Four years ago my roommate Chris shared with Adam and me that his brother had Battens disease.  He shared that this disease caused a person’s body to slowly degenerate and eventually fail.  That was our freshman year of college, and I got met David that year.  He was a handsome sixteen year-old at the time.  Loved sports, especially the Yankees (much to my dismay), and quickly became a big fan of mine, and I of him.

David

Over the next four years of school, I saw David on several other occasions and spoke with him fairly regularly on the phone when he would call Chris.  He had a quick laugh and an incredibly loving personality.  He also greatly enjoyed being in the presence of girls.  On one particular occasion, about a year ago, I remember introducing David to a couple of our female friends.  After being introduced, I told David that he had just met some very pretty girls.  His nervous smile and giggle sent us all into stitches.

The three of us, Chris, Adam and I, were put together our freshman year in a forced triple with about 4 square feet of open floor space.  Luckily, we very quickly became very close friends.  All three of us would agree that it was undeniably a “God thing.”  Shortly after Chris told us about his brother’s disease, Adam and I talked decided that we would do whatever it took to be there for Chris when the time came.

We continued to live together for the first three years of college, sometimes having to fight with the school so that the three of us could remain in the same room.  We slowly got to know Chris’ family and even had his younger brother, Daniel, stay with us on a few occasions.  Unfortunately for Chris, we found out very quickly that his youngest brother was way cooler than he’d ever be and used that for additional ammo for the continuous rounds of picking on each other we had.  We joke that we pick on those we love, so Adam Chris and I love each other a lot.

Throughout the time we roomed together at Gordon, we spent many, many hours praying for each other, our families and our friends.  I remember many occasions where we all held each other through tears of pain, sobbing into one another’s shoulders   We really became a family for each other away from home.   Continuously in the back of Adam’s and my mind was that we would be there for Chris.  We didn’t know when, and we didn’t know that I’d be in Colorado and he’d be in New Hampshire when that call finally came.

Sean, Adam, Chris, Nate, Dan

David passed away at 20 years of age, October 22nd, 2009.  I can’t describe the feeling of traveling so far and finally seeing Chris come around the corner in his home and hugging tightly a man who I have held and has held me on so many occasions throughout the past years.    Or then seeing his younger brother, Daniel who has persevered with amazing fortitude the last few months of David’s life, and pulling him equally close in a tight hug.  There are just no words.  An immense feeling of helplessness, yet knowing that you’ve done all you can do by simply being there with them.

David’s service was an amazing testimony of a life well lived for God.  I wish I knew how many people where there, but suffice it to say that there were hundreds and hundreds of people there, and I have no doubt that that was only a fraction of the lives David touched.  (If you’d like to see the service you can watch it here).

I learned, through the stories I heard about David, and the reading of some of his essays, that he was not always happy and cheerful.  He did struggle with the fact that he slowly lost his eyesight and ability to play with other kids.  He loved sports, especially baseball and football, but was not really able to play either of them.  What is so amazing about David is that it was his faith in Christ that allowed him to have joy amidst his knowledge that he was slowly loosing abilities to function.  I learned that he had a tender heart and compassion for everyone he met who were facing hardships of any kind.  I learned that he would offer to pray for people he met in restaurants and would share his faith freely.  It was his hope in Christ that gave him strength and joy that he would one day be able to see again.  So it is with very mixed feelings of joy and sadness that we said goodbye to such a great man of God.

I encourage you to take a look at Chris’ dad’s blog to read a powerful testimony from David http://davidpfohl.blogspot.com/.

Some closing words:

Chris – I don’t know what to say.  You have been such a source of encouragement and accountability to me.  I deeply appreciate all of the laughter, prayers, conversations and time the three of us have shared together and I praise God because of you.  I hope that someday soon we will live closer together again and I look forward to the many, many years ahead.  You and Adam have been the closest thing to brothers I have ever had.  I love you.

Daniel – I worry that you might think that you don’t have friends that would drop everything and travel hundreds of miles to be with you.  There is no doubt in my mind that you do have such friends.  And I’m sure that I speak for both Adam and I when I say you are always welcome in both our homes, and we will always do whatever we can for you.

Mr. and Mrs. Pfohl – It’s been an incredible privilege to walk with your son Chris through some of this time, and an extreme honor that you allowed us into your home so much during a time of intimate family celebration and mourning.  Your faith and perseverance will always be an example for me to follow.

David – I’m sorry that we did not get to know each other more on this side of eternity, but I do know that you had many, many amazing friends here and I rejoice in the thought of you being fully restored.  You have taught me much in the little I have known you, and you have forever brought new meaning to songs such as “Amazing Grace,” “It is well” and “Blessed be the Name of the Lord.”  Your life has been a great testimony of God to me and many others, and I know that it will continue to be that to many.  You ran and fought well, and I will see you again.

The Bible, a Fresh Read (Part 1)

In a previous article entitled “Stories,” I argued that as humans we have a desperate need to know how stories end.  Even if I didn’t see the beginning of the movie, and I start watching in the middle, I have to see the end.  We always want to know how the story ended, if at all possible.  We have to satisfy that craving, to fill the suspense of waiting on learning the ending.  You never hear a someone start telling a story and when they’re only half way through stop suddenly and say,

“Huh, that’s funny, I don’t know how it ends.  They were stranded on the edge of the road at night in the Everglades surrounded by crocodiles, alligators and three man-eating tigers that escaped from a nearby zoo, and I don’t actually know what happens next.  I mean the guy who was telling the story got that far, and then I lost interest and walked away…..”

No.

Never happens.

We have to know the resolution, we have to hear the end of the story.  The problem we have then, is that when we hear a story we’re familiar with, we mentally jump ahead to the end of the story and think “Oh, this is a good story.  It looks like he’s going to be eaten, but then it turns out fine in the end.”  We have lost that angst, that discomfort of not knowing how it ended, like the first time we heard the story.  We’re on the edge of our seats, with our eyes wide open, asking at every pause in the story, “What happens next?!”

We need to regain that tension.

We need to pause for a moment in those stories we read in our Bible, and pretend, for just a moment, that we don’t know that end.  A woman finds out that Pharaoh has ordered all the male babies to be killed.  Her baby is at stake, and in a moment of desperation, she has to make a decision and decides that if she has a choice between the Egyptian butchers and the crocodiles, she’ll take her chances with the water.  And then we see this woman pushing this rickety, water resistant basket out into the water while her heart is slowly being ripped apart and her son drifts out of her reach.

There’s a young man who has passionately followed God with all his heart and he suddenly finds his life forfeit because he refuses to compromise his faith in God.  He’s taken out to killed and the king says these words to him, “May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!” and then he’s thrown into a pit full of starving lions.

Another time a small group of men spent three years of their lives following someone they hope is not just another false prophet, for they have seen so many.  But this man, they are sure he’s it, he’s the one, and then they watch him be taken away and executed by the most powerful empire in the world, and the fact that they even associated with him means that they too could share his same fate.

And if you were to ask me what I thought the out come of any one of these stories was going to be, and I didn’t know the ending, the answer would be simple:

It is not going to be good.

The baby boy is going to be food for crocodiles or drown.  The young man is going to be torn apart by hungry lions, and the man’s followers are going to regret for the rest of their lives that they wasted three years following another failed messiah.  They are going to live for many years in hiding, denying that they ever knew him, and probably will just walk away from their faith completely, returning once again to be fishermen, not fishers of men.

See, that’s where you are right now, too.  You do not know the ending.  You do not know the ending of your life.  You do not know the resolution to the difficult situation you are in right now.  You are afraid of being torn apart and eaten.  You are afraid that making this next choice, years down the road is going to be a waste of your time.  You are afraid that….

And until we learn how to pause in these stories of the Bible, it will never reflect the tension, angst, hope, and salvation it really offers.  Because all of your favorite stories of the Bible were written out of a time of great uncertainty, with many unknown endings, you can take comfort in your current circumstances.  The reason these stories are great stories is that because in every one of them these people did the same thing you are called to do:

Be faithful and trust that God is so much bigger than your current circumstances will ever be.

This week I’ll be kicking off a two part series that I’m really excited about.  We’ll be looking at two ideas that I think if we put into practice will change the way we read our Bibles.  Even if you don’t put them into practice I think you’ll find these two article challenging and encouraging to you faith, so come back later tonight to read part one of “The Bible; a Fresh Read,” Pause.

A good friend, Dan Lee, asked me a great question after my last post, “Instant Gratification.”  He wrote:

“Just out of curiosity, I was wondering what you were referring to for the long term consequences that the church will be facing?  I know you used environmental issues for your example (not saying that it is not a theological/spiritual issue) but anything specific? I might be intrigued to think further about this topic.”

In a way, this is a combination of two articles, so if it’s slightly less focused than my other articles, please bear with me to the end.  I think I have a strong, concise conclusion.  Anyway, here are some thoughts on those consequences:

I think the church is in desperate need of a more holistic approach to saving lives; that is, we have too much of an emphasis on conversion and spiritual things and not enough focus on practical, day-to-day wisdom.*  This may in part be caused by a focus on the instant gratification, the “instant results” in church world. We tend focus too heavily on the point of conversion, raise your hand, come to the alter, and not enough on Christ changing someone’s whole life.

Jesus came to give us life and life to the full.

“Jesus changed my life,” we say.  Really?  How much did he change?  Or how much of people’s lives do we, as a church, hope to change?  On one level we have people in our churches who have amazing testimonies of how they were addicted to drugs or alcohol and then Jesus changed their lives and now they are drug and alcohol free.  Contrast this with other church members who are drowning in debt before they were a christian, and now that they are saved are still drowning because they do not know how to be financially responsible.  This seems like a problem to me.  Conversion is more instant; life skills are long term.

Part of the problem is that there’s such a disconnect between the “spiritual life” and the rest of life, which is unfortunate, and I would suggest means that we aren’t encouraging people to have life and live it to the full.

We should be careful not to spiritualize things to such an extent that we minimize our effectiveness at providing people concrete practical advice for life in this world.  We should teach people to care for their body, get out of debt and use money wisely (Jesus taught about money more than any other topic), leadership principles, principles of wisdom and decision making.  A good measure of whether or not we are offering advice and wisdom to people that will give them the practical long term ability to have life and live it to the full would be whether or not our advice sunday mornings could be used effectively by someone who’s not a Christian.  Not that every sermon has to do that, but I imagine you’d agree with me that most of the sermons we hear is advice mainly for Christians.  The problem is that scripture is full of wisdom about living life in wise, practical ways, and I think when we do this we glorify God the most. So, I think we should teach more of this in church.

For instance, Andy Stanley teaches this brilliant principle he calls “the principle of the path.”  In reality it’s really simple, but so few of us follow it.  It says basically, that the path you’re on will determine your destination.  Or, as he says, “Direction, not intention determines destination.”  If you want to go to college, but screw around and don’t take your grades seriously, that’s not a path that leads to college.  If you want to marry a godly Christian guy, but you date any cute guy that comes your way, you’re not on a path that leads to the destination you want to go in.  You’ve got the idea?  This is not principle that applies only to Christians, nonbelievers–even atheists–can apply this principle to their lives and have a more abundant life.**  And since we believe all truth is God’s truth, there’s no reason we should be afraid to preach it from our pulpits.

So, in conclusion, I think our attitude of “Instant Gratification” in the church has the ability to cause our ministry to be shallow, not holistic and ultimately robs our church family of the fullest life they could have.

Thoughts to chew on:
The early church, was it about “accepting Christ,” or about following Christ?  See the problem?  We focus on a one-time instant faith, but there is a process, a following, a learning, an imitation to our faith.  We go for the “instant gratification” of “knowing” our salvation is secure, rarely for the long term issues facing families in our churches.

___________________________________
* I realize that I introduced a concept with little explanation.  What I mean by our teaching “spiritual things” from the pulpit too much with out enough long-term practical things.  For example we teach to “trust the Lord” to “love your neighbor,” but someone could have a lot of trust in God, be the most loving person on the planet and be up to their eyeballs in debt because they don’t know how to get out.  Is this a concern of the church? YES!!!!  For so many reasons, not least of which being that Jesus came to give us life and life tot he full!  We have a whole book of truth and people’s experiences so that we know how to live practically and wisely.
** Yes, I realize that even with this principle atheists would not truly have life to the full as Jesus was speaking of, but you get my point.  Atheists and Christians alike would have better lives if they put this principle into practice.

If you’re like me you know about our so-called problem with “instant gratification” and you think of microwaves and fast food joints.  Or maybe you’re just a little too much like me and you’re frustrated that “instant” pudding isn’t instant but actually takes about 4 minutes.  However, those things are actually fairly shallow views of “instant gratification.” I think, as a society we actually suffer from a more long-term problem of instant gratification, ironically.

Our problem is that we only think about this instance, this moment and not the long term effect of our actions.  Pretty much everything we do today has long term effects.

Being stricken with an environmental conscience (I’m convinced it’s a conviction from God) it frustrated me how many things we do for the short term convenience that have very, very long term effects.  For instance, we’ve all been to the church picnic or the party and used the plastic silverware and cups and then throw them away in the trash.  So, for the life of that plastic fork we used it for maybe 20 minutes and it will spend the next 20 million years in a landfill.  So we have a problem; for all the momentary convenience we have landfills full of materials that will out live probably all of mankind.

It’s all for the convenience of now.

We don’t want to carry around that plastic bottle ‘till we find a recycling bin, we don’t want to clean out the peanut butter jar, we don’t want to have to wash the dishes….

You can ignore it, you can try to justify it, but at some point you have to realize that you choices today have long term consequences, sometimes very long term consequences.

The scary thing is the number of choices we are forced to make daily that require instant responses.  Scarier still is our tendency to think that we can handle it on our own, without relying on the infinite wisdom of our God in heaven.

I wonder what would happen if we as Christians really started thinking about the long term consequences of our actions.  But honestly, I think that’s a vision that is unlikely to happen.  I think we will continue to be a shallow church, focused more on the now than on the future.  I mean, thinking about how our actions will really affect the future takes a lot of time and requires action now that looks foolish because we are acting on the future as if it were now.

Besides it would be an inconvenience, and we live in an age of convenience.

So it is my hope that you will read this and just start thinking about the long term, that this would haunt you and make you question what you do today in light of tomorrow.  And maybe, just maybe we’ll start to be a church that isn’t driven by instant gratification.

Last week we looked a little at the forgiveness we need to receive from our heavenly father (see Forgiveness – God’s Part), but this time I want to look a little at the forgiveness we need to give one another.  Unfortunately this seems to be a little more complicated, so this article may be a little longer.

I feel like the most challenging thing about this that we need to forgive others, or we ourselves may not be forgiven.  Jesus teaches this parable in Matthew 18 often called the “Unmerciful Servant,” in which a great king forgives the un-payable debt of his servant.  (Even if he, his wife and children were sold into slavery it is unlikely, according to some commentators, that this would have even come close to paying his debt.)  Then Jesus says something, that to me, is pretty scary.  In short, he says that when we don’t forgive others, we don’t deserve–in fact we won’t receive–the forgiveness our heavenly Father offers us.  Let that sink in a little.  When we don’t forgive others, we won’t receive the forgiveness our heavenly Father offers us.

When we fail to offer anyone forgiveness we show ourselves to be completely unaware of the price of our forgiveness and in doing so irreverently declare it worthless, ultimately rejecting it.

So the real heart of the matter is, “How do we forgive?”

Forgiveness requires love.  We’re supposed to love our enemies and our neighbors as ourselves.  I recently heard 1 Cor. 13:4 in a new translation; it described said love “always assumes the best.”  From this I think we can find that there may be two steps in forgiveness:  First, assuming the best in someone else and then forgiving them their mistake whether they deserve it or not.  Let me break those out a little.

First, we are to “assume the best” in the other person, unless proven otherwise.  Unless it is clear beyond a doubt that the intent was indeed malicious, assume that it was an accident or mistake.  This would easily solve many of our everyday issues that require forgiveness.  The guy who cut you off in traffic and made you slam on your breaks, maybe he didn’t see you, maybe he suddenly realized he needed to get over into your lane.  Get over it.  You make mistakes too, I bet.  The person who makes an insensitive comment, do they usually say things like that?  Did they probably intend to be malicious to you?  Probably not.

There’s a subpart to this.  We’ve also all heard the line “love keeps no record of wrongs.”  This actually affects our ability to assume the best in the other person.  If we have a long list of wrongs they have done against us, we have not forgiven them, and we will always paint them as “guilty” until proven “innocent” rather than “assuming the best.”

“She did that on purpose.  Last week she said this, and the week before she broke that….”

Forgive them, don’t keep a list and then you’ll be able to “assume the best” about others.

Then there’s the second step; actually forgiving people.  We almost always can find a reason for why they don’t deserve it.  Maybe they don’t care if you forgive them.  Maybe, worse yet, they really DON’T deserve it, because they are totally in the wrong in what they did, and they’re certain they are right and you feel like you would be completely justified in your revenge.

And maybe, honestly, you would be.

But that is not going to actually make things better.

Holding a grudge is simply going to make you bitter and slowly poison you.

Let it go.

Take it to God, yell and scream to him about how mean and terrible this person is and then tell him you’re going to forgive them.  If God wishes to bring judgment on them, leave it to him, if not, know that the Creator of the Universe has seen what has happened and you will be rewarded for offering them forgiveness.  After all, Jesus came “while we were still sinners” and we neither deserved or desired the immense forgiveness we have been freely offered.

Forgive much, because you have forgiven much, much more.

This is a short two part series on forgiveness.  First we’ll look at our relationship with God, and then our relationship with others in view of that forgiveness we have received from God.  Maybe this first one won’t speak to you, but check back next week and maybe the second will hit a little closer to where you are now.  However, I struggle with forgiveness in both areas of my life, so I think there’s a chance you may too.  And maybe you don’t even know it.  That’s what I discovered when I really spent some time thinking about forgiveness, and these two articles are some thoughts based on my meditations on forgiveness.

I know that God forgives me.  I know that he has already forgiven me.  But sometimes I really don’t feel like I deserve it.  Sometimes I’m convinced that I have let him down too many times and he’s going to give up on me.  After all, can I really mean it when I ask forgiveness and I continue to mess up over and over again?

Honestly, I know we can’t earn forgiveness and grace but sometimes I still try.  I know I  can’t, but I actually punish myself as if by doing so I actually will finally deserve the forgiveness I’ve already asked for and in my head, I know I’ve received.

You do it too, I’m sure.

I ask forgiveness and then I feel distant from God.

Not because he hasn’t forgiven me, but because deep down I refuse to believe that he could have actually already forgiven me.

I don’t deserve it.

Not yet.

So I put up this wall between God and myself.  I am too ashamed to actually accept his forgiveness.  Maybe after a few days, or a few weeks when I feel like I have been acting more “godly,” I will allow the wall to crumble and draw closer to God, but not until I’ve paid my due punishment.  Because I don’t deserve his grace, I can’t possibly accept it until I’m at least a little more deserving of it.

But that is totally not biblical..

“God’s mercies are new every morning.”  “Even While we were still sinners Christ Died for our sins.”  “God is patient, not wanting any to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”  And the father ran out to met the son, embraced him and said “’Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.”*

God is waiting with open arms.  He is waiting and watching and ready to forgive you.  Right now.  You don’t have to wait until you are more deserving, you don’t have to prepare a speech, you don’t have to sign yourself over to be a monk or give all your money charity, come as you are.  The sacrifice has been made, all that is required of you is to accept that forgiveness offered to you.

Accept it.

Now.

Today.

You  are  forgiven.

_________________________
* Lamentations 3:23; Romans 5:8; 2 Peter 3:9; Luke 15:22

I am fully convinced that everything in our lives requires balance.  I mean everything.  And we know this to some degree.  We know you can’t just work all the time because it’s not healthy, so we need some vacation time; Sabbath.  We know that you can’t always eat junk food all the time because that’s not healthy, but on the flip side we shouldn’t refuse to ever indulge in a food we enjoy; we’re supposed to eat a “balanced diet.”

Funny how we don’t always apply that to our faith.  Often we applaud and admire the uncompromising man, the man who draws the line in black and white, who refuses to have room for gray.  But honestly, an uncompromising man is only helpful if it’s an uncompromising situation.  The problem is that we have a faith of paradox, we are called to be “set apart” and “holy” and yet Paul describes how he became “all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.”  We say we are to be “in the world but not of it.”  We are “justified by faith” and yet “faith without deeds is dead.”  When we “are weak [we] are strong.”  You can go on and on and on.  Our faith is not simple!   Not to mention the fact that we are no longer governed by a list of rules, rather we are free in Christ.  In fact, being free means that we have to be in tune with the Holy Spirit so that we can discern what is in fact “true, pure, noble or praiseworthy.”  It’s so much easier to create rules and laws!

“I’m a Christian so I don’t go to movies.”

“I’m a Christian and I want to be able to relate to anyone who loves movies so I watch everything.”

“The world is evil so I’m going to just separate myself of from the world entirely.”

Whatever your “law” is, it is so much easier to swing to an extreme than to continuously battle for that middle ground.  Sometimes we need to see a movie to relate to others; sometimes we should not watch a certain movie.  We are called to live in that tension, to walk that razor’s edge of that line that is balance.  Unfortunately, not only is it difficult to figure out where that middle ground is, but it’s likely you’ll get criticized for it if you take a stand there.  And the really awesome part is you’ll probably get criticized from both sides.

I love old pendulum clocks, maybe you know, the old kind that you wind up the coil spring with a special key, and it slowly releases its tension pushing the pendulum so gently that it keeps its steady “tick-tock.”  Unlike modern clocks with a battery, if you were to stick your hand in the clock and stop the pendulum in the middle of its swing and leave it there motionless, it would actually stop the clock.  The coil spring would remain tightly wound, unable to release its pressure.  It would be easier for it to keep swinging to either extreme then remain in this place of tension.

Live in that tension.

Whatever you stance on something is, try to think about the opposite extreme.  If you can think of an opposite extreme, try to imagine what the middle ground might look like.  Is it possible that that middle ground would in fact be a more biblical and God honoring stance to take?

Should you spend all your time in church activities, or spend time in “secular” activities being a light to this dark world?

I mean, whatever it is, find balance.  Live in this tension.  Be uncompromising when it’s an uncompromising situation, compromise when it’s a compromising situation.  “be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”

_________________________                                                                                                Phil. 4:8, 1 Peter 1:16, 1 Cor. 9:22, Rom. 5:1, James 2:26, 2 Cor. 12:10, Mt. 10:16

I have been desperately struggling with things to write on my blog because I was convinced that it had to be biblical, it had to be inspired from careful exegetical study of a passage of scripture, and it had to be profound. And as Christians, all too often we think that only the Christian books, only the Christian movies and media and leaders could possibly have any truth. Jesus is Truth, and the Bible is truth, so if it is truth, it must be in the Bible, and we’ll only find it by reading the Bible.

What’s revolutionary and challenging about this is that some of the most admired (and my personal heroes) find truth outside of the Bible. Heretical?

Here’s what I mean: There are leadership principles, counseling insights and business brilliance that are not found in the Gospels directly. Seth Godin wrote a book called Tribes which is full of brilliant insights and truths about today’s society. Author Jim Collins spoke about business strategies at the Catalyst conference I attended last fall and his book Good to Great is on my summer reading list. And you know what? He’s not a Christian, but he had so many great truths about leading a business—is church a business? Are you in some ways investors with shares in a company who hopes to see growth and returns (reap a harvest) for the Kingdom? Are you comfortable with that?—that he was invited to speak at a Christian Conference with over 12,000 church leaders from across the country.

Ok, so here I go. Here’s a truth, and it turns out it is solidly biblical even though Jesus never said it, as far as I remember:

Change happens. You have two choices, embrace it or die.

Change happens, and you can choose to embrace it, create, explore and even initiate great things, or you can try to defend the “we’ve always done it this way attitude” and slowly fade away. This is the bottom line.

It used to astound me at how much resistance we all put up against change, and then a funny thing happened; I spent the better part of a year away from home. I came back and there were huge new buildings, new businesses, new roads and old businesses that had closed. I walked into one store that I hadn’t even known existed, and looking around dumbfounded I asked one of the cashiers “How long has this business been here?”
“Two years,” she said.
“Two years, here? You’ve been here, in this building, for two years?”
“Yes…. Are you from around here?”
“I used to be,” I blurted out in amazement.
That’s when I finally realized it. I have moved around too much in the last two years to not notice change, but most people live in the same place and so the change happens gradually. They see Ace Hardware being built from the foundation up in six months, I came back to find a complete building where a field used to be. Change happens! We just tend to live in an illusion that things aren’t changing—and shouldn’t change—because it’s subtle, it’s slow, it’s safe. So the question is: Do you fight it, or do you support, channel and even initiate it in helpful, productive directions?

And let’s be honest, most of us like change. We think we don’t. It’s scary and uncertain, but once we get over those fears we discover something else. Change is exciting, it’s new and often it’s motivating.

My family loves Starbucks, cell phones and internet. I bet yours does too. Honestly, these are pretty new things. These things have brought change, and most of us have embraced and benefitted from the change. Most of the population of the United States wants change. We must, we elected a new president because he promised change. (Resisting political comment here.) So, change. Embrace change or….

Here’s a great quote Andy Stanley shared in one of his messages at the Catalyst Conference. It’s from Michael Hammer:

“When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near.”

I love that quote.

Oh, I promised that it was biblical. Jesus wanted to make changes. He challenged the attitudes of the day. His mantra was “You have heard it said… but I tell you…”

You have heard it said “we’ve always done it this way” but I tell you, we need to change. We need to remain relevant. We need to remain reachable. We need to be real. That doesn’t mean we throw out everything, it means we find what doesn’t work and change that. It means we look for new ideas that nobody is doing to reach people nobody is reaching (Craig Groeschel). We invent, we inspire, we create.

Or else… we die.

That morning I had dressed for winter survival. I had a lighter, gloves, water, knife, multitool, layers and layers of clothing and tall rubber barn boots on over two pairs of wool socks. I was headed to work at the Davis farm where I had worked for a few years. That day I was going to break down the temporary fences across the river from the house. I had already tried to wade through the river, but the water was too high and the temperature that day with the wind chill put it well below zero. It was bitterly cold.

Gary Davis was headed into town so he gave me a ride down to the bridge about a half a mile down stream of the fence I needed to take down. I trudged through the knee-high snow by way of a neighbors’ field and over a ridge, disappearing from sight of the nearby houses. Despite my care in preparing for a day of outside work in the harsh climate of Vermont in early January, I did something you should never do when traversing unfamiliar land in the dead of winter: I took my focus off my immediate surroundings. The sharp sound of ice cracking beneath my feet suddenly brought me back to reality. I was halfway across a small snow covered pond.

I think our fascination with stories is that eventually we find out how it all ended. Thinking back to the fairytales and children’s stories that we all heard growing up have this same thing in common: Eventually we hear how the story ends. Maybe not completely, sometimes they just end with “happily ever after” leaving a sense of closure–yet ambiguity.

It seems that as human beings we have a dire need to know how things end. It’s why we hate it when a movie ends with a “cliff hanger,” it’s why we can’t put the book down, it’s why we have such a hard time “waiting in the Lord” (Is. 40:31). Because our stories do not yet have closure. We do not know how it ends.

It’s so easy to listen to testimonies and think, “Wow! That’s an amazing story about how they came to faith.” Or listen to the stories of people like Tim Keller and his call and ministry in Manhattan and be awed by his story. Sure for two years it was a discouraging wreck with difficult situations and impossible goals, but look where he is now! Look how God has worked through this person to reach people in Manhattan! It’s an amazing story.* But you know what the problem is?

We focus on the end.

The end is only going to be reached by patiently living through the now. Tim Keller didn’t know what the end was going to look like. He was faithful in the challenges and doldrums of everyday life. He took one step at a time.

And you should too.

“Wait upon the Lord…”

We get so lost in these amazing testimonies, these stories of struggling marriages that turned around, the stories of lives that were falling apart but are now changed thanks to Christ, that we forget that it was done one boring, difficult day at a time. It wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t fast; it was one hard step at a time.

“…and He will renew your strength…”

Are you wondering where you are supposed to go next? Are you wondering how you’re going to pay off the loans? How you’re going to pay for more schooling? Wondering how you have graduated and life is nothing like you expected? Are you wondering where or what God is calling you too? Are you wondering how you’re going to live right now in general? Wait, hope, trust in the Lord in the simple, uneventful—and often challenging—everyday life. And then one day, one day, you too will have the amazing testimony, the incredible story of how God has worked in you life, and people will be amazed at how your story “ends.” Wait, be patient in the Lord, and one day, you “will soar on wings like eagles.”

Our problem as a society is that we focus on the end, and only a good ending is a success. No, the success is in the waiting. It’s unglamorous. If you are to be faithful in the wait, and some day your story may be one of great success as well.

_______________________________
*See Christianity Today “How Tim Keller Found Manhattan.”