Holy Waiting

  With working at Wal Mart, one of the most common responses that I get from older customers is that they are waiting for their significant others to finish up their shopping.  The last gentleman who told me this, it reminded me of the country song "Waiting on a Woman" by Brad Paisly.  It also got me thinking, and here is my profound thought for though for the day and that is waiting can and should be a spiritual practice, especially for us Americans.  Living in a culture that demands results yesterday along with fast answers, we have lost all meaning to the words of hope, endurance, and faith.  These things are a critical pieces to any faith, but especially the Christian faith.  Here are some practical ideas about Holy Waiting

   1. We are not called to be lazy.  The misconception is that holy waiting is another term for laziness and it is not.  Holy waiting is willing to do the work and results will come.  People who holy wait often have a depth and maturity about them that can only be a result of waiting on God.  There are plenty of warnings and condemnation through out Scripture for those who are lazy or take the easy way out.  Laziness really implies that we are waiting for God and or others to show up and do all the heavy lifting and we can somehow get our name on the credits.  Or that just by showing up we can somehow get credit with the good deeds just by showing up or doing the flashy stuff  Laziness often breads a lack of depth, commitment, and even discontent. 

 2. It builds anticipation.  When we are in the process of holy waiting, we are waiting for God and living our lives according to what has been promised.  Just as Simeon was not only anticipating the coming Messiah, he was anticipating the Messiah in his lifetime.  He lived his life in accordance to what has been revealed to him.  When we are holy waiting, often it is putting one foot in front of the other and doing what we know that God has revealed and called us to do

  3. It is becoming prepared.  During this season of life, God calls us to be more mature and just as gold or silver goes through a refinement process, so shall we.  God may call us to something or to leave something behind for something better.  God is always calling us to a deeper relationship, but there are seasons where it is more prevelant than others.  This is a season that is marked by the use of the Christian disciplines.  Whether it is fasting, Scripture reading, prayer, writing in a journal, or any other spiritual practice, it is a time for reflection, listening and growth.  This is where the rubber starts to meet the road, because it starts to get real when we are encountering the Holy and asking the Trinitarian God to change us.

4. It builds endurance.  The Christian life is not so much a sprint to see who can get there the fastest.  I know different people mature at a variety of paces for different reasons.  Endurance and faith go hand in hand.  It is trusting God to come through in the presence, just as He has came through in the past.  It a results based culture this is the hardest one to swallow, because we all want to be sucessful and not to put in that much time or effort.  I have heard that if someone wants to be sucessful at a job, its roughly ten thousand hours of doing the hard work and working from the bottom up.  Now I don't want to say that if someone works at it, they can be a mature Christian in so many years.  If we trust God and follow His leading, it will happen.  Also, if being mature was easy, everyone would do it.

5. Its all about timing.  Throughout Scripture there are two concepts of time.  The first concept is day, month and year.  I can say that I will go to the doctor tomorrow and it is in stone.  The other concept of time is more of a fulfillment of time.  It is the idea of perfect timing of when everything comes together and is right.  This sort of timing is tough for us because we don't have as much control over it as we would like to.  There are more factors that need to happen that we are not in control of.  When all those things are not forced, it is a fastball down the middle of the plate and Babe Ruth is up to bat. 

6.  It leads to action.  Holy waiting leads to "well what are we waiting for?"  Everything has come together and it is God calling us to get off of our hands and do what He has called us to do.  It can be anything from entering the full time ministry to ones calling to seminary, marriage, to even sharing the Gospel with a friend or coworker.  The Trinitarian God invites us to participate with Him in what they are doing in our world  It is faith and maturity living out in our world on a daily basis.  It is being the hands and feed of the God.  It is remembering that God the Father came up with the plan, God the Son, made a way for that plan to be carried out through His death and resurrection, and the Holy Spirit convicts and applies that work in our lives

Murphy Law

  The last month I have been challenged to put on the big boy pants and to start taking care of myself physically.  This includes going to the dentist and getting cavities filled and getting a physical done.  After all it has been three years since my last one.  I thought I I was done for the year until I woke up Tuesday morning.  I woke up one morning this week and when I looked in the mirror after getting up my face looked a little droopy.  Then I notice breakfast was kind of hard to it and when I couldn't smile fully and after realizing I have had a headache for the last two days, things were starting to get real.  It also got my mom really concerned and she brought me into the hospital to get checked out because she thought I was having a stroke.  After the CT Scan, blood work and EKG, it turns out I developed Bells Palsy, which has a lot of the same characteristic as a stroke.  Bells Palsy is an infection of the facial nerve and I have lost some of my function in the right side of my face which makes some of the most simple things a little bit of work like eating and brushing my teeth.  To top it off, it is hard for me to talk and it feels like I just got some dental work done

  Here is the kicker in all this, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a person I work with within the last week.  I often call her Part Time Paula because she is never at work during the summer.  She likes to use here three plus weeks of vacation between May and the end of August.  I told her I like to keep one or two days of my vacation in my back pocket just in case Murphy Law stops by.  Her response was that she has seen enough of Murphy in the last ten years that it is someone else turn to visit Murphy.  It got me thinking about Murphy's Law (which is if anything could go wrong, it will go wrong) and none of these things are earth shattering but here they are.

  We got to stop blaming our mistakes, bad decisions, and the failure to plan on Murphys Law.  One might say that the failure to plan is not planning at all.  People in general have a hard time owing up to stuff when it goes wrong, and it is always someone elses fault.  If we can not blame it on an orginization or a person, we blame it on Murphy.  Murphy will show up less when we not only start owning up to are end of the deal, and making sure that we take strives into working on making it better and reconciling with the people involved, Murphy will show up a lot  less.  It is a little thing called maturing and it takes work, time and tenacity.

  Murphy Law may also come in to play because of someone else failure to plan or stupid decisions.  We need to learn how to forgive and if these things keep happening, putting in some very healthy boundaries so that their decisions may be less destructive. 

  The third idea of Murphy law is that bad things happen because we live in a broken world that is desperate need of Christ redemptive work.  There are two things that we can do here.  The first one is become cold, hard and bitter at the world.  We become cynical to anything and everything along with being distrusting of every motive.  Or we could draw closer to God and get on bored with what He has planned and use those things that were meant for harm and use them to display God glory.  God's presence and glory are already being displayed, God could even have  greater reach if we joined in what God is doing.  It is allowing God to work in us and through us to display His glory.  When this happens, Murphy's law will loosen its grip on this world

Leaving a Legacy

       There is recent study that states that the average American has six thousand dollars of credit card debt.  Now this does not include, house or car payments or student loan debts.  If all of these numbers were combined, it would be a very scary number.  Through out the Bible it shares that we can not serve two masters, because we will end up loving one and despising the other.  Money can become a master of our lives very easily and how we deal with our money is a window of how our relationship with God is going.  For those of you who know who Dave Ramsey is, he is an in your face Christian financial planner who strongly believes in living debt free without credit cards.  One of his other big things is changing your family tree and leaving a legacy being debt free.  His logic is that we are not strapped by debt and we are able to give of our time, talents and money more freely because we do not have to worry about making sure are debts are covered.

          Leaving a legacy means more than having a good name and living a good life.  Leaving a legacy means that we can not just live in the moment, but we also have to have to have the future in mind.  When we invest money, not only do we expect some sort of return on our money, but it takes time.  Different investments have different returns with different time lengths of time that the money needs to stay in there and the amount of risk that is involved.  This is the same with our relationships as well, because every time we time we properly invest in a relationship, it takes time and there is risk involved.  If we want to change our family tree and leave a lasting legacy, we have to make an investment that it not only takes time, but we might not see the results this side of heaven.  So how does mean to invest in other people. 

            Leaving a legacy means that we live life with intention.  As much fun as it is to walk through life living on a whim, at the end of the day, we don’t get much done.  I know if I don’t plan out my day, it usually becomes a waste and not much gets done in the form of progress.  If we don’t plan, we are a rudderless ship.  There are times where we need to rest and to take breaks, but taking breaks from breaks is not that healthy.  Are we seeking God to see what He has planned for our day and then doing it.  I know I feel really good when I have had a constructive day, even though I may be dog tired, it still feels good.   We have to live with intentional relationships too. 

            Another important thing that we need to do is to invest in other people.  God brings people into our lives that he wants us to invest into and to have them invest their lives into us.  The popular term for this is “doing life together”.  It is being involved in each others lives, in the highs, lows and everything else.  When we invest in others, we can not have the catch and release mentality that some people have when they are fishing.  The catch and release syndrome means that after a certain time, or certain goals are met, the relationship gets terminated.  The other person is not seen as a person, but as a project, or a vehicle to get to something bigger and better.  It means that most if not all of our relationships have purpose and a plan.  Its more than using people for what they have or what they can do, but seeing them for who they are and that is a Child of God created in His image. If we do not take time to foster our relationships in a healthy way, they will either end up going no where or drifting apart.

The third thing with leaving a legacy is that are we willing to be changed by God.  This may sound cheesy, but are we willing let God to leave a legacy in us.  If we want to see change in other people and lead help people in that change, we need to be changed ourselves.  Leaving a legacy means that we have to change ourselves.  We have to be willing to make that proper investment in God, in which it is for the long haul before we can stat properly investing in others.  When we are letting God fully invest in us and we reciprocate that, this is truly when we can start leaving a legacy with our friends, family, places of employment and our community.  I encourage all of us to live with that intention and leaving God’s legacy behind us, because our legacy will be nothing but tears, pain and self destruction. 

 

What are good friends for

  In life we friends that will be just be friends for a season.  No amount of Facebook can keep us conected after so long.  Whether its just life circumstances, or moving on in life or any other reason, we walk with each other trough a particular season in life.  Then there are the friends that we interact with because of life circumstances.  Whether it is because of work, or the our kids are on the same team or class.  There is that interaction between each other, and we know stuff about them, but it stays really superficial.  Then there are the friends that you are willing to give your right arm for.  If they needed a kidney and you had a match, you would give it to them no questions asked.  For most, those friends are few and far between.  We cherish those relationships and we work hard at keeping them.  The length of time does not necessarily mean that it is a deep relationship.  I have been in relationship for years and it has stayed and on the superficial level. Then there are the relationships that have only been for a short time and it has felt like you known each other for years.  I have a friend like that and every year I make it a point to make it to Kansas to see him and his family.  I have not only gotten to know his wife and kids, but his parents and brothers too.  Here is a picture of his two of his kids

   I have been thinking what a true friend looks like Biblical.  In Proverbs it tells us that a good friend sticks closer to us than a brother.  That is a good verse to look at, but I got thinking of the story of Jonathan and King David.  Jonathan had every right to be mad at David, because David was taking what was rightfully his.  You see, Jonathan was the son of King Saul, and this means that he was net in line to be king when Saul died.  This would be true but with Saul falling out of favor with God, God elected David to be the net king.  Instead of being mean and hateful about it, Jonathan chose to protect David even putting his own life at risk.  There were a number of occasions where Saul wanted to kill David, but Jonathan stuck his neck out to warn David.  I think there are several ways that we can look at our friendships and how we interact with them.  Especially those relationships we hold near and dear to our hearts. Because there are friends that are like family and for all intents and purposes they are family 

  Is our relationships an inward focused or an outward focused relationship.  In all honesty we have friends and are those friends that show up when we only need something.  Were only friends with them because of either what one side of the relationship can provide and the other can give.  In every relationship there is a give and take, but when that becomes the sole focus of the relationship, it will lead down a path of abuse and only seeing people for what they can do for us instead of who they are.  The flip side of that coin is that we are only friends with them because we are the only ones that can help them, or even save them.  This will often give us a savior complex and it turns people into projects.

  Another relationship status is what I would call your beer drinking buddies.  There isn't wrong with having friends to go out and have fun with.  We all need to go out and have fun and enjoy life.  Life with these friends is all about going out and having a good time.  These are nice friends to have, but they end up being shallow relationships looking for the net thrill and waiting for things to go legendary.  Living this life leads to stunted maturity because no one is there to push us to grow and to be better. 

   I could go on, but there are the fiends that we should have and need to have that push us to grow and get better.  Are we willing to live out our lives and do we encourage each other to grow.  Are we willing to walk not ahead or behind people but along side of them.  One of the cool catch phrases of our time is "doing life together"  It is more than doing life in the peaks and valley of life and just getting through them.  In our relationships, if we are not pointing each other to the cross, there is something that is drastically wrong.  The cross is what makes things equal and it also provides the agent for change.  When we push each other and ourselves to the cross, it means that we use such things as forgiveness, understanding, communication, empathy, and even confrontation when needed.  These things are not done out of personal glory or for condemnation, but to see the other person grow in Christ.  God's grace and love needs to be at the center of all we do.  To wrap things up, are we using our relationships for fun and games, self interest, or to be with each other to grow and to support each other through all of life seasons