This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
1 John 1:5-7
Dear God, of course, I immediately thought of the dc Talk cover of the Charlie Peacock song “In the Light” when I read this. Since I just looked at the dc Talk version a couple of days ago, here’s a link to the Charlie Peacock version.
In terms of this passage, verse six is important:
If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.
The important thing here is that one of the people we are lying to is ourself. I think one of the biggest problems in the church today is that we have no idea how to walk in the light. We think believing there is a God and believing there is a Jesus and everything the New Testament says about him means we walk in the light. But as I saw Stuart Hall day last week in his interview with Andy Stanley, we need to worship the God of our theology and not our theology.
Father, help me to legitimately walk in your light today. That means spending time with you in prayer, listening for your voice, worshipping you with all my souls, mind, and strength, and loving my neighbor as myself. It means forgiveness. It means generosity. I love you.
48:15 Andy Stanley: So, Stuart, I want to wrap up with maybe the hardest question or the biggest question. One of the mysteries of our faith is the providence of God. Who’s in charge? The sovereignty of God. You know, what role do we have? And you touched on this earlier. Did God cause this to happen? Do you just respond to what happened? Just life, random. How has this event changed your view of the sovereignty of God or God’s activity in the world? I mean, how…the whole issue of certainty. Talk a little bit about that.
Stuart Hall: Well, Kellee and I had already been wrestling with that a little bit. We did have a window of time as empty nesters where she would travel with me when I would go and speak different places. The more we’ve been around the country, the more we’ve talked to people, the more I started feeling really antsy about this reality: That–and this sounds really harsh, Andy–but I feel like we’ve made an idol out of certainty. Like we…And an idol isn’t an idol because it has a particular property to it. An idol is an idol because of the value you place on it. And so much of our existence revolves around security and certainty. And I think what has happened in our life as a result of this is this unveiling of the fact that you’ve got your value on the wrong things. The only thing you can trust–you know, the writer of Hebrews says Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He doesn’t say your circumstances are. He doesn’t say your marriage will be. He doesn’t say your health will be. He doesn’t say your children will be. He doesn’t say your country will be. He doesn’t say the economy will be. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So the question becomes then, why would I lean my life on anything but him? Do I think that God made this happen? It’s such an interesting tension because to believe in an all-knowing God is to believe that God knows everything. I don’t know if God made it happen. I do know he wants to make it matter. And because he wants to make it matter, I think that she and I feel this, almost like this burden, that we’ve got a join him in whatever it is he’s trying to do because of the story. Because of what it is that he has done in our life. And what we don’t want to do…it’s interesting when uncertainty happens I think we all have this propensity wherever there’s a contradiction we’ll set up an opposition to it. If something contradicts our certainty–like with COVID, for example–it’s a contradiction in our certainty so when go, “Well, it’s a conspiracy theory.” Or, “It’s a political agenda.”
Dear God, the idea of making an idol out of certainty really struck me.
I heard this interview a few days ago and intended to pray to you about these quotes this morning, but while I was getting cleaned up and starting my day about an hour ago I watched this “Reaction Video” on YouTube.
Notice the title she chose for the piece was, “This one broke me.” She’s reacting to the song “Piece by Piece” from Kelly Clarkson. The video hit me on two levels. First, Clarkson’s song (which I happened to catch when she performed this life a couple of years ago) is so full of pain and determination that you can’t help but be touched by it. Second, the last words the “reactor” said in the video were, “The first person that ever broke my heart…the first man that ever broke my heart was my dad.” Wow. Heartbreaking.
As a dad who has had complicated relationships with my children, I wondered if they would use those words about me. I never left. I stuck it out through thick and thin. But did I inadvertently break their hearts?
Here are the lyrics to Clarkson’s song:
“Piece by Piece”
And all I remember is your back
Walking towards the airport, leaving us all in your past
I traveled fifteen hundred miles to see you
I begged you to want me, but you didn’t want to
But piece by piece, he collected me up
Off the ground, where you abandoned things
Piece by piece he filled the holes that you burned in me
Six years old and you know
He never walks away
He never asks for money
He takes care of me
He loves me
Piece by piece, he restores my faith
That a man can be kind and the father could, stay
And all of your words fall flat
I made something of myself and now you wanna come back
But your love, it isn’t free, it has to be earned
Back then I didn’t have anything you needed so I was worthless
But piece by piece, he collected me up
Off the ground, where you abandoned things
Piece by piece he filled the holes that you burned in me
Six years old and you know
He never walks away
He never asks for money
He takes care of me
‘Cause he loves me
Piece by piece, he restored my faith
That a man can be kind and a father could, stay
Piece by piece
Piece by piece I fell far from the tree
I will never leave her like you left me
And she will never have to wonder her worth
Because unlike you I’m going to put her first and you know
He’ll never walk away,
He’ll never break her heart
He’ll take care of things, he’ll love her
Piece by piece, he restored my faith
That a man can be kind and the father should be great
Piece by piece
Piece by piece
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Gregory Kurstin / Kelly Clarkson
Where I want to weave this song and the interview with the Halls together is the idea of trying to be that person of certainty for someone else. She is determined that her husband is going to be that source of certainty for their little girl. She is determined that she will be a source of certainty for her little girl. But as you get older you realize that not only does certainty not come from the economy, work, marriage, children, etc. It doesn’t come from me either. I am not the same yesterday, today and forever. I can die at any moment. I can make unintentional mistakes. I can say something cruel in the heat of the moment.
But you. You are there. Father/Jesus/Holy Spirit, you are there. You love me. You are the same. It made me so sad a couple of months ago when I saw that Clarkson and her husband were divorcing. I thought of this song immediately. I didn’t read any of the stories, so I have zero idea of the details, but I know there have been tears. I know every person involved has been hurt and cried over this, and with those tears might come feelings of rejection. And I’ll assume that everyone is doing their best. But we are not capable of being the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Father, help my children to heal from whatever has hurt their hearts over the years. Help them to find their certainty in your love and to rest in that peace. Help me to do the same. It’s not up to my wife to be my certainty, and it’s not up to me to be hers. Yes, I will do my best, but I will fail. She will do her best, but she can’t be the same yesterday, today, and forever. No one can. But you are the foundation of the universe. You love me. You only ask for me to turn loose of these transient things of the world (including my own selfish desires) and be part of your kingdom. Help me to do that today.
40:52 Stuart Hall: I read this week, and I think this parallels with what you’re saying–the writer posed this question: “Have you placed your trust in your theology or the God of your theology?” And that’s really easy for us to get confused. And the way that Kellee and our children have inspired me is exactly what you’re saying. The writer of Hebrews says that we can approach the throne of God with confidence and he’ll give us grace and mercy. But those are not the outcomes we really desire. What we want to do is go, “Well, no, we want him to live and we want him to be completely healthy.” And the writer of Hebrews goes, “You can have confidence that he’s going to give you grace to go through whatever it is that you are going to go through, and he’s going to be merciful to you in that process.” And it does, it pushes against this–if we get really honest I think all of us, we tend to live…our faith ends up being a churched up version of the American dream with just enough Jesus to make it seem legitimate. And what’s happened to us is that that’s been knocked out from under us, and now you go, “Okay, are we going to…are we going to trust Jesus? Are we going to lean the full weight of our life on him? Or are we going to trust what we think about him or what we believe about him? And those are two different things.
Dear God, before I get into this quote from Andy Stanley’s interview with Stuart and Kellee Hall, I want to just say that I’m sorry I’ve ha trouble stilling my mind lately. It almost feels like my brain and thought processes have become addicted to stimulation of thought, and not necessarily news. Maybe it’s just having a TV program, a podcast, or even music running. Whatever it is, I feel unsettled right now. I’m kind of wound up, and my brain doesn’t want to let go of being wound up. If it starts to hit a quiet moment than I look for something to wind it up again. I think that, today at least, I am going to concentrate on allowing for more silence. I’ll see if I can “detox” a little.
Now, back to the interview. Do I have faith in my theology or the God of my theology? Have I made an idol of my faith? By coincidence, Fred Smith’s weekly blog dealt with a similar concept this morning. He talked about how you worked with the Israelites in Numbers 21 when you sent the serpents after they grumbled a lot and then you had Moses craft a staff with a serpent at the top and if people looked upon it they were saved from death from the serpent bites. He said that 800 years later, worshiping the serpent staff became part of the Israelite culture. They took a symbol of you and ascribed your power to it. They made it an idol.
He then said that we still do the same thing today: ancient relics of the early church, crosses, and even the Bible itself. Of course, there are the other obvious things like Stuart Hall mentions in this interview. We put our faith in things that change instead of Jesus/you/Holy Spirit, which never changes. The economy. Our health. Our church. Our education. Our intellect. My bank account. A politician. I put my faith in all of these things at one time or another as I get distracted from you and what you are calling me to do.
Father, right now there is a particular fork in my road at work, and I need your wisdom and provision to carry us through both the short-term and the long-term. I need to be still before you. I need to rest in you. I need to listen for your voice and give you all of my worship and praise.
54:53 Andy Stanley: If you were sitting over a coffee table with our audience–either single men and women, married men and women, seniors, high school students, college students, and you had your, you know, your elevator pitch…the final moment–what do you say?
Stuart Hall: I would probably say that I think we have the wrong job description for love. As humans we are always trying to avoid pain. As parents we are always trying to protect our children from pain. As friends we are always trying to fix each other’s pain. And no wonder we always feel like failures because life is, it’s the human drama. It’s pleasure and pain. And the question I would have you wrestle with is just simply this: What are you going to trust in when that pain happens? When your certainty is made uncertain? Are you going to lean your life on your own understanding? Your own ability to reason? Your own ability to wrap this up and put a bow on it? Or will you trust your life to the only one that doesn’t change, that doesn’t move, and can actually heal you of your pain, can heal you in your hurt? The last thing I would say is that your love for Jesus doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be true. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be true. So I implore you–if you’re not a Jesus person, you don’t follow him–would you consider what you’re leaning your life up against? And if you are a Jesus person, you are…you do follow in the way of Jesus, how much are you trusting him? Are you trusting what you know about him, or are you really trusting him? That’s my prayer for people, that they will lean their life, the full weight of their existence on him.
Dear God, I was having lunch with a friend yesterday, and he said something I think is very true: Struggle is underrated. Struggle and pain are an important part of our human development–all of the way until death. If there is no struggle we will atrophy and die.
My wife has had a couple of specific stressors in her life lately, and she was talking about them with a friend. The friend asked if she had considered taking any antidepressants to help alleviate the stress, and my wife hadn’t considered it because she wasn’t trying to avoid the pain of the situation. She does things to care for herself through this time like prayer time in a chapel with you on a daily basis, exercise, and nourishing herself with a variety of Godly and intellectually stimulating things, but she isn’t trying to mask why is going on. And that’s not to say that there is not a time and place for antidepressants, but I do believe they are overused in our society. As part of that same conversation when she told me about what her friend said, my wife told me that 1 out of 6 Americans are on some sort of antidepressant/anti-anxiety medication. That means 17% of our country, including children, feel the need to mask their stress. I don’t know what that number should ideally be, but for what is supposedly the greatest country in the world, that seems like a high number.
One of the challenges I faced as a parent was trying to figure out when to mitigate the pain my children were experiencing and when to let them walk through it–albeit with my love and support. And there were times when I tried to not intervene when others would intervene and short-circuit any good that might have come from the struggle. It was a frustrating process, and I don’t think it’s a concept that is taught enough in parenting books.
And then there’s my own life. How do I face struggle and pain? Do I lean on you, or do I try to avoid it? Do I live in denial or do I live in faith (although there is a thin line between living in denial and living in faith). And to be sure, the struggles in my life are pretty mild when compared with other stories I know, but there are still times when I’d rather just curl up in my bed and not face the realities in front of me.
Lately, and I’ve told you this a lot in these journals recently, there have been times when I’ve let the COVID-19 news, the daily deaths, the depletion of healthcare resources, etc. get to me. I recently rediscovered a playlist I made of 15 songs I listened to in 2005 when I was unemployed for six months. They are a mixture of worship songs (“Forever” by Chris Tomlin) and songs about seeking you for comfort. The lead-off song is a guy who can’t get out of bed from the weight of his stress (“Staring at a Bird” by The Waiting). Another song has the line, “Sometimes he calms the storm, but other times he calms his child” (“Sometimes He Calms the Storm” by Scott Krippayne). A couple are songs about repentance like dc Talk’s cover of Charlie Peacock’s “In the Light.” I pulled this playlist out this week and listened to it quite a bit.
Father, I guess I’ll finish with this. If the fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, kindness and self control (Galatians 5:22-23) then I want to lean into you/Jesus/Holy Spirit as much as possible to face the trials before me and to help others face their trials as well. I want to do it with transparency and vulnerability. And I want to be a person of action. I don’t want to just sit here and think thoughts that are useless unless they are activated. I want to be a person who sees a need, hears your voice about how you would have me respond, and then be your presence in that situation. Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can (and your blessing, wisdom, and power in that work), and the wisdom to know the difference.
40:52 Stuart Hall: I read this week, and I think this parallels with what you’re saying–the writer posed this question: “Have you placed your trust in your theology or the God of your theology?” And that’s really easy for us to get confused. And the way that Kellee and our children have inspired me is exactly what you’re saying. The writer of Hebrews says that we can approach the throne of God with confidence and he’ll give us grace and mercy. But those are not the outcomes we really desire. What we want to do is go, “Well, no, we want him to live and we want him to be completely healthy.” And the writer of Hebrews goes, “You can have confidence that he’s going to give you grace to go through whatever it is that you are going to go through, and he’s going to be merciful to you in that process.” And it does, it pushes against this–if we get really honest I think all of us, we tend to live…our faith ends up being a churched up version of the American dream with just enough Jesus to make it seem legitimate. And what’s happened to us is that that’s been knocked out from under us, and now you go, “Okay, are we going to…are we going to trust Jesus? Are we going to lean the full weight of our life on him? Or are we going to trust what we think about him or what we believe about him? And those are two different things.
48:15 Andy Stanley: So, Stuart, I want to wrap up with maybe the hardest question or the biggest question. One of the mysteries of our faith is the providence of God. Who’s in charge? The sovereignty of God. You know, what role do we have? And you touched on this earlier. Did God cause this to happen? Do you just respond to what happened? Just life, random. How has this event changed your view of the sovereignty of God or God’s activity in the world? I mean, how…the whole issue of certainty. Talk a little bit about that.
Stuart Hall: Well, Kellee and I had already been wrestling with that a little bit. We did have a window of time as empty nesters where she would travel with me when I would go and speak different places. The more we’ve been around the country, the more we’ve talked to people, the more I started feeling really antsy about this reality: That–and this sounds really harsh, Andy–but I feel like we’ve made an idol out of certainty. Like we…And an idol isn’t an idol because it has a particular property to it. And idol is an idol because of the value you place on it. And so much of our existence revolves around security and certainty. And I think what has happened in our life as a result of this is this unveiling of the fact that you’ve got your value on the wrong things. The only thing you can trust–you know, the write of Hebrews says Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He doesn’t say your circumstances are. He doesn’t say your marriage will be. He doesn’t say your health will be. He doesn’t say your children will be. He doesn’t say your country will be. He doesn’t say the economy will be. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So the question becomes then, why would I lean my life on anything but him? Do I think that God made this happen? It’s such an interesting tension because to believe in an all-knowing God is to believe that God knows everything. I don’t know if God made it happen. I do know he wants to make it matter. And because he wants to make it matter, I think that she and I feel this, almost like this burden, that we’ve got a join him in whatever it is he’s trying to do because of the story. Because of what it is that he has done in our life. And what we don’t want to do…it’s interesting when uncertainty happens I think we all have this propensity wherever there’s a contradiction we’ll set up an opposition to it. If something contradicts our certainty–like with COVID, for example–it’s a contradiction in our certainty so when go, “Well, it’s a conspiracy theory.” Or, “It’s a political agenda.”
54:53 Andy Stanley: If you were sitting over a coffee table with our audience–either single men and women, married men and women, seniors, high school students, college students, and you had your, you know, your elevator pitch…the final moment–what do you say?
Stuart Hall: I would probably say that I think we have the wrong job description for love. As humans we are always trying to avoid pain. As parents we are always trying to protect our children from pain. As friends we are always trying to fix each other’s pain. And no wonder we always feel like failures because life is, it’s the human drama. It’s pleasure and pain. And the question I would have you wrestle with is just simply this: What are you going to trust in when that pain happens? When your certainty is made uncertain? Are you going to lean your life on your own understanding? Your own ability to reason? Your own ability to wrap this up and put a bow on it? Or will you trust your life to the only one that doesn’t change, that doesn’t move, and can actually heal you of your pain, can heal you in your hurt? The last thing I would say is that your love for Jesus doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be true. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be true. So I implore you–if you’re not a Jesus person, you don’t follow him–would you consider what you’re leaning your life up against? And if you are a Jesus person, you are…you do follow in the way of Jesus, how much are you trusting him? Are you trusting what you know about him, or are you really trusting him? That’s my prayer for people, that they will lean their life, the full weight of their existence on him.
Dear God, I should probably spend the next few days and separate out these three different sets of quotes from Stuart Hall.
I was riding my bike the other day and listening to this interview/podcast/sermon from North Point Community Church, and I’m so grateful for it. When I came across these three specific quotes, I looked at the phone and noted the time stamp so I could go back and find them. I loved them.
I guess, from a macro level, it was just so nice to hear from a couple that has been through trials, but their faith was solid throughout because their faith was in the right thing. They had the right perspective on you.
I haven’t always had that kind of faith. Sure, sometimes I have. Probably the high point of my faith was 25 years ago next month when my wife miscarried our first child, Sandra. I was 25 years old and kneeling beside her hospital bed and my prayer to you was that you knew my heat and you knew what I wanted, but I trusted you and I had faith in you. You were my God, and I put it all in your hands. Yeah, I look back on that and am grateful for the perspective that 25-year-old had.
But I haven’t always been that way since then. There were times when I was unemployed that I got really angry with you. There were times when things weren’t going the way I wanted them to with raising my children, and I was really disappointed in you. I could go on and on.
No, my life isn’t only failures. You have taught me through those times of lost faith. You used them to strengthen me. You used them to grow my faith. You made them count.
So now, father, before I spend the next couple of days thinking about these quotes individually, I want to say that I am grateful for the struggles. I am grateful for the humblings (is that a word?) you have given to me. There’s an old Amy Grant song called, “In a Little While.” Part of the chorus says, “We’re just here to learn to love Him.” I wish I didn’t need so much instruction, but I submit myself to the lessons you have for me. My utmost for your highest, oh, Lord!
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Matthew 4:1-4
Dear God, I wanted to go back and find the verse Jesus is referencing here to maybe get a look into why this particular passage came to his mind when Satan was tempting him. Why did his thoughts go here? Here is the passage from Deuteronomy 8:1-3:
Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
There is a lot here about God humbling the Israelites. I wonder if that was part of the lesson you were teaching Jesus during those 40 days in the wilderness: Humility. Jesus was coming into his ministry and he was about to spend the next three years being worshiped as a celebrity and healer. Some would even worship him as God, but humble authority was his calling card.
Giving into this first temptation of Satan’s, I suppose, would have been to have Jesus prove out of arrogance, or maybe out of doubt, that he was your son and the Messiah. “If you are…” But Jesus didn’t take the bait. He knew humility and security in knowing who you are and who he was/is were the foundation upon which his life and ministry would be built. When Satan pointed him towards bread, he pointed Satan back to the importance of living humbly and depending upon your word. Their exchange wasn’t really about food. It was about one who had rejected you and grabbed for all of the power he could and the other who was submitted to you, looking to you for his being.
So how does that apply to me? Well, I can get very distracted by everything going on. I can look for nourishment to feed my mind through news, self-gratification, gossip, and also worry and fear. When I cut you off, you always end up replaced with selfishness, envy, greed…all of the things I’ve talked about in Galatians 5:19. There is no fruit of the Spirit without a connection to your vine.
Father, I don’t want to be someone who just sits here and thinks holy thoughts. I want to be a man of action. Help me to know how you would have me apply your words to my life and to act upon them. I want to do it for your glory. I want to give you my utmost for your highest. I want to live by every word that comes from your mouth.
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another —and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hebrews 10:24-25
Dear God, there is just nothing like community. I cannot imagine going through this time of staying home during the pandemic as much as possible as a single person. But I’ve even noticed it with being separated from church. I’ve never really enjoyed going to church on Sunday morning. I’ve always done it out of self discipline. However, I can see the value in it in new ways now that I cannot attend in person.
I talked with two different executive directors of other nonprofits this week, and it was good for us to encourage each other. I talked with a friend this week who is also a husband and a father, and we shared some of our victories and our failures in those areas. We had a really hard, heartbreaking thing happen at work this week, and I hope I was able to be a comfort to some of my coworkers. I know that they were a comfort to me. I was able to take some groceries to a friend last night who cannot go to the grocery store. My wife and I were able to just sit down and enjoy an evening together last night after having met for a picnic lunch at a local park during the day. I even had a tricky thing to deal with professionally, and I was able to bring in select board members to help me think through it and pick the correct course of action–what we hope is the correct course of action (no one really knows for sure, I suppose). Community, community, community. We are not alone in this world. We need others who can be your audible voice of love, encouragement, wisdom, and even admonishment to us.
Father, as I get ready to sit and spend the next two hours writing letters to donors for our Center, I pray that you will use me as an encouragement to them. When I see an old high school friend later today, help me to be an encouragement to him. When I spend time with my wife or my father-in-law, encourage them through me. And use all of these people to encourage me. I need it too. I need your community. I heard the analogy once that wood and coal will burn longer and hotter if it is put with other wood and coal. If you pile pieces of coal up, they work together to burn better. But if you remove one of those coals from the pile, it will soon burn out. Help me to keep bringing my coal to the pile, and be with those right now who are isolated and are having a hard time being alone.
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:14-19
Dear God, there are about three or four families for whom I wish to pray this passage for this morning. Each is facing its own crisis–one particularly scary and possibly tragic. So please, out of your glorious riches, strengthen them with power through the Holy Spirit. Minister to them. Comfort them. Make this pain count. I’ll confess that my heart is incredibly heavy this morning. Make this count in me as well. And why do I pray all of this? So that Jesus Christ will live in their inner beings. That he will live in my inner being. I pray that all of us would take this knowledge and grasp how wide, high, tall, and deep your love is for each of us and for everyone we each encounter. Stir our hearts for you, oh God. Find each of us where we are, not so that we can be powerful, successful, popular, or anything like that. Only so that we can know you and be a better reflection of you to others.
I think there is real good work–heart work–to do in all this. And, you know, I’ve said this enough in other places that I’ll mention here in this context that part of the work–the heart work–that God has had me doing as my own wife is very sick with brain cancer, that I’m 46 years old, she 46 years old, we’ve got three health and vibrant kids, she’s a marathon runner and a swimmer and it’s been very hard to see her decline. A lot of her disorientation around what’s happening, and it’s like there’s a lot of sad things to say about that. But even as she’s been very sick we’ve had a lot of things to be very joyful about. And the reason I mention that in this context is when we go through things that are periods of suffering, and I certainly have gone through that with my family over the last three years since she was first diagnosed with that, it was June of 2017, our idols began to take shape. You can see them more clearly. We have an idol of health and healthiness. And we have an idol of, you know, sort of relational vibrancy, of being a pair. You know, I’ve seen older–she’s a terminal patient, and so I sometimes will see an older couple who, they’re like talking about their grandkids and I flashforward to the life that I imagined I would live with my wife, and that’s a natural and normal thing for me as a married man to do. But also it’s its own kind of idol because the Lord wants us to, every day, to depend on him for our deepest identity, our, sort of, you know, we’re not promised anything. Our lives, as scripture says, are just a vapor. And so how is it that we as a Christian community today could use the things that God has given us, our stories, even our suffering, and then allow God to use that to tear down and move us past some of the deep idols that we have so that we can become–so that we can live the story that Jesus tells us in scripture. The full and abundant life. And that’s what actually just drives me in my work and my caring for my wife.
Dear God, idols, idols, idols. How many do I have? Can I count that high? My relationships with my children. My wife. That’s just a start. Stable income. Helping the poor. Christian service. Working out. Weight loss. Gluttony.
I was listening to this podcast yesterday, and this man describing his vision of how his life should be turning out as being an idol in his life with which he has had to reckon really struck me. Been there. Still there. My own health. My wife’s health. See, I just keep coming up with more. My right to respite, travel, and fun. My goodness, when I examine my heart just a little I find idols everywhere.
I have a particularly challenging situation I’m facing at work right now. I want to absolutely do what is right and what you want done. I don’t want to make an idol out of friendships or the path that is easier for me. I also don’t want to be rash and cruel. I don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I want to be an example of your presence. I want the organization to be better for having gone through this. I want each individual to be better for having gone through this.
Father, I know my biggest failure in this area over the years is the idol I made of my relationship with my children. I’m slowly learning to turn loose of them and care more about what they need from me to and experience you rather than what I need from them to satisfy my ego or insecurities. But I know I have other idols too. Heck, I’ve listed just a few of them for you. Help me to know how to die to these idols and give all of my worship to you. Ooo, that seems like a dangerous prayer. Be gentle with me, please.
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Matthew 7:13-14
Dear God, the gate is a constant choice. It’s interesting that choosing a life through the narrow gate or the wide gate will have a cumulative effect and will build on itself, but there’s a portal from each road that will take me to the other instantly.
So what are some ways I can accidentally go through that portal that gets me to the road with the wide gate?
Self-indulgence
Clinging to my rights over others’ rights
Lethargy
Judging others
Gossip
Ignoring the struggles of others
Gluttony
Now that I think about it, it is choosing all of the things in Galatians 5:19-21:
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
The gate is wide for all of these, and I can find myself easily wanting to fall into at least half of them.
But the narrow gate and road are really only dictated by two choices:
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” 28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
Luke 10:25-28
Love you with all my heart, soul, and strength and love my neighbor as myself.
Father, I am taking these two days as a vacation, and I have a choice for these two days. I can be self-indulgent or I can love you and love others. If I allow myself to be consumed by news, social media, watching movies/TV, then I will find that I’ll return to work on Thursday in a worse place that I left yesterday afternoon. But if I will take these two days to rest, meditate on you and your word, and think about how my life might be a blessing to those around me then I have a chance of going to work on Thursday morning walking on the narrow path and being a blessing to others in your name. Help me to use these two days wisely.
Emails to God 