A Little Box of Soap Today

Yesterday I was listening to a conversation between two men about duck hunting.  Of course, too far into a conversation about such things gets me a little lost.  I usually nod like I know what they are talking about and locations they reference, but usually I don’t.  I did pick up on one statement from one to the other about duck hunting with his son; “If you teach him to do it, you’ll never have to do it for him.”

The other man has been spending the last several years doing just that.  Teaching the skill.  I stood there for a moment thinking about the statement and wondering to myself if there is something to the sport of duck hunting that makes that statement especially significant.  I mean, that makes sense to me when I think of fishing and cleaning your own fish.  Who really wants to spend time cleaning someone else's catch?  But, isn’t that true with any type of game?  who wants to field dress (that’s a term I know) someone else’s deer?  I’ll just have to ask one of my hunting friends when I get the chance.

Anyway, as I stood there I began to think upon the wisdom of the statement when it occurred to me that such a precept is true in all areas of parenting.  I suppose it is the same concept of teaching a man to fish instead of giving him a fish (might as well stay with the sportsman metaphors).

I began to imagine what it would look like if I was still tying my 9 year old’s shoes.  What about when he is 20?  What if I were to still be hand feeding my daughter, as a perfectly heathy and capable little girl when she is 15?  Sounds stupid, I know, but this is the truth in other major developmental stages of parenting.  I know of parents who currently do the homework of their high school students...they literally do the work for them.  Are you kidding me?

I immediately began to think upon the application of this principle in other areas from the most basic tasks on:  Teach him to clean up after himself.  Teach him to manage his money.  Teach him how to relate to others.  Teach him how to think for himself.  Teach him how to exercise common sense.  Teach him how to read and write.  Teach him how to eat with utensils.  

So many dysfunctional parenting relationships have rolled out of childhood and into adulthood because the concept of teaching instead of doing has not been followed beyond the basic skills and into the more complex areas of living.  Too often this reality becomes a terribly enabling relationship between parents and their children, and sometimes the cycle is never broken.  In many cases, adult children still act like children because they have never been taught to be adults.  They have relied on a parent to do things for them instead of learning the skill.  Both suffer the difficult consequences of that arrangement.

I know my readers who have adult children may not agree, or may feel there is nothing to do about it now.  While I’m sure it feels that way, changes can be made; perhaps that is a discussion for another blog.  In the meantime, for my readers who still have younger, impressionable children in their care, be diligent in training them in all things of life and living.  What profit is there in being a champion duck hunter and a worthless husband or father?  

The Bible instructs us to train up our children in the way they should go.  Such instruction is not limited to learning to tie shoes, button coats, or use the correct duck call.  It is a direction of self worth, right living, integrity, and building character.  It is teaching them what it means to be a man or woman.  It is teaching them what it means to follow a godly code of living.  It is teaching them to be well rounded individuals ready for this thing called life and culture.  It is teaching them to be a contributor to family, church, and community... not filling in the void and making excuses for them over and over, and over, and over.....  

1 Corinthians 13:11

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

August 13th

I love my wife for so many reasons (see last years blog 17 Years and Counting).  One of the things I love about her, and our relationship, is that in all our years of marriage, we have neither become tired of each other’s company nor exhausted our conversations.

I remember when we were dating, we would look around a restaurant and notice seasoned couples who seemed to have nothing to talk about.  They just sat and looked at their plates, eating and never said anything to each other.  I remember telling Jennifer many times that when we are older and married a while, I don't want to be like that.  I don’t ever want to sit in a restaurant across from her and have nothing to talk about.  That would just make me feel so sad.

We always have something to discuss.  We always have stories to tell each other.  We always have things to laugh about.  We have spent many nights over the years sharing a bowl of chips and Queso or salad and endless baskets of breadsticks while having the best conversations of our lives with each other.  I love those moments.  I love those memories.

Those orchestrated moments have been farther apart and fewer in number in recent years, but Monday I look so forward to having one again.  We will celebrate 18 years of marriage on that day and though there are many things about that to which we look forward, the thing to which I look most forward is sitting down across a table for lunch and just enjoying our conversation.

We will sit and discuss the fact that it is just the two of us and we will try our best to recall what we did with our time before our children required it.  We will joke about what it is like to simply ask for a table for two instead of seven.  We wont need kids menus or high chairs.  We will be excited that the cost is significantly less as a result, and we definitely will not be getting stared at while seeing our kids being counted by others and the details our life theorized.  People are funny.  

We don’t have that rule you hear in sit-coms about not discussing the children on our date - we love to talk about them.  While doing so, we will also reference the fact that we are without the constant need of our children wanting crayons, trying to reach the chips, playing with the salt & pepper shakers, or having to go to the restroom at the same time.  We won’t have to worry with forks loudly banging on the table, spilled beverages, straw sheathes blown from the straw at us, or deciding whether to bribe with ice cream for good behavior.  We will find ourselves enjoying the moment of childlessness.  It takes a little bit for the stillness of that moment to sink in.

For me, the alone, adult time is nice, but not so much because they are not around.  It is because when the children  are not around, I also see that it is each other we still so deeply enjoy.  Moments such as these are not void ones either - there is no awkward spot where suddenly we don’t know what to do with ourselves.  Though our children are missed, they are not what holds our relationship together.  Their absence from us, even for a little while, reminds us that it is not our children that have kept us committed in our relationship - it has been the relationship itself.  Our calling to submit to oneness with one another.

My bride has been my bride since before the foundation of the world, and I have been her groom.  We have weathered many things together by now and anticipate an array of experiences to come.  Our life has been so full and blessed with surprises thus far, and has been an adventure beyond anything we would have knowingly signed up for 18 years ago.

I love my wife, and I still love calling her “my wife”.  I love that she loves me.  I love that we love being together.  I love that I love her far more today than I did back then.  Back then I didn’t think I could possibly love her more...but, I do.

I Corinthians 13:13

But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

A Word from the Lord? Forget about it. Put it out of your mind.

No, this isn’t a word to you from the Lord...I guess it could be on some level, but this is about a word from the Lord to me.

A few weeks ago while away at a conference I was in a moment of deep reflection, meditation, and prayer (sounds extra spiritual, right?).  Though maybe sounding cliche, it is the truth - I was in the midst of all three of those descriptions when I felt a tremendous prompting of the spirit to do something when I returned home.  I decided that perhaps I was simply caught up in a moment and dismissed the prompting as my own thoughts.  Actually doing so proved difficult.

I remember back when I was wrestling with my call to ministry.  After having come to a breaking point of conviction, I shared the news with my personal mentor, teacher, and minister.  His words to me were, and I quote, “Just forget about it.  Put it out of your mind”.

What?!?  Are you kidding? After all this struggle, rebellion, denial, disobedience and running?  No way! 

He told me that if God was truly calling me, then such advice would be impossible for me to follow.  He said “God wont let you forget it”.  It was an interesting measure to help me affirm the Holy Spirit’s quiet voice among the resounding noise of my own thoughts.  I have used the same advice for others over the years now.

Well, after my encounter a few weeks ago I chose to take a similar approach to what I believed to be the Holy Spirit pressing upon me in a specific area.  I knew the spirit seemed to be telling me to do something, but nothing about what I was hearing really made sense.  I felt like God wanted to use me in a particular event, but in order to do so, I would have to explain this to the organizers of the event... and I would have to come out and ask to preach it.  This thing has been in the works for months, and the details (or at least the major ones) have been worked out.  I decided I may be letting my own heart and desires interfere with my moments of reflection.  

For weeks now I have been unable to release the thought of this prompting and have since decided it is a genuine word from the Lord with no ambiguity.  But how?  How was I supposed to do what I felt like God wanted me to do?  All I could think of was to simply ask, but asking would feel so presumptuous.  Almost egocentric.

I’m a pastor and a preacher.  For those who might not realize, those are very different things and not everyone is good at both.  Some excel in one which helps allow for the tolerance of weakness in the other.  It is my personal desire to be excellent at both - I am still a work in progress.

For the preacher side, the opportunity to preach outside the normal week to week church environment is usually a welcomed one, but is also an opportunity preceded by an invitation by another.  I have never requested to preach anywhere.  Yet, I felt God’s leading for me to ask to do so.

I have kept this a matter of personal prayer for a couple of weeks and finally decided I needed to bring it to the attention of the event organizers.  Knowing that preachers are lined up pretty early, I decided to share the story of my realization and simply offer myself as a back-up in the event the booked preacher could not attend suddenly.  

I decided I need to prepare something in case something unexpected occurred and he could not show.  I am absolutely convinced that I am specifically supposed to preach this event (This doesn’t mean I would have sabotaged another preachers travel ability to force the situation, i.e. slashed tires, syphoned gas tank, give him the wrong address, etc., I was just thinking ahead in consideration of God’s providence).  Anyway.

As it turns out, I was in a meeting where the event was being discussed to discover no one had been booked.  Are you serious!  I couldn’t believe it.  It had been accidentally neglected and the man in mind had never been contacted.  As I sat in the room, I felt myself become fidgety and nervous with excitement.  As with other times in my life, I was seeing God’s plan coming together before my eyes and in my presence.

I finally decided to speak up and tell the story I just relayed in this blog.  I ended with saying that I know it is not up to me, but I believe God wants me to do this.  Just then another man in the room made the statement that “this is definitely a God thing” and that he was planning to ask if they might ask me to do so anyway instead of the other guy.  My heart feels like it skips a beat just recalling it all.  I tell people all the time that God has no trouble communicating himself to his people, and here I am once again experiencing just that in a real and immediate way.

I have no idea what will come of this event, but this I know - I am not going to miss it for anything.  Doing so will be me stepping outside the very will of God.  That is something none of us should ever want to do.

A Burden's Prey

Recently I have felt heavily burdened with a ministry concern swelling through my mind and heart.  It is interesting how burdens seem to take on different characteristics for us.  I feel many burdens in ministry that are simply burdens of the mind.  They hold a place in my thoughts for processing and may even give me a headache as I think upon them.  They are often burdens requiring calculated thought, logic, and problem solving.  They may even be suitable for the old “pros and cons” assessment.

Sometimes there are burdens of the heart which seem to manifest themselves through emotion.  These are those burdens that may result in a tug of heartstrings, sympathy, empathy, compassion or heart-ache, and often all at the same time.

Then there are burdens that prey upon our whole being.  They fall under all possible categories of expression. Burdens that pressure the intellect as well as the heart in ways that are difficult to articulate.  My bones feel weakened, my body fatigued, my mind spinning in thought, my eyes burning in concentration, my heart breaking and my stomach in knots.

I feel just such a burden.

I was standing in the kitchen looking out the window and thinking that I was actually feeling that feeling of pressure upon my shoulders that people often speak of when describing turmoil.  It’s not that I haven’t felt that before, it just always amazes me how literally physical it feels.  I was standing there thinking it feels like a tremendous weight pressing down upon me.  I was thinking that I actually felt as though there were two hands - one on each shoulder - pressing upon my frame.  

As I stood there I finally decided to call in the troops, so to speak.  I thought for a moment and decided I needed to let someone else know that I needed prayer.  I know prayer works. I know prayer matters.  I know there are those who will pray for me in a moment, and they don’t even have to know the details, they’ll just do it.

I sent texts to four of these people.  My text was a generic, non-alarming text requesting prayers of wisdom.  Within minutes... nay, even seconds I began receiving replies of prayer affirmation, each with its own personal words reflecting four distinct prayer personalities in the texts.

I’m so thankful for such people in my life.  I must admit that I was quickly misty eyed to see the response texts back to back.  The burden is still there, but with the prayers of others, it is significantly more bearable.

I write this with no particular intention of conveying any universal truth to possible readers, but rather as a means to express myself - I’ve grown to understand that people identify more with our weaknesses than our strengths.  We Christians should always remember the importance of interceding on behalf of others and seeking such intercession when needed, which is really more often than not.

“For this reason also, since the day we heard this, we haven’t stopped praying for you. We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God.”  - Colossians 1:9-10