Why don't we change?

I was on my way home from small group Sunday night thinking about the fact that making a change in just about anything is difficult. Careers, city in which you live, friends, schools, behaviors….whatever it is, change is not easy. I remember several years back hearing something like the following: “people are not willing to make change until the pain of their current situation outweighs the perceived pain of the change” – this was related to the sales process. I believe this relates to change in general.

In this case, I was thinking about change in behaviors. If you want to lose weight, you need to change your diet and put some effort into working out – or as I have been know to say “close your mouth and get on the treadmill.” If you want be more productive at work, you need to make some change to the little behaviors such as time management. But what about changes of a spiritual nature? What if we want to live the life that we are told about in John 10:10 – “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” Do we continue going on living life as we always have expecting to magically have our life “to the full”? There’s a saying that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing you’ve always done but expecting different results”. It is going to take change.

Why was I thinking about change coming back from small group? Because we are going through Francis Chan’s “Crazy Love” and he calls us to read and the DO something about it. So when the tough question is asked “how is your life different as a result of reading this chapter” – the common answer is, “it’s not”. Why is this?? Pride? Laziness? Fear? Self-sufficiency? Comfort?

Prayer: legalism, duty, life

This is from a blog that I read regularly (http://theologica.blogspot.com) ....

John Piper:

But the hard truth is that most Christians don’t pray very much. They pray at meals—unless they’re still stuck in the adolescent stage of calling good habits legalism. They whisper prayers before tough meetings. They say something brief as they crawl into bed. But very few set aside set times to pray alone—and fewer still think it is worth it to meet with others to pray. And we wonder why our faith is weak. And our hope is feeble. And our passion for Christ is small.

And meanwhile the devil is whispering all over this room: “The pastor is getting legalistic now. He’s starting to use guilt now. He’s getting out the law now.” To which I say, “To hell with the devil and all of his destructive lies. Be free!” Is it true that intentional, regular, disciplined, earnest, Christ-dependent, God-glorifying, joyful prayer is a duty? . . . Is it a discipline?

You can call it that.

• It’s a duty the way it’s the duty of a scuba diver to put on his air tank before he goes underwater.
• It’s a duty the way pilots listen to air traffic controllers.
  
• It’s a duty the way soldiers in combat clean their rifles and load their guns.
  
• It’s a duty the way hungry people eat food.
  
• It’s a duty the way thirsty people drink water.
  
• It’s a duty the way a deaf man puts in his hearing aid.
  
• It’s a duty the way a diabetic takes his insulin.
  
• It’s a duty the way Pooh Bear looks for honey.
  
• It’s a duty the way pirates look for gold.

I hate the devil, and the way he is killing some of you by persuading you it is legalistic to be as regular in your prayers as you are in your eating and sleeping and Internet use. Do you not see what a sucker he his making out of you? He is laughing up his sleeve at how easy it is to deceive Christians about the importance of prayer.

God has given us means of grace. If we do not use them to their fullest advantage, our complaints against him will not stick. If we don’t eat, we starve. If we don’t drink, we get dehydrated. If we don’t exercise a muscle, it atrophies. If we don’t breathe, we suffocate. And just as there are physical means of life, there spiritual are means of grace. Resist the lies of the devil in 2009, and get a bigger breakthrough in prayer than you’ve ever had.

Jesus as "The Way"

I just started reading "The Jesus Way, a conversation on the ways that Jesus is the way" by Eugene Peterson. Just in the introduction, I found this quote:

Here is a text, words spoken by Jesus, that keeps this in clear focus: "I am the way , and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). The Jesus way wedded to the Jesus truth brings about the Jesus life. We can't proclaim the Jesus truth but then do it any old way we like. Nor can we follow the Jesus way without speaking the Jesus truth.

But Jesus as the truth gets far more attention than Jesus as the way. Jesus as the way is the most frequently evaded metaphor among the Christians with whom I have worked for fifty years as a North American pastor. In the text that Jesus sets before us so clearly and definitively, the way comes first. We cannot skip the way of Jesus in our hurry to get the truth of Jesus as he is worshiped and proclaimed. The way of Jesus is the way that we practice and come to understand the truth of Jesus, living Jesus in our homes and workplaces, with our friends and family.

living it out...

I'm wrestling with the words of Soren Kierkegaard....

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

walking

I was struck once again by the words of 1 John 2:6

"whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked."

do i really do this?

prayer

I have been known to tell some people that prayer is something that I am terrible at. It seems weird to think of someone that has been a follower of Jesus since he was seven years old to have a bad prayer life….but it’s true. Most days I am lucky to have spent some time talking with God a little before my head hits the pillow. I think it has to do with the fact that I never made it part of my “routine”. I have my Bible sitting on my desk to make sure that I see it first thing when I wake up. This is a physical reminder to read the word. I have medicine that I take daily --- I have to set it next to the coffee maker to make sure that I take it, otherwise I will forget. I have my son tell me to put on my seatbelt when we are in the car because I never made it a habit --- he is my reminder. I walk into the house after being on the road and put my keys, wallet, and phone in my office so I do not lose them…..this is my routine. Unfortunately, I never had any habit or routine when it came to a prayer life. Honestly, I don’t know if I have ever been taught or told how to pray or make it a habit. It is something that is just assumed or expected that you do as a follower of Jesus. That’s all well and good, so how am I supposed to “pray without ceasing” as I am told by Paul?

One day, a month or so ago, I was working as I often do at a local bookstore. They provide free internet and I purchase cinnamon tea from them in return. I decided to take a stroll through the book store and a book caught my eye --- “In Constant Prayer” by Robert Benson. Knowing that I have issues with being able to pray like I’d like to, I decided to purchase the book to see what I could get out of it. Conviction. That’s what I got out of it. This book is about the use of liturgical prayer in our daily lives. Taking time to pray at several hours of the day like the fathers of our Church (big “C”) did back two thousand years ago. This practice actually started way before them and goes on today --- except for the protestant church that seems to have done away with it a few hundred years back.

In this book, “In Constant Prayer” a quote caught my eye. It is rather lengthy, but worth it. Note: at one point, the author speaks about the “Daily Office” which is reference to praying certain liturgical prayers. The quote is as follows:

“We make grocery lists and honey-do lists. We set our alarm clocks, and we program our TiVos. We have automatic deposit and automatic draft, and we make sure we are planning for that glorious day when our children grow up and go off to college or go off to somewhere else (anywhere, if need be). If we are going to move, we do our homework before we buy a house; if we are going to travel, we sort through Priceline; if we are working toward some big event at the holidays, we put a checklist on the refrigerator. We would not dream of trying to do anything in our lives that really matters to us, where it is large or small, without making a list or two or twenty-seven, and checking it twice a day.

I have noticed a curious phenomenon. One of the few things that we are reluctant to make lists about and do research about and have a row of boxes to tick off about are the things that have to do with our spiritual lives. I don’t know why that is.

We say that our spiritual life is important to us. Sometimes we will even go so far as to say that it is the part of our lives that is the most important to us. We also say, at least we say about everything else that matters to us, that if we do not writ it down, we will forget to do it. We say that if we are going to make sure something is done and done well, we need to make a plan so nothing gets missed and nothing gets forgotten.

The place we are least likely to make such a plan is when it comes to our spiritual lives. We would not dream o f being this way about anything else.

Then we go back to a retreat or some such event a year later and realize we are being drawn to the same things again, and so we make the same promises again to God and to ourselves. Then we go home and do not make a plan again, and we look up one day and realize that we have moved no further along again.

We are unwilling, it sometimes seems to me, to leave anything in our lives to chance except the way that we live out our lives in communion with the One who gave us life in he first place. It seems odd to me.

I have spent enough time over the years writing and talking and retreating and studying and teaching, dare I say it, about and around and over and through and inside and out of the practice of the daily office to know at least this much: to pray the office is to anchor your life of prayer somewhere between the daily and the divine.”

Well, if it wasn’t enough for the Spirit to convict me of my lack of prayer life, Robert Benson sure did. I haven’t yet finished the book, but I do plan on purchasing a “daily prayer” book and making it a part of my life. I hope to make prayer as daily as my coffee, medicine or other routines that I have.

be hospitable...

I was reading an article this morning that was quite challenging. The article focused on the practice of showing hospitality --- not just "entertaining". Check out a quote from it below and tell me what you think.

In earlier issues of the Missional Journal I have discussed the need for us to speak the good news and embody it. In a culture of alienation, hospitality becomes a powerful means of incarnating the truth that God in Christ has welcomed us. Christine Pohl, in what is arguably the best book on the topic, writes: “In hospitality, the stranger is welcomed into a safe, personal, and comfortable place, a place of respect and acceptance and friendship. Even if only briefly, the stranger is included in a life-giving and life-sustaining network of relations. Such welcome involves attentive listening and a mutual sharing of lives and life stories. It requires an openness of heart, a willingness to make one’s life visible to others, and a generosity of time and resources” (Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition [Eerdmans, 1999], p. 13).

Particularly important for modeling the gospel is hospitality directed to those living on the margins—the poor, the handicapped, the infirm, the immigrant. Jesus actually warns against throwing parties for friends, family, or rich neighbors. Such hospitality may have more the character of commercial exchange than of gift. Instead he counsels inviting those who cannot themselves repay. In this, he says, “you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:14).

I will be the first to admit that such hospitality is a challenge to western Christians. Most of us have little contact with people on the margins. We are often too concerned with our own safety and security to provide a safe place for others.

The busyness of life also diverts most of us from effective missional engagement. The practice of hospitality is quickly experienced as an intrusion: “It requires one to stop a busy, demanding routine for a period of time and focus attention on the stranger for the sake of the stranger. . . . It is an act that forces us to confront how our lives are driven by agenda and by demands that push away any relational encounter with another” (Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk, The Missional Leader [Jossey-Bass, 2006], p. 157).

The Missional Congregation: Practicing Hospitality
	by David Dunbar