Chris Howlett

Bible Reading 101

The beginning of a new year is a good time to start a new, healthy habit. Daily Bible Reading is as good a habit as any, so here are some helpful tips in starting and maintaining daily Scripture reading.

Three Tips to Get Started Consistently Reading God’s Word

1. Make a Plan

It’s always good when you’re setting out to start a new habit, or revive an old one, to make a plan. Like the old saying, “If you fail to plan you plan to fail.” Jesus said it like this in Luke 14:28:

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?” Luke 14:28 (NIV)

Jesus was talking about considering the cost of discipleship, but the principle applies to starting a new, godly habit. If you’re going to be successful, you’ll want to make a plan.

We’re talking about starting the habit of reading God’s Word, daily, so you need to plan the medium you want to read. A physical Bible? On your computer? A phone or tablet app?

Plan that. Download the app. Get a new Bible.

Then, choose how you’re going to read it. Are you simply going to read from Genesis to Revelation? Are you going to use a Bible Reading Plan?

A simple plan is what I call the 3/5 plan. Read three chapters a day and five on Sundays, you’ll read through the Bible in a year.

Another way to do it is count the number of pages in your Bible. Mine has 1,042. If I divide that by 365 I get 2.85 pages per day. Well, it’s hard to figure out the 0.85 pages, so read three pages a day and you’ll get through it in a less than a year.

Here are a couple of resources that are super helpful to keep you on track.

Bible.com

This website is produced by the same people who publish the YouVersion Bible App for your smartphone or tablet. You can sign up for a free account and it will track across all your devices. It’s an incredible gift to Christians around the world. The app has been downloaded onto 455 Million unique devices around the world. There are dozens of English translations, there are dozens of different reading plans.

I highly, highly recommend you check out this app and website. It’s great! I thank God for the folks at Life Church out of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for sharing these wonderful resources.

Another website and app that I find helpful:

DailyOffice2019.com

This is a wonderful site that also has free apps for your smartphone and tablet. It follows the Daily Office Lectionary and daily prayers from the new Book of Common Prayer, the 2019 version produced for the Anglican Church in North America. I’ve used the Daily Office Lectionary for many, many years for my daily devotions and Bible Reading. It’s the pattern John Wesley followed. I figured if it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for me. The Daily Office offers a one-year cycle of readings that can be adapted to a two-year cycle. In one cycle, the Old Testament is read once each year (with a few short passages left out here and there). The Gospels, Acts, and Epistles are read in their entirety twice in a year and the Revelation of John is read once. The Psalms are read on a thirty or sixty day cycle according to your preference. For millennia, the Psalms have provided the backbone of prayer for the people of God. When you pray with the Psalms, you’re in good company.

However you choose to plan to read the Bible, let me encourage you to plan to read the whole Bible with a systematic approach. You want a plan that takes you through the entirety of the Scripture in a set amount of time, whether that’s ninety days, one year, two years, or three years. Whatever you choose to do, choose to take in the whole counsel of God.

Here are a couple of other things that will help you build this new habit: A. Choose a time of day and keep it consistent. B. Choose a place and keep it consistent. When I first started reading the Bible seriously, I read it at night, right before bed. Some people find early mornings work best. If you have small children and home, you might have to get creative. But keeping a consistent time and place will go miles toward helping you build a habit that sticks.

2. Share Your Plan

You don’t need to announce it to the world, but an accountability partner or small group can be a helpful way to keep on track. Invite them to hold you accountable to your plan. This is a big, important step in your spiritual maturity, don’t keep it to yourself. Share your plan with someone. If you’re married, your spouse can help remind you. They might even start to see the change God brings about in your heart and life because you’re giving him the opportunity to produce the fruit of discipleship in your life. 

“Iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens another.” Proverbs 27:17 (CSB)

Almost anything you do in life that’s going to improve your life requires the assistance of others. Accountability is one of the bedrock principles of Methodism because it works. Share your plan. It will help you keep on track.

3. Work Your Plan

This is the Nike step. Just do it. As they say, “Plan your work and work your plan.” In the words of that great philosopher-poet, Larry the Cable Guy, “Git ‘r done.”

When’s the next best time to start reading your Bible? Right now. Today. Make your plan. Share your plan. Work your plan. Those words aren’t going to read themselves.

What do you do when you forget to read or you don’t prioritize it one day? The temptation is to beat yourself up and quit. Do not do that! Nearly every person starting to read the Bible daily will find that this new habit begins with fits and starts. It’s not easy to develop a new, healthy habit. But it’s worth it. You won’t be perfect. You’ll have a bad day here and there. You’re going to be tempted to quit. This is the one personal spiritual discipline, yes it’s a discipline, that will make the biggest difference in your life. Regular, systematic, Bible intake combined with faithful worship attendance are huge keys to building spiritual maturity. The Devil does not want you to do it. He’ll throw up every road block he can imagine to keep you from experiencing the fruit of discipleship in your life. Just remember: God is with you!

“No temptation has seized you that isn’t common for people. But God is faithful. He won’t allow you to be tempted beyond your abilities. Instead, with the temptation, God will also supply a way out so that you will be able to endure it.” 1 Corinthians 10:13 (CEB)

Reading the Bible’s like learning how to ride a bicycle. You’re going to fall off. Get right back on and give it another shot. You’ll be so thankful you did and this new holy habit will position you to experience the kind of flourishing, Spirit-led, grace-filled life you’ve always wanted to live.

Make your plan. Share your plan. Work your plan.

Hang in there. Don’t give up if you miss a day here and there. You’ll reap the rewards God wants to produce in your life if you’ll be faithful in reading your Bible.

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The Video Version of this post: Here.

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Set Free for Freedom

A young couple goes to the church office to answer some pre-marital questions with the pastor. The young man, who’d never talked to a pastor before, was nervous, so the pastor tried to put him at ease.

When the pastor asked the question, “Are you entering this marriage of your own free will?” there was a long pause.

Finally, the girl looked over at the apprehensive young man and said, “Put down yes.”

Do we have free will, or are we just puppets of God, or fate, or of a cascade of electrical and chemical processes that originated with the Big Bang.

Is everything in life on a predetermined course, set off at the beginning of the universe? Is everything like the domino effect? Just a chain reaction reaching back to the recesses of the beginnings of time? Are we just players on a stage following someone or something? Do we have free will or not?

I think free will is important to consider when analyzing a person’s potential for wholeness. If it only comes down to God’s choice, and he’s given us no freedom in the matter, then there’s nothing much we can actually take charge of in order to make positive changes in our lives. If, however, God has endowed us with free will, then we can use that free will to make positive choices, responding to God’s gracious initiative, and impact our sense of wholeness, physical, emotional, and spiritual.

I want to dig in a little bit deeper than I was able to talk about in my sermon. 

The Fake News I addressed is the saying: “Everything Happens for a Reason.” This way of thinking is called Deterministic Fatalism. It’s a philosophy which teaches humans don’t have free will. Instead, everything is predetermined either by God or by fate, or simply genetics and biology. You don’t have control over anything that happens to you. You don’t have control over your choices. Think about it. A lot of what happens to you is the result of other people’s actions, but they don’t have free will because these happenings were predetermined. Thus, everything you do is also predetermined, so you have no free will.

When you think about this, it means you’re not responsible for anything that happens to you. You could blame the Universe, Fate, or God, or society, or your parents, your DNA, or whatever… anything but you because you don’t have free will.

In a way, a whole lot of what’s going on in popular culture today is related to this kind of worldview, a worldview of fate. Responsibility has been taken out of the hands of the individuals and posited somewhere else: the person’s family, their upbringing, the group to which they belong, their race, their gender, their national origin. Because this person is part of this disadvantaged group, they’re not responsible for their actions. People and society as a whole are now looking for any way of removing responsibility from the self and onto something else, something outside the self, something larger, possibly less personal, a force, impersonal injustice in the system, or simply fate.

But that’s not how the world works. Each individual person is is endowed with freedom to choose. You have free will.

A big influence on my own thinking on this is the Jewish psychiatrist and survivor of the Holocaust, Viktor Frankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl’s parents, brother, and wife died in concentration camps. Before the war, he was a Freudian determinist who believed persons are slaves to their subconscious memories. His experiences in the concentration camps changed all that. He wrote:

“We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” 

Humans do, indeed have freedom. We don’t have to automatically react to circumstances like an animal acts out of instincts. There’s something higher than the animals in our being.

In the Bible we learn that we are created in the image of God. People of faith have struggled to tease out exactly the Scriptures mean by this and there are a variety of responses. Most agree that at least part of the image of God is free will, as God is the most free being in existence.

John Wesley, in his sermon The New Birth talked about what it means for humans to be created in the image of God. He states there are three aspects, or facets, ways of understanding the image of God. We have been stamped with the natural image, the political image, and the moral image of God.

According to Wesley, the natural image of God includes “a picture of his immortality, a spiritual being endued with understanding, freedom of will, and various affections.” The political image implies that a human is “the governor of this lower world, having ‘dominion’” over the created order. The moral image implies we are created in “‘righteousness and true holiness.’”

Because of the Fall, the image of God was voided or decimated. Obviously humans aren’t by our current, fallen nature, moral beings. The image of God has been marred. But, because of God’s grace, a measure of that image is restored. This is what Wesley labeled “Prevenient Grace.” Through faith, we respond to that grace and we growth in grace, embodying more and more of what it means to be God’s creatures. The more mature we grow in grace and faith, the more like God we become,  and the more freedom we have. We exhibit greater degrees of righteousness and holiness because we are reflecting the character of God expressed through the image of God.

As God ministers his grace, we’re free to respond to that grace, which opens our lives more fully to his gracious initiative.

We do have free will, because of God’s grace. The question we must ask ourselves is, what will I do with my free will? Am I to choose to respond to God’s grace or will I fall away from God’s goodness and become a slave to sin? The choice is ours. We can join God in his mission of rescuing the people of the world, largely from themselves, from their abuse of their freedom, and help them discover the New Birth that Jesus Christ made possible, so they can be truly free. 

For freedom, Christ has set us free.

Photo by Julian Jagtenberg from Pexels

How Do You Approach Scripture?

Jesus, facing his testing in the wilderness prior to his public ministry, was tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread. He’d been fasting for quite some time and I imagine this would have been quite the strong temptation. But Jesus replied to the tempter, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4 ESV). Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 8:3. Moses was reminding Israel that God, indeed, had provided manna for their sustenance, but even manna is not enough. Physical bread is necessary for survival, but the Word of God is what sustains us in the life and love of God.

It’s ironic that in Jesus’ exchange with the devil, the devil himself had been quoting scripture. It goes to show that knowledge about God’s Word is not enough. We need knowledge about God’s Word. The only way to gain this knowledge is by reading it. But it takes more than a mere knowledge of what God says.

For the devil, the Bible is merely a tool to be manipulated to get what he wants. For Jesus, the Bible is the life-giving Word that feeds our souls in the presence and purpose of God. This is a fundamental difference in posture toward the Scripture.

When you think about how you “use” the Bible in your spiritual growth, how are you approaching the Bible? For some the Bible is a foreign set of books that has little intersection with their daily life. They hear from people like me that they need to feed on the Word and so they start reading, checking off the box and moving on to the rest of their day. But this approach has limited appeal and benefit.

While the Bible is foreign to us, written by a group of people living in a very different time in a far away place in varied cultural settings that are quite distinct from our twenty-first century, Western context. So, there is that gap to bridge. But even more than that, the Bible is the Word become text, the self-revelation of a God who cares and loves us and chose to reveal himself universally through specific people groups in a specific location at a specific time. The Word is living and active (Hebrews 4:12). The Word is dynamic.

This is where posture counts. How do I come to the text? To manipulate it? To stand over it and use it for my purposes? Or do I come hungry, desiring to know God and submit to his loving leadership? 

When you approach the Bible with a heart to know and love God, the Holy Spirit meets you there and the Word become text can be the Word become flesh in you to speak to and through you about and to a world searching for redemption, wholeness, and justice. We need physical sustenance. But, we need a nourishment that’s deeper, that’s life-giving, that speaks to our hearts as well as our minds, and opens up to us the way of life. Approach the Bible with an open-heart and a willingness to obey and watch what God does in and through you!

Prayer

How did you learn “how” to pray? Jewish children were taught to pray every night before they went to bed. Their mother or father taught them to use one of the Psalms, Psalm 31:5 “Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God.” Every night this was their prayer. Jesus would have been taught this prayer as a young child. This prayer reveals that your life is not in the hands of fate. Your life is in the hand of a faithful God. Jesus repeated this prayer on the cross, knowing his life was being poured out as an offering and sacrifice and that his Heavenly Father held him in his loving care even in the midst of his most difficult and devastating time.

Jesus was a person of prayer. He often took time to get away by himself to pray. Think about it. Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity. John tells us that the creation, itself, came into being through the Word and the Word is Jesus. He is fully divine and fully human. Yet, Jesus felt the need to step away from the busyness of ministry and everyday life to pray. He constantly placed his life in the hands of his Heavenly Father.

If prayer was important to Jesus, then it must be vital to our lives today. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Revival in 18^th century Britain wrote, “Prayer may be said to be the breath of our spiritual life. One who lives cannot possibly stop breathing.” Prayer is breath. Prayer is oxygen for a thriving spiritual life, a vital church, a Kingdom movement seeking to transform the world. Prayer changes us and then prayer channels the grace of God in and through us to a hurting world. We need prayer. The world needs our prayers. Our Heavenly Father is waiting for us to place our lives, our whole beings, into his loving hands.

Run Away!

“It is far better to avoid sin in the first place than to struggle to overcome its consequences.” – Tony Evans

Imagine an animal you fear, perhaps a rattlesnake or a large spider. What if you were on safari and you faced an angry rhinoceros?! What would you do if you suddenly saw such an animal? Run away, of course! You wouldn’t sit there and analyze the situation. You wouldn’t tweet about it or text a friend. You’d get away to safety as quickly as possible.

As a follower of Jesus that’s how you should feel about temptations to sin. When faced with a compromising situation, a set of circumstances that invite you to violate God’s perfect law of love, you'll want to flee! You will want to flee from sin and flee to Christ. He loves you and is offering this incredible new life in the new world he’s building. When you think about what your getting, the positive blessings of life with Christ, not just what you’re denying yourself, sin looks much less attractive and more and more scary!

King David did the opposite. Faced with the tempting situation involving Bathsheba, a beautiful woman, he ran toward the temptation. That decision led to a world of hurt. 

Joseph, on the other hand, when tempted by another beautiful woman, Potiphar's wife, ran away, avoiding the sin. He struggled with another kind of consequence entirely, being falsely accused, but ultimately God's blessing carried the day. It's always best to flee temptation.

What scary monster of temptation is facing you down, today? Remember, God is with you and always provides a way out so that the temptation can be overcome (1 Cor. 10:13).

 

Climbing the Mount of Transformation

“Spiritual formation is a process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others.” — M. Robert Mulholland

Climbing Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, is a daunting and challenging task. Climbers face the dangers of sub-zero temperatures, high winds, and a low oxygen environment. The latter is the most life-threatening. Altitude sickness leads to fluid in the lungs and a swelling brain. Many who suffer altitude sickness on Everest die.

Even the world’s most experienced climbers need Sherpas to assist them to reach the summit and return safely. Sherpas are a unique people who, for generations, have inhabited the Khumbu Valley at the base of Mt. Everest. They developed the capacity for surviving at altitude and capabilities for mountain climbing. Sherpas are gifted climbers who assist others to attain their goal of summiting the highest mountain in the world.

On our journey of discipleship, we need spiritual “Sherpas,” those who have developed the capacity and capabilities of spiritual discipline and discernment and actively model their lives after Christ. It can be a daunting journey up the Mount of Transformation, because everything in the world teaches us to live for self and place ego needs ahead of all others. The process of allowing Jesus to reign in every area takes time, energy, and the investment of others ahead of us on the journey.

As we develop the capacity to love God and others and the capabilities of spiritual discipline and discernment, we invest in those who are behind us, growing a family of missionary servants who learn to reflect the image of Christ for others. No one accomplishes this on their own. We need spiritual “Sherpas” to assist us as we grow and develop our desire and ability to bless others.

Jesus Wants to be Your Personal King

In some circles it’s not popular to talk about Jesus as your personal Savior, or having a personal relationship with Jesus. Detractors claim that the words “personal Savior” or “personal relationship with Jesus” don’t occur in the Bible. True. However, Jesus is a person and he invites us into relationship with himself, that’s what the new covenant in his blood is all about(Lk. 22:20). So, what he’s offering is a personal relationship because it is a relationship between persons. I don’t have a problem using this language that’s been part of the evangelical world for a long time.

I do, however, understand that the objection to the idea of a “personal Savior” is the hyper-individualism that exists in the Church today, the “me and Jesus” mentality that excludes loving our neighbor as ourselves as long. As we have our ticket to heaven we’re good to go. This is a pervasive problem resulting from our primary identity as consumers rather than children of God.

It's certainly a legitimate objection, but dropping personal relationship language is not the answer. Instead, we need to add something to our language: Jesus as Personal King.

In Advent we talk about Jesus returning as the Messiah who will be King of the World, fulfilling the hope of Israel as outlined in Psalm 2. But that’s in the future and that’s Jesus’ world-wide reign. It needs to be more personal. Jesus not only wants to be my personal Savior, he also wants to be my personal King. He wants me to voluntarily submit to his loving leadership so I can serve the purposes of his already/not-yet Kingdom. The Kingdom that is already inaugurated in his life, death, and resurrection and will be completely fulfilled at his Second Coming.

Jesus desires a personal relationship so he can be Savior and Lord, Forgiver and Leader, Redeemer and King. He wants to guide my steps and empower me to join him in his mission to rescue my friends, neighbors, coworkers, family members, and the whole world. He’s my personal Savior and my personal King. He saved me and he is sanctifying me. He’s calling me to follow him in his lifestyle which is spelled out in Mark 10:45 “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (ESV).

When Jesus is my King, then my life is no longer about me, it’s about him and his Kingdom purpose. My focus turns outward to see how I can serve others and help them experience the love of the one true God and see their lives changed for eternity. My relationship with Jesus is personal, but it’s not private because he is my leader and my leader is all about rescuing the whole world.

So, how about you? Is Jesus your Personal Savior AND Personal King. Or, are you still trying to be king?

On Abuse

Sunday, October 18, 2015, I shared the message: Honor Mom & Dad, the fifth in the series, Life Preservers: 10 Commandments for Life. This message was based on Exodus 20:12 “Honor your father and mother so that your days may be long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

In the Sunday morning message I did not address what to do in the case of abusive parents, but promised I would post on this blog some help and hope for those who have struggled with abuse. So, this is my follow-through on that promise. 

I want to begin by saying that the Bible is not silent on the matter of child abuse. The Bible does not foresee a perfect situation where all parents want and love all their children. Child abuse is not a taboo topic in the church, although, unfortunately, it has been treated that way in the past. Two passages are particularly important:

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’—this is the first commandment with a promise: ‘so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.’ And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Ephesians 6:1-4 (NRSV)

“Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is your acceptable duty in the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, or they may lose heart.” Colossians 3:20-21 (NRSV)

There is an assumption here that some parents will cross the line and act in abusive ways toward their children, and that this behavior is inexcusable. For some reason, and I think it is because these passages have been so misused for so long by persons who wish to “lord it over” their families, we have been under the false assumption that parents have an absolute authority over their children. However, the Biblical witness is clear that this is not true. There are certain behaviors the Bible labels as unacceptable. Children have a standing with God.

There were times, and in some places this is still true today, when parents were given free reign over their children because others considered it untoward to interfere. It was considered the parent’s right to treat their children any way they felt appropriate. This attitude presupposes that children are property of parents, which is not a Biblical view at all. Children, in the Bible, are seen as unique individuals worthy of dignity and respect. Jesus welcomed little children and warned those who would lead them astray (Mark 10:13-16; Matt. 18:6).

In the Ephesians and Colossians passages above, parents are instructed to not provoke their children. There are actually two different Greek words used here. One means do not “provoke, embitter, irritate” (Eph), the other means do not “anger or exasperate” (Col). To do so would be to use excessive discipline and make unreasonably harsh demands or to treat children in an arbitrary manner, forcing compliance simply to prove one’s authority. Condemnation of a child or any gross insensitivity to a child’s sensibilities that would break his or her spirit is proscribed.

If this issue is addressed in the Bible one must assume this behavior was occurring with great enough frequency to warrant the apostle’s attention. So, abuse is nothing new. Children are commanded to obey, but parents are equally commanded to treat children with dignity.

So, the main question I want to address here is, “How do I honor my parents if my parents are, or have been, abusive?” What type of abuse am I talking about? Any type. Physical, sexual, emotional, and neglect.  Any abuse is too much abuse and makes it rather difficult for children to “honor” their parents in the way in which Exodus 20:12 teaches.

The first thing I want to say to children who have been abused is that I am so sorry this has happened to you. You did not deserve it. Period. There is nothing you could have done or not done to deserve to be abused by anyone, particularly your parents. No matter the circumstances surrounding your conception, you are a gift of God, created in his image and precious in his sight. He loves you so much that he sent Jesus to make a way for you to be in relationship with himself and he is infinitely concerned about your well-being. Unfortunately, some people are so broken that they perpetrate evil acts against those whom God has entrusted into their care. My prayer is for your healing, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, so that God can redeem even this most painful experience.

The second thing is that God has never abandoned you, even in the moment of your greatest pain. He has suffered along with you and for you. The greatest revelation about God’s nature is the revelation of the Suffering God, the God on the Cross. In Jesus, God identifies with all the suffering of humanity from beginning to end, and in this suffering, physical, emotional, and spiritual, he takes on all of our suffering. He does not minimize it or dismiss it, but absorbs it and redeems it through the power of the resurrection. So amazing is this experience of redemptive suffering that Paul wrote: “‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” 1 Cor. 15:55-57 (NRSV). So, claim the victory of your healing and then trust Christ to work out the ramifications of healing in your life. 

Now, to the original question: How you honor your parents if one or both were abusive? There is a bit of a clue in the passage from Ephesians 6:1: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord…” John Calvin, the great 16^th century reformer declared that the “in the Lord” phrase implies that whatever instructions given by parents need to be consistent with Christian principles. Obviously abuse is not consistent with Christian principles. This is not a carte blanche, blanket license for parents. It is an admonishment to them to raise children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

There is a principle of honoring parents, however, even if they have been abusive. Honor them in the sense that you give them the respect that is due to parents. The respect due them is not based on their performance, but on their position. However, this respect must come within the appropriate personal boundaries. This means, for adult survivors of abuse, that they may not have much contact, if any, with abusive parents. For children who are still at home this means you need to seek out the help of a responsible adult, not in your family, who can report the abuse and get the help you need. You can respect and honor your parents, but do it from afar if they cannot or will not honor your personhood, the fact that you are a unique creation, a person who embodies the image of God. Abuse is violence against God, himself.

 I once counseled a woman whose mother died without ever, not one time, telling her daughter that she loved her. The daughter was abused physically, sexually, and emotionally. Yet, she was struggling with the lack of acceptance from this abusive mother even after her mother had died. God was able to bring a measure of healing as she reflected on the amazingly painful childhood her own mother had experienced and as she trusted in Christ for the love she never received from her mother. It was a long process. There were many tears and it took a lot of work on her part. But, God is faithful, and she was able to come to a point of honoring the memory of her mother, forgive her mother, and seek healing in other relationships in her life.

There are different types of abuse. Some leave physical marks, all leave emotional pain. If you are or have been the victim of abuse, let me encourage you to seek the help of a professional Christian counselor who has experience moving people forward in the healing process and setting up and maintaining appropriate boundaries. If, again, you are in an abusive situation right now, please seek out a school counselor, teacher, pastor, someone who can help you find a safe place and get the help you need. 

God designed the family primarily to propagate the faith. The faith is always one generation away from dying out. Parents have the huge responsibility of helping their children experience the love of Christ. Abuse has the potential to destroy this process and make it very difficult for their children to open up to receive the love of God. If their primary spiritual examples abuse them, the damage can last a lifetime. It does not have to, though. God is a God who heals and redeems. Every day people overcome the pain of an abusive past and are able to move forward in healing and wholeness by the gracious intervention of the God who suffers when we suffer.

The Power of Choice

“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” – Stephen Covey

I recently spoke about our power of choice and how this is a uniquely human endowment. Dogs, cats, horses, and cows function out of instinct, not choice. Only humans have this power. We are able to consider our motives, think about possible consequences, and reflect on the results of past choices in order to formulate a response to a given set of circumstances. This is because we are created in the image of God. A space exists between the stimulus we receive and the decision we make. That space is where our freedom of choice resides.

The sad thing is that some of us forfeit this divinely-inspired characteristic because we've grown complacent or resigned to our circumstances. Life is difficult at times and we can find ourselves feeling like we have no choices, or only one. But to limit ourselves is to limit our very humanity. 

My circumstances are what they are. Sometimes they are of my own doing, sometimes they result from someone else’s choices, good or ill. They just are. The question is, what am I going to do moving forward? Am I going to settle? Am I going to remain frustrated? Am I going to let others dictate to me what to do? Or, am I going to feel the empowerment from knowing the love of God and that his plan is always better than my plans? Will I choose to listen to and obey God’s voice? Will I rise above my circumstances and, with the help of God, produce a new future, a preferred future?

God always has the best perspective, the eternal perspective. As I grow in faith, I learn to lean on him and his understanding and wisdom to make choices that will glorify him, reveal his love to others, and bless me. I get to choose. 

What choices are you making? How are your choices honoring God and loving others? As you reflect on challenges that lie ahead, how can you learn from God and trust in his loving direction? The more you pray and think about your choices in light of God’s will, the easier it will be to use the power of choice God has given you to experience the fulfillment, peace, and security that only God can give.

 

Which Side Are You On?

We’re all in a formation process all of the time. Some of us are formed by Christ, to be more like him. Some of us are being formed by the world, to be more like the ruler of the air.

In my last post I used the Star Wars universe as an analogy for spiritual formation. Each person needs to be in an intentional apprentice relationship, much like Luke Skywalker experienced first with Obi Wan Kenobi, then with Yoda. The Jedi Order had formalized a process of leadership development in which a Master was partnered with a Padawan, or young disciple, in order for the Padawan to learn and grow and become a master him or herself some day. 

The Jedi fought on the Light Side of the Force, for everything that is pure and just and right. But there was a Dark Side which tempted young Anakin Skywalker, who eventually became the arch nemesis Darth Vader. Anakin is particularly gifted and is placed as a Padawan under Obi Wan Kenobi’s leadership. Eventually, however, Anakin’s ambitions get the best of him and he finds himself under the influence of Chancellor Palpatine, who is actually a Sith Lord, one who works for and with the Dark Side of the Force. Palpatine manipulates Anakin’s ambitions to serve the Dark Side, eventually turning him into Darth Vader, the murderous anti-hero of the original trilogy.

So, not only is there a discipleship process which leads to spiritual maturity and reproduction, but there also is an anti-discipleship process that forms people in a worldly set of values and principles, preying on the inherent fallenness of humanity and leads to selfishness, sin, and self-destruction. The enemy is real and he wants nothing more than to destroy life.

Who is forming you?

Paul wrote to the Romans, warning them, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2 ESV). I happen to believe that if you’re not in an intentional spiritual formation process whereby you are being formed in the image of Christ, you most likely have succumbed to the opposite project of being pressed into the world’s mold. The end game of which is destruction.

We’re all in a formation process. Which one do you choose?