C’mon Guys!
Okay…here’s the deal. If you’re going to have a blog and you’re famous for writing and singing, you ought to at least be considerate enough to post a feed on your blog so that guys like me don’t have to truck out to your individual blog site every day. Let’s get with it gentlemen!
(Note: This is a tongue-in-cheek blog to show how unusually spoiled I have become)
Tune-Up
So today I had a random but well-timed meeting with one of my 50,000 coaches, Dick Speight. We had a great time at the world’s greatest fast-food restaraunt (how could you not?) and caught up with what was going on in each others’ lives. As I was sharing, though, I became very clearly aware that I have avoided some much-needed maintenance on my spiritual life.
A random tune-up picture from Flickr, not covered by copyright.
Let’s be clear about one thing-I’m not happy about this. There are probably a ton of reasons why I’m not happy about this but here’s two good ones to start. First, I thought I was doing better than this. There have been times in my life where my disciplines were right on and people could feel the affect of my time in secret with the Lord. Lately that has not been the case. Because I lack time in the secret place, I have nothing to give when I’m in the world. No one knows I’ve been with Jesus and I’m not content to live that way.
The other real bummer is that I hate maintenance. I’m not good with it. I love to start things. I love to improve things. I love to resurrect things from the dead. But I’m not very good at routine maintenance. I typically just don’t have the focus and the stamina to stick with a routine that I have mastered. My length at any one position in my job is directly related to the amount of time it takes me to understand the position. Then I move on. To be clear, this has not happened with God in any stretch of the imagination, it’s just that I want to be further along my walk than continually retooling my devotional life.
So, its time to take some time and get under the hood of this car I call my life in God and see where the kinks are. Mostly this will look like me scheduling in time on my calendar where I cannot be bothered distracted. I’m needing to find time to get some communion in with God and get some vision about where my family, the church I belong to, and my life are all going. Pray for me as I start out on this journey…it will mean some definite changes for me and for us as a family. Pray that I’m able to stick to a routine that doesn’t become routine…a continual encounter and drawing away with God that propels me into the harvest field. Pray also for grace for my family to help me in this. I won’t blog a ton about what’s going on, it is still the secret place after all…but who knows? Maybe God will give me something sometime. Who knows whats under that hood anyways?
Just A Thought…
I was talking with a friend of mine about some struggles he has been having and as I was listening to him, something dawned on me that I never thought of before. It occurred to me that most of us believe that “religion” (defined as doing things because we’re supposed to and not really for Jesus) is something we struggle with because it has been inposed on us by others. It’s their fault. Religion is something someone else shoved on me.
But as I was listening I became aware of something in my heart that I believe may happen more than we realize: Religion isn’t something that is forced upon us. It’s something we choose. We take it as a taskmaster. Somewhere along the line someone defines Christian spirituality for us. Not every time they define it are they accurate…I know people who would say that spirituality means to dress a certain way or to celebrate or not celebrate certain days or to drink or eat or not drink or eat something specific. Obviously none of these things will bring you any closer to God (see here and here). But some times the definition we receive is actually accurate. It’s not something made up to make some people spiritual and some not. Where we cross the line into religion is when we decide to become that definition on our own strength, apart from God because we really want to be viewed as special and unique.
It;s at this point where we begin to strive for something apart from God that we cross over into religion, the worst kind of religion-self tyranny. We try to measure up to a standard and when we can’t we begin to judge ourselves worse than anyone else ever would. Because we don’t know we’re accepted by God and we think being accepted by spiritual people will help ease our pain, we do things that we were only designed to do by the enabling of God. The result is usually burn out and defeat. We swear we will never do that again…but honestly that depends on whether we really want to be accepted again badly enough.
I bring this all up to say that we need to stop pointing our fingers at others for bringing us into religion if we really wanted to go there ourselves in the first place. And those of us burned by religion need to admit to ourselves that the definition may not have been the problem as much our desire to go their on our own was the problem. In the end we (myself very much included) need to go back to the source of life (Jesus, the God-Man) and ask for His help to not remain where we are, but by His enabling and by His enabling only to journey after the deep things of God. Only then will we be truly satisfied.
Take what you want from that…they’re only thoughts…
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 