A Word (or two) from Mark

As essential as it is for us to spend time alone with God, it is equally essential that we learn how to be in community.  The important practice of solitude should never make us think that we can function without the body of Christ.  In Hebrews we are told not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together (Heb. 10:25).  Assembling is not simply attending a meeting.  Paul tells us quite clearly that we are to be subject to one another in the fear of Christ (Eph. 5: 21)

So there are two practices we need to cultivate.  They work hand in hand.  In Solitude we seek to be alone with God and listen to what He says to us.  We need to pour our hearts out before His Throne. In Community we need to share  our hearts with others.  We need to listen to what God is doing in their lives and encourage them.  We need to allow them to affirm what they see God doing in our lives.  As we learn to submit to one another we allow the gifts that Jesus has given His church to function.

Neither of these practices will happen without intention.  (There is that favorite word again.)  But be honest with yourself.  It won’t, will it?  Unless you purpose to spend some extended time alone with God, it doesn’t happen.  Unless you purpose to spend some time with other people in worship, prayer and mutual submission, it doesn’t happen.

This fall we are doing an amazing study together.  If you want to get the most out of it you will arrange your schedule so that you can be a part of one of our small groups.  Don’t miss out on your chance for community.

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O.K.  O.K.  O.K!!!!!!!! I get it.  I finally get it.  If you have been around Grace for any length of time you know that I have talked about solitude for at least 10 years now.  A close friend once teased me that my standard answer for any question was spend three hours in solitude and call me in the morning.  But even after talking, reading, and trying to practice solitude I still didn’t fully grasp the nature of this spiritual discipline until this past week.

I left Lynchburg on July 19th to begin a week of solitude at an awesome retreat center designed to get you away from the busyness of life.  Because I had been there before, I didn’t spend a lot of time looking around.  I was able to slow down and rest.  As I was reading a wonderful book called “Strengthening the Soul of  your Leadership” by Ruth Haley Barton, I was struck with this thought.   She wrote that God does things in our life under the surface.  In other words it isn’t cognitive.  It isn’t the result of some insight.  It isn’t the result of some activity. It isn’t something I achieve by great effort.  It is just by being quiet and alone with God that He is able to work things out in our heart in deep ways beyond our comprehension.

By the end of the week, I discovered how true her insight was.  True, I had prayed about a number of things.  I had a wonderful time of confession one morning getting rid of a lot of burdens I was carrying for myself and others.  But it wasn’t those activities that did the work in my heart.  Without any fanfare, without any visions or any kind of dramatic encounter, God quietly healed my heart.  I am convinced of it because of some settled confidences that set into my soul.  As I returned to Lynchburg this past Monday I felt it.

I don’t know what your experience with solitude is.  If you are expecting the heavens to open and to see some dramatic vision, you may be staying away from being alone with God out of fear.  If you are expecting God to come down hard on you and beat you to a pulp emotionally over past failures, you are mistaken.  Solitude is simply your act of saying to God, do your work.  I don’t have to understand it.  I don’t have to achieve it.  I trust you Lord that what you will do is best.

I renewed my commitment to personal solitude last week.  I have a plan.  I hope you will try this for yourself.  Taste and see the Lord’s goodness.

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I don’t know how many times I have tried a variation of the “Read through the Bible in a year” plan.  It always started well those first few days of January, but usually got off course and totally crashed and burned by mid February.  So a while back I stopped setting a timetable.  I decided I would read through Bible in as long as it took.  All I did was start with this intent; I would try to read one chapter a day.  Sometimes I missed, but since there was no deadline, there was no penalty.  All I had to do was read a chapter the next day.  No catching up to do.  Well, I finished it.  Sometime in March of this year I read Revelation 22.  I had made it all the way through.  I have no idea how long it took me.  All I know is I made it through.

What I found I loved about this approach was freedom.  Because I had no deadline or quota to meet,  I was free to think about what I was reading.  I didn’t have to hurry.  I could take a rabbit trail if I had a question about a person or topic.  It was even a little unsettling, yet enjoyable, how often the chapter I was reading on a particular day addressed my current needs.

Someplace about Malachi I adapted my plan. In addition to reading one chapter, I also would read one psalm, and one small section of a gospel.  Currently I am in Luke.  I just read one story, or section each day.  This diversity has allowed me to worship, to ask questions in prayer as I saw themes and ideas intermingling.  It has allowed me to focus each day on Jesus and think about one specific event in His life on earth.

I don’t know if you have failed at other reading plans or not.  I know it can be a daunting task to try to read the Bible at times. Where do you begin?  I feel the Lord has blessed me each step of the way as I completed this journey.  So,  I have started the journey again.    As of this writing I am up to the account of Joseph’s life in Genesis 39.

If you have ever tried a reading schedule and failed… give this one a chance.  You might surprise yourself.

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Any time you examine the state of your life you open yourself up to the possibility that you might not like what you see.  This, in and of itself, is what leads people to avoid self reflection.  But it is extremely important to make a distinction between introspection and Godly review.  In and of ourselves we make mistakes; we fail and we sin.  There are plenty of bad things we can discover about ourselves.  When we engage in introspection it can be likened to going on a personal mining expedition to find all the junk in our lives without bringing any light with us.  If we approach it in this way, we end up in a gloomy place all alone. We can even get caught there.  That is why it is much better to avoid any type of introspection done without asking for the Holy Spirit’s guidance and presence in the process.  At the end of Psalm 139 is a prayer that David prayed.  He asked God to examine his heart.  That is the only context where we should engage in self reflection.  My personal evaluation, and the evaluation of others for that matter, isn’t nearly as important as God’s evaluation.  Only God sees my life accurately without bias or prejudice.

So how does one do this? First we reject any message with in us that shouts about our failures.  We seek the Lord in a time of prayer and worship.   We pray the Psalms out loud. And then ask the Lord to speak to our heart.  What He brings to mind as a sin, we confess.  We then receive His forgiveness…(1 John 1:9) he faithfully promises to give us.

Sometimes the Lord will bring something to mind that we need to talk about with another person.  If we have hurt someone, we may need to ask for their forgiveness, if it is appropriate to do so.  This is a apart of dealing with our failures.  After this kind of prayer, having received God’s forgiveness, and asking others for forgiveness, we forgive ourselves.  We press forward. It is o.k to move on with the good things God has for us when we have dealt with the past in this way.

The next post will be about waiting on God as we move forward.

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The first step in forming a “trellis” that makes room for the work of God to take place in our lives is to engage in candid reflection on our current status.  I said Sunday that we all have a “trellis” because we all have a set of things we do regularly.  Some patterns may be relatively recent ones adapted because of some change in our life or schedule, while others may be established from long habit.  As you ask yourself these questions, don’t be hard on yourself.  Try to be as thorough as you can, without any prejudgment.  Try to be neutral.  That way you won’t “fudge on any of the answers.  Are you ready?

1.  How much sleep do you get each night?  (Do you have a regular bed time or get up time?)

2.  What are your weekly commitments?  ( Appointments, work schedule, trips to the gym, the grocery store, coming to our Sunday worship, Life group,  anything you do weekly.)

3.  Reflecting on 2009, what project or projects did you accomplish outside of your job?  ( This could be anything you did to your home, or volunteering, or as a member of a team.  Anything you would consider as “done”.)

4.  How much time did you spend in regular activities.  (reading, watching television, going to the movies, meeting friends, sports,)

5.  How are your finances?  Do you have a budget and a financial plan or not?  What kind of pressure are you experiencing in this area?

6.  What is the balance between “work” and “play” in your life?  Do you always have to be doing something productive, or can you ever just rest.

7.  What is our current plan for spending time in the word and prayer?  What spiritual disciplines do you practice regularly?   Do you have some goals in these areas? Do you have some prepared materials, study guides, etc. that you are using in this area? Do you use some kind of prayer list?  What are you doing now to grow spiritually.  List anything you are currently doing.

7.  What “rules” guide your life.  My family told me that one of my rules was that when the traffic light turns green, it means go, and I get to say things to the car in front of me I would never say to the person’s face if they don’t go.  Maybe you have some “governing” rules that shape your behavior at different times.

8.  After you make a list consider these numbers.

24 hours in a day

7 days a week

168 hours in a week.

Now, take the answers from the previous questions, and anything else you observed about your life this week, and make some kind of list or chart that shows how you are using the time God has given you.  Is there any room in your schedule?  Are you overbooked? Do you have lots of free time?

The main purpose behind this exercise is to bring you to this point.  Having a “rule” or a trellis just may give you a new found permission to say “NO”…. I can’t add that to my life right now, thank you anyway.   Wouldn’t that be a relief?  For some of us, before we can say Yes go God, we may have to say no to a few things, just so we have breathing room.

Please feel free to make comments on this post, as your thoughts may be helpful to others.  And be sure to e-mail me any insights you have.  I ‘d love to know what you are learning.

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This year I am experimenting with a thought I learned from a couple of different sources.  It is an idea that goes back to monastic traditions.  Ooohh..that sounds scary. But it really isn’t.   Each monastic movement had a “rule” that governed the pattern of their corporate life.  It was a set of principles that guided them in how they worshiped, worked and lived in community.  From this, we can adopt the idea of constructing our own “rule” of life.  Now if that sounds legalistic, consider this.  Whether you have chosen to construct a “rule”, or simply just lived life with little thought about the pattern you were constructing for yourself…you still end up with a “rule”.  You do certain things pretty regularly.  (I have never encountered anyone who thought it was legalistic to practice eating three times a day.)  The question to consider is whether the rule you have, chosen or otherwise, places you before God in a way that He can change you.  If our normal regular patterns never bring us to the Scriptures, or to prayer, then how can we ever expect the work that only the Holy Spirit can do in us to take place.

So this year in church I am going to be talking about what our “rule” is. But the analogy is better considered as a trellis.  A grape vine grows best when there is some structure to support its growth.  A “rule” or pattern for life is simply a trellis for our branch to grow on as we are connected to the vine.  (John 15:5) It isn’t the vine.  It has no life in and of itself.  But it supports the growth the vine creates.

To get us started with this process, I am asking you to do this simple assignment for this week, observe your life. Try to write out the “rules” or “trellis” you are living by now.  Check back on Tuesday, (January 5th)  for some specific questions to ask yourself about your current ” trellis” or “rule of life”.  Feel free to leave some comments here on the blog.  As you make some observations…share them.  Send me an e-mail about what you are learning about yourself from considering your own “rules”.  I would love to have some people share some thoughts next Sunday as we each develop our own “rule” or “trellis”.

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With Christmas around the corner, many of us are anticipating spending time with family.  For some of us, that is a delightful prospect.  Others may have mixed feelings about it.  Why is it that family presents such a challenge?  One of the reasons is that as “family” we tend to know the truth about each other, or we think we do.  Having grown up together, we think we understand how things should be.  The problem is that sometimes we are wrong about others in our family and sometimes they are wrong about us.  Mark tells us this about Jesus’ family as His ministry was beginning to attract a lot of notice.

“When His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him, for they were saying, “He has lost His senses.” Mark 3::20

If Jesus could be misunderstood by His own family, it shows the challenge that the proximity of “family” can present.  Sometimes families just don’t get it right.  Facing pressure from family members is tough.  Jesus didn’t let His family deter Him from His own calling and mission.  Neither should we.  On the other hand, we should think twice before we put pressure on others because we might be the ones who have it wrong.

So, this year a good plan for the family gatherings might be to seek to listen before you speak. Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.  Don’t let family pressure deter you from your calling.  Most of all, hug the ones you love, while you have the chance.

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Recently I was praying through Psalm 51.  I was confessing some sin in my life that I needed to talk to the Lord about.  I was struck by the word hyssop.  David writes, “purify me with hyssop and I shall be clean…”.  I asked, what does hyssop do?  Off to a bible search program and I found the answer.  Hyssop isn’t a soap.  It is a small bush or flower of sorts.   It was used by the priests to sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice on the altar.  All of a sudden my cleansing became clear to me.

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Romans 4: 17

even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist.

Often when we pray, we limit ourselves to the kinds of things we can see happening. Much like we wouldn’t ask a friend or our children to do something we think beyond their capability, we limit the kind of requests we make of God. But in Romans 4, as Paul describes the faith of Abraham, he make this passing comment about God. Our God is the one who gives life to the dead, and calls things into being that do not exist.

I stopped as I read those words.  Dead things back to life. How many things do I  consider dead, hopeless? Yet God is the God of resurrection. But even this isn’t an adequate picture of His power. Because when something is dead, it actually once existed…alive. We can see the carcass, the remains. God can do more than that. He can bring something into being that has as yet to EVER exist.

Do I believe this? Honestly?  No. I say that because I don’t pray that way at all. But I am starting to pray that way. I think that is the way God invites us to pray…and live….joining with Him in His work.

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This past summer, I walked on a nearby bike trail that crosses a bridge to an island in the James River.  The trail runs the full length of the island and crosses another bridge to reach the other side.  The trail also runs underneath a four lane highway bridge that crosses the James.  Standing near this bridge you can hear the sound of cars speeding by overhead, all the while seeing the river slowly drift by. As I did this that day, the contrasts were extreme.  I thought of a scene in the book Prince Caspian.  The river asked Aslan to set it free from the bridge because the bridge allowed people to cross without going through the water.

Although bridges can be a metaphor for connecting, on this particular day I saw them in a different way.  The bridge, high above my head, allowed travelers to hurry on their way without slowing down.   As I watched the water that day, I thought of all the beautiful things a river can symbolize — cleansing, healing, life from above.  I thought of busy travelers avoiding getting wet.  I thought of how often I avoided getting wet. How often do I avoid slowing down?   How often do I take the bridge, rather than going to the water’s edge?

I resolved that day to slow down and spend more time “by the water” each week.  I did for awhile, but then “busyness” set it.  But I am going walking again real soon.

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