Quotes From Dobson. . . .

Ok. I mentioned these quotes in my last post. I'm finally getting back to Dobson's book to look for them. (plus, I needed a post since Frankly has 3 already - not that blogging is a contest).

The first quote of Dobson's book that challenges me comes from a rabbi that one of his sons studied with and is on the first page. "If you're a Christian and aren't reading through the Gospels every week, then you're not a very good Christian. How can you claim to take Jesus' teachings seriously when you spend so little time actually reading them?" The rabbi hit a nerve with Dobson. It does with me too. I've tried many times to read through the Bible every year. I get a good start every January, but then "get too busy". This year is going to be different. I'm going to do everything I can to listen or read through the gospels every week. I'm already failing miserably this week, but there are still a few days left. This may mutate into a gospel a week/all the gospels in a month goal for me.

The second quote has still not been found. I've been through almost 80 pages and not found it. Its rather frustrating. But, alas. I guess I need to read through the book again. I'm writing down some of the prayers that Dobson uses throughout his year long journey. Two that are really grabbing me right now are the Orthodox Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." It is repeated for each knot in an Orthodox Prayer Rope, which has 33, 50, or 100 knots in it, depending on which length rope you have. It really helps me control my mind and focus back towards God, especially when my mind decides to go the opposite way.

Another resource Dobson came across in his journey is the Amidah--a set of blessings that are a part of the Jewish prayer life. I need to do more reading on how they are used individually and communally in the life of Israel. But, from my first look at the blessings, they seem like they will be helpful to pray through. (if you want more info, or to see them, you can go here)

I guess that is all for now. Maybe the next time I blog I'll have the other quote and a specific list of what I'm actually doing this year as I try to live more like Jesus.

Living Like Jesus

A few weeks ago I popped into the local Family Christian Store looking for a songbook for Christmas. I normally try to stay away from bookstores altogether because if I don't, I buy books and put them on the shelf behind me in my office. That is where the plan to read books are. So, I was taking a risk. To help me not buy anything, I took my girls along.

Unfortunately, Family Christian did not have the book I was looking for. I was ready to be in and out to control the temptation. However, Hannah got stuck in the kids section. Go figure. To kill a little time I looked at the church resource section. Luckily there was nothing there that I needed. From there I went to the Christian Living section, or I think that is what it is called. Its the good section between stuck in between the fiction and the charismatic section, I think. Its aisle 3. That is not the point, though.

While in the Christian Living section, a book A Year Living Like Jesus caught my attention. Ed Dobson was a minister at a large church in Grand Rapids. I have never interacted with any of his books, theology, writings, and such. I normally would skip right over him and look for one of the authors that my mind/theology resonates with. Yet, the title of the book, really gripped my attention. I thumbed through the book for a moment, looked at the back cover, and then put it back. Luckily my girls were ready to leave.

Later that week, I did a little internet looking for the book and for Ed Dobson. That's how much the title and idea caught my attention. It fits in so well with where I am at in my life. I'm not feeling down. I'm not feeling un-spiritual. I'm feeling like I'm in the middle of the road--not doing horribly, but not living epic (to use a word from my Merge students). I've been mulling and thinking about where I'm at for a few months now. I've been wondering how I change and add discipline to my life so I can move from the middle of the metaphorical road.

Last week I had lunch with a friend to talk about some other church stuff. In the process of that conversation, we talked about Dobson's book, and the book that he read that pushed him to live like Jesus for a year--A.J Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically, which my friend had just gotten as a birthday present. Needless to say, my consumer mentality was calling me to buy the book. I NEEDED it.

Last night I gave in and bought the book. I'm already half done with it. I couldn't put it down. I hope to finish it in the next two days or so. I plan to buy it for some close friends for Christmas.

Please note, its not about the book. The book is good. Its the concept that is shared in the book. The idea of allowing Jesus to shape my life in a day to day manner should not really be new to me--should not be as earth shattering as it is. But, it is what it is. There are especially two quotes within the book that feed my passion for this idea of living the life of Jesus--quotes from other people that Dobson shares. And, I would tell them to you if I had the book here beside me. The book is in the car so I would actually do the work I needed to do today rather than finish the book! And, as most of you know, I stink at memorization. You'll simply have to wait for the quotes.

Now to the reason I wanted to post this--these are the things I'm thinking about doing next year. They are not as extreme as what Dobson did (like not cutting his beard and eating kosher), but they are extreme for me.

• Read/Listen to Gospels once a week
• Read/Listen to NT once a month
• Continue my study of the Pentateuch and look into the Talmud
• Make prayer more than what it is right now in my life
• Better eating habits
• Get back to weekly fasting
• No soda
• Commit to and have a weekly/daily exercise routine
• Observe Sabbath
• Live out the Sermon on the Mount (this includes memorizing it)

I'm not telling you these things to gloat and say, "look at what I'm going to do!" Rather, I'm asking those of you that read this to pray about these things, about my crazy decision to do them Pray that I choose to do the right things, not for me, but so that I can reshape my life to be like Jesus. Right now the list looks daunting. It makes me ashamed that I'm not doing some of these things in my life now. It is what my middle of the road soul longs for.

Thank you for praying for me and for this.

Chiding

The other day Frank, my senior minister, commented that he has not been blogging much lately. His specific comment was something to the effect of, "I'm blogging like Wally." While not being offended by his comment, it motivated me to blog more. . . or at least to try and blog more. We'll see how it goes.

I started a post a few weeks ago concerning Tiger Woods while messing with ommwriter for mac (which is a cool program for removing distractions while writing). I was rather frustrated with how much the media was hounding him about his little encounter with the fire hydrant and the tree. I didn't have time to finish my thoughts on that blog when I started it, so it ended up sitting on my desktop for a few days before I tossed it. At that point, i was more messing with the software than really collecting and writing my thoughts.

A couple days later the news broke about his personal downfalls. While I was not shocked with the news, I was surprised by the media's response. A famous man wrecks his car a few days earlier and tries to be quiet about what and why happened and everyone hounds him to speak up and share the story. I remember the headlines, "Tiger cancels his appointment with the state troopers again!" The media was relentless. Then, it comes out that he has been unfaithful to his wife and it seems to be second or third page news. One would think that his unfaithfulness would be more important or dramatic than than driving his fancy SUV into a tree. (Granted, his wife did extricate him from said SUV with a golf club. That to me is funny and ironic.) But it wasn't. By the time the truth came out, it seemed to me that the media and everyone who thrives on news had moved on to the new big thing.

What is it about our society that we chase after all the dirt and all the secrets. Why is it that we pry and poke and dig until we get the "truth" and in my opinion exacerbate the situation? I am certainly guilty of this. Every morning after I get ready for the day, I find myself perusing three or four websites to see what happened in the world the day before. And, unfortunately, I continue to check back to see if anything else has happened since the last time I looked. That, in turn, gets carried into other conversations with a simple, "hey, did you see this story or that story?"

We are a reality TV society. We thrive on peeping into the lives of those around us, those down the street, and those on the other side of the world. We want to see and feel their excitement, shock, and pain. We are so infatuated with the lives of others.

The question my mind then asks is why? Why are we so infatuated? Why are we so intrigued by Tiger Woods or our latest classmate from high school we found on facebook? Is it so we can compare ourselves to them and say things like, "I've turned out better than them!" Are we looking everywhere we can for people who are more messed up to feel good about ourselves? Or, is the bigger issue the fact that we don't want to think about ourselves so we bury ourselves in looking at others to forget? Either way, I think the big issue is that we are not happy with ourselves.

Jesus has something to say about that in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7). Why do you look at the sawdust in the lives of others when you walk around with planks in your own eyes? If I'm going to look at the world and "judge" or whatever it is I will do with the world, I first need to check myself and make sure I am ok. I think the second greatest commandment hits on this too, "Love your neighbor as yourself." While it calls us to loe our neighbor, it also calls to love ourselves. That is a challenging thing to do.

Its hard to love ourselves. We know everything about ourselves. We don't need the media to dig into our closets to reveal our skeletons to ourselves. We live there in the closet, continually replaying the past and wondering why we were so messed up. We can't let go and move on, even though we should.

In my journeying through Leviticus the last few months, I have been gripped by the way that the Israelites were challenged to deal with sin. Well. It goes a bit farther than that. They were expected to not intentionally sin. If you intentionally sinned, you were either booted from the community or stoned. If you unintentionally sinned, when you realized it, you were to take an offering to the tabernacle to make yourself right in order to keep you and the community in the right with God.

What if we were to take the lead from this and actually deal with our skeletons? What if we were able to deal with our past so we could live in the now, looking ahead rather than struggling with what is behind us? How do we do that? How do we somehow instill in ourselves the want to do that? How do we overcome the fear of saying, "this is me"?

Maybe we simply need the media to focus on us and hound us, dig at our pasts until they find the truth. Then we would have to deal with it, just as Mr. Woods is right now. I doubt my life is that interesting. . .

Lord, help us to be a people who chase after your righteousness and holiness. Help us to be a people who learn to love ourselves because you show us love and grace. May we be a people who learn to revel in that love and grace and show it to others, so they can know how great you are. Move us to deal with the the planks in our own eyes so we can help others with their own sight.

Waking the Giants

In the last few weeks or so I have been chewing on the idea of potential. It all started with a blog post from a seminary friend about some teaching he has been doing about money. The idea that struck me most in his thoughts was,

In week two of our series, I shared some stats. Discovery receives, on average, about $6450 per week. If each household earned $60,000 (which is much lower than our city's average household income) and each household tithed, which the New Testament would consider to be the very beginning point of generosity, Discovery would receive over $13,800 per week. More than double. Imagine what God could do with that? I asked our church to ask God that very question. "God, what could you do with an extra $7350?" I'd love to find out.

Those thoughts really dug into my mind. What potential is there really for any church if its people (me included) would do what we are capable of doing, rather than doing what we choose to do.

I shared the ideas with our staff here at South. We spent some time talking about it, drawing in some other quotes from some other reading. Our conversation spawned a sermon series idea called Waking The Giants that we decided to work on at a latter date. On the heals of that I spent time in South Bend with some students that I got to know at Michiana Camp. It was good to reconnect with them and to see what God is doing in their lives. As I sat and talked with them, it was evident that they were doing everything they could to achieve their potential and putting their whole selves into the reign of God.

At that point in my mental pondering, I was really self reflective. Am I achieving my potential? Am I moving forward with my life in a way that really puts my whole self in the reign of God? Is where I am in my life where I should be? Could I have covered more ground and done more? Unfortunately, I think I felt more regret than I did accomplishment. And, being the good human I am, I began thinking about who has held me back from achieving what it is I could have/should have achieved, rather than looking on the inside. And, for that moment, there was some slight change out of all of the thinking (see here), not that it lasted long.

Alongside all of these thoughts is a study that I am doing with some adults from South on the book of Leviticus. In Leviticus, there is a definitive focus on making sure the community stays pure and right with God, so that their sin doesn't contaminate God's space and remove him from their presence. There is an expectation that they are going to live to their potential, and when they don't they immediately make it right. The two ideas married themselves together in my mind and continued to haunt my thoughts. (Well, maybe haunt is too strong of a word, but it is very Octoberish!)

Over the last few days, there have been more conversations about this potential thing. Many of those conversations happened during a planning meeting for camp next year. I pitched the idea of actualizing potential that I have been pondering. We discussed, chewed, argued and came out with a week long theme for camp about it called What if? We'll be looking at ideas like:

What if the church worshipped with their whole life?
What if the church was a place of healing for sin, rather than a place of judgement?
What if we lived out our lives under the reign of God rather than just dabbling in it?
What if we learn to share God's love outwardly, rather than just reveling in it ourselves?

Finally, in my reading this morning (and the whole catalyst for this post) in Teresa of Avila's The Interior Castle, I came across this quote, which is yet another wrinkle/layer to this whole concept of potential. She writes in the First Dwelling,

Not long ago a very wise man told me that souls who do not practice prayer are like people whose limbs are paralyzed. Even though they have hands and feet, they cannot command them. And so there are souls so caught up in worldly matters that there is no hope for their recovery; they seem to be incapable of entering within themselves.

The entering here is to enter into the Castle of the Soul, where relationship with God happens - where the soul communes with the Father. She goes on to say,

These souls are so used to dealing with the nasty creatures that inhabit the outer walls of the castle that they have become almost like them. Even though they are naturally endowed with the power to commune with the Beloved himself, there is no remedy for them. Unless these souls strive to heal their profound misery, they will be turned into pillars of salt, just like Lot's wife was changed when she looked back.

Have I paralyzed myself by focusing too much on the world and not enough on God and his reign? Have I allowed sin too much of a foothold in my life so that it chokes away the potential that I have been endowed with? Even greater, how do I change to actualize this potential that I have? How do I grow some discipline so that my life isn't about brief moments trodding on a treadmill only to give up the next day? More stones to overturn in my chewing. . .

The staff here at South is going to hammer out the specific details on the Waking the Giants series that we will roll out in January. I'm beginning to think that its kind of a big deal since God hasn't let me move on from these thoughts . . . a big deal for me and a big deal for us here at South. Maybe it is be a big deal for you too. Are you actualizing your potential?