Everything Adds Up

A powerful general principle in the spiritual life is this: everything adds up. Everything counts, and moves us in one direction or another, including small things. It isn’t generally the big things of our lives that play the largest role in shaping who we are, but all of the small things that add up over the course of our lifetimes. All of things we put into our minds add up. All of the decisions we make about our time add up, and on the other side of all of them, we become the kind of person that is naturally the sum of all of those things, because everything adds up. In his book, Falling for God, Gary Moon relates a great illustration of this is in a parable called “Crumbs and Bubbles” by Safed the Sage. It’s the story about Safed, who is spending a quiet day with his granddaughter when it begins to snow. The little girl looks out the window and notices the fluffy, falling flakes. She asks her grandfather to take her outside to play in the snow, and he cannot refuse.

Once outside, the little girl begins to giggle with delight as the snow comes down. She says, “Look grandpa, the snow is making crumbs and bubbles.”

When he asks her what she means by crumbs and bubbles, she explains, “The bubbles are falling against your face, Grandpa, and turn to water. But the crumbs land on your overcoat. They don’t melt and you can brush them off. Watch."

Safed marvels at the way the small child put the words together to describe her new experiences. They spend the day enjoying the crumbs and bubbles until the cold sends them inside to thaw out by their fireplace.

The next morning he awakens and notices how quiet everything has become. There is no movement outside, no noise from trains, cars, or footsteps. He looks out the window and observes that the snow has fallen in great drifts and brought the entire town to a hault.

Then he remembers the cute words of his granddaughter and how she described the crumbs and bubbles of snow, which have now piled up in such great drifts that they can stop a powerful train.

Then he unpacks the parable and says, “I considered that it is even so with many things in life that are small in themselves, but when multiplied they become habits that people cannot break, or grievances that rend friendships asunder, even as great drifts are made of bubbles and crumbs of snow.”

Snowflakes add up to make snowdrifts, just as the things we allow our minds to dwell on and the decisions we make about our time add up to make a person- either a person whose character is very significantly like that of Jesus, or a person whose character isn’t; they add up making me the kind of person that I want to be, or to something less.

C.S. Lewis also describes this well. He says in Mere Christianity, “Every time you make a choice [and I’ll add here- a choice about what to do with your time] you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a Heaven creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”

Everything adds up, and this is one of the core ideas of understanding spiritual formation, because we are, always, being formed into some kind of person. This is true whether we know it or not, and living as a disciple of Jesus is largely about learning to recognize this and pay attention to it.

 

Why You Should STOP Trying to Support Your Ministries with Prayer

A recent article in the newspaper of my denomination's local conference was advertising an upcoming Prayer Leader's Summit, which appears to be a very good event. I'm certainly thankful that it's happening and the leadership I serve under is putting it on. Therefore, I don't want this blog post to come across as belittling this prayer conference and others like it; it's certainly a good thing whenever people involved in doing "God stuff" can be intentional about talking to him about it. So now that you understand I'm in favor of it... One sentence in the article caught my attention because it represents what I've come to believe is a mistake about how we usually look at the relationship between prayer and ministry: "This Summit is not about praying for the Conference as a whole. Instead, it's about encouraging and equipping prayer leaders to support their local ministries." Innocent enough, right? I'll see if I can explain my picky-ness with the wording. I've been involved in church all of my life, and in church leadership all of my adult life, and have used phrases myself to describe prayer in ways similar to the newspaper quotation above. We often say things like, "this needs to be covered in prayer," or such-and-such is done on "a foundation of prayer," or as the article said, that a particular "ministry is supported by prayer." We say such things for good reasons, because we are involved in doing a multitude of kinds of things for others, and we realize that if we try to do them only according to our own abilities rather than dependently on God's ability, the results will be limited to what we can accomplish by ourselves. We all know ourselves far too well to get very excited about that. We certainly want to welcome God into these things that we're doing. We serve others, care for the sick and the poor, lead worship services and Bible studies, etc., and all of these things are ministries that have to be based on, supported by, and enabled by prayer. But what if that's wrong? What if it's the other way around? What if prayer is the ministry and all of the things we do for others are the supporting and enabling forces? What if prayer is where God and we really get things done, and the ways that we serve others are just how we can come along for the ride? This is a lesson I began learning a while ago, but still have lived into very little. If I can really start to think this way, I will certainly approach ministry differently than I do by habit. It would lead to a way of ministry with much less pressure on me and those around me. My title indicates that I am Pastor of Discipleship in a large church, but how in the world am I supposed to help a large congregation of people connect with God? It's an intimidating job description, and I can't do it. But, if prayer is the ministry rather than the activities, I can pray. Then I can act, doing things for others that will support and be a part of what happens when I pray. This helps something become practical that we talk about a lot but have difficulty enacting: rather than leaving results up to me, they are left in the much abler hands of God. When I pray, I become more aligned with who God is. I become more who he wants me to be in the world. That simply matters more than all of the other kinds of things we do. It is where things get done, and it is how God's kingdom comes. It is ministry. Then, when I work and act by serving others, caring for the sick and the poor, leading worship services and Bible studies, etc., I'm simply jumping in on the work God is doing in the world (or putting my hand on the load God is carrying). So while the aim of the newspaper article is more than admirable, this one sentence reinforces our misconception that prayer and ministry are separate things. We need to stop trying to support our ministries with prayer. Instead pray, then find ways to be a part of what begins to happen.

You Spend Eight Months of Your Life Opening Junk Mail

Our church is studying John Ortberg's book, The Me I Want to Be, and I really appreciate the framework it gives us for describing the life of a disciple of Jesus. Paraphrasing from the overall structure of the book (and the groundbreaking accompanying tool called Monvee), disciples of Jesus are careful with how their lives are arranged in these four areas: our minds, our time, our relationships, and our experiences for others. This post is from my message on redeeming the time, which ties together the first two of these areas.

In Ephesians 5, Paul instructs, “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” Or, I appreciate how some of the older translations say it, encouraging us to “redeem the time.”
Obviously Paul understood that, in his day, redeeming the time was an important part of people learning to live wisely. If it was important then, it is at least as important today. While it has always been a key element of living wisely, perhaps the need has never been more urgent than it is for us today, and all of the signs in our world point to this urgency continuing to become more and more pressing.
Consider these facts that James Bryan Smith shares in his book which our Apprentice Groups study, The Good and Beautiful God. He says that, in a lifetime, an average person spends:
  • six months at traffic lights
  • eight months opening junk mail
  • one year searching through desk clutter
  • two years trying to call people who are not in
  • three years in meetings
  • five years waiting in lines
In a single day an average American will
  • commute 45 minutes
  • be interrupted 73 times
  • receive 600 advertising messages
  • watch 4 hours of television
We must learn to redeem the time!
There is quite a bit of overlap between how disciples of Jesus through the centuries have arranged their lives in respect to their time, and how they have arranged them in respect to their minds. Time is always passing. We can neither slow it down nor speed it up. It just is what it is, without respect to what we think about it. Sometimes we feel like time is on our side, and other times it’s a fierce enemy, like for the old basketball coach who said that his teams never lost a single game, they only ran out of time. It’s similar with our minds, because as time is always passing, our minds are always absorbing the things that we put into them, whether those things be helpful or destructive. Paul urged Christians to be transformed by the renewint of their minds, because he understood that the kind of people that you and I are becoming is largely the outcome of how we think. If we “set our minds on things above,” and think great thoughts over the course of our lives, our habits of thinking will play tremendous roles in determining the character that is in us when we come to our last days. And it’s the same with our time.
I’ll invite you to do a mental exercise with me to illustrate. Take a moment and bring to mind a person that you have greatly admired. It may be someone you have known personally, or perhaps you only admired them from a distance, but bring to mind someone whose quality of character has inspired you.
Have someone in mind? Now bring to mind someone as unlike that person as you can think of. Again, it may be someone you have known well or not, but think of someone whose life and character is to you the epitome of being un-admirable. You may even feel a knot rise up in your stomach at these thoughts.
Now, think of the lives that these two people led which either developed them into very admirable or un-admirable people. Two things that are surely differences between them are the ways that they thought and what they did with the 24 hours per day that each of them were given. The un-admirable person in your mind surely had long patterns of thinking un-admirable thoughts, and this led them to use their time in un-admirable ways. And just as surely, the admirable person in your mind took Paul’s advice when he said in Philippians 4, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Then, these patterns of thinking led them to use the time that they were given in ways that made them into people who were true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, and praiseworthy, because we really do become what we think.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, paid a lot of attention to these things. He was extremely careful, even highly meticulous with his time, keeping records of what he did hour by hour, and recording the activities of his days in his journals. He lived in such a watchful way over his own time, because he understood the role that what we do with our time has in shaping who we become.
Wesley talked often about “redeeming the time.” He said, “[Save] all the time you can for the best purposes; buying up every fleeting moment out of the hands of sin and Satan.”
And I love this quote from him: “Redeem the time. Improve the present moment. Buy up every opportunity of growing in grace, or of doing good. Let not the thought of receiving more grace tomorrow make you negligent of today.”

 

Renewing My Mind and Redeeming My Time

I haven't written much to post lately, largely because I've been preaching more than usual. So, just incase you're interested, here are videos (and audio is available here): [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/15407408 w=400&h=300] The Me I Want to Be: Changing Your Mind (CWS) from First United Methodist Church on Vimeo.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/15411493 w=400&h=300] The Me I Want to Be: The Energizing Impact of Scripture from First United Methodist Church on Vimeo.

Advice to Christians from the World's Leading Hindu

E. Stanley Jones was a widely respected Methodist missionary of the last century (and, I am proud to say, a fellow alumnus of Asbury College, although he graduated ninety-three years before I did). During his ministry, he had influence all around the world, from counseling American presidents to being an evangelist in Japan, but most of his efforts were focused on India. He even came to have the reputation as “the Billy Graham of India” because of how deeply he impacted the country.

During his time in India, he became a friend of Mahatma Gandhi. Jones’ autobiography, A Song of Ascents, recounts stories of their interactions with one another. Jones says that once, while holding a series of lectures with a group of students, it came to his attention that Gandhi was nearby and that he had been invited to visit. During their conversation, Jones wanted to ask Gandhi, at that time the nation’s leading Hindu, what he believed Christians should do to contribute to India’s uplift and redemption. Gandhi immediately replied:

“I would suggest four things: First, that all you Christians, missionaries and all, must begin to live more like Jesus Christ. Second, that you practice your religion without adulterating it or toning it down. Third, that you emphasize love and make it your working force, for love is central in Christianity. Fourth, that you study the non-Christian religions more sympathetically to find the good in them, to have a more sympathetic approach to the people.”

Jones goes on to talk about why, despite Gandhi’s tremendous admiration for Jesus, he never became a Christian: while living in South Africa, Gandhi saw Christians do horrible things in their religiously backed support of apartheid. In other words, although he had a great deal of respect for Jesus, he could never see the value of the Christian religion because he saw so little of Jesus’ character in the lives of many who claimed to be followers of Jesus.

Even though we are now so far removed from this conversation between Jones and Gandhi, both in time and culture, we would still do very well to heed his advice. If we are going to always seek to show God’s love to others in practical ways, people must be able to see Jesus’ character in us. We must begin to live more like Jesus Christ, practice our religion without toning it down, and emphasize love in all that we do. Imagine the impact it could have if even just ten percent of the people in your community resolutely decided to live this way. The impact would be staggering. If we continue seeking to find ways, big and small, to let others know that they are loved by God, while seeking to pattern our entire lives after Jesus, life as we know it would be radically different. Our families and friends would change, our communities would change, and we would never know the extent of how far around the world the ripples of such a commitment would reach.

We are sure to find that as we try this, God is there helping us. It is the life God wants for us, and grace to strengthen us is abundantly available along the way.