Have You Lost Your First Love?

A link to this was added as an update to Sunday’s post, but I felt it worth giving full attention to it today. Randy Davis is another author we linked to in the past at Thinking Out Loud. Click the title below to read this at source and look at other articles.

This is a followup on my sermon from Revelation 2:1-7 titled What’s Love Got to do with It? The theme was, have you lost your first love when it comes to your relationship to Christ?

But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. (Rev 2:4-5 ESV)

These questions may serve as a diagnostic help as we probe our own hearts and ask this question, have I lost my first love in regard to following Christ as my Lord and Savior? All Christians should take stock of their lives from time to time. We need a spiritual checkup to see if we are spiritually health. These questions are certainly not exhaustive. I’m sure the reader can think of others that need to be asked. However, maybe these will help you and me think about our lives before Christ and ask that question, have I lost my first love?

1. Have you stopped praying daily?
2. When you do pray is it out of duty?
3. When you pray, do you take time to think about God and wait on his reply?
4. Does your faith influence the way you live your public life?
5. When you make important decisions, do you consider what Scripture says? Do you pray about it?
6. Do you use the phrase, “I prayed about it” as an excuse to do what you want to do?
7. Do you read the Bible often?
8. When you read Scripture, do you read with understanding?
9. When you read Scripture, do you find surprising ideas that you have not seen before?
10. Do you find it hard to go to church?
11. Do you see “Church”as something you are a part of or something that you just attend?
12. Do you spend a lot of time being critical of others at church?
13. Is church attendance something you do when there is nothing else to do?
14. Do you let hobbies, personal interests, sports, and other lesser matters keep you out of church?
15. Do you feel close to other church members?
16. Do you fellowship with church members and consider them your closest friends?
17. Do you understand that church membership means a close spiritual bond between each other?
18. Do you feel accountable to your fellow church members?
19. Do you not attend church because you don’t like someone there?
20. Do you do the work of the church?
21. Do you volunteer or do you have to be asked and begged to take a position in the church?
22. Do you think it is someone else’s responsibility to teach, serve on committees, chaperone at children and youth functions, etc.?
23. Does your love for God cause you to tithe and give generously to the church?
24. Do you think that a few dollars every now and then is all that is needed to serve God?
25. Do you share your faith with others?
26. Do others know you are a Christian by your behavior, your language, your attitudes?
27. Do you believe that Christians should carry out a mission endeavor whenever possible?
28. Would you refuse to go on a mission trip if it were offered to you?
29. Do you give consideration to the poor and their needs?
30. Are you put off by someone’s poverty, race, heritage, etc.? Would you refuse to minister to them or to fellowship with them?
31. Given the chance to witness to someone about Christ, will you refuse?
32. Do the two great commands, to love God and to love your neighbor, impact the way you live?
33. As a Christian, do you think there should be limits to things you want or do you think you should buy whatever your heart desires?
34. Are you proud or are you humble in the way you live and treat others?
35. Do you think that worldly practices are fine for a Christian to practice?

Chewing on the Word

First of all, it’s not a reference to Ezra eating the scrolls, but if you guessed that, give yourself five extra points!

Today’s reading is from Jim Thornber whose writing we have shared here several times. For four years, Jim was an Assemblies of God minister who was also a monk. Seriously! Check out his story here and here. To read this at source, click the title below.

Gnawing On God

“Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” —  Joshua 1:8

I like the word “meditation.” Although some Christians are truly scared to meditate – thinking it is something done by cultic Eastern religions while forgetting that Judaism and Christianity ARE Eastern religions! – Scripture is full of injunctions to meditate upon the Word and Law of God.

The word for “meditation” in this passage comes from the Hebrew haghah, meaning to murmur, to mutter, to sigh, to moan, to roar, to meditate, to muse, to speak, to whisper. The word also describes the low moaning sound of a dove (Isa. 38:14) or the “growl” of a lion (Isaiah 31:4). Eugene Peterson uses the analogy of a dog gnawing on a bone, getting everything it can out of it.

This got me wondering: what is my heart gnawing on? What causes me to moan and growl, to be so totally consumed with God that I’m unaware of any thing else? If people could listen to my thoughts, would they hear me murmuring and musing about God and His goodness? Would they hear me whispering to God the joy and wonder I sense in His ever-present love? Or, would people hear me doubting my place in His Church, struggling with my pride and my desires and wrestling to place my wants into the realms of His eternal agenda?  Depending on when a person tuned in, I know they’d hear a little bit of both.

I want my heart to murmur, sigh, growl, moan and utter the goodness and glory of God. I want to be lost in my consumption of God and unaware of anything but Him. But in reality, I spend too much time thinking about my self and my place, or perceived lack of a place, in the Kingdom. In say I want to consider Him but I end up thinking mostly of my self.

However, meditation is not thinking, which is where I go wrong. Meditation means I’m gnawing on the truths of God. It means I’m taking into my spirit the very nourishment that God knows I need in order to grow into a healthy man. Meditation is the simple act of putting my mind and spirit into the hand of God and allowing Him to take me where He needs me to be. Thinking, on the other hand, is me taking God where I think God and I need to be. See the difference?

I want to wrap my thoughts and prayers around God the way a lion wraps its paws around a piece of meat, savoring and tasting its life-giving goodness. I want to meditate upon God and reap all possible benefits from the encounter. I wonder if this is why the Psalmist encourages us to “taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8)? Could this be one of the reasons Jesus said we must eat His flesh and drink His blood (John 6:53)? How else could we take into our spirits the nourishment needed for the eternal journey?

Today I purpose to gnaw on the goodness and faithfulness of God. What about you? What’s on your plate?

 

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Related: 4 Previous posts by Jim Thornber at Christianity 201.

Desiring to be Known

While God wired us with a tremendous capacity to respond to Him spiritually, he also gave us egos that long to be satisfied. Included in that is a desire to be known, to be recognized. This bears on larger issues, such as pride and humility, and it varies greatly between faith families. Growing up in Toronto, Canada at a time when the Saturday newspaper boasted two large pages full of church advertising, it was interesting to notice that in one particular denomination, the announcements for the Sunday services almost always included a photograph of the pastor or guest speaker.

True, we elevate some pastors to superstar status, but the average disciple is looking for a few strokes as well. Sadly, some people don’t give money to a significant project unless there is going to be a small plaque bearing their name, or some recognition in a printed special event program. Even in very small social clusters, some people have what I would term attention addiction. Despite everything Galileo discovered, they believe the universe revolves around them.

Author and theology professor at Regent College (Vancouver, BC) John Stackhouse touched on this two weeks ago in a post he titled, Hoping to Get Noticed.

I don’t get enough attention. You might think I do, but I don’t. Do you? I’ll bet you don’t, either.

Some people get more attention than they deserve. Kim Kardashian comes to mind–and I really wish she wouldn’t, because now she’s getting even more attention than she deserves. Certain politicians, film stars, athletes, other entertainers (see what I did there regarding politicians? Man, I do not get enough props!)–they get more than their share. Hardworking folk like you and me? Not so much.

To be sure, it’s not obvious what “enough” would mean. American humorist Garrison Keillor confessed that what he really wants people to do when they appreciatively greet him after one of his “Prairie Home Companion” radio shows is not to say, “Hey, good show!” but to fall down and worship him as the Sun God.

I don’t want that much responsibility, but I’d settle for [an embarrassingly lengthy and detailed list has been deleted from this space by my better nature].

Yet the Lord Jesus Christ said,

Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ in front of others, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Okay, that’s actually not a problem for me. My financial giving is always done sub rosa, via cheques, or direct deposits, or the like. Only my wife and the Canada Revenue Agency know what I give–although, I confess, it isn’t enough to make either of them blow any trumpets….

But today it seemed to me (if I were Pentecostal, I’d say, “the Lord showed me”) that what applies to charitable giving applies to everything I do. I should be doing everything I do without expectation of praise and reward from other people. I should be doing what I do because it is my assignment from God. Indeed, since I am God’s agent participating in God’s mission, I can appreciate that often it will be best for the mission if I am not recognized, if my work makes its way more quietly in the world than I might prefer.

God has promised us “the reward of the inheritance” (Col. 3:24). He has promised generous recompense–not just what we deserve, but far more than we deserve–in the world to come. And part of our coming into “glory” is that all that we are and have and have done will be fully publicized, made fully manifest (that’s what “glorified” means), so that our human peers will celebrate with us–and celebrate us–openly, fully, gladly, satisfyingly.

In the meanwhile, then, we soldier on, faithfully executing our part of the plan, confident that God has called us to valuable work (boring, or irrelevant, or even disgusting as it might be) that will ultimately pay off big for God, the world, and ourselves.

Onward, Christian soldiers!–however you are deployed today, however prominently or humbly, however praised or ignored. Carry on in hopeful faith. The eventual awards banquet is going to be entirely worth waiting for.

~John Stackhouse

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Christianity 201 is a repository of some of the best devotional and Bible Study material in the Christian blogosphere. Selections come from a variety of doctrinal and theological viewpoints. You’re encouraged to read articles at source, and if you like what you read, click that blog’s header to discover more about the writer/ministry and consider subscribing.

Non-Stop Praying

Today we’re going to talk about prayer not as a nightly upload, but more in terms of a chat channel we stay logged into all day.

1 Thessalonians 5:17
Common English Bible (CEB)

¹⁷ Pray continually.

Today’s post is from the blog of Christine Sine, who along with her husband Tom founded Mustard Seed Associates.  But it’s actually a guest post on their blog by Roy Goble and it kicks off a series they are beginning on prayer. So… I’m strongly suggesting you read this at Christine’s blog Godspace, and consider staying with the rest of the series.

Many years ago, when I was far younger than today, I was interviewing a person for an important leadership position at a ministry. He was about my age and I asked him to describe his prayer life. He answered, “My life is a prayer.”

That’s all he said. I sat there waiting for him to elaborate. He didn’t.

Curious, I asked the typical follow-up questions. How do you do that? What does it look like? Are there exercises to follow? How can you attain such intimacy with God at such a young age? I wanted an answer that helped me understand how it was even possible. But he basically shrugged and said, “It just is. I can’t really explain it.”

Frankly, the answer made me nervous about this candidate. A conversation with wiser friends calmed me as they explained how different faith traditions view prayer in different ways. Eventually we hired him and he worked for many years with the organization.

But I still think about his response. Or more accurately, I think about living a life in such a way that it is pure prayer. How is it that every thought, action, and breath reflects such a spiritual richness?

A simple poem by Fr. Gilbert Shaw sets up the question:

Prayer
is the turning of our whole mind,
our whole being,
towards God.

I want that, of course.  It sounds wonderful. But how do you get it? The idea of a life that is prayer sounds great but seems impossible. A part of the mosaic within my brain understands that there is no definitive methodology, but my linear side is completely frustrated by that.

This is very Western of me, I’m told.  And I agree that it is. But that doesn’t answer my question.  Besides, the Western faith tradition has a long history of mystics and poets who found great joy in struggling with the incomprehensible idea of living a life of prayer.  Brother Lawrence and his pots and pans comes to mind. Learning from those who walked down this path before me has been helpful … to a point.

Shaw also writes:

The purpose of living is not to learn to make prayer,
but to become prayer; to live in and for God
according to the divine call, wholly surrendered to
the Spirit’s activity in the soul for the glory of God.

That’s somewhat more helpful because it equates the idea with something we become. It’s an action. But what action? I keep coming back to the desire for something tangible. It all seems like hard mental work to figure this stuff out, and I would rather just not think about it.

But then that’s the point where I stop and smile. I have learned that we need to be thinking about it. God likes it when we wrestle with such things.

Over time I have come to understand that this struggle to understand is exactly what God wants. My life is prayer only when it is a life of longing for God. The mental sweat that comes from striving to grow spiritually is part of connecting with God’s heart. And God considers it pure joy to meet us in that place.

Or said another way, what we find to be work may well be what God finds to be praise.

~Roy Goble (c/o Christine Sine)

Living the Red Letters

For the past few nights our family has been working its way through The Red Letters a 6-part DVD series produced by World Vision Canada, in preparation for my reviewing it at Thinking Out Loud. The video features outspoken author and speaker Tony Campolo being interviewed by Colin McCartney, director of Urban Promise in Toronto, and author of Red Letter Revolution. If you know Tony, and you noted the title of Colin’s book, the combination of Campolo and McCartney on the subject of Jesus’ teachings is going to produce a thought-provoking video curriculum.

But last night I decided to venture into some of the recommended websites and discovered Colin McCartney’s blog at RedLetterInfo.com including this post from a few days ago:

Last night I had the privilege to worship with a group of young believers at a house church in Anaheim, California. It was a refreshing time for me being with these vibrant Christians and hearing them share about their journey with Jesus all within such a caring environment. The majority of the believers in this simple house church are from total unchurched backgrounds so to worship with them was a real treat. I was especially impressed by the fact that every one of them worshipped and shared from their hearts. The honesty and intimacy present within the living room of this house church was contagious. Grace permeated throughout the room and it was obvious to me that this was a safe place to come and meet Jesus no matter who you are or what you have done.

 Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name there I will be among you.”  (Matthew 18:20) Jesus was among us in that house last night. That’s one of the things I like the best about Jesus – he loves to be with his people and especially those who hurt. He does not restrict himself  to the mantras of professional clergy nor does he limit himself to only making appearances in sacred church buildings.  He is not into religious posturing or rituals. No, he is present in the simplicity of the poor (“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” – Matthew 25:40) and the gathering of two or three or more of us meeting together in a living room of a house in Anaheim, California.

 While we worshipped there was no “proper” worship protocol that is present in so many of our church services today. There was no evident “order of service”, no special musical arrangements with guest singers and there was no passing of the gold coloured offering plates for our tithes and offerings (though we did pass a baseball cap around that was a little sweaty and dirty as it came from the head of one of the folks attending the house church). Needless to say what happened last night was raw, rootsy and real. People shared how their week had went and I was amazed how many of these people talked about the times they shared their faith and cared for others especially the poor. People spoke about loved ones who were now homeless. Youth asked for prayer for their freinds who are cutting themselves with razors. Best of all were the groanings that rose from the mouths of everyone in that room when they prayed for God’s intercession in their lives and in the lives of those they know.  When it came time for me to share the Word I had a captive audience hungry, willing and thirsting to learn from the Scriptures. Now that is a church!

 I loved last night because this is what I always dream and pray about – to see a movement of Christians in love with Jesus, embodying his “red letters” in word and deed, just simply living out their faith. This sounds like the New Testament church to me and it is to this form of missional movement that I have committed myself to.  I seek to work with churches who are committed to activate their people to this kind of “red letter” missional lifestyle where they challenge their people to “go”!  I also dream of church plants being birthed naturally and organically in homes, community centers, prisons, bars and wherever else “Red Letter” Christians do mission. It’s that simple yet it is so rare!  All it takes for this to happen is for us to go! So, what is holding us back? 

Since Colin ended with a question, here again is the link where you can post your response.

Henri Nouwen: Don’t Let Your Mind Become a Garbage Can

This is my prayer: That your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.  Phil 1: 9,10

Through spiritual reading we have some say over what enters into our minds.  Each day our society bombards us with a myriad of images and sounds… each image or word demanding our attention in all sorts of sizes and colors with all sorts of gestures and noises.  The words yell and scream at us: “Eat me, drink me, buy me, hire me, look at me, talk with me, sleep with me!”  Whether we ask for it or not is not the question; we simply cannot go far without being engulfed by words and images forcibly intruding themselves into our minds.

But do we really want our mind to become the garbage can of the world?  Do we want our mind to be filled with things that confuse us, excite us, depress us, arouse us, repulse us, or attract us whether we think it is good for us or not?  Do we want to let others decide what enters into our mind and determines our thoughts and feelings?

Clearly we do not, but it requires real discipline to let God and not the world be the Lord of our mind.

O Lord, help me… to reduce my daily input of distractions and to see and appreciate the realities of faith; to treasure the things that really matter.

~Henri Nouwen

Henri Nouwen Quotations

It’s pronounced ‘NOW-in.’  I don’t need to tell most of you that.  But many people don’t know his story, so you might want to take a minute to read about him before continuing, though his Wikipedia article is far too brief. In short: A theology academic who gave it up to live a life of service that most people reading this would consider far too menial.  Therefore, posting his words here is almost secondary to remembering his actions.

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“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”

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“Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.”

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“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing… not healing, not curing… that is a friend who cares.”

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“We are called to give ourselves, not only in life, but in death as well. I am called to trust that life is a preparation for death as a final act of giving. Not only are we called to live for others, but also to die for others. We have to choose between clinging to life in such a way that death becomes nothing but a failure, or letting go of life in freedom so that we can be given to others as a source of hope.”

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“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.”

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“The world is waiting … for new saints, ecstatic men and women who are so deeply rooted in the love of God that they are free to imagine a new international order.”

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“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, “Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody.” … [My dark side says,] I am no good… I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.” Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”

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“The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it”

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“Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our lives. It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is the fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness … But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to the day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us.”

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“One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there.”

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“Dear God,
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!
Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?
Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?
Please help me to gradually open my hands
and to discover that I am not what I own,
but what you want to give me.
And what you want to give me is love,
unconditional, everlasting love.
Amen.”

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“Christian life is not a life divided between times for action and times for contemplation. No. Real social action is a way of contemplation, and real contemplation is the core of social action.”

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“The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation…”

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“To pray, I think, does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God. As soon as we begin to divide our thoughts about God and thoughts about people and events, we remove God from our daily life and put him into a pious little niche where we can think pious thoughts and experience pious feelings. … Although it is important and even indispensable for the spiritual life to set apart time for God and God alone, prayer can only become unceasing prayer when all our thoughts — beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful — can be thought in the presence of God. … Thus, converting our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer moves us from a self-centred monologue to a God-centred dialogue.”

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” Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared. “

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Sources: Think Exist, Good Reads, Quoteland, Wisdom Quotes, Quote Mountain, Sammy Williams Blog, iWise.

Here’s a final quote from Nouwen on prayer which I found at Thinking Out Loud from May, 2009

For many of us, prayer means nothing more than speaking with God. And since it usually seems to be a quite one-sided affair, prayer simply means talking to God. This idea is enough to create great frustrations. If I present a problem, I expect a solution; if I formulate a question, I expect an answer; if I ask for guidance, I expect a response. And when it seems, increasingly, that I am talking into the dark, it is not so strange that I soon begin to suspect that my dialogue with God is in fact a monologue. Then I may begin to ask myself: To whom am I really speaking, God or myself?

Sometimes the absence of an answer makes us wonder if we might have said the wrong kind of prayers, but mostly we feel taken, cheated, and quickly stop “this whole silly thing.” It is quite understandable that we should experience speaking with real people, who need a word and who offer a response, as much more meaningful than speaking with a God who seems to be an expert at hide and seek.