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Take Up Your Cross and Follow Him

9/4/2013

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What does it mean to "take up our cross?"

When he described this choice, Jesus had a decision that only he recognized.  On one hand was a path that other people wanted for him, to make him king of the Israelites.  They could have deposed Herod, put Jesus in the place David once held, therein fulfilling their limited, social understanding of who their Messiah would be.

Or as Jesus knew, he could give himself over to the people in a different way, to torture and death, sacrificed because humanity is too broken and sinful to honor goodness and truth when it stands in our midst.

Only Jesus knew that through death on the cross, he would become the ultimate King of all nations, the Savior and the mighty Lamb.  Only Jesus valued that path more than becoming the king of a small, impoverished nation, fully under Roman occupation.   See almost ever time, we humans will choose a lesser victory rather than the challenge and pain of acquiring God's purpose for our lives.  Let me reiterate that - EVERYONE else wanted Jesus to aspire to being king of the Jewish nation at that time... not King of kings for all time.

Only Jesus pursued his calling, his purpose from God.  No one else understood. 

And only Jesus had to literally carry the cross to become Savior of the universe.  For the rest of us our cross is not literal, but a description of our burden, our pain, that stands between us now, and the life God calls us towards.  

The choice is always ours.  We can live a lesser path.  We can become kings of our own broken country.  Or we can pursue God's will alone, and live the triumph only He knows is ours to claim.  

It won't be easy.  
We will have to let go of our false hopes.  
We will have to deal in truth.  
It will likely hurt sometimes.  
It will take great courage.  
It will require trust in God - the One who sees what we cannot yet see.

Yet it will be greater than any other possibility for our lives.

"Take up your cross, and follow Him."

In Christ!
 
-M4
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Dealing with Stress - There has to be a better way

12/4/2012

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     Last year our family ventured to the Woodfield Mall the Saturday before Christmas.  I “checked-in” on Facebook at the mall.  The response was quick and clear: why in the world would you do something that stressful?  Upon further review they might have been correct.  

     355 was bumper to bumper that day and parking was worse than normal, and normal is already difficult.  There were people everywhere.  Navigating around folks in the mall looking for the perfect gift was as tough as weaving through traffic in gridlock.  Standing in line to pay for gifts took longer than the shopping.  And then there is the issue of how I was actually going to pay for all this Christmas shopping.  When we pile up people, traffic, and money, there is a buffet of choices of what might stress you out.  

     Stress is everywhere.  Stress is an emotional, mental, or physical tension resulting from circumstances.  We can’t escape stress.  Whether at home, work, or school, there are emotional and mental circumstances creating tension that impacts us.  Stress can erode our body.  And stress can erode our soul.  

     Unaddressed stress raises our blood pressure and weakens our immune system.  It makes us more susceptible to illness and has even been linked to causing heart disease and cancer.  Unaddressed stress also attacks our emotional immune system.  It can cause us to be quick to anger at those we love most.  It will cause us to cross boundaries that will hurt people.  Stress is an enemy of the heart.  

     Life will always create stress.  Chances are you cannot quit your demanding job, walk out on your financial obligations, or avoid traffic.  Emotional and mental tension are built into our lives - especially in Chicagoland.  The issue is: how do we deal with it to reduce the harm?  How can we change ourselves internally so that stress does not damage our lives? 

     First, God says to worry about nothing.  Worry is intellectual energy devoted towards a problem we cannot solve.  When we lay awake at night worried about a decision at work that is out of our hands, that is worry.  When we imagine the bad things that COULD go wrong with already stressful situations, it is worry.  Nothing is solved by worry.  Worry only causes us distress.  So worry about nothing.

     Second, pray about everything.  Ask God for direction, and ask for Him to get involved in a direct way in a situation.  Too often, myself included, we think that bothering God with anything less than AIDS in Africa or hunger in Haiti is wrong.  God is personal, God is interested in you and me, and God has the time and the ability to work for the good of each and every one of us.  God is probably sitting on the edge of His seat, waiting to be invited into the complicated and stressful situations of your life.  So pray about everything.

     Give God a chance to do something.  We as middle class Americans want what we want, and we want it now.  We complain when the popcorn takes two and a half minutes in the microwave, and we get bored driving 65 mph instead of 75.  But in these stressful things, give God time, and give God a chance to work through and in the people involved to untangle the stressful situations in your life.  

     This is really a matter of trust.  Do we trust God?  Will we give God time to deal with our lives, or will we insist on our way right now and risk the mess we are likely to make?  The fact is, it might take longer than two minutes for God’s outcome. I have learned the hard way that God’s timeline is rarely mine.  But His solutions are also not mine, and they are always much, much greater than mine.  Always.  I am afraid I have cut God off from creating a better future for me often - simply because of my impatient lack of trust.  Give God a chance, and give God time.

     You will encounter stress today.  That is a given.  The question is, what will you do about it?  Will you allow it to attack your body and mind and attack your soul?  Know that there is a better way.  Worry about nothing.  Pray about everything.  Give God a chance.  



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Is Anger Always Wrong?

11/13/2012

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“I AM MOVING THEM,” I barked!   I yelled loud...  in the front yard...  at 7 AM ... on a Sunday morning.   

     I would love my neighbors to come to church.  Our church is a friendly and encouraging place with kind and sincere leaders.  But that morning you couldn’t tell by how I acted.  I got angry over literally nothing.   

     All I had to do was move the speakers as we were loading up for worship early one Sunday morning.  All I had to offer was a strong back and an ounce of humility.  But instead, I wanted to do it my way, and even the fact that I had no knowledge of what the right way was did not keep me from getting angry. 

     Anger is everywhere.  Anger is hollering from the bleachers at youth sports.  It’s on cable news.  It’s inside the walls of our nice homes.  It is always stuck in traffic.  And it is filling up the local law enforcement and court system.  Anger comes out of people like us, almost everywhere we go. 

     Anger is an emotional response to not getting our way.  When we snap, rant, or  unload, we are responding to not getting our way.  

     Anger always reveals what we value, what we desire, and the way we want the world to be.  Anger, like our calendar, and like our bank statements, communicates what we value, and who we really are.  That Sunday morning my anger revealed that I have a hard time accepting the simplest instructions, that I want to do things my way, even when it is obvious I don’t know what that is.  So apparently, I value being a know it all.  My anger revealed a dark, stubborn side in me.    

     Often, in the name of religion, we are told to stifle our anger.  Some traditions speak of anger as one of the “seven deadly sins.”  While I agree that we can, and often do, respond emotionally to some of the most petty things, I also know that anger can be the most righteous response to a situation.  Anger is not always wrong.

     I know this because Jesus got angry.  One day he walked into the temple courtyard and completely blew his top.  The public gathering area to enter worship had been run over by con artists who sold sin-removing sacrificial animals and “clean” monetary offerings at ridiculously inflated prices.  Jesus hated seeing the people swindled as they tried to move towards God.  

     So Jesus got angry.  He created a whip of cords, and he drove out the money changers and let the sacrificial animals run free. Jesus‘ anger revealed what he valued; he valued people being able to access a relationship with God. (For a great video of this story go to YOUTUBE and search Jesus and Money Changers.  It is the first video to pop up; it is two minutes long.)    

     Take 30 seconds, and reflect on the last time you got angry (chances are you won’t have to think back too far).  Was it something petty or something life defining?  How did you not get your way?  What does your anger say that you value?  Does what you value need to be reconsidered?  Do not hide behind empty statements like “I can’t help it” or “I don’t know where that came from.”  Allow God to dig below the surface. 

     Anger is not always wrong, but anger does always reveal what we really value.     



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Sin and a House Cat

10/1/2012

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Sin has gotten a lot of dramatic press.  I thought I would tell you a story of a personal sin so deep and dark that it turned my mom’s house cat red.

When I was 15, my mom and dad left me in charge of my younger brother and sister at home.  It was the first time I had been given babysitting authority, and believe me, it went straight to my head.  They cautioned me about how to care for younger children, but I was quite certain I knew all I needed to know.  As soon as they walked out the door, I settled in to my real agenda - watching some sitcoms they wouldn’t normally let me watch, Cheers and Night Court.  

Things were pretty quiet for the couple hours they were gone.  I enjoyed my time alone, and I thought I was in the clear.  But when they walked in, I heard a storm growing as they made their way through the house to where I waited with mounting anxiety.  They were mad.  Real mad.  

While I had been enjoying my self, my brother had fashioned a metal coat hanger into a tool - a tool he was busy applying to electrical outlets upstairs.  And my sister had carefully painted our cat with my mom’s lipstick...ALL over the cat.  (The cat was never the same; I think it suffered the indignity until the day it died.)  Suffice to say, I got in some well-deserved trouble that day.

Now you may not have been an accomplice to painting a cat with lipstick, but I know, and you know, that you have a couple too many stories like this.  We all have plenty of times we have done something we shouldn’t, and there was a cost and consequence we had to face.  This is the human experience.  We all fail, we all mess up.  We all miss the mark.  And we all pay a price for those missteps.

Missing the mark is how Jesus described sin.  It was a concept borrowed from archery.  And just like great shooting, steady, accurate, aim takes focus and effort.  It also requires learning and practice.  And everyone is going to miss sometimes.

Like a skilled sport, until we know why we do what we do, why we miss the mark, why we are making bad decisions, and how to correct the errors, we will continue to miss.    

Why we do what we do is different for each of us.  We all have our weak points that make us susceptible to our signature sins; I know I do.  Whether there are childhood issues, selfish desires, responses to stress, marital strife, or economic anxiety, until we identify the cause of why we are missing the mark we can’t expect to do better.  We are the one who is really undermining our best decision making, and until we look at ourselves honestly, we aren’t going to do better.   

God asks to help each of us do this.  God is the ultimate coach.  God wants our honesty, so He can help us put things right as only a loving, forgiving, encouraging, and healing God can.  And God is willing to do that with you and with me over and over and over again.  There is an endless supply of arrows and a patient and loving Instructor pointing the Way to our target.  That is amazing grace.  

This week we will miss the mark.  The question is not will we fail, the question is, will we be honest about why, and will we ask God to help us do better?  That is the life of faith.    

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Vanilla Ice & a Life of Faith

4/3/2012

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              I almost broke the chart when I took the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. The people administrating the test had never seen an introvert so far off the scale.  I was taking the test as part of a professional assessment for my ordination process, and I was floored when I saw the results.  I assumed to do the work of ministry I had studied and committed myself to, I needed to adopt the personality of a used car salesman: "What is it going to take for me to put you in this church today?"  But that guy just wasn't me.

The truth is, I am an introvert.  I would rather read for an hour than talk for an hour.  I have a few close friends.  I am NEVER the life of the party (unless I get the opportunity to karaoke Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice Baby").  For years I tried to overcome this, to become someone I was not.  I tried small talk and would never let conversations die.  I acted the part that I thought an extroverted pastor should play in a social setting.  To put it politely, I was awkwardness on steroids.  It took years for me to embrace who I am really am; an introvert who knows how to talk to large crowds and share Jesus with people whenever I get the opportunity.  

You and I are uniquely created.  Some of us are introverts, other extroverts.  Some of us are silly and others are serious.  The same way that we embrace our height or the shape of our face as an obvious feature God gave us, we would do well to embrace the gifts of our personality.  John Ortberg has written in his book “The Me I Want to Be,” that life's highest aim is to become who God made each of us to be.  Rather than trying to force ourselves to be someone we are not, faith can allow us to embrace and develop who God made us to be.  In doing so, we will discover gifts that flow from the design of our personality, talents, and God-given capacities. God created us to be us...with love, on purpose.  Trying to force yourself to be someone you are not only creates dysfunction and heartache. 

In a recent article in the Guardian, a nurse to the dying kept track of the most frequently vocalized regrets of the patients.  First and most common was, "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." 

You and I are not an accident.  Yet the longer we play a part that was not written for us, the longer we miss out on the role where we can truly shine as we are created.  And life is not meant to be a charade, a pretense.  Reflecting on this makes me want to stand and shout “EMBRACE WHO GOD MADE YOU TO BE!”  But that would be a very extroverted thing to do.


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Walking in Circles

3/7/2012

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A few months ago I caught an absolutely hilarious MythBusters episode where they tested the theory that  it is IMPOSSIBLE to walk in a straight line blindfolded.  They took it to the extreme, sight canceling goggles, earplugs, etc.  so that no outside influence could affect their ability to find a direction.  And this picture is roughly like how their trajectories moved. 

When they interviewed the walkers, they each described in detail how good they felt they were doing, how straight they seemed to be moving, how on target they thought they were.  Wow, were they wrong!   Without the point of reference in focus, guiding, they could not stay on course.

And that, my friends, is what life is like.  Without an external point of reference we flounder and spin.  I believe we each want what is best for ourselves and our families, but I know that people feel at best uncertain about what that actually looks like.  The human tragedy aspect of it is that regardless of how we feel we are on target, our lives end up looking like the picture.  And who wants to reflect on a life shaped like that at the end of their days.  "I worked too much.  I didn't really know my kids.  I never forgave my father.  I should have spend more time with my wife."

The Good News, is that there is a simple and accessible guiding standard, Jesus.  Jesus taught a paradigm-busting set of truths, establishing himself as a model of living that no one in the history of humanity has undone or superseded:  
1. Love God (keep your eyes on the target) 
2. Love One Another (serve and welcome and give more than you get)
3. Do Not Judge (because nobody's perfect - least of all you and me)

For 2000 years, no one has articulated human excellence better than this.  No one has defined right living more clearly or succinctly, and no one has established a better paradigm.

Ultimately, it is up to you.  You are free to roam, free to circle, free to meander.  But for me, I am gonna stay as close to the Way as I possibly can.

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What is Communion?

2/27/2012

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It began with a meal among friends.  No, they were more than friends; they were newly adopted siblings of the most powerful man in the known world.  As they ate together, this man dealt them some bad news; it was time for him to die.  His teachings were too volatile, too big, too challenging.  He had broken too many barriers for their society to accept his message and his very existence any longer.  He was simply too much for the world to contain.  

So he told them this as they finished what would be their final meal together:

"My time has come.  I am going to my death.  My body is going to be broken - yes.  But I am doing it for you, willingly, freely, because I love you so much.  And you are worth it.  I am like this bread, torn apart, broken, but I am broken for the best reasons - you.
And my blood is going to be poured out just like this wine, but I let it flow openly as a new promise for you.  I am promising that nothing can separate us anymore, not any part of life, no matter how bad, and not death either. 
When you eat and drink, think of me and what I have taught you, and know how much you are worth to me, and how far I am willing to go to prove it.
I love you."    

And he did it.  He was taken, suffered, and died, and three days later was not found dead, but appearing alive, repeatedly, to these sisters and brothers in faith, still full of the love and encouragement they had learned to expect from him.
 
And so to this very day, we remember Jesus, his life, teaching, death and his promise of love & life everlasting every time we eat and drink together.  That is Communion.








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Myopia & a life of faith

2/3/2012

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I was 13 when I had to get glasses.  I was nervous because, frankly, I was never very popular or good looking to begin with.  And my mother (much beloved) had a penchant for picking things out for us not because they were cool, but because they 'complimented the shape of our face'.  Now being young & much Irish, my face was roughly akin to a pale, freckled saucer.  (When my son was young, well-meaning people would say, "oh, how cute, he got your cheeks.")  So long story short, I got enormous brown plastic framed glasses... because I had an enormous pale brown-freckled face.  Not cool.

BUT when I finally got them back from the doctor, I remember standing on the edge of my parent's farm, staring over the rolling Illinois hills, and seeing, for the first time in a long time, the details of the landscape.  Tiny leaves blew across the bow of every tree that stood against the distant sky.  The rows carved into the plowed fields gave texture and depth to the Illinois farmland.  Birds spun dizzyingly high into the enormous sky.  It was like I had never seen how beautiful it really was...right in front of me...every single day.

And that, my friends, is what faith is like.  Sure, you and I can live and make do with our daily existence.  Sure we are 'functional'...more or less... depending on our individual proclivities.  AND YET - if we would dare, there is beauty all around us that we cannot fathom without seeing it first-hand.  Faith gives sight to those of us tending towards blindness of any degree.

I know my atheistic friends will object.  And I understand, I was there once as well.  But I will speak clearly for myself now; once I saw, living without sight was no longer an option.    

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Wrasslin' with the Lord

1/28/2012

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After you finish laughing, some seriousness (just a little):

This famous image (sans quip) is from the story of Jacob who wrestled with the angel of God until he received his demanded blessing. 

One would think such action would end in God's spanking Jacob and Jacob being a sad little sinner shunned by the Lord.

Au contraire ... though he did get a little beat up, God rewarded Jacob for his tenacity and faith, & Jacob became 'Israel', the paternal figure from whom God's people, including Jesus, descended...  Not to mention the namesake for the Jewish nation into modern day.

What does that say about how we should approach faith?  Maybe we aren't as helpless as we think?

So next time you feel like you are getting hit in the face by life...maybe hit back a few times and see what happens.
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How does God look at you?

1/27/2012

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God sees you as a little child. Innocent, curious, love-hungry.


And God sees you as a powerful individual, chock-full of largely untapped talent & skill & energy & relationships.

God looks at you with intense and hopeful love.


What does God not see in you?  


All the bad decisions.


Why?  


Honestly, I don't have a clue.  I keep track of all the stupid things I and everyone else around me has ever done.  They call this God-quality "grace."  It is simultaneously one of the most cliche terms in "Christian-speak" while being one of the hardest concepts to understand.  All I know is I like it.  It's Jesus. 
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