:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

I once heard an interview with comedian Dennis Leary who shared that his grade school teacher told him that anyone could be president. He returned home that day and asked his dad, “Can anyone be president?”

“Sure, anyone can,” his dad replied.

“Could I be president?” young Dennis asked.

His dad snorted and replied, “Are you kidding me?”

I like conversations like that because Leary’s father didn’t necessarily discourage him from pursuing a successful career. He simply understood who his son is and where he would be successful—i. e. not politics.

Why I Want to Fail

I have a little hobby on Twitter where I unfollow everyone who posts pithy motivational sayings about never giving up, never quitting, and failure being a choice we don’t have to make. I wrote about this a little while back in a post called Jesus Hates the Smell of Failure, and I wanted to follow up with some additional thoughts about the pitfalls of “never” giving up.

For instance, I want to fail. I don’t want to exclusively fail, but I’ve been thinking lately that I want God to expose everything that is not part of his plan for my life. I want anything outside of his plans for me to wither and die.

Arriving at this point wasn’t easy.

The Success I Crave: God’s Path and Provision

After seeing a friend of mine receive some fresh opportunities from out of the blue, I began to think, “Gosh, I wish God would affirm my direction in life like that!” Some days I feel like I’m just slogging along with the same old list of things to do. I begin to wonder if anything is going to change, if something big will ever happen again.

Sitting down in church yesterday, I recalled that God had actually affirmed a new project in several ways. In fact, he had even provided the way to develop it that I’ve always craved. In many ways, God has affirmed and provided for me. I had just missed it.

That startled me. How dense could I be? God has already been providing for the path he wants me to follow?

The next obvious question was this: Am I missing anything else?

Why yes, there was. Of course there was. A note from a friend later in the day affirmed something else I’ve been working on.

As soon as I began to ask God to cut off anything that wasn’t from him and to affirm anything that was from him, I began to see his fingerprints in several key areas of my life. I have no doubt that I’ll always find new paths to follow. I need to keep praying this prayer: “Frustrate what is not from you, affirm and provide for anything that is part of your plan.”

I pray that I will be frustrated, that plans will fail, and that I’ll sing God’s praises while walking through the ruins.

May God frustrate us until the day he reveals the path laid out for us. May God give us grace, patience, and courage to wait on his timing, to submit to his process, and to leap at the opportunity when the time comes.

When I saw the enormous flowers toppling over our Christmas cactus on the dining room table for the first time this morning, I knew I had a problem. How long had those blooms been sitting right under my nose while I sat at the table reading, browsing the internet, or staring dumbly at my cup of coffee?

It was like God gave me a pleasant little metaphor of how I approach the Christmas season. It usually looks something like this.

The first Sunday of Advent hits like an unexpected tidal wave. It throws me into a panic because I need to start shopping and getting ready for a spiritually significant Christmas. I now have a deadline. If I can’t get my gifts purchased and wrapped, as well as arrive at a spiritual epiphany by December 25th, I fear that the universe will start to unravel and I’ll be sent into exile—or something like that.

Dread often gives way to guilt until December 25th passes and I’m filled with nostalgia for the glories of Christmas. Ah, I can’t wait until next year…

It struck me yesterday that dreading the arrival of Christmas is sound evidence that my priorities are in the wrong place.

I still love buying gifts for family members, but I don’t want to dread Christmas. I want to enjoy this season of prayer and meditation on God’s love for us. Reading through a daily Advent Devotional has helped immensely. However, I’m still pretty confident that I can screw things up with overblown expectations and busy schedules.

Just as I schedule time to get my work done, to do the dishes, and to even shop, I’ve been working on scheduling time to wait on the Lord. I’m not even hoping that anything in particular will happen.

My goal is to wait in peace and hope, letting God do as he pleases. If I only end up waiting better for the season of Advent, then perhaps I’ll have learned something valuable in the process.

This post is part of Bonnie Gray’s Thursday Faith Jam. Check out her post today: Be Fully Present

I wasn’t going to share this on my blog. My only hope is that God can be glorified by me telling it. I assure you that I’m no saint. I’ve got my issues, but if God can speak through a donkey, he can use me. Here we go…

The comments on a recent blog post impressed on me the crisis we have today when it comes to hearing from the Holy Spirit—namely, there are so many frauds out there, many of us don’t know what it’s like to genuinely hear from God.

Here is my story:

One night I ran out for some lumber and groceries. After picking up some lumber and pocket cash at Lowe’s, I stopped by Aldi for a few things. While checking out, the woman in front of me mentioned “stamps.”

These were food stamps, not postage stamps. She had a full cart, clearly buying food for a large family. When it came time to pay, she started rooting through her purse for change. She wasn’t paying exact change just to be anal like me. She was just trying to pay her bill.

I heard God tell me, “Take out your wallet.” I did. Thumbing through the ones and fives, I heard God speak again.

“Not those. A Twenty.”

Read the rest of this entry »

This Sunday marks the beginning of Advent, and I’ve asked Christine Sine, an author and blogger at God Space, one of the best Advent and Lent resources around, to share a guest post about the Advent Season.  She most recently edited a collection of brief devotions for Advent and beyond called Waiting for the Light:

The Christian calendar begins at the end of November, with the season of Advent and our preparation for the coming of the Christ child at Christmas. This season means different things to different people.

For some the season of Advent is just a time to enter into the hype of consumer binging and overindulgence. For those of us who follow Christ, this season is meant to have a different focus. This is the season when we all should await the coming of Christ in quiet expectation.  We don’t just await his coming to us as a baby, we enter into the anticipation of the coming of a Savior who not only brings personal salvation for those who choose to follow him but who will also redeem all creation with love and righteousness. 

This is also the season when we anticipate the coming of a God who brings justice for the poor and freedom for the oppressed and judgment for the oppressors.  For still others it is the remembrance of a child whose birth two thousand years ago radically refocused our world.

Christians of all traditions are discovering the value of taking time in the days that lead up to Christmas to break away from the consumer frenzy of our culture and prepare their hearts and minds for the coming of Christ.  Waiting for the Light is a book that responds to this desire. It is more than a devotional; it is a complete guide to the Advent and Christmas seasons providing liturgies, weekly activities and daily reflections to equip and nourish us throughout the season. Reflections are contributed by bloggers across the globe who love God and love to share their faith with others.

And if you want to spend more time in quiet reflection during this season you may also like to follow along at http://godspace.wordpress.com where we will continue to add new thoughts on the theme Jesus is Coming – What Do We Expect?

Have you ever become frustrated by the Bible? Sometimes the commands of Paul set me on edge.

He writes to the Ephesians, “be renewed in the attitude your minds.” Fine, I’m all for that. My mind is feeling a bit stale these days. How exactly should I go about that?

It’s tempting to read these verses and to think it’s all up to me. However, the bigger picture of holiness presented by Paul and throughout the Bible actually takes quite a bit of pressure off us.

The power to become like Jesus comes from his indwelling Spirit. However, are we really off the hook completely? I mean, we dare not insert our own works into the equation?

This is where Protestants can especially struggle since we’re so “salvation by works-averse.” The power is 100% from God, but we can neglect it. I’m not in any way capable of powering my chop saw, but I need to plug it in to the power source and keep it there if I want to cut anything.

The word that Jesus used to describe this process was “abiding.” The abiding is our work. It’s what we have to do if we want to become holy and renewed in our minds. A branch can’t grow any fruit on its own, but it needs to remain connected to the vine in order to grow grapes. The nutrients come up through the vine as the branch stays connected.

Our abiding work tends to put us at odds with our fast-paced culture that values multi-tasking and increased efficiency. Dare I suggest that our culture doesn’t really know what it is to “abide.” It seems lazy or wasteful. The heroes know how to squeeze every last ounce of productivity out of their time, money, and even other people. Those who know how to abide are an anomaly.

The examples of abiding in scripture are sometimes quite extreme to our eyes:

• Moses spending 40 days on the mountain.
• Joshua remaining in the tabernacle long after Moses had left.
• Samuel sleeping in the tent of the Lord.
• Anna fasting and praying night and day for her entire life.
• John the Baptist spending his adult years in the seclusion of the wilderness.
• Paul wandering in the wilderness by himself before beginning his ministry.
• Jesus praying for an entire evening.

Why would all of these founders of our faith spend so much time in solitude, away from productive ministry and work? What is the value of this time?

The connection is this:

• Without 40 days on the mountain, Moses fails to lead the people to the Jordan River.
• Without those evenings in the tabernacle, Josh falters when he leads the people into the Promised Land.
• Without those nights in the tent of the Lord, Samuel can’t hear God speak to him.
• Without fasting and prayer, Anna misses the Messiah and the message God gave to her.
• Without wandering in the wilderness, John and Paul can’t hear the message God wants them to share.
• Jesus modeled this for us. It’s striking to think that even God incarnate set aside time to hear the voice of God. It’s like a Trinitarian brain teaser.

Do I honestly believe I can imitate Jesus effectively by praying less than he did?

If I’m ever frustrated by my lack of progress with holiness, one of the first places to begin is the work of abiding. I can’t explain what happens when God gets ahold of us or how he “makes” us holy or renews our minds. We have models who have gone before us who suggest that this is the only way to be changed.

The final straw arrived last night—the one that breaks the camel’s back. Like an angry camel I flopped onto the ground flailing and spitting. Proverbially spitting that is.

Or are llamas the ones who spit?

Regardless of the spitting involved, I hit my limit last night. Enough things had gone wrong, enough projects had piled up, enough incidental circumstances had mounted to the point that I snapped.

The crazy thing is that under normal circumstances, the final straw was actually a pretty good thing tinged with a few problems. It was something that I would normally thank God for. But oh last night, I didn’t need one more thing to do. One more urgent deadline was too much after pushing to meet more deadlines than I could count. The constant urgency of one thing after another got to me.

I stomped out of the house because I needed to break my little pity party. I needed… Mediterranean food. I could try to tie this back to my camel metaphor (I mean, where else would a camel in Columbus go?), but I’ll just stop things there since I ate a lamb wrap.

A few hours later I had some perspective.

I hadn’t prayed about things. I’d just reacted. It was alright that I recognized a need for a change of scenery, but it took me far too long to realize that some of the things that had pushed me over the edge were essentially answers to my prayers.

I just didn’t expect those answers to my prayers to arrive along with all of this other junk.

So now I just feel like an ungrateful jerk who asks God for stuff and then doesn’t even recognize it when it arrives. In fact, I had the audacity to see his blessings as a problem.

I feel like I need to channel my inner Ann Voskamp and work on this gratitude thing. My spirit runs dry for want of gratitude and worship.

My mother-in-law once said that we overcome sin and the schemes of the enemy with worship. And if I was honest with myself, something that is not a guarantee, I’d have to say my “woe is me” attitude is a pretty good sign that I’ve been a tad self-absorbed lately.

I need to redirect my worship to where it belongs.

I used to have this red chair in our previous apartment’s living room where I sat every morning with my coffee and Bible. I’d usually pray for a bit too, and if a rabbit hopped over and hunkered down, I may even scratch his/her ears.

It was a peaceful place by our windows, and if it was warm outside, I’d leave the windows open and you could hear the rush of the water fall behind our building.

After moving to Columbus, I no longer had the red chair. The rabbits had done enough damage that we passed it along to a new owner with joy. However, as we parted from both that apartment and my chair, we had also parted from my routine.

Ever the creature of habit, my spiritual disciplines flagged almost immediately. It was really, really hard to stop myself to pray even for five minutes each morning.

I tried to fight it by sitting at my desk each morning, forcing myself to be quiet and still. The call of work often interrupted my serenity. My computer, closed and hibernating peacefully a few feet away, emitted some kind of electronic pulse reminding me that I really needed to start writing. There’s work to be done.

My solution was insultingly simple. I’m ashamed to even write this in a blog post—as if this is some amazing thing I learned.

We bought a couch, and I sit there to read the Bible and pray each morning. No, it’s not my “red chair,” but it’s a sacred space where I can go to pray at peace each morning.

Our spirits need boundaries. We need space, however small it may be, that is set aside for work, devotion, or leisure. Even if that couch later becomes the spot where I read a book in the evening, I know that sitting there in the morning means my mind is directed toward heaven.

I’ve read that lots of creative folks have little crazy rituals, like drinking coffee out of the same mug each morning or only writing on yellow legal pads. These little things they do have a way of alerting their minds and spirits that it’s time to focus, to get down to it.

Boundaries help rope our minds and spirits in so that we can be present. There is a freedom and comfort in knowing that when I go to that spot in our living room each morning, I’m free to be with God. The computer can’t reach me with its electronic pulses, and I’m free to hear what God would have me do today.

Read more about creating space for God at Faith Barista today: When You Don’t Feel Like Praying

What do you think of when you hear the word “holiness”?

My first thought is usually a bunch of monks chanting in a dark chapel with incense and flickering candles as they sit stock still for hours on end. In other words, holiness strikes me as an awful bore on first impression.

But is holiness really boring?

I recently read a book based on a documentary about the ancient Jesus Prayer: “Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” An author and a film crew traveled to monasteries all over the world and asked monks and nuns (Are there female monks that aren’t called nuns?) about the ways they use this prayer in their quiet moments of meditation and what their moments of intimacy with God are like.

No matter where this film crew and author traveled, the monks and nuns always said that their intimate moments with God are too wonderful to describe. They smiled and offered some clues but were short on details because words failed them.

I love how a monk can gently remind us, “I know something you don’t know.”

When I think of sitting to pray in silence for a long time, I’m usually a bit intimidated. I mean, sitting quietly before God for five minutes can seem like an eternity. Sitting quietly at the dinner table is hard enough for me. However, I’ve had some tastes of God’s love and presence in those quiet moments that remind me about something—those monks are on to something.

Sure, we can’t all sit in a dark chapel for five or six hours a day to chant stuff. We all have our callings to fulfill from God. It’s easy to forget that holiness has some lively and exciting elements to it. Meeting with God has a very active emotional and spiritual element that can spill out into the action of our daily lives.

Making ourselves stop to refuel, so to speak, is tough. However, once we’ve discerned the will and direction of God in our lives, holiness becomes active. We emerge from the cloister, so to speak, and take the message we’ve received into our relationships and daily encounters with others.

Holiness is no longer something that we try to do by ourselves, sitting still. It becomes a cycle of personal devotion, communal interaction, and service to others. When we see the ways that God shows up in our daily lives, we’ll be encouraged to spend more quiet moments alone with him.

Who knows. We may even light a few candles along the way.

I like it when God offers me an easy choice.

The big decisions regarding our move to Columbus were easy. That is, once we looked at the facts honestly. Ohio State clearly was the best place for my wife Julie to pursue her PhD. We were walking one day back in Connecticut discussing our choices, and I remember when we hit the point where we realized it wasn’t worth being uncertain any longer.

We knew where we needed to go because so many details had lined up in answer to our prayers.

When it was time to look for an apartment we didn’t need a rainbow pouring down from heaven on the right place for us—though that would have pretty awesome.

We found one place and one place only. That place also happened to provide what we’d been praying about.

The big decisions have been easy.

The details rarely are.

But then the details are where we do the heavy lifting of faith and grow. On our first night here I was laying in bed, stiff and exhausted after a full day of driving. Our rabbits were bouncing around in their play pen next to our bed, getting used to the new place and trying to decide whether they’d like to try killing each other or not (see rabbit bonding).

It was hotter than hot. Our air conditioner didn’t seem to be working.

I began to pray. I don’t know what was going through my mind until this phrase came to me, “Trust the process.”

It was a moment of undeserved grace that God poured on me. We had a couple of long, hard days after that night—moving is always a trial—and those words sustained me.

God has a process for us that may well be demanding, painful, and upsetting. And yet, the thing about God is that he’s actually in that process.

I don’t think it’s helpful to speak about God causing pain because he’s actually with us in the midst of hard times, grieving when our hearts break and shaking his head when the smoke detector goes off at 3 AM for no apparent reason. I don’t know how cause and effect works in relation to God, but somehow God is both all powerful and intimately connected to us in the ups and downs of our lives.

I transplanted some perennial flowers from my in-laws to our new place, and I can really relate to them right now.

I’ve been hacked out of what’s familiar and shoved into a place that is totally different. I’m slowly adjusting and sticking my roots in, but I still feel out of place, off-balance, and overwhelmed. I fear that I may wither in this new place.

And yet, transplanting is a process that works. In fact, some perennials need to be broken up and transplanted in order to thrive—or so I’ve been told.

I have to trust that those flowers will take root and bloom next spring. Transplanting is a process that works. By faith, I trust that the same will be true for us.

It was the worst thing that Peter could have imagined. And yet, he declared that he was ready to face it, giving up his life for the sake of his friend.

As Peter faced the predictions of Jesus about his coming death, Peter vowed to take them seriously. He’d had his doubts, but when Jesus predicted that his body would be broken and his blood spilled out, Peter would wouldn’t let him face it alone.

“I’m prepared to die with you!” he said.

Peter had thought through all of the worst-case scenarios and toughened himself up to face the end of his life.

However, Jesus didn’t ask him to die with him. While Peter would one day meet a similar fate of Jesus, that wouldn’t come for years and years down the road. Peter had worked himself up for no good cause.

Peter tried to show himself strong and committed in the face of the most terrible thing he could imagine. Then he fell asleep when Jesus asked him to sit, watch, and pray with him.

Though willing to face a sword, Peter couldn’t fight sleep. And when the moment for bravery and commitment arrived, he fled.

He’d spent so much time thinking about being strong, that he failed to sit and pray with Jesus. Peter thought Jesus wanted a follower who could stand next to him while he was whipped and killed.

Jesus just wanted someone to pray with him.