Sweeter Than Honey? Really?

[I am preparing to lead a retreat this weekend called Open [to] the Book, which focuses on ways that we can approach the Bible in order to allow it to take its full intended effect on us. Below is an excerpt from the first session.] I remember a point when I was freshly out of college and in my first years on staff at a church. It was a period of my life when I had begun digging in to great books on prayer. I was discovering Richard Foster and Henri Nouwen and others, and I loved their teaching and I was growing. But then it hit me one day that something wasn’t right: I was beginning to love prayer, but when it came to the Scriptures...well, I could preach and teach from them, but I didn’t love them. I knew that wasn’t good, but it was honest.

I think that's something of an "elephant in the sanctuary" even in churches that claim to be the most Bible-focused. An attitude like that can be pretty common, possibly even for a majority of the people there. If we were asked, “Do you center your life around the Scriptures,” we would likely say yes–at least to some degree. But if the question changes to, “Do you really like the Scriptures?”...we might plead the Fifth Amendment.

My hope is that wherever you find yourself along the spectrum–if you’re in a period of life where the scriptures are pure treasure to you, or if right now they seem to you about as dry as the pasture that my cattle call home–that we’ll be refreshed and in the weeks and months following this retreat, able to drink from them a bit more deeply.

–––

My wife and I lived away from Texas for eleven years before moving back. During that time, whenever we came to visit my parents, pretty much the entire diet for a week was split between my mom’s great cooking and going to our favorite restaurant, Rosa’s Café and Tortilla Factory. We just couldn’t get enough of either of them. I remember once coming home to visit for a week and we hit Rosa’s five times!

I don’t think we’ve had any five-visits-to-Rosa’s weeks since moving back, but we are still frequenters there, and we especially were as soon as we moved back to Texas. We had been living in Guatemala for two years, so Tex-Mex seemed like God’s pure glory on a plate for us. I think it may have been during our very first week back that we went to Rosa’s for lunch and it was fairly crowded, and our table was unusually close to the table of the family next to us.

As they were finishing their meal, sitting so close to them gave us a good view of an image I may never forget. They had a boy, maybe ten years old, who was doing what we usually do and finishing off his Rosa’s meal by eating one of their delicious tortillas spread with honey. However, it was clear that for this boy, the tortilla was secondary in that recipe. His tortilla was permeated in honey. I think his parents had gone from the table to get refills on their drinks when I looked over and saw him, holding the tortilla up in the air, with honey running down his arm to his elbow. Then he couldn’t help himself. He began licking his own arm, trying to get down to his elbow, in order to get every last drop of honey that he could.

That fits an image from some of the writers of scripture as they described the utter goodness and delight that they found in their scripture.

The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb. (Psalm 19:9-10)

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! (Psalm 119:103)

I want to look at the scriptures like that, with that delight of the boy at Rosa’s licking the honey off of his elbow. But a question comes to mind when I look at the verses above: what exactly was it that the psalmist was describing as being more precious that gold and sweeter than honey from the comb? It wasn’t John 3:16, or some of the great passages in Romans that talk about nothing separating us from God’s love. No, it was stuff like Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It was those sections of the Bible i that were more like eating stuff you don’t like at all but your doctor says is good for you than the ones we usually think of as being like Rosa’s honey-inundated tortilla to that boy.

So how is that the writers of these psalms could open the book to those same passages of scripture and come out saying that they were like honey and gold? Well, I think part of the answer is that they approached them very differently than we normally do, and that difference is what I’m trying to get at in playing with the title for this retreat, because not only did these psalmists open the book, but they opened themselves to it. Now, we’re not going so spend any time on this retreat meditating on passages from Leviticus, but we will try to look for some ways that we can do things to open ourselves to the scriptures and find them for the treasure that they are.

An Invitation You May Have Never Heard

[This post is part of a series: How Jesus Got Hold of Me: Why I Believe and Why I Follow]

Ten weeks ago, I began this series with the statement, "If we're honest about it, the invitation of Christianity is absurd." Between that statement and this final post, I have tried to convey what it is that has convinced me that accepting the invitation by organizing the entirety of my life around it the best I know how is the best option available for how I will spend the remainder of my days. This ancient Jewish crucified and risen rabbi-messiah has gotten hold of me, and to conclude this series, I will do my best to relate his invitation to you. But please stop and pause right here, before you think you know what I mean by Jesus' invitation.

I am convinced that one of the main reasons more people do not take him up on it is because they presume they know what it is when, actually, the versions they think they know are only reductions of it. Then–understandably–very few are willing to arrange their lives around the diminished versions. My hunch is that some of you reading this are already very dedicated Christians yet may have never heard this invitation. For others of us, there are a lot of names higher on the list of things we might call ourselves than "dedicated Christian"–and some of us might even want to keep it that way, but if that's you, I also doubt that you have heard the invitation this way.

And though some will surely disagree with me, I will go ahead and claim that this is not just my own spin on the invitation, but–rather–I am convinced it’s the only invitation offered to us in the pages of the Bible. I’m convinced it’s the only invitation that makes sense. It’s the only invitation that naturally leads us into a way of life that really works. It’s the only invitation that offers hope of a life lived in peace with God, peace with those around us, and peace with ourselves.

Before trying to clarify what the invitation is, I want to clarify some things that it is not.

The invitation is not about having your sins forgiven so that you can get into heaven when you die. Having our sins forgiven is certainly a good thing. But Jesus never gave a sermon that included, “If you were to die tonight, do you know where you would go?” so I’m going to try to give an invitation closer to the things he talked about.

The invitation is not about joining a movement to make the world a better place. That’s also certainly a good thing, and should always be at the center of the things Jesus’ followers are doing. But, again, it wasn’t the invitation in the gospels, and I’m not going to make it mine today.

So, here is the invitation in a way that may sound a little bit clumsy, but which I think gets the point across: The invitation of Christianity to you and to me today is to spend the rest of our lives seeking to be with Jesus, in order to learn from Jesus, how to live our lives as he would live them if he were you or me. There’s a shorter way to put that: Spend the rest of your life as Jesus’ disciple.

We make a mistake in how we often think of being a disciple as something we’re trying to be, but probably haven’t made it there yet (and really wouldn’t know how to put a plan together for really being one if it came down to it). We often tend to think of a disciple as someone who has reached a certain level of maturity, but that really isn’t it at all. The question of whether or not you and I are disciples of Jesus comes down to something pretty simple: Is he our teacher? Are we learning from him how to live our lives, just like any student would learn any other subject matter from anyone else they’ve taken on as their educator/guide/trainer?

Is Jesus your teacher? Are you his apprentice? If Jesus is not your teacher, who else do you have in mind?

One of the shortcomings of the invitation of Christianity as we normally talk about it is that we are led to believe it’s about having our sins forgiven and getting into heaven when we die, but that we can spend the remainder of our lives until our death beds learning virtually nothing from the one we claim we trust with our eternal salvation. But–honestly–how can we really think he’s trustworthy for the rest of eternity if we don’t think he’s trustworthy enough to be the one from whom we learn to live right now?

So, again, the invitation is to spend the rest of your life seeking to be with Jesus, in order to learn from Jesus, how to live your life as Jesus would live it if he were you. The invitation is to accept Jesus as your teacher, for you to live as his disciple.

Dallas Willard said that it would be a natural thing for disciples of Jesus, people who have devoted themselves to carrying out their decision to become like their Master, Teacher, and Lord–“those who, seriously intending to become like Jesus from the inside out, [to] systematically and progressively rearrange their affairs to that end, under the guidance of the Word and the Spirit. That is how the disciple lives.”(1)

That's a great sentence: “...those who, seriously intending to become like Jesus from the inside out, systematically and progressively rearrange their affairs to that end...”

The invitation is to stop living as an apprentice of anyone else–unless you’ve decided that the person or group of people from whom you’re currently learning to live is better cut out for the job than Jesus is–and spend the rest of your life learning to live your life from him.

So that we can all make educated decisions, I want to spell out a little bit of what it means for each of us.

If we choose to accept the invitation and devote the remainder of our lives to our ancient Jewish rabbi, our crucified and risen messiah, it’s going to affect our minds. Since we understand that we live at the mercy of the ideas that are there, we are going to be careful and intentional about the things we allow into them, the things we allow them to dwell on. We’ll pay attention to what has our attention, and see if it lines up with the kind of life that our Master is trying to teach us.

Accepting the invitation is going to affect our habits. Or, another way of saying the same thing is that it’s going to affect the things we choose to do with our bodies. These bodies are the only vehicles God has given us through which we can experience life as Jesus’ disciple, and Jesus lived–in fact still lives–in one of these bodies too, so he is the natural choice for the person who can best teach us how to live life in God’s kingdom in these bodies. Our bodies inevitably develop habits, and our habits are either conducive to Jesus’ kind of life expanding in us, or opposed to it. So we’ll pay attention to our habits.

And accepting the invitation will always affect our relationships. Disciples of Jesus do not exist apart from communities of disciples of Jesus. I recently read one author who said, “Disciples are like grits. There’s no such thing as just one of them.” If you are going to live your life as Jesus’ disciple, you will need the help of other disciples. Church is a natural place for this to happen. (I’m very biased toward some opportunities that I’m always involved in, and if you ever have a chance to be a part of an Apprentice group, I cannot encourage it strongly enough. They help us to look at our lives along precisely these lines–our minds, our habits, and our relationships–and how we can shape all of those to be open to God. If you are near Midland and are interested, new groups are forming soon–please contact me.)(2)

That’s all kind of big picture, which is appropriate since we’re talking about the direction of the rest of our lives, but let me see if I can end by making it more practical. Accepting the invitation means that you will find a way to shape today as Jesus, your teacher would have you, as best as you understand that: what you put into your mind today, what habits you employ today, how you engage in your relationships today. We disciples of Jesus rarely get anything like five-year strategic plans from our Master Rabbi. Instead, he likes to focus on how we will spend today. Then, when enough of those todays of learning from him add up over months, years, and decades, in the words of Jesus himself, “a disciple, when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher.”(3)

Perhaps the best thing that any of us can to is to carve out some time to consider the invitation. Maybe you’re already living it, or at least semi-living it, and some consideration can help you be a little clearer about how to shape today, and then tomorrow and the next day. Or, maybe you’ve never understood that this was the invitation of Christianity. Some of you may be thinking, “this wasn’t what I signed up for.” If that’s the case, it would certainly be worth your while to spend some time examining your options; if not Jesus as your teacher, then whom?

Or, my hope is that some of us reading this (perhaps even you) already know we want in, and we want all-in, which is entirely appropriate. So you can allot some time for asking your teacher how he would have you shape your thoughts, your habits, and your relationships today.

–––

Scripture Readings for the Week*:

  • Jeremiah 1:4-10
  • Psalm 71:1-16
  • Hebrews 12:18-29
  • Luke 13:10-17

A Prayer for the Week*:

Grant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

*Scripture readings are taken from the Revised Common Lectionary. Weekly prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer. (1) See Willard's article, "How Does the Disciple Live?" So much of what I have said in this post is heavily influenced by his teaching that I couldn't possibly footnote him every time that I gained one of these ideas from him. When it comes to these issues, I can no longer determine which thoughts are mine and which are things that I learned from Dallas. (2) Apprentice groups work through the material of the three books in the Apprentice Series by James Bryan Smith: The Good and Beautiful God, The Good and Beautiful Life, and The Good and Beautiful Community. (3) See Luke 6:40

What Happened to Me: My Habits

I grew up as the youngest of three boys. Since both of my big brothers played basketball, and since–judging by the stares on the faces of children who sometimes gawk at me in public–I am abnormally tall, I wanted to play basketball like my brothers did. One thing I remember from the drills I did as a youngster, which at the time I never thought to have any connection to my life as a Christian, is something coaches talked about as "muscle memory." The idea they were trying to get across to me was that once I could find a way to get the ball into the basket, it was a good idea to work at getting my body to do things in exactly that same way as many times as possible. Then, even though getting the ball into the basket in that way would take a lot of focus and concentrated effort in the beginning, eventually my body would develop its own "memory" of how to do that, and after time I would become able to do the same thing at the right times without thinking about it–just by habit. It was true, and I became able to put the ball in the basket without much concentrated effort, but–unfortunately for my basketball career–apparently my body also always remembered how to run slowly and jump lowly, so I didn't get as many opportunities to shoot the ball as I would have liked.

Years after I stopped playing sports very often, that idea of muscle memory came back to me as I was getting rid of a misconception. For much of my life, I had unconsciously separated everything I did into one of two categories: I mistakenly thought that there were some things I did physically (like shooting a basketball, playing a guitar, driving a car, eating a taco–or eating a plateful of tacos), other things that I did spiritually (like praying or reading the Bible). I didn't see that the two categories were very relevant to each other or had any influence on one another.

But then I began studying how God changes people's lives and what our role is in cooperating with the grace that is offered to us, and I discovered that not only had I been mistaken in thinking there was a separation between the physical part of my life and the spiritual part of it, but that making that mistake had been costly. While it is true that there are physical parts of me and non-physical parts of me, I made mistakes and became frustrated because I couldn't see what now seems obvious: when I do "spiritual" things like reading my Bible or praying, as a human being I have no choice except to do those things in my body; and vice versa–everything I do in my body, even if it was something I considered non-spiritual, affects my character/that part of me that makes choices and connects with God/my spirit.

My misunderstanding of both sides of that was inevitably harmful to me in my earlier attempts to follow Jesus, because I had no room in my conception of Christianity for understanding the importance of our habits. Each one of us has habits ingrained in our bodies which are self-centered and end up causing harm to us and those around us. Some of us have a tongue and lips that lie or spew gossip before we know what happened; some of us turn to food, drugs, or alcohol for comfort; some of us have sexual addictions; some of us are experts at quietly shunning people with our body language; the list could go on, and those of us who know ourselves pretty well might respond, "Practically guilty of all of the above."

We all have ingrained, bodily sin-habits, and the New Testament repeatedly talks about our responsibility to take those off (even put them to death) and to put on other ingrained, bodily grace-habits in their place. Last week, I wrote about the difference it made for me in my mind when I began to read authors who talked about the Christian life in ways that made sense, and coming to understand the essential role of our bodies in our efforts to follow Jesus was a big part of that for me. It gave actual, practical, plan-able meaning to passages of scripture like, "...offer your bodies as a living sacrifice...," "...put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed...and clothe yourselves in compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience...," or "to set the mind on the flesh is death but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace."

So how do we do that? What are the grace-habits we want to become ingrained in us? Dallas Willard (the person most responsible for helping me put my body and spirit back together in my efforts to follow Jesus–or, rather, to realize that they were never separated in the first place) nails the issue on the head and should give each and every one of us tremendous hope:

We can become like Christ in character and in power and thus realize our highest ideals of well-being and well-doing. That is the heart of the New Testament message.

Do you believe this is possible?

My central claim is that we can become like Christ by doing one thing–by following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself. If we have faith in Christ, we must believe that he knew how to live. We can, through faith and grace, become like Christ by practicing the types of activities he engaged in, by arranging our whole lives around the activities he himself practiced in order to remain constantly at home in the fellowship of his Father.

What activities did Jesus practice? Such things as solitude and silence, prayer, simple and sacrificial living, intense study and meditation upon God's Word and God's ways, and service to others. Some of these will certainly be even more necessary to us than they were to him, because of our greater or different need. But in a balanced life of such activities, we will be constantly enlivened by "The Kingdom Not of This World"...(1)

As my relationships changed and I stopped attempting to live an isolated Christian life, and as my thinking changed and began to center on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and their implications for how I will live my life today, and as my habits changed and I began to attempt to take on Jesus' lifestyle rather than further entrenching myself in destructive habits and wonder why my spiritual life wasn't getting anywhere...I began to change. My life is full and rich in the things that are the most satisfying. Things like love, joy, and peace are now states of which I have tasted the tip of the iceberg rather than things I long for but haven't authentically experienced.

After all of my explorations, my questions, and my putting the claims of Jesus to the test in my life the best I know how, I am convinced that there is a highway deeper and deeper into this kind of life whose on-ramps are open to each and every human being. That highway is called discipleship. Next week, I will conclude this series by inviting you to join me and countless other students of our ancient Jewish rabbi on it.

–––

Scripture Readings for the Week*:

  • Isaiah 5:1-7
  • Psalm 80:1-2,8-19
  • Hebrews 11:29-12:2
  • Luke 12:49-56

A Prayer for the Week*:

Almighty God, you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of this redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

*Scripture readings are taken from the Revised Common Lectionary. Weekly prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer. (1) See Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives, pp.x-xi

[This post is part of How Jesus Got Hold of Me: Why I Believe and Why I Follow]

What Happened to Me: My Mind

On a normal day, I would look forward to the task of writing about the changes that have occurred in my mind throughout these years of putting the claims of Jesus on my life to the test. Today, though, I've been grumpy. Right now I feel more like complaining to someone about any of a list of trivial things than I feel like writing about God's goodness and the gift we've been given of the freedom to choose what we allow our minds to dwell on. So, since I need to write something on the topic today, perhaps the best thing I can do is to use my current crabbiness as a negative case study.

[I was so crabby on the day I started to write this that I couldn't get any further than the paragraph above. Below is the continuation from at least 48 hours later.]

Normally, I have pretty good habits in regard to what's going on in my mind–both the things I put into it and what I choose to let it ruminate on. So, when I noticed myself being so irritable, I knew I had to take a look at what had been happening in my head. Sure enough, I could pinpoint something that mattered.

About a week ago, I finished something I had been going through for a while that kept my mind in the scriptures. Since I normally base my reading on the passages of the Bible that are given to us in the Revised Common Lectionary (as they are included each week at the bottom of these messages), I had been spending a few weeks in Colossians. It was my first time really digging into the book, and along with spending time in Colossians itself, I thoroughly enjoyed reading through N.T. Wright's commentary on it.(1) For those weeks, my mind was often occupied with the content of Colossians: how Jesus was the one in whom all things in the cosmos are held together and yet also a human who perfectly housed the fullness of God, and in him we are all brought to fullness as well. I even enjoyed soaking my mind in a passage which I have had memorized for years which begins with, "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things."

Then my study of Colossians finished, and I proceeded to not do what Paul said in the passage I just quoted. I can now trace the beginning of my few days of grouchiness to how I replaced my time in Colossians by filling my mind with chapters from a couple of business books. I'm not saying my study of Colossians was good and reading the business books is bad–I need both of them. Part of my life as it is now is that I have a hand in running two small businesses, and I certainly need to learn to do that well. But if you've ever read a book on business, you know that while they can potentially be very useful for helping generate ideas, something they generally stink at is fostering contentment in us. So, after about a week of covering a few pages of these books each time I had a free moment and nearly leaving off the habits of letting my mind soak in the scriptures and instead focusing so much on business, I started to get testy. All of the sudden, the people around me whom I love so dearly and are normally my greatest delights became obstacles that were in the way of my ability to accomplish things.

As evidenced by my first paragraph here, it even annoyed me that I had to write this rather than continue working on those other projects. Thanks be to God that preachers and teachers often get to preach and teach the things that they themselves most need to hear, as getting started writing this helped me to correct course. Now, I'm still reading the business books, but also putting other things into my mind and being more intentional about following Paul's advice on where to set my mind.

–––

We cannot overestimate the importance of our minds (the things we put into them and allow them to dwell on) in relation to the kind of people we are all becoming. Every one of us has innumerable choices every day of what to do with our minds, and those are the decisions–perhaps more than any others–which shape us.

One of the great difficulties in many of our efforts to live life with God is that, honestly, we don't find the Bible or other very helpful materials available that help open us to God interesting or understandable enough to give it the space in our mental attention necessary to keep our whole lives headed in a Godward direction through the months, years, and decades that add up to the kind of people we will be when all is said and done. I have had friends who spend their working lives interpreting things as exciting as legal documents or insurance policies but who then claim that the scriptures and the writings of Jesus' followers through the centuries are too heavy of reading for them.

I don't say that to pick on some of my lawyer and insurer friends (there are plenty of reasons to pick on them, but that's not what I'm doing here), because we all make similar mistakes. It isn't that we don't have the capacity to stretch our minds in the ways that allow us to live lives ever more open to God, but typically–we'd rather read a Sports Illustrated, People Magazine, or just watch some TV.

–––

Last week, I wrote about a point of my life when I hit a wall, and how my relationships brought me past it. Another piece that fell into place around the same time for me was that I began reading some authors who described Christianity in ways that made sense, particularly C.S. Lewis and Dallas Willard.  Rather than simply writing about things to make their readers feel a certain way (guilty, happy, repentant, etc.), I was fascinated by their writings because of the way they helped me to see how the kind of life with God that I want really works in the lives of real people. Putting things about Christianity into my mind which made sense made my efforts to follow Jesus turn into something livable, something for which I could make reliably-guided plans in my entire life.

When a change like that happens in our thinking, our emotions follow suit. Rather than my ill-temperedness from earlier this week being generally characteristic of my life, when my mind is set on things above, feelings of gratitude, contentment, and joy become the norm. Then, of course, our desires begin to change, and we will form different kinds of habits and relate with everyone differently. In short, we begin to take on the lifestyle of Jesus himself. Further exploring that, and how I stumbled into trying to do so, will be our subject next week in looking at what happened with my habits.

–––

Scripture Readings for the Week*:

  • Isaiah 1:1,10-20
  • Psalm 50:1-8,22-23
  • Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16
  • Luke 12:32-40

A Prayer for the Week*:

Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

*Scripture readings are taken from the Revised Common Lectionary. Weekly prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer. (1) See N.T. Wright's Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters.

[This post is part of How Jesus Got Hold of Me: Why I Believe and Why I Follow]

What Happened to Me: My Relationships

As the title of this series indicates, my aim is to describe how Jesus got hold of me–why I believe and why I follow. To this point, I have focused on why I have been convinced that Jesus is believable, and for the remainder of the series I shift gears to focus on how Jesus is followable and what my efforts to do so have looked like (both the misguided ones and those that have been better informed). I want to do this in three areas that have made each of us the kind of people we are: my relationships, my mind, and my habits. Though it isn't really possible to focus on these areas in a chronological order (as if my relationships took a certain shape before anything changed in my mind) I did want to look at them in this particular order, since it was my relationships that opened me up to changes in the other areas.

I remember a point when I hit a wall. I was a college student, and by that time, I had already been involved for years in Christian activities and efforts. I was attending a Christian university and my studies there were preparing me for a career I thought I would have in full-time ministry. Part of that training was that I spent a summer in a ministry internship with a good church.

Though it wasn't an instantaneous crash into the wall, I can look back on it now and pinpoint that time of my life as a point when the wall and I collided. The wall was coming at me in different forms: much of what I thought Christianity was about and had been planning my future around was proving unreliable; I was stuck in selfish patterns which felt like a rut with no way out; my relationships were unfulfilling, as I was nearly obsessed with trying to find people who could bring excitement into my life, make me happy, and pull me out of my loneliness.

It is never fun to hit a wall. One of my heroes says, "reality is what you run into when you are wrong," and I was running into a lot of it during that part of my life. I was steeped in Christianity, but the way I was living it wasn't working. Though I'm not sure what the implications of giving into the wall would have been, I can remember thinking, "If this is all there is to this stuff...I'd rather give my life to something else."

I have certainly made my share of poor decisions, but it was at that point when I made one that has turned out to be one of my best choices: I wrote a letter to the person I knew (though I didn't know him well at the time–he was just an acquaintance whom I'd had the opportunity to observe in different situations) whose life with God seemed to be the most authentic I had seen. He seemed to have the kind of stuff I wanted, even though my wall was proving to me that I didn't know how to pursue it.

My letter to him wasn't long or complex. If I remember correctly, I think it was about a page long and could be summed up as, "It seems like you have the kind of life with God I want. Can I spend some time with you?" I had no idea what his schedule was like, and–being someone many people looked up to–I thought he probably had people asking things of him all the time so there wouldn't be much chance of a real relationship. But–since I was at the wall–I had to give it a shot.

He wrote me back and invited me to get together with him when I returned to campus, and then when we met, he invited me to spend an hour with him each week throughout the year. Most often we spent our hour talking in his office, but I think he knew that I also needed to be with him in other situations. We went to lunch, rode around in his car, and went to ballgames...and each circumstance gave me the opportunity to be known by someone who lived what I wanted, and to see the kind of shape his life with God took regardless of where he was. His simple way of describing what we did was "doing life together."

Because of my relationship with him, my life changed direction that year, and here is the key: even though I didn't understand it at the time, what I gave up on when I wrote that letter was my attempt to live Christianity by myself. Prior to that, I had always had friends who were Christians, but never before had I given anyone permission to be part of my entire life to that degree.

Since then, I have had periods when my life with God has leaned back toward being something I have tried to do in a companionless way, but I have also had times when my relationships with others have been the most valuable part of my life. I have had stretches of stagnation as well as times of authentic change. When I look back at all of it, the most critical factor seems obvious: the kind of life I want inevitably stalls during the go-it-alone times, while the only progress I have ever known has happened with the helpful company of others.

Maybe you have hit the wall at some point too. I wish that everyone would have a friend as helpful as mine was whenever we run into it, because without him and the direction in which our ongoing friendship sent me, I don't know what role the crucified and risen messiah would have in my lifestyle today. It's likely that someone reading this hit their wall some time ago, then either couldn't or didn't have someone like my friend to turn to, and as a result has either accepted a lifeless version of Christianity as the norm or might have even given up on it altogether.

John Wesley said, "Christianity is essentially a social religion…to turn it into a solitary one is to destroy it.”(1) Or, to put it into language we might be more likely to use in our day: disciples of Jesus do not, indeed cannot, exist apart from communities of disciples of Jesus.

So, just to help make this a bit more practical, below are some of the ways I repeatedly apply the lesson that I learned through writing that letter fourteen years ago. These are some of the relationships I enjoy and continue to nurture as part of this kind of life I want to live with God:

  • With my wife: Though there has always been as-yet-unrealized potential for how we can best be helpful to one another in following our Lord, when I look back at our years together to this point, there is no doubt that she is the one most responsible for helping me continue to move forward. We have experimented with a lot of different ways of helping one another stay open to God. Over time–as long as we keep looking for them–we stumble into some that fit us pretty well. She knows me better than anyone, and in her loving, kind, yet red-headed firm way, we're continually getting better at helping each other grow.
  • With a friend or two: I have had different friends fill this role at different points in my life, but I can see how I always need one or two friendships that are on a different level than the others. These friends are the ones whom I'm not afraid to give a glimpse of the good, bad, and ugly in my soul, and they have each known God and known me pretty thoroughly.
  • With a group: One of the most life-giving things I've done over the past several years is to continually be part of an Apprentice Group with others in our church. Being with others in one of these groups each year has become a non-negotiable for me. It is a source of good friendships in which we have common weekly practices and allow the story of Jesus to constantly sink in to us at deeper levels. (If you are near Midland, new groups will be forming this fall. If you are interested, please let me know.)

Each of these kinds of relationships is a joy to me. I look forward to the chances I have to engage in each one of them. But...none of them happen without intentionality on our part. It is very possible, and looked at as acceptable among Christians, to float through our lives without the meaningful connections with others that are indispensable if we want to keep moving forward rather than staying stuck at the wall for the rest of our lives.

Next week, I'll try to describe the change that took place in my mind and what I do with it.

–––

Scripture Readings for the Week*:

  • Hosea 11:1-11
  • Psalm 107:1-9,43
  • Colossians 3:1-11
  • Luke 12:13-21

A Prayer for the Week*:

Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

*Scripture readings are taken from the Revised Common Lectionary. Weekly prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer. (1) From Wesley’s sermon, “Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse 4″

[This post is part of How Jesus Got Hold of Me: Why I Believe and Why I Follow]