Relax Into Prayer

An enduring child hood memory was listening to long prayers at church. People seemed so fervent, so earnest. Brother Henry Tomlinson used to punctuate his prayers with “Our Heavenly Father…” We kept count - and one night during a closing benediction he used the phrase 76 times.

When I was in college, the pattern continued. We were entreated to pray long prayers, filled with conviction, to demonstrate our sincerity.

Falling in a preachers, this habit was only re-enforced. No preacher worth his seminary degree would think about offering a prayer for a meal that lasted less than 8 minutes. Blessing on significant ocassions - Thanksgiving, family gatherings with sinners present, the dedication of the new Coke machine at the high school, Rotary luncheons - were times when prayers need to stretch out for 10 to 15 minutes. These prayers were often less conversations with God and more opportunities to preach sermons wrapped in the disguise of prayer.

The other day, I was nodding off during the Georgia- Alabama game (I was pulling for Alabama, but I am reminded of what Larry Munson, the great Georgia broadcaster once said when asked who he favored between Yale and Harvard, “Neither - you are both Yankees and I hope you both lose) when I felt a sense of great peace - the presence of God. Several names came into my mind - people I knew I needed to pray for. I turned off the game and for a few minutes voiced a prayer to my Father in heaven.

Here’s what I learned. Sometimes prayer needs to be fervent and earnest. Sometimes, our hearts need to be stilled and open - so we can hear from God about who should be on our prayer list.

Sunday Download

Great attendance today! Any day we baptize 6 people is a good day. Great to see many people come to the altar and pray about facing the conflict in their family.

I hope First Family has been positive series of messages for you. I know it has been challenging for me. Be sure and join us this Sunday as the series wraps up and we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.

A Father Takes Time

I was in a lunch meeting with some very busy people, including one high profile, nationally known pastor. We were trading ideas back and forth about doing church, reaching people, and growing disciples while gobbling down our salads.
The well-known pastor’s cell phone rang. Normally something like that irritates me – but I was seeking good advice for the price of a lunch so I took another bite of my salad as he got up from the table.
He turned back to us and asked, “Do you know any good devotional books for men?” Someone fired back an answer, and he returned to his cell phone. His conversation went on another minute or two and then he returned to the table.
“That was my daughter,” he said apologetically. He then grinned sheepishly and said, “If I don’t answer, she’ll keep calling till I do. She’s thirty years old and still needs to talk to her Dad.”
Two shots ricocheted through my brain. First, despite all the fame that had come to this preacher, he remembered that he was a father first. If his daughter needed him, he was going to be there for her, even if it was about something as small as needing a devotional book.
The second thought? I hope my daughters will be calling me when they are thirty wanted a little bit of fatherly advice.
I wonder if how I parent now will have an impact on whether they call me or not?

It's Not Your Fault

I was listening to NPR today and heard both Obama and McCain tell campaign crowds that their economic problems were not their fault.

I know economics is complicated - and I have the grades to prove it! But think through this for a minute:

You borrowed money you couldn’t pay back - but it’s not your fault.

You put things on credit cards and paid them off with a home equity loan because you didn’t have cash - but it’s not your fault.

You bought into the “I gotta have it now” way of American thinking - and so you bought somenthing new just because it was new. As a result, you have a lot of junk, a lot of debt - but it’s not your fault.

Whose fault is it?

Where does personal responsibility kick in?

What To Do When You Get Hurt

When you get hurt, what do you do?

Do you blame the other person? “It’s your fault!” Sometimes it is their fault. Is blame a stopping place?

Do you get angry? Anger can be a protective wall we erect to push a person back and provide ourselves with a bubble where we can feel secure. Is anger a stopping place?

Do you resolve to get even? Maybe that happens in the moment – when you fire back a catalogue of ways the other person has hurt you. Maybe you wait until just the right time – and you bring out all the failures of the other person to justify yourself and to gain advantage. Is getting even a stopping place?

Do you accept that it is your fault? We are flawed people so there is usually enough blame to go around. But some of us are conditioned to accept all the responsibility. Because we have low self-worth, we receive the message of blame too quickly. Is accepting fault a stopping place?

Do you withdraw? Withdrawing to pout is really an invitation for the other partner to pursue. “Is anything wrong?” “No,” is the terse reply. What is really being said is, “Yes something is wrong and you had half a brain, you idiot, you would know something is wrong and you would seek me out and you would apologize in advance for hurting me.” Is withdrawal a stopping place?

Do you act like nothing happened? This is the “Mr. Spock” response. In the face of feeling, you shut down and go into a logic loop. Though your emotions may strain against the lock, you want to pretend like it is a hurricane that must pass. Is acting like nothing happened a stopping place?

All of these are stops on the journey toward forgiveness. They may be the first emotional responses we give – because that’s what we know. To have healthy relationships, however, we go further – we forgive.

Forgiveness is the essential skill to sustain a relationship. That’s why we need to learn it from God. That’s why we need to extend it toward each other.

This Sunday, I’m talking about forgiveness – I hope you will come and get unstuck from your stopping place.

Sunday Download - Family Temptations

I think famlies and the leaders of families have to passionately fight temptations that will destroy relationships. As I shared this morning, these temptations are are best seen in the first family:

1.The temptation to listen to those who want to manipulate your family for their own gain. How to fight this temptation? Check the motives of those who have an agenda for your family.

2.The temptation to install legalism in your family - asking rules to do what they cannot do - change a heart. How to fight this temptation? Do a rule inventory. Pray for God to change hearts.

3.The temptation to listen to those who encourage you to doubt God’s way of being family. How to fight this temptation? Decide that you will trust God and you will trust His way of being family.

4.The temptation to be passive and give in. How to fight this temptation? Live with the tension of “no.” Take drastic steps if necessary to get the evil out of your life and out of your family.

5.The temptation to hide - to cover our failure and shame. How to fight this temptation? Have the hard conversation. Deal with the problems. Deal in reality, not fantasy

6.The temptation to play the blame game - “It’s not my fault - I’m the victim.” How to fight this temptation? Step up and own your responsibility for issues in family relationships.

Bottom line - you won’t fight unless you grow some passion and anger about the danger these temptations pose to your family. So fight!

Trying To Catch Passion

I just finished talking with Scott Shipes who led our mission team to Old Naledi, Botswana. His passion was contagious. I felt a sudden rush that I needed to go to Africa right now! So I rushed upstairs to my computer and tried to capture what this feeling of passion is all about.

It’s about knowing something you do makes a difference.

It’s about seeing what could be - and knowing it will take a movement from God to make it happen.

It’s about being the hope of Jesus to the least of these.

It’s about realizing you have been blest to be a blessing.

It’s about having a true religious experience - serving widows and orphans.

So, mark it down - I am going to Africa. Still don’t know when - but I am going - because I have caught the passion.

Have you caught any passion from God?

It's Easier To Be Miserable

It’s easier to be miserable. I can complain about how unfair my boss is, about how mean my spouse is, about how ungrateful my children are, about how my parents failed me. I get to be the victim. Whatever goes wrong in my life is not my fault. I get to blame everyone else – It’s McDonald’s fault that the coffee is too hot and spilled on me – I’ll sue!

It’s easier to be miserable. I don’t have to do anything. I can be passive and helpless. I have to exert the energy required to be frustrated, but I don’t have to exert energy to change myself or my circumstances. I substitute vicarious experiences – I watch HGTV and Oprah but never get off the couch to do my own self-improvement.

It’s easier to be miserable. I don’t have to make decisions. I get the satisfaction of never being wrong. I don’t have face a sharp pain of making a mistake, just the dull ache of misery. Then when someone else makes a decision for me, I can criticize them for being stupid and not seeing what I see.

It’s easier to be miserable. I can blame those in charge for my predicament. I can criticize the decision makers, be an arm-chair quarterback, and then throw up my hands and declare in righteous satisfaction, “But you can’t fight the system.”

It’s easier to be miserable. If I can find just one person who will pet me and tell me I’m right and everyone else is wrong, just one person who will get in my pit of dysfunction with me so we can justify how bad this world is, then I’ll be okay. Misery does love company.

It’s easier to be miserable. Ultimately, I can blame God for everything. If He can do anything, why doesn’t He do everything for me? Why doesn’t He take away all my temptations, why doesn’t He fix my kids, why doesn’t He make my marriage better, why doesn’t He stop the hurricanes and the bill collectors and my spouse from having an affair?

It’s easier to be miserable –isn’t it? Or is there a price tag that I don’t see – a price tag of a wasted life, a life shriveled by self-absorption. There is no grace in misery, no intimacy, no forgiveness, no peace. And that price tag gets larger the longer I choose misery.

Maybe it’s not such a good idea to be miserable after all.

First Family, New and Old...

Barack Obama’s mother and father divorced when he was two. When his mother re-married, he went to live in Indonesia with his new blended family. He has been married to Michelle for sixteen years and they have two daughters. If he is elected, how do you think it will impact his family?

John McCain divorced his first wife, the marriage no doubt having suffered during the time he was a POW. He married Cindy, who is a Baptist and a beer distributor (an interesting combination). They have three children together, adopted a child from Bangladesh, three children from his first marriage and four grandchildren. If he is elected, how do you think it will impact his family?

Joe Biden lost his first wife and child in a car accident after he had been elected to the Senate. He had to step up as a single parent to care for his two sons. In 1977, he married Jill and they had a daughter together. As a family they have gone through two brain aneurysms, two attempts to run for the presidency, and all the stress and strain of a blended family. If he is elected, how do you think it will impact his family?

Sarah Palin eloped with her high school boyfriend and has five children, including a son who is going to Iraq, a daughter who is 17 and pregnant and talking about marrying the 17 year old father, and a baby that has Down’s syndrome. If she is elected, how do you think it will impact her family?

Once there was a family that started out pretty well, but then the wife messed up. She got her husband involved in some shady business and they lost their home and their future. On top of that, their boys didn’t get along. Finally one killed the other and then he hit the road. The last boy, born after all the trouble seemed to be more stable – maybe Mom and Dad had learned to parents by then. I wonder if Adam or Eve could be elected to office, given their family?

This Sunday we start a new message series about that old first family – the family of Adam and Eve. The truth is there is no perfect family – not even the first one, whether we’re talking about the one in the garden or the one in the White House. So join us Sunday as we look at lessons from the First Family. The Bible has things to teach us that help in White House and in your house.

The Key To Marriage - Find the Fit

Quick recap of today’s message:

We experience un-necessary frustration because we try to make marriage meet needs God never designed it to meet.

God - the original designer of marriage - has some specific design principles in mind about what marriage is supposed to accomplish:

1. Marriage is not about finding your soul mate - only God can meet the deepest needs of your soul. It is about finding a relationship that helps us journey through life. That’s why kindness is key to making a marriage work.

2. Marriage is about making a connection - God designed us to be attracted to people who are different from us - because we need their strengths. But their strengths also frustrate us and can lead to conflict. That’s why we need to patient with each other and seek to understand our spouse - especially in the places they are different.

3. It’s too easy to be critical of people. God wants us to delight in His gift to us - our spouses. So affirm, encourage, and validate them.

4. God intends us to be loyal to our marriages - above our families, our children, our jobs, or our hobbies. That’s why we leave our parents and cling to our spouses.

5. God intends for us to be open and honest with each other. That requires trust. Trust is built through consistent communication: keeping promises, being honest, willing to admit flaws, and accepting each other.

Bottom line - only God can help us be the husbands and wives we need to be. We need the love of Jesus to transform us.

Sunday Download

The Story of You was a challenging series because we asked you to consider your own spiritual journey - how it needs to be shared, how you can make it your own, the friends you need to accompany you, and today - how you can’t really know yourself until you know God - and you can’t know God until know you know His heart - and His heart is with the least of these.

So ask God to put the least of these - the littlest of the little - on your radar.