Learning to glorify God

I was painting today to make some extra cash. As I tried my best to do a job that would glorify my boss (not the guy paying me), the thought went through my head 'How would we do the things we do differently if Jesus had the paint roller next to us?' For one of the first times in my life, I realized I wouldn't be doing much different.

After years of short cutting, half assing, and giving my self excuses to do it less than perfect, I am finally at a place where I actually work hard to do whatever I am doing well. And it only took 4 decades! Of course it helps to be working for a guy who tends to be perfectionistic (yes, the guy paying me), and if I am really honest, I need the work badly, so doing a good job pays off. I close the door of the bathroom I am working on, and paint to the glory of God. Or at least try to.

What's my point? I guess that sometimes you do what you don't want to do because it is all you have to do. I am thankful for the job. I wonder sometimes why a guy with a Master's degree is painting bathrooms, but that road leads to some disgruntledness, and I don't want to go there. So the new work that God is doing in me is helping me to learn how to do what I have to do not only in the level of my performance, but in the level of my character.

If I could get that part of me to glorify Him, it really would be an act of God.

Mulling at midnight

Ok, Ok, so I know I'm writing at 2 am. My buddy Glen says to get used to it - it comes with old age. But since he is older than I am, I can still play the game that I'm not there yet (or he beat me too it). Whatever, I'm sitting hear writing in the middle of the night.

These times around the woodburner give me time to reflect on my life. (That isn't just figurative - we actually heat with wood all winter, so I have this ritual where I restoke the fireplace and contemplate my navel.) God seems to show up when it is just Him and me on the old leather couch we have in the 'library room'. The library room is all torn up right now - I'm putting in the slate flooring that has been sitting under 3 feet of snow all winter.

As I sit on the couch, my life comes to me in pieces that I carefully take out and mull over. I have no clue what it means to 'mull over', but I do it quite frequently. I pull out the pieces of what is happening in my life and look at them from a different perspective, seeing what they feel like and smell like and taste like. Just spending time with those pieces helps me find my way in life a little easier. And it helps me get to know Papa better.

Tonight we are mulling over some opportunities that have been thrown in front of me, with a normal section of our time questioning the direction of life and the speed with which it is passing.
Sometimes the conversations are just replays of previous conversations - meaning I mull over the same stuff for several 2 am slots in a row. He seems to always be there though. It is almost like He doesn't have anything better to do. And we are becoming fast friends in the process.

I know that someday I will be on my death bed, and as I look back at the 2 am times around the fire, I know I won't remember the fires I built or the things I mulled over. I won't even probably remember this blog entry. The things I spend the wee hours contemplating will have all passed away, and what will remain will be the time with Papa.

Who am I to question His motivations to want to hang out? I know there have been many times in my life when I have gotten up in the middle of the night just to see if the new thing in my life was still there. That used to happen a lot when my oldest two boys were born. I would sneak to their rooms when I should have been sleeping, just to see if they were still there, and everything was going okay. I just couldn't believe I got to be a father.

Can I blame God for that? He wants to just be with me. He misses me. So I am not the only one who wants to hang out with me. That is kinda cool.

Life after death?

Is there anything after this life? After working our 40 every week, after taking that 2 weeks of vacation we get each year, after all the tedious steps between our teen years and retirement, there comes the question about what really matters. I wonder if the eternal question of life shouldn't be challenged. It shouldn't be "Is there life after death". The question should be "Is there any life in our lives?" For far too often we settle for existing through the time we are given. We have forgotten how to live.

So what does it mean to be alive? I don't know if I have any magic answers. I know that if your life is about living to retirement so you can do what you really want to do, you are wasting your time. Where did we ever get the model that says I trade my youth doing something I don't love so I can get old and not have any youth to do what I love?

I think there are two messages that I want to convey. The first is this; Don't settle for doing something with your life that you don't love. Life is just too stinkin short to waste on employment that isn't from your heart.

The second is this; if you know what you will be doing next week and the week after that and the week after that, do something to upset the schedule. Parachute, learn to belly dance, buy a motorcycle, shave your head, paint your toenails, drink a beer, smoke a cigar, hike a mountain, drive too fast, sleep all day - just do SOMETHING out of the routine of life. Grab hold of a spark plug, get struck by lightening, put battery charger clamps on your ears. Come back to life! Don't settle for the status quo. Challenge it once in awhile.

The hardest spiritual battle isn't with sin. It is with boredom. So go do some battle!

Real prayer

Prayer has become one of those things that Christians are supposed to do. But as I step back and look at it, it has become a religious term. It is one of those words we use around the Christian table, but do we really know what it means anymore? I think, like a lot of things in Christianity, we have lost most of what the word was supposed to means. So what is prayer?

My 'Out of the box answer' goes like this - When I was a kid, my brother and I used to play this game where we would say a word over and over as fast as possible until the word lost its meaning, and just became a sound our mouths were making. I think that is the way prayer has become - a Christianeze word that we talk about, but don't understand any more. I personally try never to pray. I talk to God almost all day long, but that doesn't have anything to do with 'prayer'. And I don't believe prayer is ever about changing God's mind. If that were true, I would be God of the universe, because all I have to do is pray and I can control what He does.

If He always wants our good, why do we have to 'pray' to convince Him what is good? I believe prayer is always for our transformation and changing, not His. Prayer is about changing our mind, not His mind. Prayer is so we can get in line with His general and specific will for our lives, not so we can line Him up with ours. It is our participation in His transformation of our hearts.

Prayer is really all about us. Ironically, (or is it moronically) we think that prayer exists to change God' s mind. I wonder - if that is the purpose of prayer - to change His mind - then why does the Bible say He is never changing? The Bible does talk about Abraham changing God's mind when he negotiated for Sodom and Gomorrah (what a dumb investment that was!) I don't think that was an example of what we need to do in prayer. I think that was a Jr. High version of relationship with God - He enters into our immature definitions and understandings and requests out of sheer grace, not because He is so movable by our manipulations.

We think that prayer is our pump handle so God will give us whatever we think we need. That isn't relationship with God. That is using somebody for our ends.

Garth Brooks sings a song about begging God to give him the girl of his dreams when he was young. When he runs into her at a high school football game many years later, he thanks God for the unanswered prayer. What he thought he would have died without turned out to be a blessing to live without. So who are we to decide what we need, or to tell God what we want put on our plate?

My encouragement today is don't pray. Just talk to Papa, and listen lots. And forget trying to get Him to do what you think He needs to do. Instead, open yourself up to what He wants to do in you.

What is real excellence?

We had a teleconference call on excellence earlier this evening. It was an interesting conversation. One of the topics that came up was the idea that earthly excellence has a measuring stick attached to it. We always equate that word with some level of performance - and excellence was the top of the measuring stick. We agreed that we like excellent things, and get caught up in a thinking that teaches us to strive for excellence in our personal dealings. As Christians we get the idea that we are called to excellence. I found myself strongly disagreeing.

I think there are two kinds of excellence. The first is the kind of excellence that uses a qualifiable measure to determine its very existence. In other words, the first type of excellence is something you do. I would agree that God is glorified if we strive to do something well for Him. But I don't believe this is the kind of excellence that He calls us to.

The second excellence, and the one that matters in the kingdom of God, is excellence as a value, as a way of being in life. Excellent being surpasses excellent doing. We can do excellent things in the world, and still be a horrible person. Several years ago there was an Olympic sprinter who was a hopeful for winning the gold, but the story was that he was a complete ass when it came to being on the track. He was arrogant, self centered, not a team player, and very unpopular with the rest of the Olympic team. He was an excellent runner and a poor human being.

There is more to life than excellent performance in the tasks we do. Some of us will never be excellent at what we do. I believe that there is another level of excellence - it is doing what we do with an excellence of personhood that has nothing to do with outcome - it has to do with engagement of heart.

One of the callers tonight told the story of a Downs Syndrome grocery bagger who puts encouraging notes in the bags he packages up for the customers at his grocery store. As she told the story, I realized this young guy was at a level of excellence the highest paid CEO will never attain. His product isn't excellent - his heart's intention is. And what a profound difference.

So what kind of excellent do you want to be?

Things that we believe

When I was a kid, there were certain names that I heard in my world that seemed to all blur together. A classic example was the big copper thing that stands in a harbor on our east coast called the statueofliberty. It wasn't until I was probably in Jr. High that I realized the statueofliberty was a statue that some other country gave us, and that it stood for liberty. I know, hard to believe that I could be that ignorant. What do you expect when your mom and dad were related before they got married?

Another one that took even longer to decipher was the famous actor with a glass eye named sammydavisjunior. I remember being in high school before I realized 'Junior' wasn't his last name. We always said the name in a quick repetition, as if it were the guy's last name. It always seemed strange to me that someone would have the last name 'junior.'

But I realized an even deeper truth the other day. It was the revelation that I wasn't as inbred as I thought (or maybe it is that my kids are as well). We were talking with the boys about not having school today (Monday), and if they knew why. They said it was because it was Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday. Being the eternal smart @*#$^ that I am, I asked them what Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dad's name was. Without thinking, one of the boys say "Martin Luther King Junior Senior. I busted a gut.

All this to bring me to a point (I know, hard to believe I actually have one.) I wonder how many of the things we believe are really true. I used to have an aunt and uncle that had one name. They were Margeandjim till I was in college. I wonder what foolish beliefs we hang onto, not realizing their foolishness.

I received an email today - it was spam from somebody I didn't know. It had a really cool picture of Jesus with intricate detail in His face of a crucifixion scene and the three crosses. And at the bottom it said that everybody who had passed the picture on had gotten very blessed - one had won the lottery, another got a promotion. And everybody who deleted it got a curse. One lost her job, another had his family get killed in a car accident. It made me wonder if there were really people out there who believed this crap. I mean, COME ON! There is stupid, and then there is a couple steps past stupid. This one walked off the cliff.

But even the normal people in the world have their ridiculous beliefs. 'I need to pray more or God won't do what I want Him to do'. Really? Are you that powerful that it is up to you? All you have to do is more of something to manipulate God? COME ON!

There are a bunch of them we swallow without chewing. 'Trust more, be more obedient, God is disappointed with you if you don't read your Bible every day, you are going to hell if you don't go to church, etc.' COME ON! He is God because we can't be, but we sure try. The Bible gets pretty clear - God is love. End of sentence. Why is that so hard to digest?

So I deleted the Jesus picture email. It was stupid thinking. And now I have this rash.....

Giving power away

There is a profound shift that happens when we feel some hope in life. It can literally make or break your attitude and your outlook in life. It is the difference between night and day.

I find that the thing that keeps us from feeling hopeful is our perspective. In theory, we could always be hopeful because we are so profoundly loved by such an eternal God who is ever present in our lives. There is hope in Him - we can always trust Him, and we can always know He is even more invested in our future than we are. So where does our hope go when we are discouraged?

I guess we hand it away. We had it over to the bills or to that person who speaks negatively into our lives. We hand it away to our circumstances and our short sightedness. We give it away to fear and expectations.

Knowing that we have the power to hand it away or take it back can really cause a shift in how we live out our walk with God. I'll let you know if I ever get if figured out. In the mean time, I guess there is a call on all of us to take back the hope that is ours in Christ, even where there doesn't look like there is much hope.

Compromise

Compromise is one of those words that has a double meaning for me. There are times when finding a middle ground or a way to have two things be true at the same time is a valuable asset. It can be a real gift. There are times when it is most God honoring to be willing to make adjustments to what we want or hope for, settling for less than ideal.

The other side of compromise is not compromising - when giving in and settling for less than isn't a good thing. Those are the times when we need to stand our ground and hold fast to what we are called to. It is staying the course without listening to the waves around us.

Most of my life has been lived in the no compromise position. I have always been the one to stay firm, or at least call others to stay firm. I have always wanted to be the guy who hangs onto the stars despite the lack of grounding under my feet. Yet I find myself having to go against that grain and instead of reaching for the stars, settle for some rocks. I guess maybe it is the next step in the journey of following Papa. I told Him I was willing to go where ever He led. Boy, was that a dumb idea.

I cling to His goodness, despite the direction the road is taking. After all, He is God of heaven and earth.

Would you be willing to....

I wonder what the limits are to what we would be willing to do to follow God. I sometimes imagine the very antithesis of the way I live, and ask myself if I would live that way if God called me to it. For example, I could never work in a factory. I would need to be hospitalized within three months for psychiatric disorders (new ones, not the ones I already have). But if God parted the clouds and said "Mike, I want you to work in a factory for $8 an hour," I would. It is the parting of the clouds that makes that answer easy.

But what about all those times in life when the sky doesn't do anything, and there isn't any voice? I guess we do whatever makes the most sense. And if we do, what guarantees do we have? Deeper still is the question of where the heck we got the idea that following God was going to have anything to do with guarantees. That stupid notion sure isn't from anything I read about in the Bible. Except for a couple very select individuals, God didn't hand out many guarantees. What He handed out was faith.

So faith is what we do when the sky doesn't part. It is what we do because there is no clear direction as to what to do.

I suppose some day, when I am older and balder and not backpacking quite as much, I will look back at the 'steps of faith' moments, and they might make sense. Then again, they might not. He is still worth focusing out faces toward as we blunder on in the journey.

I guess His presence is the guarantee.

The Starbucks guy

I was in Denver this last weekend, and had a few hours to kill, so I went to Starbucks. I know, pretty depraved.

I sat there drinking my $567 mocha latte frapaccino thingy and began smelling the rankest smell. It was a mildewy BO smell that I thought was coming from a week old coffee spill someone had forgotten to clean up, but as I got my head out of my computer and looked around, I quickly saw where the origin was. Two tables away sat a homeless guy.

He was tall and probably good looking under the scruffy beard and unkempt hair. His stock of worldly belongings sat opposite him on the chair across the table, and every bit of his clothing had that greasy, hadn't-been-washed-in-months look to it. He sat staring as if he was carrying on a conversation with someone. His face often contorting into an expression as if someone who he cared about had just shared something awful with him. Whatever it was he was doing, it consumed him. He had no awareness of any one else in the room.

I watched him for a long time. I could feel a deep pain for him as he looked very trapped in a one sided conversation that only he could hear. I wanted to reach out to him, but what could I do? I didn't have any money. As I reviewed my own finances, I realized the sobering truth that I wasn't very far from joining him. I knew that if there weren't a few key people in my life propping up my world, I would be homeless too. I wanted to make a difference for the guy, but reality told me the way the path would go.

I had worked for 2 years with guys just like the Starbucks guy. They were usually severely mentally ill - the kind that were barely alive even after they were taking their medications. The best life got for them was a low grade existence. I knew from hundreds of hours of trying to bring people like him back to reality that it was mostly impossible. The best he would get would be a little more tolerable to be around - washed up, groomed, numbed with medication, and harmless. I knew he would never be fully alive. It broke my heart to realize I was powerless. Handing him $20 wouldn't have done anything, even if I had it to give. Taking him home with me and cleaning him up and feeding him and putting him to work shoveling snow off my roof wouldn't have given him any life that he could actually take in. Like the layer of greasy dirt on his clothing, there was a profound glaze on his life that I knew I couldn't wash away with any amount of detergent. I felt sad and powerless.

So I sat and watched him, and I hurt. I ached for his illness and the emptiness he lived in. I felt ashamed that although my bank account was pretty depleted, I had so much compared to him. I had my mind, my presence, my wits about me. I was sane and in my right mind. How I longed to speak to the demons that held him captive, but knew I had no magic words.

Seeing the Starbucks guy made me want to live, because I knew he couldn't.

Stranded on the trail

I have been thinking lately about what it means to be and have a friend. I know hundreds of people, maybe thousands. In the last 6 months I have been doing the Facebook thing, and as I reflect on those interactions, I am struck that the same thing happens on Facebook as happens in life. People go through the motions of connecting, but not much really happens.

When I sit right down and think about it, a person can really only have a couple real friends. It is so much more common to have a bunch of acquaintances that you never really get anywhere with. How many people can we really be close to? It's like there isn't that much room on the trail of life to walk side by side with that many people. 2 or 3 maybe. That's about it.

And what makes up the traveling together that makes the investment worth it? Sharing the journey I suppose; having someone to talk about the trail with, someone to help you when there is a snag you can't get past, a brother or sister that can encourage you on your way. I can't even imagine doing the trail without a couple people to walk with. I find that I really need them. We really can't do this alone, even if we want to.

My truck broke down today - I know, hard to believe. It is only 19 years old with 200,000 miles. I was panicking because I had to get the kids to school, the truck wouldn't start, and it's big carcass was blocking in the car that has 225,000 miles on it. It finally started, but I knew I needed to take it into the shop. I called my next door neighbor, and he gladly picked me up at the shop and took me home.

Being truckless was pretty terrifying. For those of you who don't live in Colorado, you just plain can't make it out here without a four wheel drive, even if you wanted to try. Not only is the car useless, it is buried under 3 feet of snow.

Today, a neighbor who cared to walk the path with me was worth his weight in gold.

I wonder what kind of friends we are to each other. Are we walking the path with others on a regular basis? Is there a couple people you can count on when the snow gets high and the truck doesn't run?

I am thankful today to not be stranded on the trail of life.

Grace and power

Sometimes I am completely boggled by the concept of grace. It is one of those things you just have to experience. When you have done something awful, and the very person you hurt is loving back instead of being bitter and awful in return - that's grace. Or when someone gives you a gift with absolutely no strings attached. I have always heard it said that grace is unmerited favor. Why is it that Christians say phrases like that and never translate it? Grace is when you are given something or something is done for you that you don't deserve. It is a 'just because' gift that isn't about you, but about their choice to give.

There are so many ways to be powerful in the world. We can intimidate people by being smart or strong or loud or big or swearing a lot. We can be powerful by putting other people down and shaming them. We can be powerful by controlling people and manipulating them through your higher status on the hierarchy ladder at work or in the church. We can be powerful by guilting people or making them feel obligated. We can be powerful by being really angry or really selfish or really depressed. I guess there really isn't an end to the list is there?

But I really believe that there is nothing more motivating and ultimately powerful that grace. Because grace is the only way to be powerful that has nothing to do with the other person. It has totally to do with us. If I choose to be graceful in an interaction, it is my gift to give. It doesn't require a response or a change from that other person. It is my power! It is my wonderful gift to wield as I want. It really does make me ultimately powerful - in a profoundly loving way - because I am the only one who can use it. And the very definition of grace implies that it is good. It can't be other than that.

So if you want to be really powerful and deeply motivating to others in the world, throw your weight around a little bit. Be in grace every moment of every day.

Sailing into a new year

I have an analogy for life in this new year that I am liking, and that is challenging me. It is the picture of seeing our relationship with God as being a big galleon out on the ocean. The ocean is life - limitless, expansive, and overwhelming at times. And the big ship, with masts pointing to the sky, and giant sails catching the wind, is us.

Every one of us has a uniquely different ship. As I sail mine, I find a bunch of lessons facing me as I look at the horizon of a new year. This is a unique place that Papa has me in. At the moment, the sails are up, and the wind is dead. There is nothing moving the ship - I find myself waiting for a breeze. Sometimes I think that I am a fool for having every sail I have drooping in the dead air. It looks like I am pretty hopeful for this new year. It also looks like the sails are up for no reason. Maybe they offer shade more than anything else.

In the dead calm it gets mighty tempting to go below and fire the engine up. Historically that is what I have done when the wind dies down. There is a voice in my head that says I am stupid for waiting for a wind that may never come. I tell myself sometimes that it just makes more sense to be going somewhere - even if it is the wrong way and under my own power - than it does to wait on a God who may or may not breathe on my life.

The other thing that happens in the windless season is that I look off the bow of the boat and wonder if the waves I see there far below are water or sand. If those waves are solid ground, I really will be a fool for thinking any amount of wind could move my ship.

Faith tells me to leave the giant sails hanging in the sky. It also tells me to trust that sooner or later the wind will blow. Faith says to hang onto the belief that the boat is still in the water, and that those are waves of billowing sea foam and not crests of blowing sand I see below me. Faith says that Papa wants to teach me as much in the dead calm as He does in the season ahead when the wind will blow mightily.

I don't know if my analogy for 2009 makes any sense to anybody but me. Maybe it isn't supposed to. I know that I have a lot to do in managing the affairs of my ship, and that I want to walk in faith that He is ultimately the captain.

So Lord, may this year be a mighty sailing year, full of adventure and new horizons. And more than anything, may You be glorified by the way I sail.