Colton Moments

So over the course of this last week I got into a discussion in the comment section of another guy’s blog. I’m a preacher; I guess I can’t just leave well enough alone. So I want to do a couple things.

First: I’ll extend my thanks to Don (http://donmilleris.com/) for the forum I spent all weekend on.

Second: I want to post some things for the folks I was talking with over there.

We talked about faith as a linear thing rather than a compartmental thing. When I share the gospel with someone, I present it as a map. I want to share that map here on the Blog. We’ll see how it goes.

Let’s begin with a compartmental gospel:

This is how the gospel was first presented to me. When we believe in Christ we are in the circle, “saved” in churchspeak, when we don’t believe we are outside of the circle, “unsaved.”

Now this is true. Jesus said that our eternal destiny, Heaven or Hell, depend on faith in Him. And He said He was the exclusive way to reach the Father (more on that later). So this picture is accurate at any particular point in time, but it isn’t the best way to portray the process by which I come to faith. It doesn’t deal with my growth or the passage of time.

So I once saw the gospel presented as a map which showed growth and time. I thought it made a lot of sense. What follows here is my rendition of that map.

We begin our journey across the map when we are born. And shortly after that we begin to ask questions. It looks something like this:

We become self-aware and begin to investigate our existence. We learn our names and the names of the people in our lives and ask questions about the physical world around us. We learn that the cereal bowl makes a cool sound when we throw it from the high chair and that it creates a response from our mom. As we grow, as time moves us farther to the right on the map, we begin to consider bigger questions:

We begin at some point to tackle questions of theology. We move from investigating the physical realm to debating how the physical realm came to be. And then, as we discover God, we begin to wonder how we might relate to Him. That is one of the biggest questions we have. As we deal with that, we come into contact with the claims of Jesus and we must decide what it is we believe about Him.

I list some Bible verses here because that is where we get our information about God. When I’m drawing this for someone on my white board, or a napkin, or the wall of an unfinished house, I always include these four verses. Sometimes I add some others, but these are always part of it.

The first is Jesus’ claim to exclusivity. That is, that He is the one way by which we gain access to God and heaven.

Joh 14:6 Jesus *said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

That is an important answer to the question “How do I relate to Him?”

The two verses in Romans talk about the condition of mankind. These address the same question and the question of sin – failure to live the morally perfect standard that is set for us by God. Consider the verses:

Rom 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

“Death” by the way means not just physical death, but spiritual death – eternal separation from God in Hell. It isn’t very politically correct, but it wasn’t my idea, it’s God’s. It’s His game and His rules.

Fortunately, of course is the second half of that last verse also touches on the hope. The hope is that there is eternal life available. Much like the first verse, we see that it is available in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The last verses tell us more about that:

Eph 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
Eph 2:9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

That salvation is BY grace, that is, a gift. And it happens THROUGH faith. Believing that what God has said about us and Him is true and agreeing with Him. Furthermore, there is nothing we can do to earn that grace. It can only be a gift.

It is that series of questions and answers that identify us as Christians. But even then the map is not finished. There is still time to pass and ground to cover. Consider a couple additions:

Notice now on the right side of the cross that there are more questions and growth. The person who has come to believe in Jesus and in the importance of a relationship with Him has not reached a point of total spiritual knowledge. As a believer of 20 years I still have much to learn. There are still things I do not understand. And there are areas in my life that require growth. If I believe the Bible and the things it says, I will make changes in my life that further reflect those truths. The idea of continuing, upward growth (often called sanctification) is why I have drawn that side as an ascending stairway.

We have also added Heaven and Hell. They are real places that are the real destinations for all human souls. And those destinations depend on our relationship with Christ. (You may want to reference Mark 16:16 on this point)

There is also a pathway off the map. One may well decide that there are answers that lead somewhere other than the cross. Indeed, to answer the “Is there a god?” question with a “no” is to either delay forward progress or to leave my map entirely. Biblically that too leads to condemnation.

Now what I generally do when I draw this for someone is ask them to place themselves on the map. And I encourage people to do so honestly. I don’t need to hear that they agree with me just because I’m a preacher talking about Jesus. If they haven’t reached the same conclusions I have yet, that’s OK. I still want to have the conversation with them.

Biblical orthodoxy still says that the decision has to be made. But because I’ve learned to understand this in a linear fashion, I understand that someone else and I may be at different points on the journey. We may be wrestling with different questions. Many of the questions we ask and answer can move around on the map. They may even be answered on different sides of the cross.

For example I didn’t come to conclusions about literal, 6-day creation until sometime after coming to faith in Christ. For someone else, they may well wrestle with the questions of creationism before dealing with the questions of Jesus’ exclusivity. And that’s OK. On a non-critical question we may even come to different conclusions. That’s OK, too.

The important thing is that there is continued movement and growth and that we finally deal with the critical questions about Jesus. The rest is just the details of the journey.

I hope this helps someone.

p.s. another thank you: I believe it was Pastor Matt Hannan from New Heights Church in Vancouver, WA who first showed me the Map. Thanks Matt. http://www.newheights.org/

OK. I told some people that I was going to put The Map up here today. I spent all day working on it - including drawings. I came over here to post it and the drawings all disappeared. I’ll get some help and have it up here soon. Please check back. If you want to know more or be told when it gets up here, go to the contact page and ship me an email.

Thanks,
Eric

I spent Saturday at the Colton Farmers and Crafters Market. Like I said on my very first post on this blog, it is one of those events that makes you love living in a small town. (For those of you who read that post, I now know where the outhouse went…)

The attendance has been poor, presumably because the weather has been lousy, but the market is still a lot of fun. I get to spend time with people there that I generally don’t spend time with otherwise.

The pace of life is a little nicer there for a couple of hours. We slow down a bit. We wander the booths looking at the stuff for sale, our kids run in the grass even my dog finally settled down and slept under the back bumper of the bus.

It may have been, for at least a little while, that the nagging voice in my head, the one that tells me all about the things I’m not getting done, was quiet. It was glorious.

It makes a person wish that life would slow down like that a little more often.

We have a tendency to get so busy that we don’t take time for the people around us. We see them. We may even talk to them. But we don’t take much time for them. We can be driven by the tyranny of the urgent and miss the things that are really important.

The problem in that is that God calls us to relationship – both with Him and with each other. It’s a huge part of what we’re called to do. The greatest commandment is to love God. The second is to love our neighbor. We aren’t going to love if we don’t take any time to even know each other. So for me the market has been a good exercise in slowing down. I can’t say I know everyone there well yet, but perhaps as the summer goes on I will slow down enough to do so.

I hope so.

(By the way, if you want more info on the market go to http://coltonfarmersmarket.org/ )

If you go sit down in any small town café (or probably any big-city establishment) and then just sit and listen for a while you will probably hear someone who is carrying most of two or three conversations.

He’ll be talking the ear off of the guy he came in and sat down with and then interjecting comments into the conversation the waitress is having with the guy drinking coffee at the bar and explaining something to the couple sitting in the booth behind him.

I will not ask for a show of hands to find out how many of us have been that guy, nor will I give him a name. We all know who we are. Besides, the goal here isn’t to take people down, just to make us think about some things.

What I want to consider is what is going on when we have what I heard a singer refer to as a “lopsided conversation?” I can’t help but think that it may mean there is something amiss in the relationship. Now I’m not talking about just an introvert and an extrovert sitting at the same table, I’m thinking of conversation which is clearly being dominated, where one person’s opinions and input are being left out, ignored or trampled on. I think something might be amiss because there I some reasons I might dominate the conversation. It may be that I’m insecure. Maybe I really don’t care about the other person. Maybe the conversation I’m forcing is covering for the conversation that we’re not having but we should. None of those things are healthy.

Now that is clearly no way to manage a relationship – especially one that is supposed to be close. We would probably recommend counseling for a married couple whose communication is consistently lopsided, where one person’s voice is not heard and where ideas don’t matter. That relationship has problems.

Now let’s talk about how we pray.

Is our conversation lopsided? Do we know how to be quiet and listen? Would I know God’s voice if I heard it?

And if our prayer is lopsided, what does it say about our relationship? Are we insecure; do we care; are we avoiding the conversation we need to have?

I want my relationship with God to be right. I don’t want to be the guy dominating three conversations. I’m trying to improve how I listen, but it’s hard to hear sometimes. Clearly I need to be in the word – that is His revelation to man and a certain and reliable place to start. But I’m left with this nagging feeling that there can be more: that I need to be quiet, that I need to not dominate the conversation. I’m trying to spend some of my prayer time quiet. And I’m praying that I will learn to listen.

Are we really prisoners of our past?

I had a discussion about this with a dental hygienist this morning. As much as one can ever converse with a dental hygienist: “ungh yah ah ngstn uht oo een.”

We were discussing my extraordinary dislike of going to the dentist. I REALLY don’t like going to the dentist. Accelerated-pulse, sweaty, tense-muscle, avoid-it-like-the-plague don’t like going.

On the initial paperwork I did at this office, they asked if I had ever had a bad dental experience. Yes, actually I had. When I was about six, I had a dentist hold me down as I tried to fight my way out of the chair and out of his office. After that my parents found a new dentist. He was a great guy. I liked him. But I still didn’t like going to the dentist.

Now I’ve found a new dentist. I’m in a new town, the old guy is retired and I still have teeth to fix. Sigh.

I like the new office. The ladies working there are really nice and really trying to take care of their patients. Julie, the hygienist, is friends with some friends of mine. We share some experiences and some philosophy and theology. She appears to be good at her job and was very considerate of my discomfort. And she said something that got me thinking.

She said she thought that maybe some people approached church a lot like they do going to the dentist. If they have had a bad experience sometime in the past they are scared to go to church – even though they sort of know it would be good for them. Going to the dentist is good for me, but I don’t like to do it.

And it made some sense. Unfortunately some folks have had bad experiences at church, just like they have at the dentist. But you know what? Life has to be bigger than our bad experiences. We cannot be prisoners of those experiences.

I go to the dentist. I have to work my way up to it, but I go. I know that it’s the right thing to do and that I’m better off in the long run for doing so. And it would be ridiculous for me to let my teeth deteriorate just because I met one really bad dentist 35 years ago.

And it would be silly to dodge church just because I had a bad experience with it once. Worst yet (and more to the point) would be avoiding or neglecting my relationship with God because I once had a bad experience with someone who claimed to know Him. That person wasn’t God. The dentist who held me down isn’t the dentist I’m seeing now. If I avoid God because of another person, I am allowing myself to be the prisoner of one bad experience.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the bad experiences are real and that they really hurt. But we have to live beyond our bad experiences to grow – or even to stay healthy. I once stayed away from the dentist for ten years (no insurance was my excuse). When I went back I needed 7 fillings. A little regular cleaning could well have avoided much of that. I can’t blame a bad dentist. I have to live beyond the experience – as real as it was – and do what needs to be done.

Are you a prisoner of your experiences?

I was reading on the internet this morning about financial freedom and contentment and such things – again . I was looking at a site that a friend of mine had told me about because of a book that changed how he looked at life. I’m going to read the book, if I like it, I’ll recommend it here at a future time.

The site did get me thinking, again, about what is important and what isn’t. And how much is important and how much is sufficient and what and how much is really necessary.

Of course, none of these thoughts are new. Not for me, not for anyone reading this, not for the lady writing the blog I read this morning and not for mankind generally. As I thought about the things I had read, I wound up in the book of Micah.

Mic 6:8 “ He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?”

Now in context, Micah was talking about worship. In the previous verses he poses a question about what would be an appropriate offering to bring to God. But the application is even broader. It’s broader because all our lives are affected and shaped by our worship.

The blog I was reading (which was not directed to spiritual matters) raised questions about work, money, savings and prioritizing the things that are important in our lives. If justice, kindness and walking humbly with God are the things that really matter, then my work/money/savings priorities will change. How much time will I put into chasing wealth if the things that are really important are justice kindness and walking with God?

Who and What and how I worship will shape the rest of my life – down to how I earn my living, what I drive and where I spend my time and money.

Or, perhaps more appropriately, where I spend my time and money, what I drive and how I earn my living may well be a very accurate reflection of how and What and Who I worship.

We spent yesterday putting shingles on the new house. It is an exciting time. After framing in the rain all winter, we’re finally getting the place dry. There is a lot of promise in that.

I can go inside, wander through the kitchen and great room and then climb the stairs to the family room and look out the hole where the big bay window is going to go. As I look around at the unfinished walls, I can see the places where certain of Wende’s paintings will hang and where I’ll put bookshelves and where I’ll put a rack to hang the guitars. Out in the garage there’s a Jacuzzi tub that I bought for $20 waiting to make its way into the master bath. The potential and the hope are simply astounding. And they keep us moving.

Life needs hope. Hope that says there is something more, something better coming. That’s what we find throughout the pages of scripture. There’s hope for the future. It says there is something better coming – something that makes everything make sense and that keeps us pressing on.

Look at something from the Old Testament, from the Prophet Hosea:

Hos 6:3 “So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; And He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.”

Hosea spoke of the promise of restoration. Even though God’s chosen people had been rebellious and He had to discipline them, there was restoration coming. Just as certain as the spring rain.

And the Prophet’s call was to press on to know the Lord. Even though there were problems, even though God had judged them severely, the call was to press on and know Him. The prophet understood that there was hope for the future. He could see the places where God was going to hang the paintings. And Hosea wanted the people to see them as well.

I walked a friend through the house a little bit ago sharing all the stuff we were doing. I showed her where things were going to go and where I was going to hang the paintings. She began to share in the hope. She could see it coming together just as sure as the spring rain that was falling on the new shingles.

God is THAT good. Can you see where the paintings are going to go?

I wonder some about my discontent.

There is a certain discontent necessary for discipleship – or for any growth, for that matter. We should be discontent with our sinful habits, with our lack of compassion and concern for the people around us, for anything in our life that isn’t driven by godly, kingdom values. That sort of discontent is good. It causes us to grow. It is what causes us to overcome obstacles and reach the next level in our walk with God.

But that isn’t always what happens.

Instead we get discontent with our situations, our jobs, our families, our kids and our dog. We begin to whine that we don’t like this life and it might be better “if…”. And that sort of discontent is a lie from the pit of hell.

It’s not that I shouldn’t try to get a better job. I’m doing so right now. (For those of you reading this who don’t know, I have a day-job in addition to being pastor.) It’s not that it’s wrong for me to try to improve my home life or train my dog not to pee on the carpet. What is wrong is for me to be discontent with time and place and circumstances the God has orchestrated and ordained for me right now.

I’m broke most of the time. And I’m not wasting much on frivolous things. Duh. Our nation is in the middle of a recession and 103% of the people reading this are broke most of the time. But there is a real tendency for me to want to whine about it. And to be discontent. Because I don’t remember that it’s not all about me – there is much more going on here than Eric’s story.

Or I may want to be discontent about decisions that other people are making. Think: politics, social ills, pop culture, whatever. Worse yet, there are decisions made by people close to me that may affect me negatively (negative in my mind, at least) that I have no control over – not even one vote in umpteen million.

These are not my things to be discontent about. If they come from the hand of God or if they come from an earthly source over which I have no or limited influence, they are part of my situation and I am called simply to deal with them. As I tell the kids, “get a big straw and suck it up.”

Where I am not in control (just about any place outside myself) I am called to contentment. Consider the Apostle Paul: “Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.” (Philippians 4:12) That ought to be our attitude as well.

And it can be. Grab your Bible and jump down to verse 13. If you’ve been in church much, you’ll recognize this verse.

“I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”

The context is Paul being content in whatever circumstance he finds himself. And he found himself in all sorts of circumstances. Circumstances like shipwrecks and stoning and prison. And yet I whine about the price of milk and gasoline.

I need Jesus to strengthen me to do all things. All things like understand what to be discontent with and what stop whining about.

Amen.

I was reading this morning about facing fear. It is an interesting topic. I talk a good talk about not living in fear. I preach it. That’s what the Word of God says, after all.
And then I look at everything I have to do and the magnitude of it all and the very real chance that I might be setting myself up to crash and burn…and sometimes all that preaching goes out the window.
The good thing about grace though, is that I can pick things up again this morning and try again.
Saturday I was doing fine, even a bit gung-ho. Sunday morning was great. Then we had a business meeting here at the church and the financial report was a bit scary. And I began to feel the weight of it all and wonder how in the world we were going to make everything work. (And that on the heels of preaching that Jesus was STILL in the business of making things better…)
Monday I was just tired.
Tuesday (today) rolled around and I read some guy telling me how I need to live beyond the fear in order to do something real and important. I’m pretty certain he’s right.
Fortunately today has a certain promise to it; today is a new day and by God’s grace my weeny Monday can be replaced by something bigger and better today. Today I’ll look in the mirror and preach the sermon again to that guy and pray that whatever it is that brought on the fear yesterday would be overcome one more time today.
Because Jesus is STILL in the business of making things better.

(by the way, for those who are wondering the book was Don Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, check it out at http://donmilleris.com/ )

I just got home from walking with the kids (some of them) and our puppy (lots of him). We stopped and talked with some friends down the hill and then searched the middle school baseball fields for stray balls that the puppy could chase. By the time we got home it was dark.
While we were out the kids and I got to talking about baptism. (We are having a baptism here next Sunday and I preached about it yesterday.) We talked about growth and about the seriousness or lack thereof in our Christian walks. We came to some sort of a conclusion about how it was good that grace was there for those times when we weren’t all that serious (my translation). We didn’t want to get baptized everytime we messed something up. (Since we write our names on the backside of the wall in front of the baptistry, it would be really embarrassing to have your name up there 20 times!)
Grace is a cool thing. God keeps loving us through the serious times and the not-so-serious times, the good times and the not-so-good times, the I-really-am-a new-creation times and the not-so-new-looking times. He even keeps loving us when we’re sort of like the puppy and leave messes in the living room. For a guy prone to a short attention span and the ability to be not-so-new-looking sometimes, grace and mercy are really good news.
The whole thing got me thinking about this blog, too. I keep trying to get it going and faltering. But the opportunity is always here to start again and to do better. It’s there because my wife, in her normal grace-filled manner keeps the website current and keeps giving me opportunities (without nagging me!).
So here I go again. (and this time I know how to post stuff myself, without geek support, so I have fewer excuses).
God’s mercy is new every morning and every time I sit down to write. And every time I make a mess in the living room.