. There’s a message in our culture that you might call the American gospel. It’s called “Follow your dreams” or “You can accomplish anything you want to”. I’m glad for this, in some regards, because it has probably advanced society and made things easier for us. But from a Christian perspective, this has a subtle and possibly undetectable pull away from God.

As Christian parents, we know that the best thing we can do for our children is to teach them to obey everything God commands. It would be very tempting to be lazy and default to the “Follow your dreams…follow your heart…You can be anything you want to be…” attitude. Won’t it create conflict to tell a child to obey God AND follow your own plans for your life? In the end, they will have to choose one or the other (or continue to live with an internal struggle.)

I suppose this is just as loud of a message for myself. It’s almost cliché anymore for a father to sacrifice his family relationships in order to provide for them through his career. I think it is necessary for Dad (or Mom) to work in order to provide for the family. But there comes a tipping point when it’s not worth the relational sacrifice.

I want my children to learn to obey God and follow HIS plan for their life. How will I ever teach them that if I am caught in the struggle?

Oh, the pull the world has on us! May God’s pull be stronger!

(And may my arms not get ripped off in the battle)

(Above Image Provided by: br3akthru / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

In one hand out the other

August 11, 2010 in Daily Life, God and us, Kingdom with 1 Comment

My family is well acquainted with eating out.  There have been many times where we get the bill and my wife and I talk about how awesome it’d be to have so much money we could leave a huge tip. Wouldn’t that feel awesome to just be able to drop a $50 or $100 and bolt out the door?

I like to think I would be the kind of guy who would be generous if I somehow acquired massive wealth.  I know, by world-wide standards we DO have massive wealth.  I’m talking about if we came into so much money we had well over what we absolutely needed to live in middle-class America.  I like to think that if somehow my family started raking in the dough that we would live off what we needed and give away the rest.

I don’t know.  As I write this, I’m imagining what it would be like to win the lottery.  I’m sure my first thought would be what we could do immediately – vacation, addition on the house, pay off all our debt, etc..  I’m sure most of us immediately think of meeting some personal need or desire.  I guess that gut reaction reveals how much we are really influenced by the world of materialism.  And I’m sure some would say “What’s wrong with spending it on yourself?”  I like to think we would seek godly counsel (and God’s counsel) on what to do with it.  On the other hand, don’t most people fall to ruin when they win the lottery?

I have this theory that the more money you give away (with the right motivation) the more money God will give you.  The theory supposes that if God can trust you to be someone who channels His funds where they’re needed, He’ll give you more funds to channel.  Now, on the surface this could seem like a get-rich-quick scheme or the prosperity gospel.  But remember.  In my theory, the person is motivated by being a good steward of God’s resources, not by getting rich.

This gives me an idea for an experiment that maybe someday I’ll try.  What if I added a PayPal “Donation” button on the sidebar on my blog.  What if every penny I got from those donations, I gave away to someone in need – asking God where to send it.  Would God prompt people to give and prompt me to give it to certain people?  I’ve heard many stories where a ministry or missionary needed X number of dollars, they prayed, and X number of dollars mysteriously arrived in the mail.  Would I be the guy who mailed the check?

But then I wonder.  What about my family’s financial needs?  We do have what I believe to be legitimate monetary needs beyond our normal cost of living.  Is it right for us to give money away when we have our own needs?  I guess the simple answer is “Well, yeah, If God tells us to”.  It’s a tough thing to reconcile.

I guess what I’m asking is – Could it really be true that if we seek God’s Kingdom first then He will take care of all our needs?

FSBO

July 13, 2010 in church, Daily Life, God and us, Pastoring, Worship with 3 Comments

I was listening to a sermon the other day and either my own mind came up with this or it was God’s Spirit revealing truth – or at least a different point of view to look from.  Now, this is all kind of off the top of my head.  I haven’t searched scriptures to verify the theological accuracy of these ideas :) But let’s take a quick look at the concept of “surrender.”

The act of surrender is a daily practice for those who call Jesus “Lord”.  When we wake up in the morning, our natural inclination is to take life into our own hands and let God watch.  Thankfully, God knows us well and Jesus told us we would need to deny ourselves daily.  After listening to the aforementioned sermon, I’m starting to wonder about surrender, what it really means, and what motivates surrender in my life.

Often times, especially while partaking in the Lord’s Supper (communion, during worship services) I meditate on what Jesus did for me.  I think of Jesus giving everything he had for me (and us).   It would seem natural to think “Jesus gave it all for me, therefore, I owe it to Him to give my life to Him.”  Is this way of thinking right?  Am I thinking that I am indebted to Jesus and therefore I have to pay Him back for what He did for me?  Do I OWE him my life because he gave His life for me?  If that were true,  doesn’t that make Jesus’ sacrifice more of a barter than a gift?  Jesus gave to me without any requirement of repayment.  It’s not a trade-off.

So now what I’m thinking is, in stead of “surrender” being a matter of giving and receiving, perhaps it’s a matter of ownership.  God owns all he has created – including me.  Perhaps surrender is about us re-acknowledging that God owns us and WE don’t own ourselves.  Yes, in a sense, it’s the same as “giving your life to Jesus”.  But I don’t know if I’ve really ever owned myself.

We often lead an existence with only a vague sense of God’s presence.   It’s so easy for us to lose sight of God’s ownership of the world (and everything in it) because there are much louder and more consistent messages in our lives that drill the ideas of personal possession and ownership into our consciousness.

In those moments when I remember that Jesus bought my life with His death, I need to re-align my way of thinking and humbly surrender ownership rights.

What do you think, reader?  Perhaps it’s all semantics.  Don’t know.  Whichever way you look at it, though, for a disciple of Jesus, surrender is a big deal.  And it’s really difficult.  And COMPLETE surrender might just be a rare quality.  Complete surrender – is it even possible?  Sounds like a good blog post.  We’ll see!

Preposition Proposition

July 11, 2010 in church, God and us, Worship with 0 Comments

It’s Sunday morning again and many of us will be heading off to some sort of worship gathering.  Currently, God has me carrying responsibilities as our local congregation’s worship leader (among many other things).  As a worship leader I am often thinking on and wondering about the corporate worship environment and experience.

A while back I was reading a few different passages in the Bible and a phrase came to me.  ”Look for God”.  This phrase, or invitation, has become part of my Sunday morning vocabulary and I’ve used it many times to help us all understand one of the facets of worship.  I explore it a bit here.  Lately, however, I’ve been thinking of a new preposition.

I thought about it a lot and it seems like my worship times with God (I mean those times of singing and just standing before God in adoration and awe) are often more like a phone conversation or writing a letter.  How much do we realize God’s presence among us when we’re worshipping?  I mean a real conscience, relational sense – not just the cognitive sense.  How much do we just send off our thoughts and words into the air with the trust or hope that it reaches the invisible God somewhere somehow?  Or that we send it off like an email and know that some distant God will receive it.  Or we express our hearts to God not really expecting a reply.

Let me suggest a new phrase.  ”Look AT God”.  This morning we will try an experiemnt.  Before we begin our time of singing, I will ask the congregation to try this experiment.  To close their eyes and in the best way they can figure out, to look AT God.  Then once we’re all looking at Him, to tell Him we are there to meet with Him, and to tell Him it’d be awesome if He would reveal Himself to us.

I realize this will have different results for different people.  For anyone who doesn’t really know God, this will be meaningless. I suspect there may be people more religiously oriented who’ve never began to imagine God is really there.  There may be some who know God but become painfully aware of certain sin barriers that separate them from seeing God.  Either way, I hope this helps shape our understanding of our relationship with God – that it is a real relationship.

Have you ever tried to close your eyes and look at God before talking to Him?

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