“We Don’t Have a Lot of Time”

The other day my friend spoke these words, and the way in which he said them left an indelible mark on me.  Our conversation was in the context of his life, and what he was learning about himself in his own therapy.  But the applications were endless.  Immediately my mind was flooded with images regarding all the stuff I spend my time doing.  Some of it great.  Some of it good.  Some of it bad.  Some of it pointless.  And the point Matt was making, was nothing novel.  In fact, it is a conjecture that has been made since the beginning of human life.  Every man, woman, and child that has ever lived feels the heavy sentiment present in the statement.  Philosophers and the uneducated; Royalty and peasants alike; we all know this simple truth, “We don’t have a lot of time.”  James, the brother of Jesus, said it this way, “Your life is a vapor.  It appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”

As a therapist, death anxiety pervades every story I hear.  As a father and husband, death anxiety is embedded in my story.  Even as believers in Jesus, we all bear the weight of being cast from Eden.  The fruit of the tree of Life we shall not taste any longer.  Yes, our Lord has overcome death, but we still must die.  So, what will we do with the time we have left?

—————————-

It has been said that the physicality of death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.  Meaning, once we realize our time is short, and that we are physically going to die, then, and only then, do we have the opportunity to fully embrace the meaning of our existence.  We have been created for a purpose, and living in the awareness that the clock on life is ticking, propels us toward that purpose.  But if we live in the denial of being East of Eden – if we live in denial of our own death, then we are restricting the impact we can make while we yet live.

Saint Augustine wrote, “It is only in the face of death that man’s self is born.”  When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, they gained the awareness of good and evil.  Their entire life paradigm shifted beneath them as they hid in the thickets, doing their best to avoid their Creator.  As a result, God sent them out of the garden, and death entered the picture of humanity.  As Augustine said, when we begin to understand our terminal diagnosis, we begin to understand who God has created us to be, and where our part lands in His Story.  The question then becomes, “Will we choose to live in the awareness of our fatal disease, or will we stick our head in the proverbial sand?”

Living in this awareness may seem like a complicated issue for Christians.  We are taught, with good intentions I believe, to long for the Sabbath rest that is Heaven.  But where we go wrong lies in our lazy application of this truth.  The Sabbath rest implies a solid workweek.  Instead, we routinely use our ticket into heaven as a way of checking out of the present day’s duties.  C. S. Lewis said it this way, “Read history and you will find the Christians who did the most for the present world were those who thought the most of the next.”

Yet, all too often through our actions, and sometimes our words, we communicate, “I’ve punched my ticket, so I don’t need to worry about the rest of this mess.” Instead of living a life of intentionality and purpose for the sake of others, we become focused on getting ourselves ahead.  Our careers or families centralize our focus regarding the way we pass the time, and our insatiable desire to achieve and amass material possessions becomes a way of life meant to divert our attention from the ticking clock.

But a full understanding of the doctrine of salvation disallows such a shallow view of Christ’s work in our lives.  Our salvation is not just about us getting into heaven.  Our salvation also comes as we are allowed to participate in God’s work in reconciling the entire world.  The gift of grace, once truly accepted, compels the receiver to replicate the gift.  To put it in the context of my favorite passage in Scripture, our salvation also comes with the present beauty inherent in bringing Revelation 21 to a broken world.  As we wait, we are meant to wipe away tears.  As we wait, we are meant to mourn with the brokenhearted.  As we wait, we are meant to bring the surprisingly scandalous story of Jesus to every person we encounter.

 Revelation 21: 3-4

‘Look!  The residence of God is among human beings.  He will live among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more…’

But we don’t do these things, do we?  Instead we just sit at the bus stop waiting for our ride into eternal comfort.  Our interest is not in making sure others don’t miss the bus.  Our interest is in making sure we get our seat.  Heidegger calls this, “living in a state of forgetfulness of being.”  As followers of Christ we call it ignoring the fact that we are marching toward our last chance at living a purposeful life in this part of God’s story.  When we forget our place in the story, our tendency is to forget the story altogether.

The opposite, as Heidegger said, would be to live in the state of “mindfulness of being” – to be authentic about who you are, and who God has created you to be.  Concerning this idea, Yalom wrote, “Death is the condition that makes it possible for us to live life in an authentic fashion.”  As we take up the task of coauthoring our lives with God, we quickly realize we only have so many pages left to write on.  Right away every scene and every storyline becomes increasingly important.

So, what have you done with the fact that one-day you will die?

Are you allowing this awareness to propel you to love God and love others with an ever-increasing passion and energy, or do you maneuver your life away from this reality?  Have you committed your life to being a workaholic?  Are you amassing riches and treasures that will wither like the grass, in an attempt to conceal the debt you owe as a result of your sin? Or has the idea of death saved you?  Have you come face-to-face with the limited number of pages left in your story, and thus begun to journey toward the life God wants for you?  Take up your pen, my friend, we don’t have much time.

The Benefits of a Confused Life

Look back on your life and try to remember the moments when you found yourself most confused.  I’m guessing those moments correspond closely with moments of great suffering as well.  (I know they do in mine.)  And it is no secret that our tendency in moments of struggle and uncertainty is to question God, but before you begin beating yourself up for this, know that you are in the glorious company of the psalmists.  Maybe our questioning and confusion isn’t such a bad thing.  Perhaps there are some serious benefits of living a confused life.

Just yesterday I had a wonderful breakfast with a good friend and mentor that pointed out how the psalmists were the ones that most loudly proclaimed the personal and compassionate aspects of God’s character, yet in the same breath were also the biggest complainers and questioners of His presence.  Take a look at Psalm 22 for instance.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.

O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer;

And by night, but I have no rest.

Yet, You are holy,

O You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel.

In You our fathers trusted;

They trusted and You delivered them.

This poetic expression of David continues on in this lament – confession – lament confession structure, concluding in a song of praise, where God’s story of redemption is told to the coming generation.

Though we do not know historically what incident in David’s life this psalm speaks to, it is clear that confusion and fear have a grip on his heart.  And as he wrestles with this tension of feeling lost and abandoned, yet trusting that God is with him, we begin to notice the benefits that come as a result of a confused life: focus, dependence, and community with God.

————————-

We all like for things to run smoothly, and most of us have some pretty seriously entrenched unhealthy coping mechanisms to keep things running like a well-oiled machine.  These mechanisms give us the illusions of security and control.  Yet, remove the very thin veil and it quickly becomes obvious that we are living outside of reality.  Our security is a pipedream, and our control is nothing more than a monster of fantasy we feed in order to keep it quiet.  If we were to unchain this dragon, our sense of dread would overwhelm us, and we fear our lives would become unmanageable.  My argument this morning is that this is precisely where we need to be.

Our coping mechanisms work to keep the power of the situation in our hands (so we think), and when confusion strikes, our instinct is to move toward clarity as quickly as possible.  There are a variety of ways that we do this, which we don’t have time for today, but in so doing, we miss the opportunity to reap the benefits of our situation.

Look back at Psalm 22 again.  Like I said before the psalm is expressed artistically in the poetic form of a lament followed by a confession.  Each lament forces David (and the reader) to focus on God, and each confession forces a dependence on God.

To start the post I asked you to think of the times in your life of greatest confusion.  Now think of the times in your life where you have had the greatest amount of clarity.  What I notice about my life is that clarity can also be translated as ease or comfort or even control.  When things are clear, I’m comfortable.  When things are uncertain, I’m uneasy.

Another thing I notice about myself is that my focus and subsequent dependence on Jesus is at its lowest when I am comfortable.  Though I may never say it verbally, when I am comfortable, my life screams, “I don’t need Jesus.”  However, when life is foggy and painful, I run to One that can deliver me.

Now, important point, we should run to Jesus all the time, and community with Him is always the goal no matter the circumstance, but my argument today is that there can be huge benefits when living in uncertain times.  If we would simply take hold of these opportunities, we would find ourselves in more intimate relationship with Him, for focus and dependence brings community – thus, the ending in Psalm 22.

The final ten verses are vows of praise that spring forth as a result of an intimate connection with God.  While there is no indication of David’s deliverance, the pain, which led him to focus and depend on God, has brought him closer to the One that referred to David as a man after His own heart.  Let’s follow the same path in our own lives, for then we too can reap these benefits of confusion.

Crazy Love

Occasionally, I’ll read a book that, for whatever reason, has a profound impact on me.  Crazy Love by Francis Chan was one such book.

For the past several years I have not been able to spend adequate time reading and conversing with some of the great books that have been published lately.  It’s my fault, and I feel like I am playing catch-up.  So, I apologize if this book has already blown past your radar.  Maybe you read it.  Maybe you know people that have read it.  Maybe you forgot about.  If you forgot about it, then I suggest you read it again, because you might be on an adventure in missing the point.   I was and sadly still am.  But I have at least stopped, and I am beginning to look for a place to ask for directions.  Unfortunately, it seems, not enough people know the way…

————————–

Francis lovingly prefaces his book by identifying that something is radically wrong with our American churches.  Without throwing punches, he points out how an American Dream mentality stands antithetical to the surprise of the Gospel, yet we still allow it to be the driving force in our lives.  For example, take a look at this commercial.  I wonder how many people in our churches feel uneasy when they watch it?

This commercial didn’t use to bug me.  I would just tell myself I was never going to retire because retirement isn’t Biblical. Blah, blah, blah.  Look at me, all self-righteous in my understanding of God’s view of work.  I don’t need a number.  I would go about my business, nothing internally changed, totally missing the point.

Now this commercial disturbs me.

Here’s the thing.  The problem with the American church is me.  I may never retire, but I am still living as though this number ING is talking about is important.  I have an inaccurate and inadequate view of God.  I want to be happy more than holy.  I want to have great schools for my kid, and a nice house in a safe suburban neighborhood.  I want to have money to travel.  I want to buy my wife nice things (and a lot of times for the wrong reasons, by the way).  I want God’s protection more than his provision.  I want to be entertained, comforted, and only slightly convicted.  I feel like Bob Wiley from the movie, What About Bob?  “I want!  I want!  I want!  I need!  I need!  I need!”

It’s sad, really.

For the first time in my life, I want to be disgusted by myself, and it has taken me far too long for me to ask God to do it.  Crazy Love has helped me take this honest look in the mirror.

The main point in Chan’s book is this:  If we are truly in love with Jesus, then our lives should not make sense to the rest of the unbelieving world.  The minute our lives appear “normal” we’ve got a problem.  His driving question being: Is this the most loving way to do [your] life?

Through ten chapters, Francis lays out who God is, who we are, and what the gap means.  And the deal is, if we love Jesus and love each other as much as we say we do during Sunday morning worship…if we are to love God and love others the way Jesus beckons us to… then we need to live in a way that does not make sense.  Some might even call it “Crazy.”  Indeed, at the conclusion of Chan’s book there should be change.  Not motivation for change.  Not inspiration for change.  But change itself.

As I interact with Chan’s book, I am slowly making changes.  God is opening my eyes in a way that is allowing me to see myself for what feels like the first time.  I am frightened.  I am energized.  And I still don’t know what all this is going to mean for our family.  But God has put us on a journey that I did not expect.  Our story has taken a turn, and some inciting events have sent us through doors that have locked behind us.  Yet, there is freedom in this type of story.  All I have to do is turn the page.

The Art of Feasting

This past weekend was one of the best I can remember, and it is one I will not soon forget.  My wife and I were the undeserved recipients of an amazing feast of food and fun, as a family of self-professed ragamuffins opened their home, their hearts, and indeed, their lives to us.  Never before have I been treated so well and felt so welcome from people that were not family or long-time friends.  My gratitude is deep, and I eagerly look forward to hanging out with them again.  Just being in their presence one couldn’t help but leave smelling like Jesus, and selfishly I want more of that aroma.

Besides that, they got my wife to shoot an assault rifle!  No kidding!  I have been trying to convince my wife for years to gain a familiarity with a handgun (just because she is so scared of them), and on Saturday evening she shot four handguns and a freaking AR-15!  The whole time I’m thinking, “Yeah!  And that chick voted for Obama!”  Ted Nugent would have been proud.

The point is, this magical time with my friends got me thinking, and it occurred to me that maybe we need to get reacquainted with the art of feasting.  I know I do.

———————–

Feast: something that gives unusual or abundant enjoyment

As I’ve spent some time over the past few days studying the feasts of the Bible and looking back over the weekend, I’ve made a couple of observations.  For example, a feast is not the norm.  It is has an unusual quality to it that sets it apart.  Think of it this way, the same evening I spent with my friends could have very easily just been a great night of fellowship.  But something made it mysteriously good.  Something about it was unusually abundant.  Somehow this night stood apart from other dinners we have had with friends?

Looking deeper into these observations, here is what I notice:  1) A feast always involves great sacrifice, and 2) a feast always invites deep intimacy.

————————

My friends are not wealthy people, but they doted on us as if we were prodigal children finally returning home.  As I said, they took us to a shooting range and allowed us to use their guns and ammo.  (Bullets, by the way, are not cheap.)  But even more than financially sacrificing for us in this way, they also extended themselves physically and emotionally.  Vicky had never even been in the same room with a gun (let alone had one in her hands), and the care and grace they showed her allowed her to feel both confident and safe.  Then came the meal!

They lavishly prepared an enormous banquet in our honor back at their house.  And that is no hyperbole.  It was a banquet!  They purchased the finest and most expensive cuts of meat, and meticulously prepared beautiful sides that filled the house with the fragrance of fresh vegetables, herbs, and spices.  They filled our glasses with fine wine, and in the August Texas heat, they slow roasted the meat Brazilian style over an open flame.  It was glorious!  And just when we thought we could not eat another bite, they brought out a huge helping of traditional Brazilian dessert.  Our hearts were glad, and it was all made possible by their willingness to sacrifice their time, money, and energy on our behalf.

But the food was merely an appetizer to the intimacy that such willing sacrifice invites.  With full bellies and glad hearts we sat together and told great stories of God’s work in our lives.  Because of the nature of the sacrifice they had made, we were compelled to take risks as we revealed the stories of where we have sought peace only to see it shattered.  By the removal of walls, we told our stories of pain, death, and redemption.  We were able to engage with each other on a level that is both rare and coveted.  If this sounds over the top, good!  It was!  And my point is, we as a Church have got to get reacquainted with the lost art of feasting with one another.

If we are to know one another deeply, and as a result come to know Jesus more sincerely, we must get back to the routine observance of feasting.  We must be willing to sacrifice.  We must be willing to provide avenues for intimacy and storytelling.  Erwin McManus said recently that we as the Church used to be the great poets and storytellers of the world.  We used to throw the best parties.  We used to be the people that shaped culture to fit the truth of God’s love, because the art produced by our lives was so profoundly inviting.  May we find our way back to this dream!  Let’s get reacquainted with feasting.  Let’s not merely invite people over.  Let’s sacrifice for one another, and by so doing allow the aroma of the sacrifice to invade our conversations.  I promise you it will change us.  It has changed me.  Thank you, Val.  Thank you, Mark.  Thank you, Leslie.  Thank you, Brandon.

Do You Want Answers or Do You Want to Find God – Part 2

Last Tuesday my cousin, Shannon, called me.  Her shaky voice, fighting through tears, uttered the words, “Jeremy, T.J. passed away this afternoon.”  T.J. was her brother, and though he was my cousin, he was just as much a brother to me.  He was only 32.  I fell to my knees…

Do I want answers, or do I want to find God?

T.J. spent the last 10+ years fighting addiction and fighting himself.  His death was tragic, but our family does not mourn as those who have no hope.  T.J. was a follower of Jesus, and he is in the glory of a redeemed soul.  No more pain.  No more cravings.  No more anxiety.  I cannot wrap my mind around heaven, but it must be awesome for him to be finally free.

But our earthly, broken vessels deeply mourn his loss.  We know we will see him again, but we long for his strong embrace.  I ache to hear his infectious laughter again.  To sit and talk life with him one last time, I would give all I own.

His story is an apt picture as we continue to look at the three postures that keep us from finding God – our posture toward others, our posture toward ourselves, and our posture toward God.

One of the last acknowledgments T.J. made before he died was his inability to forgive himself.  His posture toward himself hung around his neck like a sack full of rocks.  I wonder how his life might have been different had he been able to forgive himself.

———————————-

Last post we spent some time on our posture toward others.  We discussed how we are all selfishly looking to get something from the people that inhabit our lives.  This self-centered stance toward our fellow man creates in us faulty relational strategies that keep us from finding God.  We doubt God, thus we leech off others to get our needs met.  Yet when people can’t meet those needs, we begin to close off.  We look to attack people preemptively, or we people-please and allow ourselves to be used.  In an attempt to find answers to our deep existential longings from those around us, we end up missing out not only on the emotional payoff of serving others, but we also miss out on any chance at true and satisfying community, especially community with God.

This week we are going to examine how our posture toward ourselves keeps us from experiencing the same benefits of love and community.  How a faulty view of self keeps us demanding answers rather than finding God.

————————-

An accurate and honest assessment of self is humility, but knowing your skills and shortcomings and being able to act authentically within them is an elusive character trait.  Just when you think you have a handle on it something happens to cause it to slip from your grasp.  Typically, we swing back and forth between being a narcissist and being self-degrading.  Both postures toward our selves keep us overly focused inward.  We spend extraordinary amounts of energy either trying to go it alone, no matter how much God or other people disappoint us (narcissism), or we get absorbed in how worthless we are and how bad our situations seem.

As a result we become our top priority.  We think we have all the answers, and we don’t need anything from anybody.  Or we get bogged down in the muck and mire of our problems and circumstances.  In each instance we are more focused on the answers themselves rather than finding God and community with His people.  We think the answers will make us feel better, but relationship is not all about warm fuzzies and positive feelings.  Intimate connectedness is about looking more like Jesus.

So, how do we move toward God when our posture toward ourselves is so out of line?

The first step is to acknowledge our need for communion with God.  Last week when T.J. died, I had to come to the realization that my questions were probably not going to be answered.  When I conceded my demand for answers, which was my way of trying to embed myself in the pain of the circumstances, it freed me up to just be with my family and be in God’s company.  Not ignoring the pain, but letting the truth and promises open my heart to hope was liberating.  I didn’t always feel hopeful, but I was hopeful, and sometimes His presence flooded my soul.

The second step is to convey gratitude to God.  So often our communication with God comes in the form of requests.  There is nothing wrong with asking God for something, but a huge problem arises when we only come to Him when we want something – when we treat Him like the proverbial genie in a bottle.  Instead, we should express gratitude.  Rather than saying, “Lord help me…” Say, “Lord, thank you…”

At T.J.’s funeral I was called upon to offer the concluding prayer as we laid his body in the ground.  As we said our final goodbyes to his earthly temple, I thought about how God had been working on me to seek Him as opposed to seeking from Him, and although I can’t even really recall much of what I said; I do know I thanked God a lot.  As I tried to hold the tension of questions and sorrow in one hand, with gratitude and hope in the other, I was able to help guide my family and friends toward communion with God.  The thanksgiving and words of affirmation they spoke to me are precious memories.  I thank God that His recent work in my life helped my family to be comforted in the arms of the one that keeps T.J. company.

Do You Want Answers or Do You Want To Find God?

To say that I love the music of the blues is a terrific understatement.  I eat, sleep, and drink the blues.  Just last night I stayed up until 1 in the morning worshipping Jesus through BB King’s classic, The Thrill is Gone.  Luckily my poor wife is a heavy sleeper, and the dude in the apartment below ours works nights.  

Simply put, the music of the blues is genuine.  Coming from the fields of slavery, it is a musical heritage that looks pain and sorrow square in the eye, and refuses to accept trite and superficial answers to the brokenness of the humanity it sees.  It offers nothing more than hope.  This unpretentious confession draws me in like a fine wine poured by the hands of Jesus at a wedding.

I wonder, at times, if the church could say the same?  I wonder if we are in the business of offering hope, or if we work tirelessly to provide glib solutions to life’s problems?  I wonder if we are creating a generation of Christians that are more interested in finding answers than finding God?

I pose the question not because I want to take a sucker punch at the church.  That would be too easy, and altogether not helpful.  I pose the question because as a counselor in the local church I confess that many times I provide people with “fast food” quick fixes to their hunger for Jesus.  As a result, their cravings are never adequately addressed.  In fact, fast food only makes us more dependent on its superficial and short-lived relief.  It’s time I learned what it really means to feast.  It’s time for a detox.

So, how do I address this in my own heart?  How do I help people find God, when it has been ingrained in them to just want answers?  How do we all come to a place of walking with God, instead of seeking selfish responses from him?

It seems to me it’s all about posture: our posture toward others, our posture toward ourselves, and then ultimately – our posture toward God.  If we begin to address each relational sphere in our lives, we begin to experience a very deep hope.  As Larry Crabb writes:

No matter how well I come to know the Lord, until I actually see him, my life will still be a mess – and so will yours.  Finding God in this life does not mean building a house in a land of no storms; rather it means building a house that no storm can destroy.

We can’t change our circumstances.  Pain will come no matter what we do to stop it.  But what we can do is enter into the process of letting God change us from the inside out, so that when tragedy envelops our story, we cling not to a demand for answers; rather we cling to the hope of Jesus.  A spiritual realignment is needed.

———————–

 As I write, there doesn’t seem to be space or time to flesh all my thoughts out regarding these three postures in one post.  (Forgive me, as this is the writing process in motion.)  Let me begin to elaborate on the first section, our posture toward others, before posting on the other two.

———————–

 When you look at the relationships in your life, what stands out?  What emotions come to the surface as you run down the list of characters in your storylines?  Now let those emotions guide you as you answer the next question.  How do you treat people?

We are created for meaningful relationship, but we screw that up daily.  Through isolation, we attempt to keep others from hurting us.  By going on the offensive, we take a strike-first approach to life, so that we never feel the sting of disappointment.  Or perhaps we incessantly try to please those around us, because then they will want us around, and at least we’ll get to sit in the shadow of our perverted definition of love.

In counseling jargon, we call this moving away, moving against, or moving toward, respectively.  Why do we do this?  The short answer is we are all looking to get something from each other.  Due to wounds in our past and present, we live selfishly in the mode of seeking from others what they can never fully give – i.e., wholeness, love, affirmation, protection, satisfaction, fulfillment.  Really, when you look at it for what it is, it’s sick.  It should disgust us.  Like a bunch of parasites we bounce from host to host, sucking each other dry for our own gratification.  But what’s more disgusting – most of us know we do this, and we are doing little to nothing about it.

But what if we changed that…

What if, instead of trying to see what we can get from others, we were to try to find ways to give to others?  Sounds simple, right?  I assure you the road is more difficult than you know, and more riddled with death than you want to realize.  But the rewards are endless.  Changing your posture toward other people in order to give to them is a dramatic shift in thinking and behaving.  Here are a few tangible steps to get you moving.

1. Identify your despair:  Look at your life and begin to come face to face with the elements of your story that once seemed or currently seem hopeless.  These scenes in your life will illuminate the places where you began to take matters into your own hands, as you stopped trusting people to provide for you what you hoped they would.
2. Write those stories:  It is not enough to think about past wounds, and how they manifest themselves in the present.  You must write these memories down.  Formulate your thoughts.  Paint the setting as though it was a scene in the movie.  Organize the plot around this hurt in your life.  What did each character want?  How did your wound occur?
3. Share your stories with a trusted friend:  Once you write some stories of despair, give them to other people to read.  Confide in a friend, a spouse, or a therapist.  Let another person know how you have been wounded.  Let them know you are trying to alter the selfish posture you have toward others.  Let them know you are trying to give more.  Inviting a trusted friend into your journey is powerful and rewarding.

When we do this, we begin to raise our awareness.  The more aware of our despair (and we all have it, no matter what you say), the more aware of how selfish our posture is toward other people.  We begin to recognize how our wounds have shaped our attitudes toward others.  Do we use people or do we isolate?  Do we check out or do we try to please?  All of this comes from a faulty posture toward our fellow man, and as we begin to see this we begin to also address our posture toward ourselves.

More on this next time…