Staying Current

It's been tough to keep my blog-and my life-current. Lately, as I've recounted in agonizing detail, my schedule seems to have spiraled out of control. Thanks to those of you who are helping me to think through my priorities. You may have noticed that I'm a big fan of letting other people speak into my life. Now may the Lord himself grant to me discernment and power, that I may please him in the management of my time.

I know that I have several blog readers who aren't your typical, tech-savvy blog connoisseurs. With them in mind, I offer this little tip for watching blogs that (like mine!) are not updated every day. It's called Google Reader, and it functions almost like an email inbox. Simply subscribe to the blogs you want to track, and Google Reader will let you know which ones have been updated each time you log in. Just another way to stay current!

HT: HM

Methodology Meets Theology

I've been thinking lately about the way that I work. My often unhealthy motivations and my sometimes unhealthy practices have been exposed by my sickness. You can interpret my absence from the blogosphere, in part, as a failure to integrate those practices with the other necessary components of living. You can interpret my filthy apartment and car, my backlogged email, and my unanswered voice mails in much the same manner.

Now that I conduct life inefficiently (read: slowly), I have to think seriously about where I spend my time. Here is where my methodology meets my theology. For example, I rarely apply makeup in the mornings now; it's simply not where I want to spend my time. The good news is that my whole triage system is completely redesigned; the bad news is that my mind is not wholly renewed in this area. So I find myself feeling confused and despondent quite regularly. I'm not yet sure how to distinguish between and among frustration, lethargy, and conviction. You know you are in a new spiritual place when both sin and surrender feel so uncertain.

Scripturally, how do I think through these things? To which things do I apply myself, and at what level?

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

This passage in Luke addresses these often contiguous issues of motivation and vocation. Most of us have seen the motivation question play itself out in our own lives. We pray because we have seen prayers answered and because we have needs. This is not wrong. But if we come to our prayers with only our hunger in mind, disinterested in the redemption that is signified in all of God's provision, then we seek him wrongly.

Christ recognizes here our tendency, even in the face of the eternal, to get bogged down in the temporal. We see this as we go about our daily tasks. Our calling, the outworking of the gifts that the Lord has given us to bless the body, gets submerged beneath the excesses of our day to day duties. Maybe that work happens at the office; maybe it happens at the gym. Maybe your answer, like mine, is C) both of the above or something entirely different.

Perceiving this weakness, the Lord warns them, "Do not labor for the food that perishes." Do not steward your time and energy to win the approval of man, a heftier paycheck, a better body. Receiving this warning, they then look to him and ask, "What must we do to be doing the works of God?" They did not know what this eternal bread looked like, and they didn't know what kind of work produced or secured it. And so they asked, and they asked wisely. What is Christ's response? Believe. Interesting.

This verse helps me to center my thoughts on the Gospel as I attempt to steward my time. For example, I contemplated going to the gym tonight—even though my legs and feet are aching. How do I evaluate this plan? I asked myself, "Am I believing in Christ?", and I have to confess that the question didn’t get much traction. So I got more specific. I asked myself this: "As I consider this plan, am I remembering that Christ has paid the penalty for my sins and that I am now righteous through Him? Am I remembering that I am now free to live not for myself but for Christ? Or am I living under a slavery that no longer controls me?" My throbbing legs made this lie fairly easy to expose. Of course, this is slavery.

It's less obvious when I try to determine how many hours a day to work. First, I must heed the exhortation of Scripture, "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ." This means that I work heartily "unto the Lord" no matter how many hours I work. But I am rarely tempted to indolence.

I tend, instead, to over-work to prove my adequacy to others or to silence that voice in my head that tells me I'm not enough. So as I look at the work that I do after hours I have to ask myself, "What is my motivation? Am I believing in Christ? As I consider this plan to work another hours’ worth of overtime, am I remembering that Christ has paid the penalty for my sins and that I am now righteous through Him? Am I remembering that I am now free to live not for myself but for Christ? Or am I living under a slavery that no longer controls me?"

I've put some parameters on myself in light of these question and answer sessions. I can not go to the gym two days in a row (even if my "workout" is just riding the bike for a very few minutes); neither can I work more than one hour overtime per day. The regulations may sound legalistic, but I believe that the Lord will honor them. Here's why:

You may be surprised that the parable of the talents hasn't yet entered into my discussion of stewardship and work. But, as I think about my "spare" time, this is where it seems most applicable to me. There are passions in my heart that I believe are God-given, and yet I have made little investment with or use of them. In many ways, I have been like the evil servant who hid the talent since he perceived that any ventures involving it would be risky. He saw with earthly eyes, blinded by fear.

As I reflect upon these loves of mine—writing, counseling, family—I know that I am doing little to pursue either the cultivation or the use of these gifts right now. These other "good things" in my life, such as working overtime and going to the gym, prevent me from faithful stewardship in other areas. I want my theology to change the way that I conduct my life—on the clock, on the bike, and in every other place that the Lord leads me.

My Big Break?

My accommodating general practitioner called me today to give me a detailed explanation of the results of my bone scan. First, a little lesson:

In a bone scan, the patient is injected with a radioactive isotope which spreads throughout the bloodstream. In areas where bone injuries or abnormalities are present, cellular activity is increased--because the cells are busily working to repair the damage. A bone scan looks for these areas in which the radioactive isotope is most concentrated.

Now, back to me:

My bone scan revealed a minor increase in cellular activity around the lower part of my right tibia and upper part of my left tibia (closer to the knee). The lab techs who read the results noted that this was "subtle, but could suggest a mild fracture or rheumatoid arthritis." My doctor is calling an orthopedic specialist for a consultation. I'm hoping for a big break, if you'll pardon the pun.

Of all the problems that have been suggested over the past two months, the orthopedic ones are the least life-altering and have the best prognosis. Please, Lord. Let this be it!

Reluctantly Finite

Some great insights here about using and refusing to use our gifts:

“Our resentment [toward God] often masquerades as modesty. What appears to be humility is often actually risk-aversion rooted in shame. I won’t take the risk of using my gifts because I am ashamed of the ‘real’ me—with all of my God-given limits—and there is a strong likelihood that those limits will be revealed if I go public. But to be ashamed of the real me is to be angry at God for the way he made me.”

. . .

"It has taken me a long time to understand that behind my dread-saturated ‘modesty’ was something deeper than a tenth-grade trauma. It was a form of self-serving protectionism, which was itself an expression of an ungrateful heart. Speaking was not, for me, the occasion to love people to the best of my God-given ability; nor was it the occasion to offer up gratefully to my Creator and Redeemer the fullest expression of the talents he had given to me. Speaking, rather, was simply (or largely) about me—about me either looking good or avoiding embarrassment. If I was reasonably sure I could get by without looking like an idiot, then I would take the gig. Otherwise I often would not. I had to be the best, and if I could not be the best—or at least look like the best—then I would keep my gifts to myself."

A Journey Worth Taking: Finding Your Purpose in This World by Charles Drew

Nine to Five, Part I

“I know, but that’s just how I am.”

I can’t tell you how many times I made this statement last week as concerned coworkers converged upon my office. "Shouldn't you be going home now?" "How long are you staying today?" I went from working half days on-site to working 9-10 hour days overnight. I tested the waters and discovered that I could swim. So I spent the whole week swimming.

As the week drew to a close, though, I noticed that bitterness and frustration were edging out my gratitude for these restored abilities. It seemed to me that it was time to examine the "that" in "that's just how I am.” Nine times out of ten, I find myself using that statement to excuse some pattern of sin in my life by an appeal to genetics, environment, or tradition. Could that be true here?

I’ve always been a workaholic. I learned in high school that the difference between a 99 and a 100 on an exam might be as much as three hours of preparation, and I decided then that it was worth it. Yes, I was the valedictorian. (No one else in my class was as crazy as I was, although a number of them were smarter).

Oh, for those report card days--when I knew where I stood among my peers! Success is not easily quantified in my current field, and so I have to seek out mechanisms by which to gauge achievement. One easy way that I can affirm myself is by working overtime. I suspect that this is the primary reason that I do it; it silences my fear that I'm not doing enough, that I'm not measuring up.

I could have gone on indefinitely working in this manner, but my sickness has forced me to think through what happens on autopilot. I guess that I absorbed a bit of my coworkers' concern last week, so I took two days to work only the requisite 7.5 hours. By the third day, though, I was a disaster (as was my desk). So this is what my workload would look like if I didn’t work after hours?

A little frustration or anxiety might be normal responses to this scenario, but there was nothing little about my frustration and anxiety. I was so traumatized by the experiment that I had to evaluate it seriously. Some unconscious thing that I was "needing”, wanting, or fearing had been jeopardized by my new plan.

I demand a lot of myself at work, and I also demand a lot of my work. I give so much to my job that I expect some reciprocity. The satisfaction of knowing that I have "conquered" a certain amount of work or approval from my boss are typically adequate for my purposes. But there are days that I walk away and wonder what I really used 75% of my waking hours to accomplish. Often these are days on which my greedy heart needed more than I got, and bitterness grew up in the absence of reward. In A Journey Worth Taking: Finding Your Purpose in This World, Charles Drew writes, "The simple joy of working hard at something eludes us. Whether we are at school, on the playing field, on stage, in the boardroom, or on the net, the desperate need to ‘win’ in some sense—to get ahead by our efforts, to define ourselves over against the competition, or just to keep up—strangles our souls." Always the need to win, even if I am the only witness to the victory.

But if it provokes me to bitterness and resentment, then why do I work so hard? It is perfectly obvious to me that I am working to meet self-esteem needs, to quiet fears of inadequacy and to satisfy desires for power. It is equally obvious that this food cannot satiate the appetites toward which it is applied. There is never enough approval to satisfy one obsessed with self. So I cannot work for that purpose.

Colossians 3 instructs, "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ."

Could "serving the Lord," then, be a better purpose for my work. Colossians 3 does not assure me that I will receive any temporal reward for my hard work. And it's interesting that this statement about working as for the Lord is nestled into a chapter about putting on the new self. Our attitude toward work can be a very important way that we fight our flesh. The flesh will find some purpose in work; the spirit must work to redeem that purpose.

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with working hard at my job, so long as the work is "unto the Lord". But I wonder, sometimes, if I work doggedly in that context so that I can ignore other arenas of service. No matter how hard it is to gauge success at work, it is easier to gauge there than in most types of ministry. Drew writes, "'Pursuing my vocation' does not, rightly, mean 'working hard at my job.' It rather means 'enjoying God and loving people as I seek faithfully to use my gifts and opportunities to his glory.'" By working 50-60 hours per week at the office, am I able to love and serve the people whom God has called me to love and serve?

My vocation is bigger than my job, and the former should never suffer at the hands of the latter. Nine to five is good; seven to five may not be. Lord, reveal to me how I may faithfully glorify you with the work of my hands. Release me from the bondage of my need for approval and achievement, that I may serve you with a pure heart all my days.

The Wells of Salvation

From my morning reading in Isaiah 12:

You will say in that day: "I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation."

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: "Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth. Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel."

Lord, hasten the day in which your people live joyfully out of the abundance of your salvation. Lord, I am parched right now; I feel as though my soul is shriveling up under the heat of this trial. Forgive me for believing that your salvation is not satisfying, sufficient, or sustaining. Forgive me for seeking my satisfaction, my sufficiency, and my sustenance in myself. I know that I am peering into the well of salvation, but I cannot drink. I know the gift of God, and I know who Christ is. So I ask, like the woman at the well, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water."

Be near me in my confusion. Reveal to me that part of my sadness that is a holy grief for sin, that part which is a "blameless" articulation of pain, and that which is a sinful expression of wrong priorities. I feel too overwhelmed to even sort it out, Lord. I believe, help my unbelief!

Suffocating

I've always associated losing control with suffocating. This probably gives you some idea how much of a control freak I am. I feel like I'm suffocating when I walk into my apartment right now. My dining room table is covered with medical bills and EOBs and, as one who always pays a bill immediately upon receipt, I'm becoming more than a little frantic. I've never even had a fine at Blockbuster, for crying out loud! So what happens when...what happens if? How will these accounts ever be settled? Debt = Oxygen debt. Suffocating.

My tidy little life is anything but tidy right now, and I can see quite clearly that peace has flown with order. Romans 5:1 tells me that, since I have been justified by faith, I have peace with God through Christ. If I have peace with God, why do I not have peace?

My lack of peace is indicative of a lack of faith. It is not my standing before God but, instead, my running from him that leads to this lack of peace. My faith is other things right now, like in my own ability to manipulate all the data of my life. As goes my ability, so goes my peace.

Though my physical pain is abating for large portions of the day, a spiritual and emotional ache seems to have settled into its place. As I told a friend earlier, it almost seems as though for each little bit of physical stamina that I gain, an old fleshly desire comes back with it. So I find myself afraid of the unknown and even more afraid that the pain has been wasted—because I thought that I knew what the pain was for.

How can I be honest, humble, and teachable before God during these days? I am a poor man to relate to Job, and yet I confess that his words minister to me. I cried when I read this verse in Job 9, "He will not let me get my breath, but fills me with bitterness." Job knew this feeling of suffocating, and he confessed it to God. Lord, this is how I feel, too. Teach me how to see your truth in this situation; grant me faith to say, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him.”

A few days ago, a friend pointed me to this verse in Isaiah 30: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” I've thought of this verse often since that time. This taciturn surrender is a difficult remedy for me, and yet I know that these are days for endurance. Lord, grant me eyes to see your strength and your salvation. Make me willing to rest in you and to trust in your good purposes. You have given me life by your very breath, enable me to wait for you to provide all that I need to sustain it.

The Soul of Suffering

"In retrospect I can see that a large part of my anguish was rooted in the fact that there really was nothing I could do to control what was happening to me. I was absolutely helpless, and it is this, perhaps that is the soul of suffering, this terrifying impotence. It is a little taste of the final and most terrifying impotence of all, which is death.

We Christians do not like to think about being absolutely helpless in the hands of our God. With all of our faith, and with all of His grace, we still prefer to maintain some semblance of control over our lives. When difficulties arise, we like to think that there are certain steps we can take, or attitudes we can adopt, to alleviate our anguish and be happy. Sometimes there are. But anyone who has truly suffered will know that when it comes to the real thing, there is no help for it, no human help whatsoever. Simply put, when we are in a deep dark hole we cannot think our way out; neither can we hope, sing, pray or even lover our way out. In fact there is absolutely nothing either we or anyone else can do to better our situation. We can have faith, yes; but in itself faith will not change anything. Neither faith, nor any other good thing that a person might have or do, can actually lift the cloud, move the mountain, or bring about an end to the problem. Only the Lord Himself can do that and when He does, as Exodus 6:6 puts it, 'Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke.' How will we know? Simply because nothing and no one else could possibly have done it. In this kind of crucible, therefore, we come to a new understanding of what it means to be saved, what it means to be snatched away from the brink of destruction. Here we get down to the bedrock of the gospel."

Mike Mason, The Gospel According to Job: An Honest Look at
Pain and Doubt From the Life of One Who Lost Everything

The Enemy in the Psalm, the Victory in the Battle

Most of David’s psalms feature “the enemy” prominently, and the psalmist quite brazenly asks for victory over him and devastation for him. Who could blame the guy? He was maliciously pursued by men intending to take his life.

But I tend to skip over those portions of each psalm. I've never really had men seeking to put me to shame, much less to take my life. The literalist in me wants to neglect those portions and focus, instead, on the declarations of faith and confessions of fear. Those elements can often be cleanly applied to my life and my situation; just cut and paste. But that spurious "enemy" always seemed to get in the way of any grand proclamations that I tried to make.

I am not certain why this disconnect between my enemy and David’s enemy has remained in place as long as it has. But I've tried, over the past few days, to force myself to consider my own indwelling sin to be this enemy--the enemy within. It is this force of which Paul writes, "So it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me." Truly, this relentless enemy seeks to take my life.

Here's an example of how this type of interpretation/application has been helpful to me. Consider this verse from Psalm 13, "How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?"

Reading this verse with an eye to indwelling sin seems particularly poignant to me. It paints a picture of one who is aware of and grieving over her sin and yet still finds herself in submission to this enemy; it's very Romans 7. I consider how my sinful desires or wayward plans, in their very realization, have proven to be an enemy exalting over me. I remember the self [centered] talk and the sorrow that abide so long as the enemy is victorious.

But it is God to whom I look when my enemy is exalted; it is God to whom I direct my cry. It is he who enlivens the counsel of my soul and infuses joy into my heart; it is he who changes both heart and soul to bring the enemy low, for his glory. So I cry, “ How long?” and I give my enemy and my battle to the Lord.

In thinking through how I may apply all of Scripture to my life, I do not want to minimize the importance or verity of the specific situations about which the Psalms were written. David often addressed the danger of being sinful and of being sinned against even in the same psalm. These are not one and the same thing, and yet they both emperil us and force us to look to God. We can recognize and we can strategize against the enemies in all of our psalms, but it is the Lord who gives us the victory in battle.

"I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies" (Psalm 18:1-3).

Grace in Trials

I was truly blessed by this prayer that we prayed at church last Sunday, so I asked one of our pastors for a copy of it. The prayer was adapted from the Valley of Vision prayer, “Grace in Trials.” I would encourage you to read all the way through, search your heart, and offer this prayer up to the Lord.

Father of mercies, I am sinful even in my closest walk with you. Yet your grace has given me faith in the cross by which you have reconciled me to yourself, drawing me with your great love, counting me as innocent in Christ though I’m guilty in myself. By thy grace, you have saved me. And now, by your grace, please sanctify and sustain me. Giver of all graces, I look to you for strength to persevere, for it is hard to practice what I believe. Strengthen me against temptations. My heart is an unexhausted fountain of sin, a river of corruption since childhood days. Without your grace to sustain me, I fall. Keep me aware of my weakness; keep me aware of my dependence upon your strength. Let every trial teach me more of your peace, more of your love. The Holy Spirit is given to increase your graces, and I cannot grow unless he works continually in me. Let me walk humbly in dependence upon your grace.
Amen.

One Story

I had dinner last night with some friends who were formerly acquaintances. Until recently, we'd shared some common circumstances and bumped up against each other regularly, but we'd never really had a reason to push beyond niceties and polite self-sufficiencies. I’m OK, You’re OK.

This all changed when I got sick. I (re)discovered the fact that I need people and that the Lord's servants are blessed by serving. I discovered that the work of ministry happens when the body of Christ is built up and that all suffer when a part of the body suffers. People like these new friends have made this lesson palatable and even pleasant! No man is an island. I could not be if I tried; and yet what freedom I find when I give up that pursuit to live in grateful and gracious community.

As each of us spoke about our own journey last night, I was astonished to see how the Lord has used our own sin and the sins of others to accomplish his purposes. I recall Genesis 50:20, which reads, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” Joseph was sold into slavery by the evil intent of his brothers, and yet that very act was a part of the same story that would later have Joseph to serve as an agent of their physical salvation. I think of the slavery of sin in my own life and I remember how even this slavery has taught me new truths about grace and redemption. Even when I intended evil, God has wrought good in inconceivable ways. What a mighty and sovereign God we serve!

If the Lord's will for our lives was merely based on a destination, it would seem as though he picked some obscure "scenic" route to get us there. But the truth is that the story of today is just a part of the same story that involves where we came from and where we are going. There are, of course, pieces of the story that don't yet make sense and others that still hurt too much to tell, that haven't yet been redeemed in an obvious sense. Still, this one story is the practical outworking of the redemption narrative in each of our lives. Redemption is both already and not yet in our lives; redemption is our destination and the inevitable conclusion of the story, for those who love the Lord. Our one story is part of the one story. Thus, "my mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the day, for their number is past my knowledge."

Sovereign God, I thank you that “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." I thank you that your hand is always guiding the resolution of each conflict in my life; that you know the end from the beginning and have shaped both character and plot. I thank you that your purposes will succeed, among those who love your name and even among those who hate it. I thank you that you have removed my heart of stone and made me one who loves your name. Help me to walk worthy of this calling.

"The discovery of Christ is never genuine if it is nothing but a flight from ourselves. On the contrary, it cannot be an escape. It must be a fulfillment. I cannot discover God in myself and myself in Him unless I have the courage to face myself exactly as I am, with all my limitations, and to accept others as they are, with all their limitations. The religious answer is not religious if it is not fully real. Evasion is the answer of superstition."

Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island