To make a decision or not make a decision...

Lately there has been a lesson that I've been learning. I will turn 29 on Wednesday and I sense that I'm finally realizing that what I choose to do in life is my choice. I understand that God leads us and directs and gives us freedom and yet we somehow end up going in a direction that He leads. In the middle of all of this, I see that our decisions still matter infinitely. Significance isn't found in a position, a title, credentials, your family, your wealth, your years of service, your education, the respect you receive or the people who give it to you. It is found in the decision. Your every decision tells you that you have significance. God gives that to you and in so doing teaches you to take yourself serious and His love and will for your life serious, but it seems that He doesn't lessen our ability to be decision makers. How does that all work within His providence for us. I'm not sure but as I've grown into manhood, I have seen more and more emphasis put on making decisions. It's not only an issue of making good decisions, it goes beyond that into the issue of realizing that every decision matters and they seem to matter more and more.

I heard someone say "After 25, everything matters!" I believe that with the right nuance, that is so true. I just have to look down at my gut to face that. I was always a skinny bean pole as a child and teenager and in the middle of my early twenties, I started to notice how one actually gains weight. I'd never understood it before, but there it was and it had directly to do with my eating habits and lack of exercise. My decision began to matter. I used to be able to eat anything, but not anymore. I see that in all areas of my life increasingly so. God gives grace and allows some things to be covered over but decisions, both good and bad, will bear their own consequences, both good and bad.

That being true, I have also seen that never before has it been more important for me to give grace to myself and increasingly more to others. It's a decision to even receive grace in the midst of my own ugliness, and at times it can be a very difficult to decision to truly receive.

I have the privilege of studying Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards on Mondays. As far as Luther is concerened, we are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners. We aren't going to become shipwrecked, we are shipwrecked - that changes one's whole approach to life, but how? Good question - that's what life and sanctification is - answering that question.

Jonathan Edwards wrote, "I have affecting views of my own sinfulness and vileness, very frequently to such a decree as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping...so that I have been often obliged to shut myself up. I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness and badness of my heart than ever I had before my conversion... It is affecting to think how ignorant I was, when a young Christian, of the bottomless, infinite depths of wickedness, pride, hypocrisy, and deceit left in my heart."

This was written 20 years after his decision to follow Christ. He said that his heightened awareness of sin results in a "...heart [that] will grow in tenderness." Out of that tenderness flows a profound gratitude to God for His mercy, a thankfulness that can only be expressed through service to Him.

I see that the "choice" is still ours in how we respond. As I journey through this time in my life, I want to see the decisions that I make really reflect what I believe, because if I don't, then I really believe that my decisions don't matter or that it will "all come out in the wash." As much as grace is a reality in all of this, so are my decisions and the weight that they carry. I believe that the more influence I receive, the more stewardship that I'm called to and the more people I am able to lead, the more my decisions will matter and that so, until I die. Whoa! That's a lot to think about, but it's necessary. I guess it's what they call growing up. I think in ages past, a man my age would have been expected to be married, to have a family, a job and a lot more responsibilities. As long as that is put off, I have time to think about all of this and in our culture today, many have a lot more time to think about their major life decisions and daily decisions it seems.

just some musings of mine...

something!

I felt like I should write something, but I'm not sure what to write. I did watch a film called, "trade" the other night about the sex trafficking trade in America and was distraught with the horrible wrongs that take place each and every day in our own country that seem so barabaric and insidious and horrific. I still like telling jokes and laughing but I think it is because I need it more - the more I see the reality of the world we live in. A good dose of the BBC or CNN with some Mr. Bean or the Simpsons and then some Dick Van Dyke to wrap it all up - that must be the good life...

There must be more!

A faith community gathers to search for God because there must be more. They gather to search alongside each other and some are called to play different roles within the scheme of that search. They want to introduce the world around them to that hunger.

shepherds are there to lead them to where neither of them have been, to lead them to where both of them need to go.

The search for more shouldn’t be led by someone who has the more to offer you. Luther has said that "every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying."

No one can give you enough advice or direction for you to have enough of what is actually “more.” What is more can only be offered by our Savior, by our Father. A pastor who gives too many answers doesn’t lead his people to something more but towards something that he’s already arrived at. There is nothing wrong with teaching what one has come to understand but it shouldn’t be the arrival or point of orientation, it should be the place that helps us on our journey to “more”, both as a community and as individuals. Do you want more, then don’t look for it from a man or a woman and don’t trust a man or a woman in order to lead you there primarily, let your hunger lead you there and don’t be satisfied with what the man or woman offers, but at the same time we must not be against what they are able to do that better enables us and our community to be lead to more. If the question is one of hunger or lack of it, then ask yourself, have I been taught or conditioned to have an appetite for something that is not meant to satisfy my real hunger, like a big plate of rice that fills but only leaves one hungering for true substance all over again. Eventually that plate of rice will lead the person to diabetes and a destructive future in regards to their health - though it does provide a filler for the immediacy that we all desire. Many can't eat anything but rice because they have never been taught or offered fruits, vegetables, meat, a balanced diet or they think it impossible and out of their reach. You can tell them to eat more wheat and fruit, but they will do what is easiest and most available, they will eat rice. We should never be satisfied with what is immediate but only find satisfaction in where ourselves and our community is going as long as it leads to “more.” Not more of what we've been "filling" ourselves with but "more" of what we know in our deepest core will really satisfy. We may not know what that actually looks like or what it is, but we should know that it is "more." I really believe that we are born with an appetite for "more", it may just take some time and some wrestling to find it but I don't want to give up and settle. What about you?

Been gone!

I haven't blogged in a long time. Most people don't know about my blog because it changed its name due to an effort to make it more accessible - which has left it less acessible. Anywho, I'm still alive and as it has it, I am not an associate pastor at a Church in the area that I'm living in. The Church's name is Life Community Church and it used to be called Cumberland Baptist Church. I never in all my childhood or teenage life or on into my young adult life wanted to or thought I would be a pastor. For me the thought was like wanting to be a Nazi. That is kind of harsh you say - well you're right except that it how distasteful if was for me to think of becoming a pastor and how far I was away from the idea. I had a hard time even imagining myself as one, except in the moments when I pictured myself up in front of a lot of people, yelling at them what I really thought of them. I did that once or twice and found out that people don't like to be yelled at. My journey into the pastorate wasn't a professional choice or a life calling as much as when I was confronted by my own fallenness. You see, I would hear preachers and speakers talk about those who experienced suffering and pain and how the Holy Spirit comforts those people ( I still don't know how that works other than if you really believe it ) and how God forgives sinners, etc... but what I didn't understand or know about was what God did with people who caused pain to others and didn't care at times if they were forgiven or not. I'll be honest, I have felt like that and wondered about what God thought of me in the process. I rarely felt like I did things right, pleased God with my attitude, spent enough time in prayer, Bible reading or silent meditation or was kind to people. As a teenager, I wanted to know what God did with people like me who just felt sinful on a constant basis and didn't feel good enough to be in ministry. It always seemed that I was on the bottom of the barrel when it came to good enough. So, the thought of being a pastor, was the furthest thing from my mind.

Then I heard the most captivating sermon of my life, the sermon that will for all time go down as my favorite sermon of all time. It was a first person narrative of the story of Hosea and Gomer, the prophet who married a prostitute and who loved her even despite her infidelity. I knew what it felt like to be a Gomer and I'd never really heard this part of God preached or taught before. It tore through all the crap of legalism and be "good enough" that I'd been pressured with and taught to believe and showed me the utter depths of God's love because He had gone to the utter depths of my ugly heart - places that even I hadn't gone to. As I've grown and understood how dark my sin really is, I arrive at caverns in my heart that freak me out, places that horror stories are made of - ones that make you sick to your stomach. You know what I found there, little markings on the wall of someone who'd been there already. Footprints and flashes of light that gave me the circumference of the dark caverns of my heart. The deeper I trod through these caverns the more fear I was blanketed with and yet I could see that someone had gone before me - and they weren't lost - they had gone this route on purpose. At one point, I had to stop because the fear and loathing of turning the next corner was too much to handle and yet I could see that the One that had gone ahead of me, had gone still farther. I can only imagine that next time I need to go farther but no matter how far I go, I don't think I'll ever get to the bottom and I know if I did, that One would have been there already.

There's a freedom in knowing that I can traverse the landscape of my life, but the freedom dims when I have to go spalunking into the taverns of my heart where fear is the air I breathe. I can't see, it's pitch black and yet each time I've ventured knowing I needed to go, I've seen that Someone was already there. In that I find comfort. I can only think of Gandalf and his deep righteous voice as it cascaded across the mines of Moria's great hall - "You shall not Pass!" as He unwincingly stared down the Balrog. For that moment there was more strength seen in him than ever before but the real strength was found in what no one saw - when he was leached to the demon and fell into the deepest caverns of the earth where evil exists unheard of and fought the Balrog only to triumph where none had triumphed before. He came out victorious. He had to go there because He was Gandalf. Jesus is my Gandalf, He is my unseen friend in the caverns of my heart - the one who has gone before me and I know no other who could do so or would do so.

Part of being a shepherd for people is leading down the caverns of their hearts to show them how far Jesus really has gone. I've seen the ugliness of my heart, I just wish I hadn't acted it out so much, but my regret is only an ode to forgiveness if it is anything. I can't excuse sin but I don't care if I do at this point because that is not the point. The point is that we all have caverns that we are afraid to descend into, but without the descent, we can't see how far He's really descended for us. Grace has to answer whatever we discover about ourselves. It has to otherwise it is not real. If we are to discover that grace, then we are called to descend at points in our lives - not all the time and not without hope but we are called to descend. I hope that as a shepherd, I may be able to call people not only away from their sin but to face it head on, each difficult step down into their caverns. There, I believe they will find grace - the grace that answers what they fear and eclipses their fear with a warm vat of overflowing goodness, a bath of God's goodness to melt into while the fear dissipates into the cold past. I guess knowing that Christ has gone that far down makes me think of what will call us from the surface. I still like to hang out on the surface where the light is bright and the company feeds my ego, but I know I'm called downward at times. I just don't want to go, so should I repent? If I want grace I'll go.