Faith Steps

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

This past December my father-in-law graciously had a garage built next to our cabin in western North Carolina. It looks like a barn, so Julia and I like to pretend we’re real country girls by referring to it as “the barn.” Julia of course wishes that we really could put horses in there but instead it houses an old truck, tools and a bunch of wood. There is a loft in “the barn” but instead of having the contractors build a staircase, David and his dad wanted to build it themselves.

“How are you going to build a staircase?” I asked. David answered, “one step at a time.” And that’s what they did. They put together the first step, then the next, then the next and so on. After some time there was a sturdy, good-looking staircase up to the loft.

Our challenge for the folks at Spring of Life this year is to ask yourselves, “What is your next step?” What is your next step in your journey with Christ? You can’t just take one or two steps on a staircase and reach your final destination. You have to keep taking one step at a time.

I love the quote above by Martin Luther King, Jr. reminding us that we’re called to take steps in our faith even when we’re not sure where we’re going or how it’s going to turn out. That’s the essence of having faith in God.

If you’re unsure about your next step in faith, here are a couple of tools that might help:

1. Sunday, February 5 (which is Superbowl Sunday for those of you that don’t have this marked on your calendars!) we will be asking folks at Spring of Life to “Get In the Game.” We will be highlighting different ways you can serve at Spring of Life. There will be people there to answer questions you might have about these opportunities to serve and help get you started.

2. Have you thought about the unique ways that God has gifted you to serve? If not, a helpful thing to do is to take a spiritual gift assessment. This is a simple tool to help you think about how God has gifted you, so that when you take your next step, it can be in an area that really interests you. Go to this link on the United Methodist Church website to learn more about spiritual gifts and take an assessment. It only takes a few minutes.

We look forward to journeying with you.

What's Your Next Step

Charlie Brown is at bat and strikes out again. As he trudges back to the bench, he laments: “Rats! I’ll never be a big-league player. I just don’t have it! All my life I’ve dreamed of playing in the big leagues, but I know I’ll never make it.”

Lucy turns to console him: “Charlie Brown, you’re thinking too far ahead. What you need to do is set some more immediate goals.”

He looks up and asks, “Immediate goals?”

Lucy says, “Yes. Start with this next inning when you go out to pitch. See if you can walk out to the mound without falling down!”

Do you ever feel like that spiritually? Many of us wonder if we’ll ever be in the “big leagues” with our Christian faith. But it’s overwhelming to think that we might have to read the whole Bible or go to Africa or something way out of our comfort zone. So therefore we become spiritually stalled to even take a small step in our growing with God.

If you ever feel like you’re spiritually stalled, you’re not alone. Many people feel like this. Either they’ve gotten comfortable with where they are in their walk with Christ or they don’t know what their next step should be.

A complaint I hear about the church sometimes (the church in general, not specifically about Spring of Life) is that it isn’t challenging enough. The church just wants people to feel good about themselves, live happy lives, and doesn’t challenge people to act or think any differently than the rest of the world.

I hope at Spring of Life we are challenging you to get out of your spiritually-stalled-stage. Don’t be afraid to take the next step that you feel like the Holy Spirit is calling you to take. I was reminded this week in some reading that Jesus didn’t say “think about me for a while,” instead he said “follow me.” If you’re stuck in the thinking stage, take the next step in growing in God by taking some action to follow God. Be intentional. Spiritual growth is intentional, not automatic.

Have you ever looked at a mature believer and wished you could be like him or her? Wouldn’t it be great to know the Bible and know how to pray and be able to lead people to Christ and exhibit joy and peace and goodness and knowledge and self-control and perseverance and godliness and kindness and love? Most of us want instant growth, forgetting that what is behind a godly life is a person who has gone through struggles and trials. Spiritual development only comes through practicing spiritual disciplines like time in the Word, prayer, fellowship, sacrificing, giving, and serving.

There are two truths to balance as you ponder taking the next step.

1. God is committed to our growth. 1 Corinthians 3:6-7: “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” God is committed to our growth because He’s the one who planted us. Isaiah 60:21: “They are the shoot I have planted, the work of my hands, for the display of my splendor.” When we grow we show God’s splendor to others.
   


2. We must take responsibility for our growth. Check out 2 Peter 3:18: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ…” 1 Peter 2:2: “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.” Paul reminded his readers in 2 Corinthians 10:15 that when they grow, the scope of the gospel grows as well: “Our hope is that, as your faith continues to grow, our area of activity among you will greatly expand.” And Paul applauded the Thessalonians for not being stalled spiritually in 2 Thessalonians 1:3: “We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing.”

It’s not all up to God and it’s not all up to us. God has designed it so that we work in partnership with God. Philippians 2:12-13 captures our part and God’s part very clearly: “…Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling [that’s our part] for it is God who works in you [that’s God’s part] to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

What’s your next step?

Remembering MLK

I appreciate the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered as a national holiday. It is interesting to me that a nation who defines power in the way that we do would dare to set a day apart to let this man's voice be heard. There is hope for us yet. 

This morning I read this excerpt from MLK's sermon on November 6 in Montgomery, Alabama and was challenged, amazed and encouraged to lead the church at least to take up this "most durable power" to fight ongoing injustice and oppression within and without. I've copied it here for you to read.

This excerpt is from a sermon King preached in Montgomery, Alabama on 6 November 1956, just seven days before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Alabama's bus segregation laws.

"The Most Durable Power"

Always be sure that you struggle with Christian methods and Christian weapons. Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.

In your struggle for justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that he has heaped upon you. Let him know that you are merely seeking justice for him as well as yourself. Let him know that the festering sore of segregation debilitates the white man as well as the Negro. With this attitude you will be able to keep your struggle on high Christian standards.

Many persons will realize the urgency of seeking to eradicate the evil of segregation. There will be many Negroes who will devote their lives to the cause of freedom. There will be many white persons of good will and strong moral sensitivity who will dare to take a stand for justice. Honesty impels me to admit that such a stand will require willingness to suffer and sacrifice. So don't despaire if you are condemned and persecuted for righteousness' sake. Whenever you take a stand for truth and justice, you are liable to scorn. Often you will be called an impractical idealist or a dangerous radical. Sometimes it might mean going to jail. If such is the case you must honorably grace the jail with your presence. It might even mean physical death. But if physical death is the price that some must pay to free their children from a permanent life of psychological death, then nothing could be more Christian.

I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may.

I still believe that love is the most durable power in the world. Over the centuries men have sought to discover the highest good. This has been the chief quest of ethical philosophy. This was one of the big questions of Greek philosophy. The Epicureans and the Stoics sought to answer it; Plato and Aristotle sought to answer it. What is the summum bonum of life? I think I have discovered the highest good. It is love. This principle stands at the center of the cosmos. As John says, "God is love." He who loves is a participant in the being of God. He who hates does not know God.

Taking the Next Step

“What is the best thing that you could do for your family, friends, community, nation and world?” When I heard that question this week it made me stop and think. The fact is, most people don’t think about that stuff. We’re dealing with getting through the day to day – taking care of kids, trying to make some money, making the grade at school, dealing with crisis, looking forward to the weekend, whatever.

What is the best thing you could do for your family, friends, community, nation and world?

This answer is what you might expect from a preacher: Take the next step where God is leading you.

Seriously, when was the last time you sat down for 5 minutes and asked God to show you the next step He wants you to take? What if you did?

Some of you are thinking: “When was the last time I sat down for 5 minutes that I wasn’t driving, looking at my phone, eating or in the bathroom?”

In Jesus, we learn that God is interested in being involved in our lives – far more than we realize, and if we’re honest, maybe more than we really want.

God is relentless in His pursuit of us and foolish in his love for us. (See Luke 15).

God wants to include us in his mission to set this broken world right. (See Mark 1:16-20).

God has a way of getting what God wants in spite of hardheaded disciples. (See Mark 9:2-8)

God will direct your steps.

King David said, “You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.” Psalm 16:11

“In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:6

So, why not stop reading this blog and ask God: “What is the next step you have for me today?”

Figuring this out and pursuing it passionately is the best thing you could do for your family, friends, community, nation and world.

Happy New Year

“Never clutch the past so tightly that it leaves your arms unable to embrace the present.”

On New Year’s Day we went out to dinner and as we sat waiting for our food David asked Julia and I what our goals for the New Year were. I hadn’t really thought about it. David talked about possible physical goals for the year (run another marathon, a triathlon), goals of spending more time with Julia (a regular father-daughter “date night”). Julia talked about just wanting to make it through the FCAT and finishing her fourth grade year. I thought about what my goals were…lose weight? Sure. Exercise more? Sure. But what I really want to do is to be more joyful.

So much of our lives are filled with anxiety. It is easy for me to think of things I am anxious about: taking care of my mother as she gets older, Julia growing up too fast, church finances (just to name a few!). And the world seems to run on anxiety. The busier we are the better. Where can we find joy in the midst of the chaos?

I have always relied on the idea that happiness comes and goes with changing circumstances. We can be “happy” one day because something good happened at work. The next day we can be “unhappy” because we had a bad day at work. Happiness comes and goes with circumstances. But real joy is found deep inside of us where the Holy Spirit resides. Fear and anxiety motivate us to put our faith and hope in resources other than the Holy Spirit. We have lost sight of our Lord in our anxious attempts to fix problems by our own efforts. Yes, we need hard work and creativity and conversation with one another in order to respond to the Spirit’s guidance, but we also need to always be praying, “Come, Holy Spirit, come.”

So how do I temper my sense of anxiety with true joy? I am resolving to begin each new day by praying for the Holy Spirit to remind me of God’s grace in my life. When we worship together this is a reminder to us that we are not alone. When we pray in our own quiet time it is a reminder that we are not alone, that the Holy Spirit is with us. As I enter 2012 I invite you to join me in letting go of the anxieties that we hold so tight and open our arms to the movement of God in our lives and the joy that is found in resting in the promises of God.

“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize.” The Apostle Paul, Philippians 3: 13-14

Happy New Year!

I’m just wondering...is there anyone reading this blog that is even a little disappointed that there are only a couple of days left in 2011? If you are one such person, I would love to hear from you to find out why. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think 2011 will be recorded in my memory as the Worst Year Ever. Rather, I am optimistically looking forward to 2012. Why, you ask? Because it is a NEW year.

We love and serve a God that is in the business of making all things new and with the arrival of 2012 He will be giving us a whole new block of time. Depending on your preferred measurement that’s either 52 weeks, 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, or 31,536,000 seconds.

For me, 2012 is going to bring some rather dramatic changes. First, January 15th will mark the 5 year anniversary of the first Sunday I served Spring of Life as the Worship Music Leader. It is somewhat difficult to believe that I am entering my sixth year in ministry with and for some of the greatest people I have ever known.

February will bring our 10 year wedding anniversary...and what a decade it has been! I’m sure I don’t need to inform anyone of this, but Lenora is clearly the better half. To borrow a song lyric, of all the gifts God’s given there is none as precious to me as the treasure of my wife. (You didn’t know that underneath my gruff exterior lies a hopeless romantic, did you?)

Next will be the arrival of our third child in late April/early May. For those of you that may not have heard, she’s a girl! The minute she is born will be a life-changing moment, a moment that will be forever recorded in my memory.

Finally, 2012 will also represent the beginning of my final year of study at Asbury Theological Seminary. My seminary journey began in June 2009 and will conclude (hopefully) with graduation in May 2013. This means that I will also be seeking approval from the District Committee of Ordained Ministry (DCOM) to appear before the Board of Ordained Ministry (BOM), the next step on my path to ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church. My time in seminary and candidacy has been by far the most transformative experience of my life. I am deeply grateful to all of you for the love, prayers, and support you have given me and my family.

So, these are just a few of the things I am looking forward to this year. What I am most looking forward to, however, is the common thread shared by these things. These are all God-given opportunities, invitations if you will, to become more fully who God created me to be. They are invitations to a deeper spiritual life. That may seem like a bit of an overstatement but it’s not. You see, these are all opportunities to continue learning how to be in the world without being of the world. In the words of Henri Nouwen, “the spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it.” This means that my life in the world, as a minister of the gospel, as a husband, as a father, as a student, can and should point to Jesus. The roles I play may be separate in certain ways but they all share a common objective. In each, I need to set my heart on the kingdom, always striving to know God and make Him known.

This is what I’ve been contemplating as 2012 quickly approaches. However, “the spiritual life can be lived in as many ways as there are people.” In 2012, what will be your God-given opportunities to enter into a deeper spiritual life, to become more fully who God created you to be? Something worth thinking about...

Keeping Christmas in Perspective

"Hey! I’ll see you on Christmas Eve!" a friend of mine said enthusiastically. You know I’m a “Chreaster,” she said. (That means she definitely attends worship on Christmas and Easter.) I said, “Great! I’ll see you there.”

On another occasion, someone asked me, “Which one is bigger for you? Christmas or Easter?” Well, if he had asked me that when I was growing up I would have said Christmas. A new bike, football, fishing pole and Easy Bake Oven beats hardboiled eggs and chocolate bunnies any day. But Jesus ruined all that for me as I got to know him better.

Turns out, Christmas isn’t the holy epicenter of the Christian faith after all. It’s just that our culture has figured out how to make money off Christmas better than any other Christian holy day.

Think about it. How come there aren’t Epiphany or Pentecost cards?

Epiphany (January 6) is actually an older holiday (“holy day”) than Christmas. This day focused on the “manifestation” or epiphany of God made flesh in Jesus. So it included remembrance of the birth of Jesus, the visit of the three Magi, and all of Jesus' childhood events, up to his baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. The Roman winter celebration called the festival of the unconquered sun (a pagan worship celebration of the sun god Sol Invictus) was established by Emperor Aurelian on December 25 in 274 AD and eventually Christians took this Roman pagan holiday hostage through reinterpretation. Since Christians believed that Jesus was the son of God, God incarnate and the one true “unconquered son,” it made since to celebrate his birth (instead of a pagan god) on December 25. And so, by the 4th century Christmas was officially on the Christian calendar in an attempt to resist Roman enculturation.

Pentecost is also older than Christmas because it has its roots in ancient Israel. It was a Jewish harvest celebration giving thanks for God providing food and more notably the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures called the Pentateuch. It happened to be during the festival of Pentecost just following Jesus’ resurrection that God poured out his spirit upon the church (see Acts 2) to give what otherwise would have been a bunch of clueless cowards the ability to proclaim the resurrected Jesus with power.
Consider this too. The earliest New Testament writings (Mark and the Letters of Paul) do not even mention Jesus’ birth. However, they all proclaim Jesus death and resurrection. That is because without the story of Easter there is no church, there is no hope and no Christmas.

Christmas is a special day for our faith, to be sure. But let’s keep it in perspective. Christmas is not the holy epicenter of the Christian faith (as stated in a recent Orlando Sentinel article). It has arguably become the epicenter of the retail economy in the United States. But if we’re looking for an epicenter of the Christian faith, we need to look at Jesus’ death and resurrection (Easter). Apart from Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, what we have in Christmas is a great story and an excuse to make money – nothing truly transformational.

So, Merry Christmas, but the best is yet to come!