The Art of Keeping it Simple!

So picking up where I left off months ago, one spiritual discipline stands out to me as something that I not only need to work on, but also others could probably benefit by practicing: Simplicity!

What's that?  Am I hearing collective groaning? Its okay, trust me!  You are not doomed to hoarding, complicated lives, complicated friendships, situations that give you headaches, and frustration.  I have learned this past year how much easier life is for me when I am keeping life simple.

I have been really trying to take to heart 1 John 2:15, which states not to love the world or anything in it, but that anyone who loves the world will not have the love of the father.  Does it sound harsh?  Yes.  But at the same time, I have to remember the idea of "love" in this case means to put something in front of God.  That being said, if I obsess over things that are temporary and put accumulating those things (things: material stuff, relationships, jobs, etc) above God, I have found that those things will eventually create a thirst that I can not quench.  Whether they deteriorate, die, end, or lose their appeal, those "things" fall away.  That is why I have learned to be content with what I have and be addicted to accumulating extra things.

Here are a few things that I am learning about life and being simple:

1.  Clutter makes me stressed.  I am not a hoarder, nor am I ever going to be a hoarder, but having too much makes me feel claustrophobic.  So why hold onto stuff that I do not need?

2.  Giving away stuff is liberating.  By virtue of working in clothing stores, one thing that I have a lot of is clothes.  Being able to share what I have with others helps meet their needs, but also helps me detach from anything that could take over my mind.

3.  It reminds me that "stuff" does not control me.  In the past few months, I was told that I needed a better phone, a better sense of style, a better job, a nicer car, a different hairstyle, to make more money, and to ultimately change who I was because who I was did not sit well with some people.  That being said, if I did make those alterations... what does it give me?  In most of those cases, it is debt and a confused identity.  Those things don't make me who I am, I have nice things, but I don't need to have everything.

4.  Complexities are expensive.  Whether it is time, money, or emotions, complexities have a way of taxing me in many different ways.  I need to be smart about what I invest in.

5.  I realize my value.  By taking away my "stuff", I can clearly see who I am.  One moment in my life that I cherish is when I was in seminary (with very little money), I was able to scrape together a few dollars to go ice skating and go to dinner with a woman that I was friends with.  She told me that the previous guys she hung out with were rich and drove expensive cars, but she had more fun with me and that the night was meaningful to her.  That blessed me because it reminded me that even though I had very little, that she liked me for who I was... which I rarely (if ever) hear.

6.  I have more energy when life is simple.  Being a new teacher and trying to teach six different classes keeps me busy!  When I factor in ministry, friends, work, and self care (resting, sleeping and working out), my schedule gets packed quickly.  That being said, I try not to complicate my schedule more than it is and I give times to things that are worth giving time to.

7.  Dramatic people = Life clutter. One danger to simplicity in life is people who are abusive, selfish, controlling, or demanding.  I can remember years ago having a friend who used to drink and then draw me into conflicts for various reasons.  I knew another person who for whatever reason would create fights when there was nothing to fight about, and for some reason must have enjoyed crying and screaming.  I learned quickly that their chaos was not simple, and it was definitely not Godly.  I had to cut ties, which stunk, but life was less stressful and healthier after that.

8.  Simplicity is peaceful.  Have you ever heard anyone say, "wow, that person needs more complications in their life!"?  One thing that I have learned about most simple people is that they are a joy to be around because you know who they are, they have healthy priorities, and they usually try to live harmoniously in life.

9.  When God provides, I don't need to be stressed out about life.  For the first time in a long time I feel that I am where God wants me for my occupation and for church, and I am at peace about it.  The job came out of no where and the church just so happened to have needs that I am able to help with.  It took a while in life for these things to fall in place, but in the end, God provided for me as I patiently waited on him.

10. Religion is simple.  As I pursue a relationship with Jesus, my life changes.  When we try to complicate religion, we create chaos.  I keep my eyes on Christ and do my best to be humble before him, and I trust that he will keep my life simple yet meaningful.

Fasting: The Discipline I Dread, Yet Crave.

In case you were wondering… no, I was not sucked into a blackhole!  There were many times that I wanted to write over the past few months, but between my internship, school, work, moving, moving again, trying to be a good friend/boyfriend, my life has been crazy and not much time was left for writing!

That being said, back to the spiritual disciplines series!  Lately, I have been mauling over the topic of fasting.  It is a pretty interesting one that tends to keep people fairly torn. 

1.     There are more things to fast than food!  Too often, people focus on the food aspect of fasting.  Yes, it is good to do that, but don’t limit yourself!  One of the best fasts that I did was I stopped playing video games for a month, and you know what, I felt SO MUCH BETTER!

2.     I try to fill the time with prayer and scripture.  If I am just going about my life not eating for a day, or two, or forty, I want to fill that time that I am not eating with communion with God.  It draws me closer during that time and reminds me of why I am sacrificing the item that I am fasting from.

3.     Sacrifice is the heart of the matter.  In the past, I have went into fasts wondering what I can get out of it.  In all reality, I was way off base!  I should have been focusing on the fact that I was setting aside something that was hindering my life. 

4.     I put that “thing” in it’s place.  Often times, we feel helpless against our feelings, desires, and emotions.  But God created us to have dominion over our life.  When I had that focus, I realized that those things that I thought controlled me were at my mercy… not me being held at it’s mercy.

5.     I need to have the right mindset.  If I look at the fast as grueling and torturous, well, it probably won’t be very successful!  I will probably go right back to what I was doing.  That being said, I always tried to have a positive attitude and talk about the freedom that I was gaining because of the fast.  As Jesus mentions in Matthew 6:16-18, do not look gloomy and get attention for your fasting like the Pharisees, but do it to be noticed by God.

6.     Don’t announce it to the world. When I fast, I usually only tell a few people so that they can keep me in prayer and keep me accountable.

7.     Don’t do it just because everyone else is.  I firmly believe that group fasting can be good, but just because my neighbor is doing it doesn’t mean that I should feel obligated to do it because God might not want me to do it. 

8.     Fast something that I struggle with.  I usually fast things I struggle with, and not whatever the “in thing” is.  For instance, when people were fasting Facebook, I realized that I would lose touch with too many people so I should keep it.  Instead, I decided that was a good time to start writing Bible verses and positive quotes rather than frivolous things.  That being said, I found something that I needed freedom from and set it aside for God to take away permanently.

9.     Fasting does not always give immediate results.  When I had a crisis of direction, I decided to fast and seek God’s direction.  The day after I stopped the fast, I got my answer!  Whenever I have fasted and sought out God’s direction, it usually came a few days later.

10. If you break a fast early, God won’t punish you!  Too many people think that once you accidently break a fast, that its over.  God knows your heart and he knows your intent, so get right back on the bike and keep pedaling! For instance, when I was giving up soft drinks, I accidently drank some here and there over a month.  But my intent was to sacrifice it so that it did not have a hold of my life and that God could fill that void with something healthier.  When I slipped, I did not let it hold me back because God knew that I wanted to manage it better to honor my body and to honor him.  Mercy is one of God’s great qualities that we often forget about.

Honestly, fasting is one of the hardest disciplines for me to engage in, but I would recommend it to anyone.  Even though I can dread it and avoid, every time I do it I feel closer to God.  Like every other discipline, it requires patience and time.  But in the end it is very rewarding.

I look forward to writing more soon, a lot has happened in eight months so I have a lot to write about.  Until then, have a great day and may God bless you greatly today!

10 Things That Have Changed My View on Prayer

      As the third part of my spiritual discipline series, this is one of the disciplines that I have been more attuned to lately.  I have also noticed that God has taught me a lot lately.  We could probably go on for chapters talking about this, but I wanted to give a brief synopsis of what I have been learning.

It is first and foremost a conversation with God:  When I think about prayer, it is not necessarily a formal or rigid process.  When praying with others, I will sometimes joke around while praying and talk to him like he is my neighbor.  There is no specific formula, you just start chatting with Him and share what’s on your mind.  What I have found is that most people who spend a lot of time talking to God know his voice and know his heart very well.  Just like any relationship, the more you communicate the better you understand the other person.

2.     There is power in our words: Recently I have struggled with the notion that my prayers are ineffective and that they don’t change people’s lives, and it affected me to the point where I was going back and forth on whether or not I should join a prayer ministry.  What I have learned is that I have the power of life and death in my tongue (Proverbs 18:21), therefore I am responsible for praying life into people and into myself.  Whether or not people accept it is a different story, but even if I am not seeing major or immediate results, I can be confident that I am saying something that is beneficial to the person.

3.     Sometimes I’m on the wrong channel:  I can be so guilty of this!   When I think about prayer that I think is getting unanswered, it could be getting answered in a different way.  For instance, I ask for patience and it seems that every irritable situation comes up.  God never handed me patience, he allowed me to go through tough situations where I can work on myself and grow into the man that he wants me to be.

4.     God is more concerned about my character than my comfort: Growing up I was taught that God works on a reward system.  If I have the faith, he gives me what I want.  At one point I struggled with school stress, depression, injury, and the effects of manipulation, and I was being told that I was not blessed because I lacked faith. I was looking for the comfortable life.  I realized that I was way off.  If I ever have a bad day, I think about what Paul had to endure (2 Corinthians 11:16-25), it was a nightmare!  If God allowed that to happen to Paul, then it could happen to me.  But God was shaping him into the man that he needed him to be, and I understand that God is interested in my character as well.  In the past I was asking God  for a comfortable life instead of asking for his comforter, the Holy Spirit.  This is why I now ask for the Holy Spirit and I ask for wisdom, patience, and understanding for God allowing my circumstance to happen.  I may not like it, but I am willing to be conformed to his will.

5.     Sometimes an answer is on the way, but I am just not patient enough:  Often times God answers as yes, no, or not yet.  The problem is that sometimes answers take years to come about, and we as American’s want it right away.  God does answer prayer, but he has the scope of eternity in mind so it may take longer than expected.  Instead of trying get mad and give up on God, I will keep asking for that answer and I will keep praying for others and myself knowing that he will answer.  For those who have been praying for physical or spiritual healing, know that healing is a process, not an event.  That is one thing that I had to learn because otherwise my expectations would not be met.  In most cases, prayer is a continual need and is a process that usually has small improvements over time.

6.     When I refuse to communicate with him, I cut myself off from him: During one period of my life I decided that I was done with God.  Instead, I should have tried to refuse to communicate with the negative people in my life and work on forgiving those that hurt me in the church.  I know that it grieved God that I was not talking with him, but he also grieved the wounds in my heart and the fact that I misunderstood cold and distant Christians as him being cold and distant.  In return, I became cold and distant as well.  It wasn’t until I had Godly Christian people in my life who modeled Godly love that I realized that I wanted to communicate with him and know him better.

7.     My choices can often interfere with God answering my prayers:  During another rough part of my life, I was trying to seek God but unwilling to change certain aspects of my life.  I found that I was like David looking at Bathsheba.  I was supposed to be out to war with my men, but instead I was in the wrong place and I was staring at something that could set me back for years if I was not careful.   Friendships soured, the job situation was bad because I didn’t feel at peace and it gnawed at me, the ministry I was in became dysfunctional and harmful, and I was not liking the man I was becoming.  Worst of all, I was feeling cut off and lost.   So what did I do?  I got rid of the job because it was holding me back from God answering a prayer for something greater and it wasn’t providing for me anyway.  I tuned out the negative voices so I could try and hear Godly voices better.  I quit the ministry and just worked on getting myself right.  I read books from a variety of authors with a variety of perspectives that helped me reconstruct my life.  The bottom line was that what I was doing was not working and interfering with the work of God, so I continually made changes until he had room to work.   

8.     “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” What am I asking for?:  When you look at what Jesus taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, here is how it looks:

           

            Revering God

            Asking for his kingdom to come and his will to be done

            Provisions for the day, be it spiritual or physical

            Forgive us and help us forgive others

            Keep us safe from temptation

            Keep us safe from evil

            Recognizing that he is sovereign and holy

           

            After reading that, I feel guilty at times because I do not always ask for those            things.  I have made it a point to pray with these points in mind in my alone time.  That being said, I have a long way to go but I hope to make changes.  

9.     I need to put myself in a position to see prayer answered:  Whether it is a job, a spouse, healing, change in character, or whatever, I always cringe when people say, “Well God will bring this along for me.” I like their faith, but it is not inappropriate for me to turn in my resume, seek counsel, read books, etc. while waiting for the prayer to be answered.  The truth is that God works through many avenues, not just miracles.  As I like to say, if the Israelites never left Egypt, they would have never seen the miracle of a parting sea.  Therefore I have to remember to try to be active so that I can create opportunities for God to move on my prayers.

10.   God really does care.  He already knows, and my doubts, frustrations, or anger does not shock him.  I admit, sometimes I get angry at life and I talk with him about it.  For the longest time I was afraid to talk to him a certain way because I did not want to offend him.  But here’s the thing: HE ALREADY KNOWS!  One of the most real moments of my life came by me yelling in prayer with tears streaming down my face.  I was so upset at my life falling apart and I felt abandoned by God, and then the next day he answered me time and time again through other people.  I can personally attest to this idea, and I want you to never be afraid to go before him in prayer.  He loves you deeply, he wants to free you from bondage, help you find your way, and he even wants to hear about your day.  He wants our friendship, and he wants to talk with us.  Never forget that.

Meditating on the Right Stuff

So my question to you is, “What do you meditate on?”  And no… I am not talking about the rather large man with the big belly.  Not that type of meditation. Christian meditation is about filling up your mind, not emptying it.

Filling up my mind?  Yes.  Filling up.  So what that means is that we are taking the time to reflect on what God is saying to us and obeying it.  How can this be done?  A few different ways:

Meditating  on Scripture:  Reading a passage or passages and taking the time to focus on those passages and allowing them to become applicable to us.  I do this a lot on days that I can not focus long enough for bigger passages and I will find a smaller one and let it take root in my soul.

Meditating to re-center your life:  This is taking the time to reflect on your life and to ask God to take those sins, anxieties, and other toxic thoughts away from you and to love on you.  I have always found this to be helpful because it allows God to de-clutter my mind and replace the toxins with his love.

Meditating on God’s Creation:  Have you ever stopped to think about the idiosyncrasies of everything that God has created around us?  It is absolutely amazing!  Spending time appreciating what God has done and soaking ourselves in that beauty can be rejuvenating and he wants to meet us there and enjoy it with us. 

Meditating on events:  Sometimes events in our world or events in our personal life seem to be confusing.  Spending time to ask God for clarification for these events can give us peace, understanding, and perspective in ways that we could never do on our own.  I admit, when dealing with my own life, re-entering the wound can be irritating and painful, but any form of healing has a cleansing pain.

So these are a few examples that I have read about and have done.  The key is that God is filling you as you are creating a spiritual and emotional space for him to operate in.  Whether he is filling you with his knowledge, wisdom, beauty, or love, we are seeking a closer bond with him.

That being explained, I will return to my question: what do you meditate on?  The truth is that most of my life I have struggled have with locking onto God.  I know that I am susceptible to negative thoughts due to what I have been through and Satan likes to grab hold of that, so that is why I try to keep this scripture in the back of my mind:

Philippians 4:8:

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

I find that when I stray from meditating on the right things, that’s when my thought life becomes damaged.  Sometimes, even my relationship with God is damaged because of it.  This is because I dwell on a perceived offense, I misinterpret something that I should not have and meditate on it, or that I entertain and welcome into my life any other myriad of negative thoughts come to mind.  That’s why I try to focus on the things of God, because his thoughts do not exhaust my soul… they give it life.

I would like to challenge you to do that this week.  Consider one of the forms of meditation mentioned above and do it.  My hope is that in the shortest time possible that you will feel a deepened sense of intimacy and friendship with God.

Ten Things That I am Learning About Studying Scripture

If you are anything like me, there was some point in your life when you would rather drill a hole in your head than read scripture because it was not alive to you.  That, or you were just so overwhelmed by the fact that the Bible is massive and you get turned away by the list of who begot who in both Genesis and Matthew (both logical starting points with frustrating introductions!).  The good news is that the Bible is packed with wisdom, stories, poems, and drama…  It is just a matter of being diligent.

This is going to be the beginning of my walk through Richard Foster’s Celebration of Disciplines.  Rather than preaching at anyone, I am going to try to share what I have learned by trying to get to know God.  Sometimes it was a success, other times I was a hot mess that did not get anywhere!  But my hope is that I can inspire you to desire a closer relationship with God.

Here are ten things that I am learning as I try to study scripture:

1.     Expect resistance.  It is no coincidence that you get hungry, remember to make a phone call, remember a bill you have not paid, etc.  If Satan can try to occupy you, he will do that.  That’s why I read scripture even when I don’t feel like it… because more than likely he is trying to deter me.

2.     It is not always exciting, and that’s okay.  Just like any friendship or relationship, there are days when you get on the phone or sit at the table and stare at each other awkwardly.  It happens, and I do it with friends and I do it with God… it is awkward but I try again because my friendship with him is worth it. 

3.     Reading the scripture is like any relationship that you have.  If you cease to talk to a friend, the friendship will fade.  That is why I do my best to talk to him and read his scripture every day.

4.     If I don’t read the word, I starve.  Just like a meal, I find that I need to read scripture regularly or else I start filling that time with useless things like too much TV, sports blogs, or video games.  That and I find I am more vulnerable to attacks of Satan because I am exhausted spiritually.  That’s why I try to always “stay full” and quench the hunger once I feel it.

5.     Sometimes scripture hurts, and that’s okay (John 15:2).  God prunes and disciplines those that he loves, and pruning hurts.  But it is not abuse… I grow from it and produce more fruit.

6.     Podcasts and Self-help books are good, but not the same.  Drinking apple juice is different than eating an apple.  Why?  Because there are additives.  When you read scripture, God directs you.  With a person, they direct you.  By all means, listen to sermons and read books (I do), but know that any healthy teacher will tell you to have your own time of Bible study and not depend solely on them because they can mess up.

7.     Scripture speaks differently during different times of our life.  The cool thing about scripture is that during one season of your life it could speak to you one way, and another season edify you another way.  It is not a matter of molding it to what you want, but speaks differently.

8.     I get to know the shepherds voice better.  Isn’t it interesting that negative self-talk sounds nothing like Jesus’ discipline?  You know that by knowing the shepherd’s voice.  

9.     It is life giving.  It gives me strength in hard times and when I pray for others, I recall the verses to give life to them.  I feel that learning scriptures and stories from the Bible has blessed me in more ways than one.

10. Most of all, God wants me to visit him.  Just like a friend who I have not spoken with in a long time, God is more happy to hear from his friend than angry about the time that has not been spent not communicating.  I say that because too many people are afraid to go to God because of time spent away.  But do not let that deter you, he loves you and wants you to spend time with him. 

So it has been an interesting journey for me.  I had the hardest time studying scripture for the longest time, but now it is one of my favorite disciplines.  For me, my goal is to be close to the vine (Jesus) and to continue to grow with him (John 15).  In getting to know him and conforming my heart to his, I am hoping to love others the way Jesus did and help them get to know our savior better.