Posts Tagged Thoughts

As I have been reading through Nehemiah one of the main themes that has come in my head over and over is trust.

In Nehemiah 8 it talks about how Ezra read The Law to the people and the Levites helped the people to understand all that was being said.  The reaction of the people was to weep because of how much they had disobeyed God.  It is very interesting to see the reaction of the Levites though.

The Levites said that SINCE the day is holy, DO NOT WEEP, but understand THE JOY OF THE LORD IS YOUR STRENGTH (8:10).  What an incredible outlook!  It is not that weeping is never a proper response, but it seems that many times I hold this misconception in my mind (as much as I speak against it) that as long as I am “sorry enough” God will then see my groveling in the dirt and then count my “repentance” good enough and thus forgive me.  This is so dangerous.

This morning I started to pray about many things and then started to ask God to teach me to trust Him more.  Immediately thoughts ran off in my head.  “Oh, great.  Now He is going to hurt me in some way so I trust Him more.” “Maybe He will even take Amber or the boys from me.”  “I guess He is just going to crush me in some other way by revealing some other issue in my life that I am terrible in.”  Can you see how quickly self centered thoughts dominated my brain AND I decided I should run with them!  All of these things may happen and the goodness of God is not dependent upon the difficulties in my life.  This is not some impersonal or sadistic view of God.  The thing is that He has come to show me that He has conquered ALL evil and therefore each trial, temptation, or tragedy is also a call to worship Him.

How different would my love of trusting Him be, if His joy was my strength?  How much more would I even weep properly, if His joy was my strength?  How much more would I hate sin, if His joy was my strength?  How much less self centered would I be, if His joy was my strength.

Papa, please teach me how to make Your joy be my strength today.

Love Truth
Vernon

Neh. 8:10

A list of the “Top 100 Church Blogs” courtesy of Church Relevance for your perusing pleasure.  Hopefully you are unlike me b/c adding new blogs to my google reader overwhelms me as it inevitably increases the amount of unread content which is a reflection of my intellectual capacity and overall worth as a human being.  Like I said, hopefully you are unlike me and you find the list extremely helpful.

Also, obviously I don’t agree with nor would I bother subscribing to all of the blogs on the list although I do think that those blogs being in the “Top 100″ is helpful in gauging our culture’s view of church, religion etc.

Enjoy

Blogging is not my favorite activity…probably because it is more challenging for me than I think it should be.  I feel like it is a bottleneck, for me, in the process of conveying thoughts and ideas.  I am much more of a bullet point list/outline type of person.  Unfortunately that doesn’t make for worthwhile reading material and usually lacks the information stored in my head that is necessary to make sense of said lists and outlines.

That being said I realized this morning that the thoughts and ideas that are in my  journal are more or less intelligible and could probably serve as short blog posts from time to time.  So without further ado here is a short prayer from January 10, 2010 on Matthew 9:14-17.  This was right after Allison and I had just arrived here in O’Fallon and were still adjusting to our new surroundings.

Father I pray that we might see our present circumstances as a fast from comfort and familiarity.  I pray that in our fasting you might create in us a deeper more profound longing for the return of Christ and for our eternal home.

Did I mention that it was a short prayer?  Anyway I hope that whatever it is that God calls you to fast from you will comply so that he might take lesser desires and form them in to an overwhelming desire for him and the return of Jesus.

Have a great week.

Dan Allender wrote a book called Leading with a Limp.  So far he has made many great points.  One of the topics he talks about is courage.  Here are some great thoughts he gives.

The more we are freed by the love of God from the tentacles of shame and blame, the less likely we will be to give in to fear during crisis.  It is brokenness that increases a heart’s capacity to live with courage.

What is courage?  G.K. Chesterton wrote,

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms.  It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.  “He that will lose his life, same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes…A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying.  He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape.  He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape.  HE MUST SEEK HIS LIFE IN A SPIRIT OF FURIOUS INDIFFERENCE TO IT; HE MUST DESIRE LIFE LIKE WATER, AND YET DRINK DEATH LIKE WINE. (emphasis mine)

The essence of courage is not an absence of fear; it is the necessary paradox of leadership.  Facing the extremity of our helplessness opens the door to freedom to fight with a “strange carelessness” and a “spirit of furious indifference.”  This is the foundation for true confidence.

What are your thoughts?

Love Truth
Vernon

Richard Stearns has written an incredibly challenging book called The Hole in Our Gospel.

One of the quotes he gives helps to understand the diversity of our world.

To better understand the makeup of the human race, imagine that all 6.7 billion people on earth could be represented by a single “global village” of just 100 people…Here’s a snapshot of what that global village would look like.

Out of 100 people:

60 would be Asian

14 would be African

12 would be European

8 would be Latin American

5 would be American or Canadian

1 would be from the South Pacific

51 would be male; 49 would be female

82 would be non-white; 18 white

67 would be non-Christian; 33 would be Christian

Stearns goes on to document that Americans only make up 4.5% of the entire world population.

I pray that if you did not know how diverse the world was, that you would be encouraged at the creativity of God.

I pray that you would be burdened by the reality that 2 out of every 3 people in the world (at best!) do not know Christ.  I pray this burden would lead you to hope filled action in Him.

Any thoughts?

Love Truth
Vernon

A friend of mine suggested that I read a book called QBQ.  It is all about personal accountability and how to ask better questions.  It is a quick read, but well worth your time.

The author had a unique twist on the Serenity Prayer that I thought was pretty interesting.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know…it’s me!”

He also had a unique outlook on what it means to be creative.  Since so many times it is easy to think, “If we only had…everything would be better.”  He defines creativity as, “Succeeding within the box.”  Therefore, our question should be, “How can I achieve with the resources I already have?”

Thoughts?

Love Truth
Vernon

Much of what I have been learning and meditating on lately has been inspired by Tim Keller’s book Counterfeit Gods. I finished it prior to moving to St. Louis and it has been a great help. The introduction and first chapter alone have resulted in more questions and revelations regarding idolatry than I have ever had before. Here are some quotes and musings:

• Idols are not bad things. “We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case. The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes. Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life.” This reality challenged me to broaden my search radius when seeking to identify idols in my life. For me good things can easily become ultimate things if I am not careful.

• Your thought life is a great indicator of what you worship. “Idols capture our imagination, and we can locate them by looking at our daydreams. What do we enjoy imagining? What are our fondest dreams?” This in conjunction with the first point allowed me to see that, although not inherently evil, my desires for success, security and control had become idols. In specific many of my daydreams are about my future and what I hope to accomplish. My ambition is not a bad thing but when my hope is found in what I think I can potentially accomplish I have made success a god.

• God is so very gracious to us in his denying us the desires of our hearts when they are anything other than Himself. “…one of the worst things God can do to someone is to give them over to the desires of their hearts (Romans 1:24). Why would the greatest punishment imaginable be to allow someone to achieve their fondest dream? It is because our hearts fashion these desires into idols.” Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit our hearts are deceitful and desperately sick (Jeremiah 17:9). Left to our own devices we would pursue everything but God for things that only God can deliver. I cannot imagine a more miserable existence.

My prayer has been that I would respond properly to the revelation of idols in my life by turning in repentance to God and restoring him to his rightful place on the throne of my heart to be worshiped alone. Read the book if you get a chance it’s worth your time.

Have a great week,
Justin

Last week I was with my Grandpa as he drew his last breath. Before he died I was able to pray with him and read Psalm 23 over him twice. I must say the whole situation has still been kind of surreal.

Here are two thoughts that keep rumbling around in my brain.

1. Death is clarifying. So many times we allow ourselves to get entangled in such tertiary things and make them as major things. Thinking of eternal life and eternal death will help to clarify many things and cause you to examine your life.

2. Many times we derive a false comfort from where a person has gone after death. Don’t get me wrong; great comfort exists (and should) when we think of Heaven. The problem is that so many times the verbage we use makes God ONLY good if the person who has died is in Heaven. I think this is why many times the main consoling words we hear are “He/She is in a better place.”

Again, there is nothing wrong with deriving comfort from Heaven, but if we still can’t find comfort in God if someone goes the Hell then we must realign our thoughts.

I must say that God has provided a great comfort to my soul that has been mainly focused on His goodness, even in this situation. I am not saying I have been free of the pain of losing my grandpa (I don’t think that would be healthy in the first place), yet I do sense the Lord speaking His great encouragement in my life.

Thoughts?

Love Truth
Vernon

Learning to Bear Burdens

I have been thinking a ton lately about bearing the burdens of others. As a family we have been praying much for the healing of Matt Chandler. We have also been praying for several guys on staff at The Village and their families. Our prayers have simply been the following:

Papa, please make Your thoughts their thoughts. Make Your feelings their feelings. Give them a peace that will surpass all understanding that guards both their heart and mind in You.

As I have prayed this for each of them I have realized how much of a distorted view of carrying a burden I possess. Many times I have looked at it as asking God to take the persons “burden” and pass it to me. The problem is that it would crush me, so I definitely would not be carrying it well.

He has been teaching me the only way to properly carry a burden is to look at Him and ask Him to take it from the person. It does not have to do with the burden being “taken on” in order to relieve the other person because of my ability to carry their burden. After all, this is still practical atheism. God has nothing to do with that thought process.

He asks us to intercede in such a way that the relief people experience is MAINLY from Him, not my prayer. If it is any other way I am focused mainly on my glory and ability in prayer and not looking for Him to be all in all. Let me give a word picture (although analogies breakdown).

A little boy and his friend were playing outside in the woods. Lightening struck a tree and it fell over on the little boys friend. The little boy runs to His daddy, who is the world’s strongest man, and says, “Daddy, My friend is being crushed by a tree in the woods! Please come and help! I KNOW you can lift the tree.” The father quickly runs out and lifts the tree off the friend and brings him to safety. As the boy recovers, they both constantly talk about the father and what he did.

Let’s look at a few things in this analogy.

First of all, in a situation like this the father does not begrudgingly come to help. It is his good pleasure (Mt. 7:7-11). He is fully confident in His own strength. The strength of the Father should give us a source of comfort and confidence. He is not like the father who hates to be interrupted in the middle of a college football game to come and help!

Next, the son knew exactly where to go. He did not take time to try and lift the tree. He knew it was hopeless, yet it did not cause TOTAL hopelessness. His lack of ability caused him to seek out someone greater than himself. This is the call of truly “carrying a burden”. We are to seek out Him who is truly greater than us and ask Him to lift the burden. After all, HE IS INFINTELY STRONG!

Finally, notice how the relief of the injured child and the relief of the son was found in the work of the Father. The strength of the father produced an intense confidence that culminated in His praise. It would have been ludicrous for the son to turn toward his friend and start talking about how great he was because he ran to his father and THAT ACTION is what saved the boy. It is not that the action was not important it just was not the saving source of the boy. The father was.

The size and weight of the tree was not mainly the focus either. The problem was not the focus. Looking at the power of the tree would not have saved the boy. The focus was the father. His strength. His compassion. His love. His power.

As we think about “carrying burdens” for others I pray we will mainly look to Him who is infinitely stronger, more loving, more compassionate, and more powerful than we will ever be. As we pray for others, I pray our focus would be on our Father in Heaven who feels infinitely stronger about every situation than we will ever feel. Pray for all those involved in this situation with Matt. Yet, pray in such a way that the way you carry the burden is by Ps. 37:5.

“Commit your ways to the Lord; trust in Him, and He will act.”

Love Truth

Vernon