Life Will Get Harder

The young couple stands at the front of a church. She dressed in white, he in a penguin suit. As they gaze at each other the world opens up in front of them. They think of all the possibilities and joys of the years to come. The travel, the escapades, the children they will raise, the fun things they will do, the joy of simply living life together. They have no idea.

Life will get harder.

Who can tell them that they may find themselves someday deciding whether to honor their commitment to buy groceries for those future children or to fulfill their obligation to the bank?

Who can tell them that the bundles of joy they imagine in their ideal future life will repeatedly suck joy, energy, and life from them, and replace it with simply more demands?

How can you explain to them that the ideals they now hold will be tested, beaten, shaken down, until only that which is truly true remains, and it may bear little resemblance to what now drives them forward?

Yes life will get harder. But no one wants to spoil the day for the happy couple. Let them have their day. Let the joy spill over. Let the festivities romp, for soon enough Real Life will have it's turn.

The question is, what will they do when life gets harder? For it will, as certainly as autumn follows summer. What will they do then? Will the pressures of life and the disillusionment and disappointments, and just sheer marathon of difficult decisions cause them to turn on one another? Or will these same circumstances push them closer together? Will they allow the inevitable hardness of life to become a wedge that drives them onto different sides of issues, or will these circumstances become the cement that bonds them together?

It all starts right there at the altar. The vows that they say, in this fairy tale setting, actually have incredible power. Here, in front of their parents, siblings, roommates, and friends, these two blissfully naive young adults will make promises that have the power to change everything for them. In two, ten, twelve, twenty years, they will face so many challenges that it is a mercy that God does not permit foresight. But if they will stand by these vows -- to love each other sacrificially in richness and poorness, in good health and bad, for better for worse, when the kids bring joy and when they suck them dry -- then perhaps this is not such a fairy tale after all.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Yes I'm back. Haven't posted anything for months. But for our anniversary a few weeks ago Ann gave me the book "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" by Donald Miller. A few years back I read "Blue Like Jazz" by the same author and it really helped me when I was floundering spiritually and emotionally.

This book has meant a lot to me as I've read it. In fact I just finished it and really would like to read it through again and write down my thoughts on here as I go.

Basically the book chronicles what happens to Miller as he is approached by people who would like to make a movie of his memoir ("Blue Like Jazz"). The subtitle is "What I learned while editing my life."

The book challenges readers to evaluate the story they are living in light of how it might be made into a movie. Would it be a compelling story? Would it be going somewhere (would it have a point?) Would people care about the main character? Would they root for him/her?

Here's the foreword that Miller starts with:
If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn't cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn't tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you'd seen. The truth is, you wouldn't remember that movie a week later, except you'd feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.

But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won't make a life meaningful either.

I don't want my life to be a meaningless story.

Refocusing prayer

Eternal Father of my soul,
let my first thought today be of You,
let my first impulse be to worship You,
let my first speech be Your name,
let my first action be to kneel before You in prayer.

For Your perfect wisdom and perfect goodness:
For the love with which You love mankind:
For the love with which You love me:
For the great and mysterious opportunity of my life:
For the indwelling of your Spirit in my heart:
For the sevenfold gifts of your Spirit:
I praise and worship You, O Lord.

Yet let me not, when this morning prayer is said, think my worship ended and spend the day in forgetfulness of You. Rather from these moments of quietness let light go forth, and joy, and power, that will remain with me through all the hours of the day; John Baillie (1886-1960)

Reaching for the Invisible God

Someday I hope to meet Philip Yancey. Not just shake his hand and get his autograph in one of his books, but to sit down and get to know him, for we are kindred spirits. He puts into words so many of the things that I think about and wonder about.

I've started reading his book, Reaching for the Invisible God (2000), and I've been enjoying it just as I've enjoyed so many of his other titles (What's So Amazing About Grace, The Jesus I Never Knew, and Disappointment With God being my 3 favorites).

The book is an attempt to explain what it really means to have a "relationship" with an invisible being. As an evangelical Christian I have heard the phrase "personal relationship with God" so many times, and used it so many times myself, that it can be easy to stop thinking about what exactly it means.

Yancey starts out by talking about how for his entire life he has struggled to "just believe", and that his experiences with Christians have made him suspicious when people talk about God "speaking to them". And yet, Yancey says, he keeps coming back to faith in God because nothing else can satisfy his spiritual thirst any better. Like Peter, he says "where else would I go?".

Such thoughts and feelings ring true with my own experience. Especially in the past couple of years. When I was younger it was easier for me to "just believe", but the past 5 years have shaken that easy belief out of me. I've learned more about the world, the history of (in)humanity of the 20th century, the reality that God often allows incredible evil and suffering, and the reality that many prayers go woefully unanswered.

Such experiences have forced me to try to understand my relationship with God in a different way. Faith is not so easy anymore. But it is where I finally hang my hat. When it all comes down, I hunger for God, and I believe he is real, that he cares for me, and that my life makes sense only when put in the eternal perspective.

My life echoes the prayer of the man in the gospel of Mark who pleads with Jesus, "I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief!"

Yancey says that faith grows on the skeleton of doubt. Only when we face our doubts head on, and openly speak of our questions about the reality of how God really works (or doesn't work) in our lives will any of us begin to see a vital faith grow.

It is that type of faith that I see God developing in me, and I'm glad He hasn't given up on me yet.

Trials of Ted Haggard (part 3 - his kids)

I was really interested to hear the response of Ted's adult children to the revelations about their father. It was a bit uncomfortable to even listen to them describe how they felt hearing about their father's sexual struggles. But the big thing that his daughter said was that she felt...relief.

Relief?? Yes, relief. She shared how growing up as the daughter of this iconic person who always seemed to be so perfect in every way was a real burden to her. Thus, hearing that her father had fallen from that pedestal brought her a feeling of relief from feeling like she had to live up to that standard of perfection. In some strange way, learning that her father had made some incredible mistakes actually helped her to feel like she could actually have a real relationship with him.

And all the time, Ted Haggard had lived his life feeling like if he ever shared his struggles honestly with people he would not have been accepted. So he put a big false persona around who he really was, trying to live up to the expectations everyone had of him, and that he had created for himself. But what really happened was he cut himself off from real relationships with people.

What a warning to anyone in public ministry positions. I myself know the battle of feeling like I need to meet people's expectations. Feeling like "if they really knew what I thought about this, or what I believe about that - they wouldn't accept me," ended up choking my ministry career a couple of years ago.

What I learn from Haggard and his family is that the stakes are high when you start living as a persona instead of a person.

The Trials of Ted Haggard (part 2)

How should the church that Ted Haggard pastored for 20 years have handled the shocking revelations about their pastor? It is really difficult to imagine the personal pain that those men must have been feeling as they sorted through the myriad issues. But I think they got it wrong.

On the Oprah show it was explained that as part of Haggard's severance package he had to agree to move out of the state of Colorado and to never preach again. Although I think I can understand why they may have put those stipulations in the agreement, again, I think they got it wrong. To force him to leave his entire support network seems cruel. He may have decided he wanted to leave the area just to try and make a new start, but to require it of him? I know they were working through a process of helping him see counselors and helping his family get their counseling needs met, but how was he to be held up by his friends if he needed to be a state away?

More importantly, I think they really blew it when they required him to NEVER preach again. Homosexual behavior is not an unforgivable sin. Neither is lying. Neither is drug abuse. Come to think of it, I don't know of any sin that is not paid for in full by the atoning blood of Jesus.

As I listened to Ted and his wife share about the process they've been going through, I actually thought to myself that God could use Ted in some very powerful ways in the future. I thought, "In time, he could be a pastor in the church movement I'm a part of." We already have a convicted felon and several pastors with marital failures who have been restored through grace and are effectively serving as pastors. Why not a restored homosexual offender?

Is God's grace and forgiveness strong enough for all of us or is it only for those who make minor mistakes? In my mind, if there is not grace for Ted Haggard to possibly lead a church again, then what the church is selling is a cheap imitation of the lavish grace the Lord offers.

NOTE: It was mentioned on Oprah that New Life Church has since rescinded the terms of the severance package. Good for them.

The Trials of Ted Haggard (part 1)

A couple of nights ago Ted Haggard was on Oprah. Yes I watch Oprah sometimes.

You may remember Ted Haggard as the disgraced pastor of a mega church in Colorado Springs who was "outed" by a male escort for purchasing meth and for his involvement in homosexual behavior.

Here's the intro to the show from oprah.com...

New Life Church leader Ted Haggard was once one of America's most charismatic and powerful evangelical leaders, with an audience of more than 30 million people. Ted began counseling foreign dignitaries and consulting on a weekly basis with President George W. Bush. By 2005, Time magazine named him one of the most influential evangelicals in America.But no one—not even his devoted wife, five children and his Colorado Springs, Colorado-based congregation—suspected that Ted was paying an admitted male escort for crystal meth. In November 2006, Mike Jones publicly alleged he'd engaged in a three-year sexual relationship with the pastor, which Ted immediately denied. Three days after the scandal broke and after a voice mail featuring Ted asking Mike for drugs was released, Ted's story unraveled. Eventually, Ted admitted to sexual immorality and to buying drugs. He later resigned from the church he helped to found.

When the news hit about Haggard I was shocked, for I had personally been to Haggard's church in Colorado Springs in the summer of 2005. One of the more memorable moments of the conference I was attending was when Haggard shared the New Life leadership structure, including the plan that was in place should he have a moral failure. I left the conference thinking what a good plan it was and how it must make everyone feel more secure about the church knowing such a plan existed.

The first thing I thought about when I heard the news break about Haggard was "I guess they'll see if that plan works now."

Seeing Haggard sharing about his life since that moment in 2006 was very interesting to me on a few different levels. 1 -How did the church respond and how should it have responded? 2 - How did his wife and family respond? 3 - Could God still use a man like Ted Haggard?

In my next entry I'll dig in...