Seasoned Veracity

Giving Thanks in the Dark

I wrestle with this. Can I give thanks in the dark, because if I can't give thanks in the dark, if I can only give thanks in the good, what does that say about who God is? When I can give thanks for the things that make no sense to me, the things that hurt, that is my public manifestation of what I say I believe, which is that God is in control, that nothing happens randomly. 

If I believe He is real, and He is using all of these events in my life for His ultimate good, it may be painful for me in the moment, but it's ultimately to shape me into being more like Christ. I can trust Him.

-- Ann Voskamp

More Popular Than Jesus?

According to The Christian Post, results of a recent Public Policy Polling survey show that ninety percent (90%) of Americans view Jesus Christ favorably. Jesus was topped in the poll by Abraham Lincoln, who is viewed favorably by ninety-one percent (91%) of Americans.

However, there was one person whom the respondents approved at a higher rate than  both Lincoln and Jesus. Who was it? The respondents themselves! A full ninety-three percent (93%) of respondents viewed themselves positively, and only one percent (1%) negatively. 

When it comes to a positive self-image, we Americans are truly hard to beat!

Conserve Your Willpower

In Leadership Journal, John Ortberg shares important information gleaned from a recent book by experimental social psychologist Roy Baumeister.  

Baumeister's findings indicate that we have a finite amount of willpower that gets depleted as we use it. We use the same stock of willpower for all manner of tasks; there aren't separate stockpiles for different areas like relationships vs. physical activities. Willpower, like a muscle, can be built up over time. But in the short term it's easily fatigued.

What are the activities that require willpower? Resisting temptation does, as does persisting in a difficult problem. Making choices requires willpower. Management takes exertion of the will, which is why leading  meetings can be tiring. 

Ortberg gives these suggestions for managing willpower well:

• Know when it is at its freshest and strongest. For many people that's in the morning before it's been drained by the day. Schedule your most critical tasks accordingly.
• Spend it wisely. Don't take on too many life-improvement tasks all at once, even if you pray on them. God works through your will, generally; he rarely gives people a free pass to ignore the laws of finitude he created in the first place.
• Use the tiny bits of willpower you have for the cultivation of right habits. Alcoholics Anonymous is a great example of this; the idea behind it is not to stop drinking through willpower, but to enter into a way of life (the 12 steps) that lead to new habits of thinking and desiring that bring power for sobriety that the will never could.
• Set goals, but not too many. Goals are the first step toward self-regulation. Without a few, we drift. But too many goals always weaken willpower: we worry about them, we get less done, and we suffer emotionally as well as physically. 
• Restore your willpower. This one comes courtesy of the Bible, not Baumeister. God is the great restorer of will. Prayer, solitude, worship and meditation were all intended by God to be done in a way that restores—not depletes—the will. Remember the one act of the will that actually replenishes willpower rather than depleting it—surrender.

 

Let Christ Do the Work

When you drink deeply from God and trust him to act in your life, there is peace in your preaching and pastoral work. Once, on my way to the podium to speak, I sensed the Lord saying to me: Remember, it's what I do with the word between your lips and in their hearts that matters. That was a tremendous lesson. If we do not trust God to do that, then he will let us do what we're going to do, and it's not going to come to much. But once we recognize that we are always inadequate, but our inadequacy is not the issue, we're able to lay that burden down. Then our satisfaction in Christ spills over into everything we do.

We often buy into a false model of success. We get the idea that we are supposed to make something happen, and so we need services to go "just right." The concluding benediction has hardly ceased before those in charge are asking each other, "How did it go?" We are not at peace when we try to manage outcomes that way. The truth is we don't know how it went. From God's point of view, it will be eternity before we know how it went.

In John 8, when Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, "Go and sin no more," I don't think she felt, If I work hard, maybe I can do that. She experienced Jesus' words as That's really possible. I can do that. That is one characteristic of preaching that comes from a peaceful, satisfied life.

Service must come out of Christ's strength and life, flowing through us, into receptive lives. We have to stop trying too hard. Take an hour, sit in a comfortable place in silence, and do nothing but rest. If you go to sleep, that's okay. We need to do this for our own peace, and as an example to those to whom we speak. There is a place for effort, but it must never take God's place with us. We need to make room for him in our lives.

-- Dallas Willard

Delayed Adulthood

In 1970, 69 percent of 25-year-old white men were married. By 2000, it was 33 percent. The remainder don't have wives, kids, homes -- in the sense of mow-the-lawn wash-the-car paint-the-spare-bedroom homes. So what do they do? Well, they drink, they listen to music, they hook up, they lead teenage lives on an adult salary. 

Males 18 to 34 years old play more video games than kids: according a a 2006 Nielsen survey, 48.2 percent of men in that demographic amused themselves in that way for an average of two hours and forty-three minutes every day -- that's thirteen minutes longer than the 12 - to 17-year-olds.

        -- Mark Steyn, in After America

Vote for Cicero

"Gaius Gracchus proposed his grain law. It delighted the people for it provided an abundance of food free of toil. The good men, by contrast, fought against it because they reckoned that the masses would be seduced from the ways of hard work and become slothful, and they saw that the treasury would be drained dry." -- speech by Marcus Tullius Cicero (55 BC)

If only Cicero were around today to run for President of the US... 

Influential Christian Leaders in the US

Results  from a recent Barna Group survey asking American adults to identify the most influential Christian leader in the US today:

• 19% named Billy Graham
• 9% named the Pope
• 8% named President Barack Obama
• 5% named Joel Osteen
• 2% named Joyce Meyer
• 2% named Charles Stanley
• 1% named Franklin Graham
• 1% named George W. Bush
• 1% named T. D. Jakes
• 1% named Oprah Winfrey
• 1% named James Dobson
• 1% named Maya Angelou

And by far the largest number (41%) were unable to name anyone at all!

The God Who Is

"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." -- Revelation 1:8

I don't have much trouble believing in the God who was: I marvel at His creative power displayed in nature, at His sovereignty and faithfulness displayed in the record of the Scriptures, and most of all at His love and grace displayed in Christ.

I don't have much trouble believing in the God who is to come: confident in the resurrection and ascension of Christ, I look forward with hope and assurance to His promised return and the glory of His Kingdom in the new heavens and earth.

The hard part is believing day by day and hour by hour in the God who is, whose Kingdom is already at hand in the place where I live and work, and who reigns even now over the mess I see in the world and in my life. Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!

Young Adult Church Dropouts

The Barna Group presents the results of five years of research exploring the lives of young people who drop out of church: Five Myths About Young Adult Church Dropouts

Some interesting (and troubling) findings:

• One out of nine young people who grow up with a Christian background become prodigals who lose their faith in Christianity.
•  Four out of ten young Christians become nomads who wander away from the institutional church.
• Two out of ten young Christians become exiles who feel lost between the "church culture" and the society they are called to influence.
• "The significant spiritual and technological changes over the last 50 years make the dropout problem more urgent. Young people are dropping out earlier, staying away longer, and if they come back are less likely to see the church as a long-term part of their life."
• "Only a small minority of young Christians has been taught to think about matters of faith, calling, and culture. Fewer than one out of five have any idea how the Bible ought to inform their scholastic and professional interests. And most lack adult mentors or meaningful friendships with older Christians who can guide them."

The Promise of Glory

The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses...shall find approval, shall please God. To please God...to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness...to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son -- it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is. 

-- C. S. Lewis

The primal delight that the Father takes in the Son, in the glory that they shared before the foundation of the world, will in the end be our glorification too. God will be truly peased with us, and we will be a part of the mutual delight that is the life of the Trinity. That will be glory, when we are finally caught up into the heavenly love of the three-personal God.

-- Fred Sanders