New year and a fresh start

As we kick off a new year it is always amazing to me how there seems to be a restart button on our emotional system, or at least there can be. Each year, like each day, has an ingredient of creation at work. God is in the calendar- the seasons reflect His divine nature and he invites us to receive afresh his touch and submit to his purposes.

 

Solomon said in Eccl. 3:1 “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven”, and in Daniel (2:21) the prophet yields himself to the Almighty as he pronounces, “God controls the times and the seasons.” The question is not whether God is at work in the midst of the season of our life, but whether we’ll join him in the work He wants to accomplish. That question is answered each day not by our words but by our actions. How you and I manage the time that has been given to us is a testimony of our interdependence on God or our independence from God.

 

Our opening series this year is simply called, “Time”. Our theme, that we began back in September remains; to SIMPLIFY. You and I can talk about the complexity of our lives, the avarice of our culture, and our desperate need to simplify our choices but until those conversations, (and sermons) are fleshed out in the context of our time they will never produce what we long for. When we choose to make time for our connection with Christ by rearranging our time for better priorities and eliminating the distractions to our time, we will experience a simpler, more satisfying life.

 

One of my favorite time saving devices is my iPhone; I can check my e-mail on the fly, text someone at a stop light, and record a series of thoughts to play back later with a few strokes of my finger. It is so cool! After only a few months of having my new pocket instrument I dropped it. I couldn’t believe it, everything stopped. The once bright screen was now black, the responsive clicks, bells and whistles I’d come to love were suddenly mute. For a moment I was stressed and dismayed, my mind raced, who could help me? This can’t happen, it’s too expensive to just break, to malfunction- to stop working! My mind flashed a mental picture of every tech geek that I knew. They can fix it, they can help me! Relief and hope began to flood back into my mind only to be arrested by the recollection that each Geek’s phone number was locked away in my dead iPhone. What was I to do?

 

Whether you own a nifty gadget likes mine or not, I would guess that your life, at least partially, resembles my story. We’ve all been dropped, or fallen into something that seems to extinguish our brightness and mute our joy. In those moments we want to be able to call someone who can come to our aid. But we seldom do.  Instead, we procrastinate. We tell ourselves how stupid we were for dropping our device, our guard, our morals, our commitments, or our values. We let our fall become a reason for not rising and moving forward into the things that matter the most. Time moves on while the person we are- our personal growth, our passion for God and the joy of doing and being the best we can be seems to stand still.

 

As I stood there deliberating my options I remembered that there is a restart button on my phone that allows you to reboot your device. The button isn’t just pushed; it requires doing something a little different. You have to push the button and hold it down, then the light comes on and the old problem is wiped away and you are refreshed to start anew.

 

We cannot just restart, and reboot spiritually because a new day has come. No, we have to do something a little bit different. We have to push beyond our normal operating system and choose to take hold of God’s promise of a restart. Scripture reminds us that His mercies are new EVERY MORNING (Lamentations 3:22).

 

Every 24 hours, God let’s us reboot. He lets us push the restart button and begin anew. Just as the seasons and our days have a cycle, so do you. Why would you ever want to procrastinate your movement toward cycling back into God’s grace and mercy? 2 Cor. 6:2 challenges us, “Today is the day, and now is the time of salvation.”

 

Let’s make today count, let’s start afresh and rededicate this day, this series, and our time to Him. Whisper it with me, Dear Jesus, I receive you afresh today, I accept your forgiveness and mercy. I choose to restart and renew my commitment to you!

The Five Levels of Listening

Did you hear that? What did I say? Were you paying attention? You never listen to me!

When we don’t listen well we don’t love well. David Augsburger (one of my favorite authors) says, “Being listened to is so close to being loved, that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.”

 

One of the most fragile areas of the relational dance that we are all created for is the listening step. Most of us are caught in a two step dance, we do, we don’t, we do, we don’t, and with each misstep someone is getting their toes stepped on. Listening has to move from being a physiological reality to becoming a relational necessity. Contrary to my open blog I do seek to listen well and do not believe men are exempt, inept sometime, but not exempt, and I’ve been there.

 

 Listening is of such importance that even God has not remained silent on the topic. Jeremiah 5:21 punctuates this point with a familiars biblical phrase, “there are people who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear….” He is not talking about the physically blind or deaf, but those who are spiritually blind and deaf. If listening is critical to our relationships with one another than it is also vital for our relationship with God. James, the brother of Jesus said, “Be quick to listen and slow to speak.” Wow that’s good advice; if we employed that alone we’d be better off.

 

One of the most helpful tools I picked up years ago was a description of five different levels of listening. Each graduating level is a movement from an introductory level of dance steps to the more intentional choreography of a ballet or a ballroom dance.

 

Level One: Ignoring- This is the most natural of all, because we are prone to distraction and self obsession.

Level Two: Pretending- It is easy to slip into a pretentious posture that looks like listening but is nothing more than a fallacious disguise.

Level Three: Selective- Here, even with good intentions, is where we often live. We can have a genuine desire to hear another only to find that we have missed some integral part of their communication.

Level Four: Attentive- This is where the proactive listener sets themselves apart from those who are less aware of the relational depreciation of bad listening. The attentive listener is engaged and seeks to capture the most accurate interpretation of the content being sent by the speaker.

Level Five: Empathetic- Listening at this level is the magical moment when we actually feel the rhythm and beauty of being heard and understood; it’s when the listener not only accurately interprets the content but they also connect with the emotional message behind the words.

 

Level five is where we should long to live; when we do, even as ordinary people, we become a conduit for God’s extraordinary love. You may not be dancing with the stars but you will be cutting a rug, or at least a different swath with your partner and that may be where it counts the most.

I think Blogging might be too hard

Blog, he tells me, my production Pastor, who loves all of that artsy-fartsy stuff. You need to this, it will be a wonderful way to communicate and share on a personal level to people that want a little more connection with their Pastor.

Well that doesn’t sound too bad, except that I’m not sure I’ll be any good at it. Plus I’m not so sure I can keep up with any ancillary communication. I have enough challenge keeping up with talking to my wife. Any other guys out there like me; you love your wife dearly it’s just not your gift to be able to talk as long as she would like you to. Really it’s not even the talking as much as it is the listening.

Like us guys know how to listen. If it’s not too critical we can listen pretty well. You can tell us to feed the dog, turn off the lights or take out the trash, as long as you don’t tell us all three at once. Multiple requests through us off please don’t do that.

And don’t expect us to bring everything home from the grocery store just because you told us twice. When a guy walks into a grocery store the synapse in the brain start firing so rapidly that we loose all perspective of time, space and lists. If there was a list the list no longer exists in its original form. Any such list either in the head or the hand, makes absolutely no difference, is all of a sudden morphed into a SUPER-LIST. That’s how we come home with so much great stuff. It is not our fault that Kenmore doesn’t make larger freezer space, or that we already had a 64 oz bag of trail mix. Besides you never have too much trail mix. And why you ask, did it take an hour. Because everyone knows they hide stuff in grocery stores!

And if you’re a wife please do not ask us to tell you back what you just said. That is not fair. We cannot do that, God didn’t make us to paraphrase. You will not find “Husbands paraphrase you wives just as Christ paraphrased the church.” It is not in the BIBLE! I don’t know where you learned that, but please unlearn that one.

Anyway, as I was saying I don’t think I’m going to be any good at blogging, especially if it’s anything like listening or going to the grocery store.