Forgiveness

I've been thinking this morning about unforgiveness.  
In my 20+ years of experience, working with students, it never ceases to amaze me at how people so young, can become so angry and bitter.


I have a pretty solid theory on that one, but that amount of information and opinion would take up another blog post on its own.  (let's suffice it to say, that their behaviors are learned, by observing the adults in their lives.)


To their credit, most students are quick to forgive and move on with life...but there are those who seem bent on holding on to anger, bitterness and out and out hatred.
Unfortunately, what many students and adults, for that matter, fail to realize is; anger, bitterness and hatred only hold us captive.  
They accomplish nothing of value and have no effect on the object of our loathing.


Think of a person against whom you are holding a grudge or harboring unforgiveness... What exactly are those feelings doing to them?  
Now, conversely, what is it doing to you?
Robbing you of joy, peace of mind, happiness...the full life that Jesus promised?  Your thoughts are consumed with how to get even, or exact some sort of twisted sense of satisfaction from their suffering.
The problem is:
The longer we linger in unforgiveness and bitterness, the longer we do damage to ourselves and more importantly, hinder the work that God is trying to do in us.


When we are wronged, or when someone we know is offended, we have a choice to make; forgive and let the offense go or hold on to it and nurse the grudge until it has consumed us...


Forgiveness brings freedom.  Period.  Unforgiveness, only brings bondage.


Forgiveness is one of the most important and powerful tools we possess in this life.


Too bad we don't use it as readily as we should.

God is watching...

I've been intrigued this morning with the thought that God is watching us...
(No, not that horrible Bette Midler song from the early 90's!)


I grew up in a fairly conservative, Christian home, where my parents instilled in me the idea/belief that God saw everything and was watching me.
As a child it was great motivation to behave.  (...of course I tried to hide, when there was something particularly enticing that I knew was wrong, but God had this way of ratting me out to Mom and Dad.)
In my pre-teen years, I began to understand that God indeed was watching, but it was the prompting of the Holy Spirit, that brought conviction to my heart and the subsequent remorse for the transgressions I committed.


The problem is that, like most of us who grew up with those ideals, the thought of God watching us and the conviction it brought to do "good things", waned with time.
It's not that I didn't believe that God was watching, it's that the repercussions for my "naughty" behavior, had less immediate bearing on my day to day life.


(Mom and Dad aren't there to be the "hand of God" on my backside.)


Therein lies the conundrum...  at what point did we/I become so calloused, desensitized, or "sophisticated" that we ceased to recognize the "voice" of the Holy Spirit in our lives?  
It's not like he stopped speaking...


I think the problem lies in our ability, or lack thereof, to recognize when God has "punished" us.
It's not that he's going to go all, Old Testament on us and cause the ground to open up and swallow us whole... or punish us in a traditional sense of the word...
However, there are consequences for disobedience.
So, when God's favor and the blessing of his presence is lacking, do we chalk it up to circumstance and the "trials" of life, instead of our own poor decisions?


Now, quickly before you chew me up and spit me out... I do not claim to sit in the seat of judgment as the one who has no sin, but it is interesting to make a comparison of life while living in obedience to God and life while living in disobedience to God.
The evidence kind of speaks for itself...

Bliss

It's late spring!  Can you believe it?  We're barreling at break-neck speed toward Summer...
Time for back-yard barbecue's, bike rides, picnics, camping, swimming...all that fun stuff we spent countless hours doing as kids.


Well, o.k., maybe you're still a kid and that's all you do during the summer months.
But as an adult, the majority of my awake time is spent working...I know, it sounds lame, right?
But, it's all a matter of perspective.  Whatchu talking 'bout?  


I'm talking about doing diligently, the things we've been given/called to do.


As a kid your primary focus is recreation...what can I do that will be the most fun, and how much fun can I pack in to one 24hour period?
When you "grow up", your focus drifts toward things like; a career path, achieving success, acquiring those things we, as a culture, deem important:
Car, house, wife/husband, kids, stuff...


When you grow up and take on responsibility, your focus tends to shift from the fun, to the necessary.  What do I "have" to do today in order to satisfy the demands placed upon me or that I've placed upon myself?


Fun becomes a luxury that we see somewhere out there in the nebulous recesses of our minds...it gets relegated to small windows of opportunity, like, vacations and days off.


Why is that?  Why can't we have fun or why have we chosen to deny ourselves the opportunity for fun?  Why do we, as adults, let ourselves sour beneath the burdens we so foolishly place upon our own shoulders?


Here's my brief thought in response to my own questions... Fun is what you make it.  If you've made choices that have stolen the fun from your life, what do you need to do to bring the joy back?
What decisions need to be made to keep you from the bitter path?
Change of perspective?  Attitude adjustment?  
It's like this; a guy by the name of Paul, wrote a letter to a group of people living in Rome.  
In his letter he said, "So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. 2 Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you."
He goes on to say that whatever we are gifted to do, we need to do it cheerfully and for the benefit of others.  This Paul was quite a guy...
So, with God's help, it's totally possible to find the joy in our daily living...to bring the fun back.  Not every single moment will be guaranteed fun, because, life is hard.  
But, if we will trust God with our lives, allowing Him to give us a proper perspective on life and the work we do...He will help us bring the fun back.  
Let God bring the best out of you!

Anti-Social Media

It never ceases to amaze me at how passive aggressive we have become as a society. 
O.k., before you get too deep into this post, I offer a brief warning...  I typically try and keep my posts uplifting and constructive, at least in some way, but this post is just a flat out rant!  
So, brace yourself...


I used to see social media sites as useful tools, by which we could; 
- stay connected with friends and family, from whom we are separated by many miles.
- network and build community with those with whom we have a shared interest.
- catch up with long lost friends, classmates or acquaintances.

- strive to encourage those who "follow" us or who are a part of our network of "friends".

The unfortunate reality is, that though we may have entered in to the realm of social media with good intentions, too many of us have been sucked in to the passive aggressive realities of "anti-social media".

We have used social media as a means of staying "connected", while keeping one another an internet distance apart.  We post obscure, cryptic ramblings on Facebook and Twitter, looking for attention, with no intention of doing anything but stirring up controversy and racking up comments.  (believe me, I am as guilty of these things as the next guy.)

By their insecurities shall you know them...

We bait people into meaningless conversations based on our need for attention and feelings of insignificance or insecurity.

We have taken these and otherwise useful tools and subverted their usefulness with our own need for selfish gratification.

(I told you this was going to be a rant...)

The really depressing part is, I don't know that this will ever change.  Human nature and it's destructive tendencies seems to be more powerful than maintaining the purity of most institutions and their intended use.  But that leads us down a much deeper rabbit hole.

So, thank you for a moment of your time, that you will never recover.

Be careful how you use social media!  Be safe, be respectful, be responsible and above all, seek to help others benefit from your presence on those sites.

Good-day.

On Purpose

Do you ever think about how many things you do over the course of a day that just sort of happen?  
Like, when I drive to work...it's not completely involuntary, but it often seems like I just point the car and it goes...  
Eventually, coming to a stop at my office...scary, I know. 
But the scarier thing yet, is when I get in the car to intentionally go somewhere and find myself heading home or to the office, when I intended to go to a completely different location.
Now, I know there might be some logical explanations for how this happens...fatigue, distraction...me simply being naturally a little scatterbrained...


However, it is interesting, given the little anecdote you read a moment ago, that we do so many things semi-intentionally, but don't really give much thought to what we're doing or where we are going.  Or, we get distracted from what we intended to do, because we've done something similar so many times, we kind of just go autopilot in the middle of it and just mail it in, so to speak.


Now, I could go a lot of different directions with this little post... leadership, pastoral ministry, business, relationships... you might even write a more thought provoking and poignant post after reading what I've written.  But, let's take this thought in the direction of love.


How often do we love on purpose?  We say we love people or things often without much thought.  We do things out of love, like taking out the trash, or lifting the toilet seat, or emptying the dishwasher and on and on...
But how often do we do those things with the intent of showing love.
Choosing to ignore the attitude that says, "if I didn't love you I wouldn't do_____."
Instead, let's take the attitude that says, "because I love you, I do this..."


You know, that reminds me of a guy named Jesus, who, many centuries ago, said something not unlike that.
"Because God loved the world so much, he gave his only son to die.  So, that we, (the world) could know God and if we believe in him and have relationship with him, have eternal life."
It wasn't a haphazard, involuntary or thoughtless rambling that motivated God to do that for us, it was love.
Intentional, on purpose love.
If we took that attitude that says, because I love you I do... How would that color the action itself?  It might mean we really think about what we're doing and for whom we do it.  We might actually, on purpose, love more deeply and beautifully than we ever thought possible.  
Our love might actually take on a life of its own and begin to do just what Jesus intended when he said, "by this all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another."


Let's love each other today.  On purpose...

Common

So, I'm back after a several month hiatus from the blogosphere...again...determined to do this at least once each week.
Not so much for your benefit as the reader, but for me to get in the habit/discipline of journalling.


I was reading a few days ago in the Old Testament book of Leviticus.  I know, right?  Leviticus...
Seriously though, there are some tasty little morsels tucked in to the laws and rules and regulations and animal sacrifice carnage.
In chapter 10 of Leviticus, two of Aaron's sons, (Aaron is the brother of Moses, and is the "father" of the line of priests who serve in the temple of God),
Nadab and Abihu, go in to the holy place of the tent where the presence of God dwells and they offer "unauthorized" fire before the LORD.


I don't quite understand what made it unauthorized, so I need to do a little more study in to that, but none the less, it was unsanctioned and God sent fire from His presence and consumes these two dudes.  Burns them to a crisp.


After this rather grisly display of the Lord's holiness, as you continue to read in chapter 10, you see the Lord is speaking to Aaron, telling him;
"you must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the clean and unclean...and you must teach the Israelites all the decrees the Lord has given them through Moses."
I'm grateful that God has moved on from this, I've got to make an example out of these punks mentality, into grace.  I'm sure I would have been smoked a long time ago.


There are several directions my mind wants to go as I think about this passage of scripture...one being how we tastelessly obscure what is holy or to be revered with things that are irreverent or common place.
I'm not saying we need to be strictly Levitical and legalistic, but there is much to be said for the attitude with which we serve both as vocational ministers or as volunteers in a ministry in the local church.  Words like humility, excellence, and loyalty come to mind. 
I think the big idea is this:
As we consider Nadab and Abihu, we must be careful how we go about God's business.  We can't just go charging in and do whatever we like whenever we like...  Remember, we exist for Him and not vice versa.

Death by Desk

If you work in an office, you probably spend an un-godly amount of time behind a desk.  I'm not one of those people, (thank God).  Fortunately, my job keeps me moving... most of the time.
However, on those rare occasions, like today, when I find myself behind my desk for an inordinate amount of time, I feel like doing something particularly dangerous to break-up the monotony.
Don't get me wrong, I believe in a hard days work and productivity, giving your best, etc...
But there comes a point, after staring at a computer screen or some printed material for hours, that you just feel like jumping out of a window.  
Well, or maybe something equally horrifying, but not necessarily as potentially life threatening.
For instance, go in to a co-workers office and ask a random, completely off the wall, unrelated question...just to see how they respond.  Or, walk past open doors while singing a familiar classic rock song and see how many people you can get humming, singing or whistling the tune.
It's the simple things in life that keep us sane...or at least reasonably sane.
Or drag as many people into the depths of your psychosis with you...either way, it will keep you from wilting away behind your desk.
Happy working!