Advent and Christmas resources

My friends from the Evangelical Center for Spiritual Wisdom have compiled a great list of spiritual resources to help you enter in more fully to the Advent and Christmas season.  Check out some of these great ideas:

For Advent

Practices:

• Use an Advent Calendar 
• Make an Advent Wreath 

Books:

Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent

by Enuma Okoro (Upper Room, 2012)

God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas 

 Anthology of prayers, readings and meditations by authors Scott Cairns, Emilie Griffin, Richard John Neuhaus, Kathleen Norris, Eugene Peterson and Luci Shaw. (Paraclete Press, 2007) 

Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus: Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas 

Anthology of sermons by George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, R. Kent Hughes, Alistair Begg, John Piper, J.I. Packer and others. (Crossway, 2008) anthology 22 authors

Preparing for Jesus: Meditations on the Coming of Christ, Advent, Christmas and the Kingdom

by Walter Wangerin, Jr. (Zondervan, 1999)

Online Resources:

Anam Cara 

Advent Music:

Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus

O Come, O Come Emanuel

O Come, Divine Messiah

Breath of Heaven

Emmanuel

For Christmas

We already have many practices and traditions we engage in for Christmas. Here are a few that might be new to consider:

Practices:

• Practice intentionally thoughtful giving – consider the impact of your gifts from all sides, both on the recipient and the makers and sellers of the gift.  
• Practice simplicity. Intentionally plan to do less instead of more. Carve out intentional time for silence, solitude and rest.
• Remember those who are away from family on Christmas—soldiers, relief workers, missionaries, etc.—by writing to them or sending them a care package.
• After Christmas Day, spend some time reflecting with God on the gifts you were given and how you received them. What do your reactions tell you about the condition of your heart? 
• Celebrate Boxing Day, December 26, by giving a gift to those who provide you with a service, and giving to the poor and those in need.
• Epiphany, January 6, marks the end of the Christmas season and celebrates the coming of the Magi. Spend some time reflecting on how your heart wants to respond in love, like the Magi, to the great gift of Christ.

Why Self-awareness is important for spiritual growth

A friend of mine recently wrote a blog post in response to an article written by a pastor on the absolute necessity of self-forgetfulness for spiritual growth.  While I found myself agreeing with some of what this pastor wrote, I believe he overstated his case.  For example, he writes:

"There is nothing in the gospel or about the gospel that encourages me to focus on me.  Nothing!"

"Any version of "the gospel", therefore, that encourages you to think about yourself is detrimental to your faith."

"Sanctification is forgetting about yourself."

In many ways, I would argue the complete opposite.  Let me explain with an illustration and a conversation:

An Illustration:

The summer after my senior year of high school, I found myself on a trip to Europe with a bunch of high school students.  Our tour bus brought us to Pisa, Italy to join hordes of tourists gawking at the famed leaning tower. To my surprise, the tower was considered sturdy enough at the time for us to climb the spiral staircase that traced the inside wall of the tilting cylinder. 

It was an ascent like no other.  Each step felt strange.  As I climbed the stairs, the tilt of the tower produced a disorienting effect.  Even though I knew I was ascending to the top of the tower, at times, I felt like I was actually descending.  It felt like I was going the wrong way, even though every step I took was one step closer to the top.

In many ways, our own journey as Christ-followers parallels my experience climbing The Leaning Tower of Pisa.  When we take our first steps as new Christians, we begin to grow.  Old habits fall away.  New appetites develop.  We find ourselves hungry to read the Bible and connect with God in prayer.  We often experience uncanny answers to prayer and learn to recognize the Spirit’s voice. 

But over the years, as our relationship with God deepens, the journey often takes an unexpected turn.  Things start bubbling up from our souls that we didn’t know were there or perhaps more accurately, did not want to admit were there.  We find ourselves descending into parts of ourselves that we would rather avoid—dark, untamed parts of ourselves that were previously unknown, ignored, or supressed.  It often feels like we are going the wrong way.  Instead of inviting us to forget more and more of ourselves, the Spirit at times invites us to greater self-awareness.

This invitation can be seen in the Apostle Peter’s journey.  When Jesus told Peter that he would deny Him three times, Peter refused to believe it and said, “I will never disown you” (Matthew 26:35).  By his response, Peter essentially called Jesus a liar.  The Son of God invited Peter to descend into parts of himself that he did not want to acknowledge.  Peter doubted Jesus more than he doubted himself.  Peter's refusal of Jesus' invitation to greater self-awareness let to failure.

A Conversation:

A few years ago, while interviewing for a church ministry position, my interviewer posed an interesting question to me.  She said, “You’ve been serving with Campus Crusade for Christ for over 18 years.  If you could go back in time and talk with that 22 year old college graduate just starting out in ministry, what would you tell him?” 

“Great question,” I thought to myself.  I paused for a moment and said, “I would tell him this:  the things that you refuse to see in yourself will have great power over you.  You must pursue knowledge of yourself as much as you pursue knowledge of God.”

In my own experience, my refusal to see some of the darker parts of myself was a great hindrance to my growth in Christ-likeness.  It felt so counter-intutive to trust the leading of the Spirit during those times.  But when I did, I found that he’s took me to a place in my soul where he was waiting to meet me.  A place of mercy, grace, and freedom from the things still lurking in my heart that I didn't want to admit were there.

Yes, excessive self-contemplation can hinder spiritual growth, but let's not through out the importance of spirit-led self-awareness with the bathwater of fleshly self-absorption.  Knowledge of God is central to spiritual growth, but so is knowledge of self.  

The importance of this "double knowledge" of self and God has a long history in Christian spirituality.  For example, John Calvin famously opened his "Institutes of Christian Religion" with this statement:

"There is no deep knowing of God without a deep knowing of self and no deep knowing of self without a deep knowing of God."

The journey upwards towards Christ-likeness also means a journey downward into those parts of our self that hinder our devotion to the Master; a journey towards an encounter with things that must be acknowledged and faced in order to be defeated. 

What about you?  Do you tend towards knowledge of God at the exclusion of knowledge of self or vice versa?  Has self-awareness been important in your own growth as a Christ-follower?  Does self-forgetfulness have a place?   

How I Found a Date Worth Keeping

Have you ever found yourself stuck in an unsatisfying pattern of life with no clue how to change it?

 

My dating life wasn’t working and I didn’t know how to fix it.  I was still single in my 30s, approaching 40, and wondering why I couldn’t find someone who wanted to be in a relationship with me.  The women I was attracted to and interested in dating weren’t interested in me and vice versa.  I was successful in other areas of my life.  Why was I so unsuccessful in relationships?  What did I need to do to change?

Significant changes came to my dating life when I read best selling author and psychologist Dr. Henry Cloud’s book, “How to Get a Date Worth Keeping.”  The book is based on his work as a dating coach to his assistant Lillie Cashion.  Dr. Cloud offered to serve as Lillie's dating coach and then equipped her to tackle her dating life in fresh and challenging ways.

The book offers three strategies to revamp your approaching to dating and guarantees you’ll be dating in six months.

Here are the strategies and how I applied them:

1.  Get a team – I needed to surround myself with people who would support me in my efforts to change my approach to dating.  People who would cheer me on in my efforts and hold my feet to the fire if I got in any unhealthy relationships.

 

My primary team member was my counselor Michael.  At the time I began implementing Cloud’s strategy, I was in seminary. My particular degree program required me to receive six months of counseling.  I found it so helpful that I spent 18 months meeting weekly with my psychologist Michael, who also served as my dating coach.  He provided a safe place for me to go with any anxiety, questions, or issues that surfaced as I revamped my approach to relationships.

2.  Get out there – I stepped up my dating game significantly and became much more assertive in my efforts to meet women.  I joined e-harmony.com and looked for opportunities to meet women in my church.  At one point, I went out on coffee dates with eight different women in a two week period.  A well-meaning friend questioned my efforts and suggested that word was getting out that I was “playing the field.”  Honestly, I didn’t care.  I knew what I was doing.  I had no interest in being physically or emotionally promiscuous.  I was simply trying to meet more women to figure out what I was looking for in dating relationship and eventual marriage partner.  I knew I was heading in the right direction.  If people had nothing better to do in their free time than discuss my dating life, so be it.

3.  Get Healthy – Meeting with my counselor Michael was enormously important.  Stepping up my dating game caused some buried internal issues to rise to the surface, which is exactly what Cloud’s approach to dating is designed to do…it forces you to confront your issues so you can resolve them and move on.


You don’t need a paid professional to address the personal issues in your life that might be hindering your dating life (although in my case, it was worth the investment).  A good friend who shoots straight with you can also be of great help.  Michael helped me wrestle with the things in my internal world that were getting in the way of meeting potential marriage partners.  In particular, he opened my eyes to the ways my addiction to approval and my tendency to people please had the potential to derail me from meeting and pursuing a great woman.


Within eight months of reading the book and applying what I was learning, I met my wife Tracy.  Needless to say, I highly recommend Cloud’s book! 


This past weekend, I invited Dr. Cloud's former assistant Lillie, the subject of the book, to speak to single adults at my church about what she learned through her experience of having a dating coach and how she met her husband Audie.  She now serves as a relationship coach and executive coach.  You can listen to her talk by clicking here.

Me, my wife Tracy, Lillie and Audie Cashion

Were you ever stuck in an important area of your life?  What changes did you make to overcome it?

Spiritual Formation and Control

“Our constant struggle with the issue of control is a crucial part of our spiritual pilgrimage. I don’t mind spiritual formation at all as long as I can be in control of it. As long as I can set the limits on its pace and its direction, I have no problem. What I do have a problem with is getting my control structures out of the way of my spiritual formation and letting God take control. In the final analysis, there is nothing we can do to transform ourselves into persons who love and serve as Jesus did except make ourselves available for God to do that work of transforming grace in our lives.” (M. Robert Mulholland. "Invitation to a Journey". Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993, p. 26.)

How does this quote hit you?  When I read it on my former spiritual director’s blog, it led me to step back for a moment to examine my life.  At times, I’ve been tempted to think of spiritual growth as a process I’m in charge of, sort of like going to the gym.  My effort alone produces the results. 

It reminds me of a quote from Dallas Willard that one of my seminary professors was fond of repeating, "The Christian life is what you do when you realize you can do nothing."  More significantly, it reminds me of what Jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the branches.  If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).

If there is nothing we can do to grow ourselves spiritually except make ourselve available for God to do the work of transforming us, then what does it look like to make ourselves available to his transforming work vs. trying to grow ourselves in our own power?  Thoughts?

Life Planning

"If we would only give the same amount of reflection to what we want out of life that we give to the question of what to do with two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days."
-Dorothy Canfield Fisher

"Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12)

As we finished out 2011 and entered the new year, my wife and I took a day last week to do some life planning.  How easy it is to get caught up in the business of life with small children and not stop to give thought to our lives as a whole.  If I am not careful, I end up feeling like I am being "lived" instead of living...like I'm following a script that someone else has handed me and that I have had no role in shaping

I discovered a very helpful free ebook by Michael Hyatt called "Creating Your Personal Life Plan."  My wife and I were able to read it together in about an hour or so.  The next day, we began implementing the suggestions for mapping out our lives based on the outcomes we hope for and our priorities.  The only "cost" to get the ebook is to subscribe to Hyatt's free email newsletter...meaning that you will receive an email version of his highly popular blog.  His blog is the only one I subscribe to via email and honestly, the content is so good, it's worth having it pop up in your inbox.  (he writes primarily on leadership, productivity, publishing, and social media).

Life comes rushing at all of us and we have no way of knowing what will befall each of us in the years ahead.  But that doesn't mean that we cannot give thought to what we will prioritize and how we will prepare to face the joys and challenges that await us in the future.

Have you done an life planning exercise similar to the one my wife and I are using?  What is the most helpful thing you have done to steward your life well?

What will ground you in 2012?

(a blog repost from earlier this year)

In their book, The Sacred Romance, John Eldredge and Brent Curtis noted that our culture produces a "thinning" effect on our souls, causing us to become "light", airy, and vulnerable to whatever blows in from the winds of our post-modern culture. They called this "ontological lightness, the reality that when I stop "doing" and simply listen to my heart, I am not anchored to anything substantive. I become aware that my very identity is synonymous with activity."

I a recent newsletter, Eldredge reflected on how, in the 10+ years since the publication of The Sacred Romance, this condition has only gotten worse. The piercing and tattooing movement, the "simplicity" movement, the increased obsession with celebrities, and the popularity of "reality" television all point to a deep need for substance, grounded-ness, and a deeper sense of self.

And with social media like facebook (and blogs….gulp), one writer noted that "we can digitally represent ourselves without having to be ourselves."

It all seems so hollow. Yet I am as susceptible to this as the next person.

In the book of Acts, chapter 17 verse 28, the Apostle Paul, in presenting the news of Jesus to a curious crowd of skeptics and seekers in Athens, notes that "in him we live and move and have our being." Any other place we look for groundedness comes up short.

How will you stay grounded in 2012?  If you are a Christ-follower, what will you do to remind yourself that you are one in whom Christ dwells?  What will you do to keep your identity rooted in Him?  How will you resist the pull to anchor your identity in someone or something else?

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Drill Sergeants, Cell Phones, and Guilt

Guilt, we all experience it.

You know the drill.  Your pastor gives a challenging sermon.  You feel exposed and guilty.  Things in your life need to change and you find yourself squirming a bit, thinking, “Yes, I need to work on that, I need to do something about that.”  A self-improvement regimen starts forming in your head as you say to yourself, “I need to read my Bible more.  I need to pray more.  Maybe I can get an accountability partner to help me with that.”  You envision yourself successfully following your action plan for spiritual growth.  Guilt has moved you to get to work and fix yourself.

What’s going on here?  Have you ever thought about exactly how you experience guilt?  I think most people experience guilt like the shrill, piercing whistle of a drill sergeant jolting his recruits out of their slumber at some ungodly hour of the morning to begin whipping them into shape.

For many of us, this is how our conscience works:  we know we fall short in some area and, when exposed by a sermon, a book, a friend, etc., we feel guilty.  The piercing whistle of guilt goes off in our heads and our inner drill sergeant demands that we get to work.  Powered by our own effort, we push ourselves towards growth and transformation.  This is particularly true for those of us who are high-capacity, get-it-done type individuals.

It’s time we re-consider how we respond to guilt.  If we stop for a minute and really listen the next time a wave of guilt hits us, I think we could “hear” something different.  Instead of a piercing, shrill whistle, what if the experience of guilt is more like a ringing cell phone?  Instead of guilt demanding that we get to work on our flabby souls, what if our guilt is actually inviting us into a conversation.  Not a conversation with ourselves, with our “inner drill sergeant”, but a conversation with our Savior, the one who knows us better than we know ourselves, the one who knows that we are far more broken and needy than we want to admit and more deeply loved and cared for than we ever dared to hope or imagine.  A conversation with the one who took our guilt on His shoulders because He knew that no regimen of our own creation could ever remove our guilt and transform our hearts.

The next time you’re sitting in church and you hear the call of guilt, what would happen if you ignored the drill sergeant and picked up the phone?  What if you took the time to listen to the one who knows that what you really need is not a self-improvement regimen, but an encounter with His unconditinonal love?  What if you were honest with Him and admitted your neediness and ongoing struggle with sin?

You would have the opportunity to drink deeply from the forgiveness and mercy poured out for you at the Cross.  You could open your heart to the outpouring of grace made available through the Cross and the Spirit.  And then, from that place of dependence, you could move forward, cooperating with what he does (or does not) tell you to do.

Beats following a drill sergeant any day.

Leadership and Vulnerablity

In my guest post on Michael Hyatt's blog today, I suggested that, like those who train for acting, public speakers must give thought not simply to how to craft a better delivery, but how to more fully offer themselves as they communicate their message.  The challenge to fully offer ourselves, warts and all, is one that all leaders face, not just public speakers.

Offering our imperfect selves is difficult.  And aren't leaders supposed to put their best foot forward?

It is tempting to hide behind preparation, expertise, education and experience.  But those who hide cannot lead well.  Hiding hinders our ability to lead effectively.

In a radio interview, Dan Allender, psychologist and author of "Leading with a Limp" made the following statement about leadership:

"I think if you were to peer into many leader's hearts, they remember believing.  They remember their first love.  But in one sense, the posturing has so eroded something of their own capacity to be real and to be alive...that they've become somewhat robotic and certainly distant.  And that kind of leadership never is a person that you would want to deeply follow."

We must move away from posturing as leaders and risk simply being ourselves.  We must be vulnerable.  Instead of always putting our best foot forward, we must put our flawed foot forward.  This is an incredibly difficult and terrifying thought for many of us who lead.  Yet it is our vulnerability that puts us on level ground with those who follow us.  We become more real in their eyes, more authentic.  Admitting failures, confessing our confusion over the way forward, and naming the conflicts we face in ourselves and with others reminds those who follow us that we are stumbling forward together.  It can lead to the kind of teamwork that no amount of formal leadership training can produce.

People are drawn to genuine disclosure, not exhaustive disclosure.  Exhaustive disclosure of every piece of junk isn't the point, nor is it necessary.  No need to air all of one's dirty laundry to everyone (But you ought to air it to someone...a topic for another post).

So take a risk and lead from your heart.

We need you.

We do not need your degrees or your years of experience.

We do not need your best impression of a good leader.

We need your best expression of an honest leader.

Someone like that is worth following wholeheartedly.

QUESTIONS:  Do you think vulnerability is an important quality in leadership?  Is it overlooked?  Have you ever seen it in a leader you admire?  

I'm guest posting on Michael Hyatt's blog tomorrow!

Michael Hyatt has quickly become one of my favorite bloggers.  He is the chairman of Thomas Nelson publishers, the seventh largest trade book publishing company in the world.  He writes insightful, practical posts on leadership, technology, communication, writing, and whatever else interests him. He's taught me much about how to become a better blogger.

I was honored to guest post on his blog this Friday.  My topic is "What an Acting Coach Taught me about Public Speaking."  I based it on a conversation I had with my wife's acting coach, Kim Tobin, .  Please stop by his blog tomorrow to read it and be sure to leave a comment!

My top three reads for 2011

Even with the craziness of life with two newly adopted children, I somehow managed to feed my voracious appetite for books.  I discovered a lot of great reads in 2011 but these made it to the top of the list:

1.  "Jesus, the CIA, my Father, and Me, a Memoir...of Sorts" by Ian Morgan Cron.  Great writing.  Honest, humorous, touching, and heart-breaking.  Cron chronicles growing up with an alcoholic father.  Though I grew up in a mostly functional family, I still encountered some of my own wounds within Cron's story.  One of the best books I've read in a long time.

2.  "The Reason for God" by Timothy Keller.  Truth be told, I plowed through this book a few years ago but read it so quickly that I didn't really get to benefit from it as much as I wanted.  I am taking a small group through a DVD curriculum based on the book and read it again as preparation for the study.  This is, hands down, one of the best explanations of the reasonableness of Christianity that I've ever read.  Based on his question and answer sessions with skeptics after his church services, this is a great gift to give to someone looking for answers from a gracious, thoughtful Christ-follower.  Reading it reminded me of why its reasonable to be a Christian in the 21st century.

3.  "Kisses from Katie" by Katie Davis.  How do you explain a high achieving homecoming queen who moves to Uganda and becomes the mother of 14 girls?  You don't.  Instead, you read her story and learn from this remarkable young woman and her heart of compassion for those in need.  I was inspired and challenged while having my categories completely rattled.

What were your best reads of 2011?

What is a pastor?

What exactly, is a pastor?

Who are we and what do we do?

In his book, "Under the Unpredictable Plant," former pastor Eugene Peterson, using the Old Testament book of Jonah, reflects on the role of pastors and the pressures they face in shepherding their flocks.  In one section of his book, Peterson elaborates on a dilemma that I often find myself facing as a pastor.  He reflects on the issue of the central role of pastors.

Are we messiahs armed with great listening skills and compassionate hearts ready to rescue weary souls struggling with physical or emotional wounds?  Are we managers eagerly looking for able bodied men and women who can unleash their talents in building the church and advancing the kingdom of God?

These are important questions to consider.

Who are we really?

Are we saviors arriving on the scene to bring healing to the wounded?  Are we supervisors equipped to bring order, direction, and administration to the work of the local church?  Or are we primarily called to something else?

I find myself drawn to both of these important roles.  It is a great honor to offer help to families in difficult situations, serving as the hands and feet, the eyes and ears of Jesus.  And I love putting my planning and organizing skills to work in finding and coaching small group leaders, serving as a good steward of the gifted men and women God has brought to our church.

But Peterson argues that each of these roles, as important as they are to pastoral work, is inadequate to serve as the core identity of a pastor.  Instead, he suggests that we serve primarily as those who pay attention to the Spirit's activity occurring around is, in us, and in the lives of the men and women we encounter in our daily interaction with those who make up the body of Christ.  We are the ones called to help the Samuels in our lives recognize and respond to the voice of God who calls out to them (1 Samuel 3:1-10).  The classic title of this particular pastoral role is "spiritual director."

Ironically, Peterson identifies this role as what we do when we don't do the visible things that we get paid to do.  It is our most significant work and yet it is the easiest to dismiss and by far the most neglected aspect of our role as pastors.  But if we do not help busy men and women stop and pay attention to the Father's activity in their midst, then who will?

How do you practice spiritual direction in your own ministry setting?  Do you tend to default to one of the other two legitimate roles of ministry?  How do you keep the other roles of ministry from crowding out this most central work?  How do you help others recognize and respond to the Spirit's work in their life?  How can we practice the other roles of ministry while living from the central role of attending to the Spirit's voice, both for others and for ourselves?

Advent: Permission to Rejoice and Permission to Mourn

I love Christmas.  I could hardly wait to get the tree up and the lights set up in the yard.  Our boys are at a fun age for Christmas.  My 3 year old is completely enamored by the lights and decorations and is looking forward to celebrating Jesus' birthday.

But Christmas also makes me melancholy.  I actually warned my wife about this when we were dating, just to prepare her for the cloudiness that shades my normally sunny nature. Christmas was hard for me as a single adult.  I'm not sure if it was the loneliness I felt of not having someone to share the holidays with or the sadness of recalling happy Christmas memories from before my parents divorced.  Maybe it was a mixture of both.

In recent years since I've gotten married, the melancholy has largely vanished from my Christmas celebrations.   Unfortunately, it still ambushes me from time to time.  I want to banish it away so I can embrace the joy and life of the Christmas season.

In his book, "Living the Christian Year", author Bobby Gross recognizes this tension and encourages us to give ourselves permission to sing and permission to mourn during the season of Advent.

Truly, there is much to sing about at Christmas:  a Savior is coming who brings light to our dark world, a Shepherd is arriving who will lead us to living water and to the bread of life.  Emmanuel, God with us, is on his way.

Though our savior arrived in Bethlehem many years ago, and though he indwells those of us who follow him, we wait for more.  We wait for the second advent, the momentous day of his second coming.  And while we wait, we live in this "in between" time with a mixture of joy, hope, and lament.

There is much to mourn as I wait:

• A young friend of mine discovered she had a brain tumor a few weeks ago and is preparing for surgery next week..
• The wife of a good friend of mine is enduring chemotherapy in a battle with breast cancer
• Last week, a co-workers endured a tragic loss.  Halfway through her pregnancy, her baby's heartbeat stopped.  A few days later, she entered the hospital to deliver a stillborn baby.

This world is not the way it was supposed to be.  Our address used to be paradise.  Eden.  And one day, we will relocate to a new home in a new heaven and a new earth.

But right now, we live in the remains of what once was as we wait for the arrival of what will be.

Living in this "in between" time stirs up joy over what has already come, hope for what is to come, and sorrow and longing as we endure life in a fallen world and wait for the world to come.

Romans 8:23 describes our condition well.  We "groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies."

Groaning inwardly and waiting eagerly. We are invited to do both.

Somehow, giving myself permission to feel melancholy at Christmas thins out the heavy haze that often descends upon me during the holiday season.  I can welcome the melancholy as a friend, knowing that it is a reminder that this world is not my home.  I can be OK with it.  I can normalize it, knowing it is not a bad thing.  I can move away from self-absorption and towards God in prayer.

I can do both:  I can celebrate the season wholeheartedly, and enjoy the view from the perspective of my children while accepting the waves of sadness that wash over me from time to time.

I can sing and mourn, and offer up both as prayers while waiting eagerly for his return.

A Double Advent (repost)

(I wrote this post in December of 2009, our last Christmas without children).

Joy to the World!
The Lord is come, let earth receive her king!
Let every heart prepare him room…

Preparing room in our hearts for Jesus.  Isn’t that what the Advent season is about?


But how does one actually prepare for an event as monumental as the arrival of Christ into the world?  At the moment of our conversion, did we ever pause to consider the enormous significance of his entrance into our lives and what would happen when he arrived to take his rightful place in our hearts? And during this season of Advent, are we prepared to welcome him into our lives anew?

If we’re honest, I think the answer is "yes and no."

The dictionary defines the word "advent" as "the arrival of something momentous."  I have to wonder, though, when those momentous occasions occur, do we truly realize what is arriving?

This year, as my wife and I take time each week of Advent to pause and "prepare him room", this season of preparation is taking on a deeper meaning, for we are actually preparing for two advents.  We are preparing for both Christmas day, and for what is affectionately known in our adoption agency as "gotcha day."  We long for this day, a day that will finally arrive after eighteen months of paperwork, social worker visits, blood tests, two sets of fingerprints, waiting lists, court dates, and a marathon flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.   A day when we meet our little one/ones for the first time and become his or her (or their!) forever family.


Everything in our lives is about to change dramatically.  Nothing will be the same.

Are we prepared to welcome this infant into our lives?  Yes and no.

So much will have to change, starting with our names. The stockings hanging over our fireplace have the names "Brian" and "Tracy" stitched into the fabric.  Those will have to go.  Next Christmas, the new ones will read "Mom" and "Dad."

Our home currently feels like a haven of safety and comfort in the world.  Our new family member will quickly challenge that assesment and will reveal to us a world of dangers we either never saw or comfortably ignored–things like exposed electrical outlets, glass keepsakes, and unlocked medicine cabinets.

Our current media consumption, our time spent with friends, our waking and sleeping schedules, our leisure time…it’s all about to get tossed out the window and replaced with something new.

Gulp.

The arrlval of baby Jesus seems so innocent and unobtrusive, yet a moment’s reflection on the upheaval awaiting expectant parents like us ought to move all of us to stop for a moment to seriously consider the transformation and upheaval awaiting all who sincerely welcome Christ into their lives.  We are far too comfortable with the Christmas celebration.

But Advent is not a season of fear.  It’s a season of joyful anticipation.  For when Jesus arrives, his upheaval involves rescuing us from the kingdom of darkness and transfering us into the kingdom of light (Colossians 1:12-13), the true resting place for our restless hearts.

So let every heart prepare him room this Advent season because the glorious disruption that awaits us, the feast that we only begin to sample this side of eternity, promises to enfold us into something and someone beyond our wildest dreams.

Need an idea for your next Sunday morning small group promotion?

If you are a small group pastor and you need an idea for your next small group promotional piece, here's a video that my wife and I developed, with the help of filmmaker Beau Brotherton.  We stole borrowed the concept from a similar video that Buckhead Church in Atlanta.  My wife, who is an actress and photographer, took the majority of the photos and helped arrange the stories.

Small Group Promo from Beau Brotherton on Vimeo.

Expensive lessons in leadership

It remains one the most painful leadership lessons I have ever learned.  The campus ministry I served with invited me to take a position as a team leader in Romania.  My team was made up of four recent college grads and a thirty-something friend who took a year off from her work as an Assistant U.S. Attorney.  

This was my first leadership position in our organization and I relished the opportunity to lead.  To prepare for this, I threw myself into every leadership training opportunity I could find:  A week with the national team as they trained the newest campus directors and four weeks in Colorado at our ministry's Leadership Development Project, where I was exposed to leaders in business, psychology, academics, and the church world.  I submitted myself to tests, mentors, and opportunities.  I was prepared...or so I thought.

Two weeks into my arrival in Romania, full of enthusiasm and excitement.  Armed with training, ideas and a team of young men and women, I fell flat on my face.

One of my team members didn't like having a leader.  He didn't like authority and I became the lightening rod for all of his hostility towards authority figures.

He didn't like me,

I wanted to be liked.  

Desperately so.

My desire for approval, even from someone who didn't like me, was so strong that it undermined my ability to lead well.  I hesitated to make decisions.  I feared making hard decisions.  Confronting him didn't change the situation.  Appeasing him made no difference.. I tried simple friendliness.  Nothing worked.

I was determined to get him to like me...to a fault.  I wanted to be liked more than I wanted to lead.

My determination to win his approval was costly.  Team meetings were draining and hindered our effectiveness in ministry.  In the midst of the challenge of cross cultural ministry and the stress of living in a foreign country, our team meetings could have been a place of encouragement and support.  Instead, weekly staff meetings stole more life from each of us.

Why didn't I send him home?.  I wanted to believe that I was dealing with the equivalent of a minor paper cut that simply needed a band-aid of friendliness.  Instead, I was facing a cancerous growth that required radical surgery and removal.  I committed one of the classic errors of leadership:  I refused to face reality.

That year in Romania was costly.  I learned several expensive lessons, among them are the following:

• Leadership isn't about being liked.  It's about leading, even when its tough.  It is not about making everyone happy.
• Reality is your friend.  Good leaders face reality.  They confront it and respond to it, even when it's tough.

What are some of the expensive leadership lessons that you have learned?

A Pastor's most important task

What is the most important task for a pastor?  To craft compelling sermons?  To develop a rich personal prayer life?  To learn how to listen well?

What would you say if someone asked you that question?

Dallas Willard, philosophy professor at USC, former pastor, and prolific writer on the topic of spiritual formation, would say that the task is this:

To arrange to live with deep contentment, joy, and confidence in one's everyday experience of life with God.

What would it look like to arrange my everyday life so that it was characterized by these three things?

• Deep contentment.

• Joy.

• Confidence.

How do I do this in the midst of a hectic life of work, family issues, poopy diapers, date nights with my wife, bible study, piles of bills, soccer in the backyard with my boys,...all the stuff of ordinary life?

We often tend to separate our spirituality from everyday life when in reality, ALL of life is spiritual, not just the explicitly "religious" moments.  It is in the ordinary moments of life that we can find the richness to be enjoyed and the satisfaction we desire.

In another context, Willard encourages pastors "to have substantial times every week where they do nothing but enjoy God.  That may mean walking by a stream, looking at a flower, listening to music, or watching your children or grandchildren play without your constantly trying to control them.  Experience the fullness of God, think about the good things God has done for you, and realize he has done well by you.  If there is a problem doing that, then work through the problem, because we cannot really serve him if we do not love him."

Instead of adding some kind of spiritual activity to my life, I need to look for God in the midst of what is already happening in my life.  I must look for the ways he has blessed me and enjoy what is right in front of me.  I need to open to God in the midst of my very ordinary life.

What about you?  What can you do to live your everyday life with deep satisfaction in Christ?

God, evil, and suffering (The Reason for God part 15)

(I'm reading through Tim Keller's book "The Reason for God" and taking my small group through a DVD study based on the book. Over the next few weeks, I'll be blogging about the book, the study, and the discussions occurring in my group.).

How does a Christ follower reconcile his or her belief in a good and powerful God with the reality of suffering and evil?  Honestly, there is no easy answer.  This is, in my opinion, the achilles heel of Christianity.  This is the toughest issue to resolve because, at the end of the day, it is ultimately a irreducible problem.  It can never be removed by argument.  And really...who among us is going to "feel better" about horrific tragedy if we have a crisp and clear answer to this issue?  None of our philosophizing about this issue will get God "off the hook."  Yet ironically, philospher Peter Kreeft comments that, "the Christian God came to earth to deliberately put himself ON the hook of human suffering."

Keller points out that, while Christianity "does not provide the reason for each experience of pain, it provides deep resources for actually facing suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair."   Keller makes the following observations and claims:

• Jesus did not face his death with the fearlessness that one would expect of a "Braveheart"-type hero.  He was deeply disturbed and shook up by his impending death (Mark 14:33-34), tried to avoid his death (“If it be your will…take this cup from me”—Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42), and when he was on the Cross, cried out that God had forsaken him (Matthew 27:46).
• Why this reaction?  He was more overwhelmed by his death because it involved something he had never known:  As God incarnate, Jesus had never been separated from God the father until now.
• "We cannot fathom...what it would be like to lose not just spousal love or parental love that has lasted several years, but the infinite love of the Father that Jesus had from all eternity. Jesus’s sufferings would have been eternally unbearable. Christian theology has always recognized that Jesus bore, as the substitute in our place, the endless exclusion from God that the human race has merited.
• "The death of Jesus was qualitatively different from any other death. The physical pain was nothing compared to the spiritual experience of cosmic abandonment.  Christianity alone among the world religions claims that God became uniquely and fully human in Jesus Christ and therefore knows firsthand despair, rejection, loneliness, poverty, bereavement, torture, and imprisonment.
• "If we again ask the question: “Why does God allow evil and suffering to continue?” and we look at the cross of Jesus, we still do not know what the answer is. However, we now know what the answer isn’t. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us. It can’t be that he is indifferent or detached from our condition. God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself.

What does the idea of a suffering God have on your understanding of the problem of reconciling belief in God with the reality of evil and suffering? 

 

Strange evidence for God (The Reason for God part 14)

(I'm reading through Tim Keller's book "The Reason for God" and taking my small group through a DVD study based on the book. Over the next few weeks, I'll be blogging about the book, the study, and the discussions occurring in my group.).

Keller makes an astounding claim in his chapter dealing with the tension of God's existence in a world full of evil and suffering.

While readily admitting that this is an enormous problem for believers, he notes that it is potentially an even greater problem for unbelievers. He notes that C.S. Lewis initially rejected the idea of God because he couldn't reconcile God's existence with the cruelty of life. But as Lewis pondered it, he concluded that the problem of evil was even more difficult to reconcile with his atheism. In his mind, suffering actually “provided a better argument for God's existence than one against it.”

Lewis stated that:

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of 'just' and 'unjust'?...What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?...Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too-for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies...Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple."

Many of our modern objections against the existence of God have to do with our sense of fair play and justice. We believe that people ought not to suffer or inflict evil on one another. But evolution is based upon the principle of natural selection and it depends upon the death, destruction, and violence of the strong against the weak. On what basis can we judge the natural world to be wrong and unfair? We can only judge it by admitting that there is some sort of extra-natural or supernatural standard by which to make the judgment. Otherwise, we are just offering up our own subjective opinion.

“The atheist does not have a good basis for being outraged at injustice,” says Keller, “which, as Lewis points out, was the reason for objecting to God in the first place.”

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga put it this way:

Could there really be any such thing as horrifying wickedness [if there were no God and we just evolved]? I don’t see how. There can be such a thing only if there is a way that rational creatures are supposed to live, obliged to live…A [secular] way of looking at the world has no place for genuine moral obligation of any sort…and thus no way to say there is such a thing as genuine and appalling wickedness. Accordingly, if you think there really is such a thing as horrifying wickedness (…and not just an illusion of some sort), then you have a powerful…argument for the reality of God.”

The problem of tragedy and suffering is a problem for everyone. At first glance, it does seem as if taking God out of the equation would make it easier to grapple with, but it doesn’t. It is at least as big a problem for unbelievers as it is for believers. 

Since the problem of evil is a problem for all of us...how do you reconcile it?  If you are a theist of some sort how do you reconcile evil and suffering with belief in the existence of a good and powerful God?  If you are a skeptic of some sort, how do you reconcile your belief that there is such a thing as an objective standard of justice and fairness in a world that is simply the product of chemical reactions occuring over time?

We'll unpack a few of Keller's thoughts on how a Christ-follower might approach it in my next post.

Book Review: "Kisses from Katie"

A few weeks ago, I attended a conference in Atlanta and had the privilege of hearing from Katie Davis, a remarkable young woman with a story full of so much sacrifice that I found it almost impossible to believe.

This remarkable young woman from Brentwood, Tennessee had the kind of life that teenage girls envy: student body president, homecoming queen, a boyfriend, a sports car, and plans to head to college. She turned her back on all of it to launch a sponsorship program for needy children in Uganda. Today, at age 22, she is the mother of 14 girls (yes, you read that right) and leads a child sponsorship ministry that cares for over 400 children, providing them with an education, food, and medical care.

Her story blows me away. I don’t have a category for someone like her. Yes, she's young, but wow, her sacrifice and humble trust in God inspires me. For those of us living in the USA who claim to follow Christ, it is easy to learn a lot about Jesus without really doing what he said to do. In her book, Kisses from Katie she writes, "As I learned more and more of what Jesus said, I liked the lifestyle I saw around me less and less...Slowly but surely I began to realize the truth: I had loved and admired and worshipped Jesus without doing what he said.”

For her personally, this realization led to her serving the poor in Uganda. She writes, “I fell in love with a beautiful country of gracious, joyful people and immense poverty and squalor that begged me to do more. It was happening in so many ways, and I couldn’t deny it. I wanted to actually do what Jesus said to do.”

“So I quit my life.”

Not all of us who follow Christ will be led down a path that leads to a third world country, but her response to Jesus’ command to take care of the poor and sick sure makes me want to reexamine how I live my life and makes me want to live with more intentionality w

You can learn more about her ministry here, follow her blog here, and learn more of her story by watching the video below.