Dangerous Milestones

Yesterday was a milestone day in my life as a father.  My daughter, Chelsea, was accepted as a participant in the World Race, an 11-month, 11-country, missions adventure that ministers to "the least of these" in some of the worst conditions in the world.  Their website says, "Participants live out of a backpack, survive on a limited budget, and find themselves in situations where faith is the only reality to choose from. In partnering with existing missionaries and ministries, World Racers develop relationships with the “least of these”, and through acts of service see communities and nations transformed all over the world."  This has become the driving passion of Chelsea's life ever since she decided to give the Lord four months of her life after graduating from BBC.  It has been a blessing to me to see God working in my daughter's heart in such a real and dynamic way, but last night another realization began to hit me.  She is offering her very life to the Lord and, in a very real way, putting herself  "in harm's way" to pull others "from the fire."   I heard a quote from an unknown source that said, "If we are going to send our children into the dark places of the world, then we must have a theology that is deep enough to sustain them as they go and us as we send them."  Chelsea has determined that the God that she serves is sufficient to sustain her wherever He wants to take her.  And her mother and I are convinced that His Word will sustain us as she goes.
I am reminded of the story of Adoniram Judson, America's pioneer missionary, who spent 40 years in India and Burma.  Upon preparing to leave, he wrote a letter to the father of Ann "Nancy" Hazeltine, the woman he loved, asking for her hand in marriage.  Here is what he wrote:
"I have now to ask, whether you can condescend to part with your daughter early next Spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life; whether you can consent to the dangers of the ocean; to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want & distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps even a violent death."
What a romantic devil! Not exactly the best approach to take when presenting yourself as a potential husband.  So what did he say that convinced Mr. Hazeltine to consent to give his daughter to marry a man expecting such dire conditions of life?  The letter continues:
"Can you consent to all this, for the sake of Him who left His heavenly throne, and died for her and for you; for the sake of the perishing, immortal souls; for the sake of Zion, and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with the crown of righteousness, brightened with the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Savior from the heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?"
Am I concerned for Chelsea's safety as she sets off on the pursuit of her life's calling? Well, yes and no.  I know that some of the places that she will be going are fraught with danger, but I also know that the safest place in the world is the center of God's will for your life.  Before she ever applied to be a part of the World Race, Chelsea spent months seeking to know God's will.  He has shown her in several distinct ways that this is it.  So she is ready to face whatever she will have to face.  And Shelley and I gave her to the Lord a long time ago, so there is nothing more gratifying than to see God choosing to use her in amazing ways.
Oh, by the way, most of the predictions that Judson made in his letter came true.  But God used him to leave a legacy of 100 churches and 8,000 believers in a place that was once one of the darkest corners of the world.  As Chelsea follows the Lord into the dark well, I am committed to stay here and hold the rope.
I read a quote recently that said, "We should not fear failure, we should fear succeeding at something in life that doesn't really matter."  Chelsea is about to embark on something that matters for eternity, and with God leading and empowering, she can't help but make a difference.
If you would like to keep up with Chelsea's preparations and the things that God is doing in her life, you can follow her blog at chels4china.blogspot.com.

An Uncluttered Life

Wow! It is amazing how much stuff (insert trash, garbage, clutter, useless trivial accumulation) you can collect over almost 30 years of marriage.  I am finally, after 6 months of living in our new house, going through some of the bins in the garage and deciding what is useful, necessary, and worth keeping.  This weekend, we are going to do the only honorable thing and have a garage sale so that our useless, unnecessary, and worthless things can be stored in someone else's garage for a while.  For instance, I found a pair of pants from when Shelley and I were first married.  I can still get them on, but I'm not sure what to do with the other leg.  Chelsea's Little Mermaid Halloween costume from when she was six has seen its better days. I have 9 cubic feet of phone chargers, power adapters, and wiring from a myriad of technological marvels that very soon will be qualified for the Antique Roadshow.  So this week will find me out in the garage in the wee hours of the morning, making life and death decisions about whether to keep the broken lawn mower and turn it into a yard ornament, take it to the dump and pay to get rid of it, or try to sell it to someone who thinks that $10 for a lawnmower is a great price, even if they have no idea what is wrong with it or how to fix it.
The clutter that plagues my garage is really just a symptom of a malady that I think all of us suffer from to one extent or another.  It is the tendency to look at a situation and say, "I can't deal with this right now, so I'll store it away until later."  Many of the things that I will toss in the trash this week have been sitting in my garage or my storage building, untouched and for the most part unseen, for years.  I should have thrown them away when I bought their replacement, but instead, I stored them, thinking that one day I might find a use for them.  We do this with all kinds of things in our spiritual lives as well.  We get wounded by the actions of someone else and instead of going to them and talking it out and getting the issue resolved, we say, "It's just too fresh right now.  I can't deal with it."  Then we pack it away in our heart and it just sits there and takes up space.  Before long, our hearts are so cluttered with past hurts and unresolved frustrations that we cannot function effectively.
I'm sure that I will find a few things that I have been looking for and that I will be able to put to some useful purpose.  They have just been lost in the clutter.  The same thing happens when we unclutter our hearts.  God is able to bring things back to our mind that we have long forgotten.  He is able to refresh and renew our daily walk with Him.  And suddenly we can find a little bit of order in the chaos.
Our Saturday night Bible study on the book, Returning To Holiness, by Dr. Greg Frizzell, is helping us to work on this process as well.  We are looking at the Scriptures that deal with seven specific categories of sin that tend to clutter our lives and grieve and quench the power of the Holy Spirit.  As we go through this process of dealing with the biggest monsters in our closet, we are beginning to see the freedom that comes from dealing with the clutter.  It is a refreshing feeling.
This weekend's garage sale is just a preliminary attempt to work on this problem.  The real test is going to be seeing if I can resist using the money we make to go out and buy more stuff to replace the stuff that we sell.

Rest

It's funny where we find rest.  Most of our daily appointment calendars have less holes than Ray Charles' dart board.  Our world is moving at a frenetic pace and if you are anything like me, most nights you fall into bed convinced that you couldn't have crammed one more thing into your day.  I like the verse in Hebrews that says, "There remaineth a rest for the people of God..."  It is one of the hopes and promises of heaven.  With the schedule that I've been keeping for the last six weeks, that's about all it has been.  Yesterday was the first Friday in six that I have been able to really just back off and relax a little.  I played something that vaguely resembles the game of golf with my friend Luke, and then I came home and looked around for my next project.  I am building a workbench and some shelves in my garage and it is not usable to keep the cars in right now, so I had to work on that a little bit, but before I started, I took just a few minutes to escape from it all and rest my mind and heart.  Across the road from my house is a large field.  The grass has grown up to the point that it is almost three feet deep.  Sometimes I go over and lean on the fence and just listen to the wind blowing through the grass.  Its a calming sound and it takes my mind off of the things that are going on around me.  Its funny how just a few minutes standing there can reinvigorate me for the tasks that are ahead. Our lives are so full of noise and motion, that we often forget that we need a little time of peace and quiet to recharge our batteries.  God knew that about us and that is why He established the Sabbath principle.  We are to follow His example.  He worked for six days and rested one.  We think we know better.  We think we can work 24/7 and we will get more done, but like Dr. Phil likes to say, "How's that working out for ya?"  Just as when we are obedient to God and give Him the tithe, He is able to accomplish more for us with the 90% than we could accomplish with 100%, so it is with rest.  When we are obedient in this area, our strength increases, both physically and spiritually, and in the long run we get much more accomplished.  Ultimately, the drive to work ourselves into the ground is just a symptom of misplaced focus.  When we start to focus on the world and on material things, the natural inclination is to try to do more and more so that we can have more and more.  When we focus on God, a large part of the process is waiting on Him and being ready to move at the slightest leading of His Spirit.  And while we wait, it's a good thing to take the time to listen to the wind blow.

Ministry to an Upside Down World

I've been thinking about the verse in Acts that talks about the fact that the early church "turned the world upside down."  We've all heard the comments about the church's task being, in reality, to turn the world right side up, but there is something about this imagery that speaks to the mindset of the world in general.  The "real world" is made up of four quadrants; the spiritual and the physical, and the fallen and redeemed portions of each.  Most of the time, our human perspective sees things through a distorted glass, kind of like a fogged up mirror image.  There are many examples of this, but the one that is particularly on my mind this morning is the one that Christ dealt with in the Upper Room.  It was the last time that He would be with his disciples before His crucifixion.  He knew that their hearts were troubled and confused.  He offered them words of comfort and hope and then He drew them a picture of the attitude that is necessary in order to make an impact on the world around us.  He took a basin of water, he wrapped a towel around His waist, and then the very Son of God, Who had participated in the creation of the world, Who was due all glory and honor, to Whom they owed their very lives and their eternal souls, knelt down in front of them and began to wash their feet.  The Master became a servant.  The Great and Majestic One, humbled Himself before lowly fishermen and farmers.  To say the least, that was out of the ordinary. 
I believe that if we, as God's witnesses and ambassadors, were to humble ourselves in such a way before the lost and needy of this world; if we were to become their humble servants instead of trying to drive them to Christ, the radical nature of servant evangelism would once again turn this world on its ear.  A kind word, a humble act of service, a cup of cool water in themselves do not provide the wayward heart all of the information needed to turn to Christ.  But they do serve to break down the walls of resistance and open the door to hearing the message.
Maybe it's time to lay down the heavy cloak of our pride and gird ourselves with the towel of humility.  Maybe we need to put off the pursuit of accomplishment and the desire for accolades, and simply give ourselves to be a simple tool in the hands of the Master.  May I challenge you today, to find a way to humbly serve someone else in the Name of Christ in a way that offers you nothing in return.  It may just be that by doing so, you will turn their world right side up.

Swimming in a Mud Puddle

I am 50 years old and my mother still doesn't believe that I know how to swim.  I think it is a residual effect of her overprotective side.  When I was a kid she wouldn't even push me on the swing.  She would just set me on the swing and then run back and forth and say, "It's looks something like this."  But swimming was one of those things that she was always fearful of for me.  I learned to swim when I was 9 or 10, but since our family rarely swam together, she never really saw me.  I swam at camp, but it was just the boys, and dad was rarely there for the swim times, so I really didn't have a witness to convince her.  On a basketball trip just last year, when I was in the middle of my weight loss contest, I said, "I'm going to go down to the pool and swim some laps."  And I could see the uncertainty and concern in her eyes. 
My mom is great, and her concern for me is touching, but there are times in life when you just have to take a risk.  I think that there are a lot of people that are afraid to get into the water if it is any deeper than a mud puddle.  When I watched Michael Phelps win 8 Gold medals at the Olympics, the thought came to my mind, "You don't become an Olympic Champion by splashing around in mud puddles.  If you are ever going to be a swimmer, you have to jump in over your head every once in a while." 
The same is true in our Christian lives.  It is really hard to have any eternal impact if you aren't willing to jump in with both feet.  Jesus asked His followers to make a radical commitment.  He said that if they wanted to follow Him, that they would have to take up their crosses daily.  The cross in Jesus' day was not ornamental jewelry.  It was an instrument of death.  If we want to truly be like Jesus, we have to be prepared to die, to ourselves, to this world, and to anything that elevates itself into a position of competition with God.  We spend too much time splashing around in the puddles and too little time really making a difference.  As the signs of the times become more evident every day, I believe that we need to curl our toes over the edge of the pool and dive in.  Maybe when the medal is hanging around our neck, Mom will believe that we know how to swim.

Wow! God is Good!

It is funny sometimes, the things that make you consider all that God has done for you.  This past week was unique for me.  In over 30 years in the ministry, I have visited people in the hospital thousands of times.  I've stood in the ER with hundreds of my congregants, trying to find the right words to bring them comfort during those moments of pain and uncertainty.  But this week, for the first time in my adult life, it was me who was in the ER, not once, but twice.  I gained a whole new perspective on the process and it made me reflect on all that I have to be thankful for.  I am 50 years old, and other than a little high blood pressure and a sore shoulder from trying to be 20 again, I am in excellent health.  I've never had to deal with waiting for a doctor to tell me the results of a test that could be the beginning of a long and painful journey.  Now, before we go too far with this, my visits to the ER, while very painful, were nothing that ominous, but they did make me think about how fragile our health can be and how blessed I am to have enjoyed good health throughout my life.  I had a friend tell me a while back that from their distant perspective, I looked like a person who was used to getting what he wanted.  That kind of shocked me, but "after further review" I have to admit, that it is, for the most part, pretty true.  God has been very good to me.  I have enjoyed a blessed life.  He has given me the desires of my heart at almost every turn. And, after running my first 5k at 50, I was beginning to think that I was indestructible, so I guess God decided to put on the brakes for a little bit to remind me that I still need Him every day.
The end result has been to make me more thankful than ever for His protection and blessing up to this point in my life.  Whatever the future holds, I know that God is faithful and it will be for my best.  And that makes it a lot easier to deal with Monday morning.

Succeeding at Meaningless Things

In his book, Crazy Love, Francis Chan quotes Tim Kizziar as saying, "Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter." What are you doing today that will outlast you?  What is there of eternal value in the things that you give your time, energy, resources, and emotions to?  This is the most critical question of life.  How do I choose the things that will occupy the limited time that I have on this earth?  Rick Warren put it another way.  He said, "Find out what are the very few things that will make the most difference in the world.  Know what really counts. Do what really counts.  Forget about the rest."  I am of the opinion that we allow our attention to be easily led away from the things that God is doing around us and the things that He is trying to do in us.  We are distracted by our own hopes and dreams, by the enticements of the flesh, and by the mundane trivia of daily life.  It isn't long and we look around and say, "How did I get here and where do I go from here?"  I believe that we need to start every day with a simple prayer. "Lord, show me your will for my life today and show me the next step that You want me to take." If these things are our focus, then the distractions of life will have a harder time taking hold.  If I know that I am doing God's will for my life today and I trust Him to show me the next step and then I take that step in faith, He will lead me into whatever His long-term plan for me is.  And if I follow Him every day, I won't have to worry about getting to the end of the road and finding out that my life didn't count for anything.
I have also found that if I follow the path that He has set out for me, there is some pretty nice scenery along the away. 
Lord, make my life count for you!