Self-Evaluation

Would you rather eat a slightly burnt cookie or a juicy ripe apple?
Would you rather eat stale potato chips or fresh baby carrots?
Would you rather drink a warm soda or ice cold water?

Too often I find myself going for the soda, cookie, and chips, no matter what kind of condition they're in. I went on this diet and lost weight and I have some more weight I want to lose. I have been exercising as well. But recent events (since the beginning of September) have really thrown me off my game.

I have been reaching for those temporary comforts which also happen to be the things that kill me (see my previous post). I have not been consistent in either diet or exercise, and I have been making excuses for myself. My last post was as much for me as for anyone who might be reading this, because I need the encouragement right now, not to fall prey to the same old sinful habits that so easily trip me up.

Why is it that we choose to settle so often for what is not good for us? I'm not just talking about food here. I was thinking about my sister's blog on "lip service" that "christians" pay to their faith/God. Dallas Willard says that we so often consider ourselves to be Christians simply because we "believe" what every demon knows to be true! We sell ourselves short. We settle for what seems close enough to doing the right thing, even though we know that something better exists. We have a comfortable cultural christianity that has very little to do with true faith.

It's a redundant question. The truth of the matter is, we are LAZY. We don't want the difficulty. We see someone take a stand - like my father, who has lost his severance and has had his morality called into question (ironically for asking his boss to be truthful) - and we see them face trials and persecutions from so-called christians and non-christians alike, simply for speaking the truth. And we close ourselves off in fear that we too might be called to lay it all on the line if we were to give ourselves fully to God.

We are content to view our choice to go to church on Sunday morning (over sleeping in) as a SACRIFICE on our part, something that makes us Holy and acceptable to God. When we make this easy living out to be a sacrifice, we belittle the sacrifice that God Himself made as our example. He DIED so that we can LIVE! And we choose to pollute our bodies and parcel off only a tiny portion of our thoughts and feelings for Him.

The real work of Satan isn't to convince us not to believe in Christ - it's to convince us that this is all God asks of us - this "chicken poop for the soul" type Christianity that my sister was reading/blogging about. Satan has done his work when we would rather eat freezer-burned ice cream than have fresh yogurt, and when we would rather unthinkingly swallow every word that comes out of a pastor's mouth than dig through His word and find the answer for ourselves.

So, which would you rather have - a vague hope that you might go to heaven when you die or a vibrant, intimate relationship with your Creator?

Every Good Intention

I had every good intention of spending the morning writing a bit more on Willard, but as many good intentions go...
I did have a thought last night which I thought would be interesting to share. I was out getting dog food and the literal thought that went through my head was "I'm dying for some ice cream." It's a thought I have sometimes while trying to remain disciplined with this dieting thing, "I'm dying for some macaroni and cheese." "I'm dying for some fried pickles." "I'm dying for some chocolate." It occured to me that this could become a sort of mantra that instead of hurting my chances of sticking to my diet, could actually assist me in achieving my goals.
I was talking to my brother about this very thing the other day. About how what I put in my mouth determines whether I will live or I will die. So I asked myself last night, what is it I'm dying for? Would I rather have one more day of health and happiness with my husband and life here, or would I rather eat this ___?
Obesity is a disease and in more than 90% of the cases, it is self-inflicted. Just as abstinance from sex can protect us from venereal disease, abstinance from certain foods can protect us from obesity. When a doctor says someone is morbidly obese, it literally means, you are dying from what you are eating every day.
There is an addiction issue when you get to a certain point with food. When I treat my eating as an extension of my mood - "what do I feel like eating today?" - I quickly start back into a downhill slope of wanting the fried foods, the salty foods, the sweets, the sugars. Just like the person who smokes realizes that he is probably inflicting cancer on himself and bringing death one day closer, so also the person who makes poor choices about eating is bring death one day closer with every bite.
Gluttony is a deadly sin, one that we very often overlook (myself included). I have tried to recondition my thinking about food - to say that my body is like a machine. We put into the machine oil, gas, things that are good for it and make it run properly. We are constantly wary of things that will clog the engine and make it perform poorly (which is why we by more highly refined gas for our vehicles). We should treat our bodies with the same sort of dignity.
What do I need to fuel me? Vitamins and minerals, proteins and carbohydrates. Water, water, and more water. What slows me down, clogs me up, makes me perform poorly and shortens the life of my "engine"? Sugars and oils and fats (oh my!).
So here is a challenge for those of you, like me, who struggle with what you put into your mouth. Next time you grab a snickers bar for breakfast, literally say this to yourself, "I am DYING for this Snickers bar." Next time you pull up to order at a fast food window, say, "I am DYING for this chicken sandwich." And then ask yourself, is it worth it?
Anyone interested in knowing how I've managed to lose 25 lbs in the last four months is free to email me and ask. I'll give you a hint - no sugars, no caffeine, and WATER, WATER, and MORE WATER. Don't die for your food. God gave us food to fuel us and help us live!

The Out of Towner

Once again I find myself being the Out of Towner. I wish I had Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn around to lighten things up a bit, but not this time. I'm hanging out in SC with my foo. So, I had started this routine of daily (or near daily) posting, and I wanted my few and far between readers who might not know why I dropped off to know where I am at the moment.
I don't really feel like sitting down to post right now, so I'm going to eat some breakfast with my Dad. But I'll be back...

Beyond Blind Faith (Hearing God Ch. 3)

Hear this promise of the Lord:

"God is able to penetrate and intertwine himself within the fibers of the human self in such a way that those who are enveloped in his loving companionship will never be alone (HG 43)".

Emmanuel. God is with us. The Lord be with you. I will never be forsaken. We are promised repeatedly through God's word that we will never be alone in this life. Christ Himself says He will never leave us or forsake us. I don't have any profound insight into this for today. I can only think on all of the times in my life that I feel utterly and completely alone. It is a powerful truth to realize that God is not only WITH us, if we belong to Him, He INDWELLS us. He is WITHIN us.

For me this means that when I don't even understand why I feel what I feel or where to begin in pouring out my worries and desires to Him, I have the confidence to say that He has so deeply ingrained Himself in me, that even without my telling Him, He has a full grasp of my every need. This is confidence itself, because it is ONLY He who can fulfill my needs. As the ultimate source of all good things in my life, God is with me.

How do I know that He is with me (beyond what is told to me in scripture and by theologians like Willard)? Willard says, "Our conviction – willing it to be so – is our only proof that God is present in our lives (HG 46)." We often scoff at this blind faith as being rudimentary. Perhaps it is - in the sense that a rudimentary understanding of Him is needed as a foundation for futher understanding of Him. We start here, with the faith that wills us to accept that God is who He says He is. But we don't stop here.

It is dangerous for anyone to assume that blind faith is the only type of faith we need when approaching God. In order to understand the mysteries He wishes to impart to His children, we must always be striving to push beyond a blind acceptance. Willard says that the call to Christ involves the discipline of constant study. We are all made to be theologians. We will not all be Calvin, but we should all use our God-given brains to try and know Him more.

Willard points out one last "proof" that we can have of God's constant presence. He says, "Life with effects beyond the natural always depends upon intimate interactions between us and God, who is therefore present (HG 50)." We, as believers, can SEE God move in this world. We are voyeurs of miracles every day. Any time that we see a life moving in an unnatural direction, we should recognize God at work (God's presence). When a man of God chooses to swallow his pride and admit his wrong before the body of Christ, we KNOW that God has moved and is therefore present. When we follow Christ's example, we KNOW that God has done this in us, because we are incapable of doing this without God.

Choose to see Him act, believers, and choose to "envelop [yourself] in His loving companionship (HG 43)."

Pressing Onward - Hearing God Chapter Two

It was interesting for me to go back and read over the beginnings of this book study on my blog and realize that I had been inclined to focus on very different points in my first reading. Now, I suppose I take some of the earlier truths that I learned for granted and am beginning to be able to find new truths to grapple with in my reading. I think this is the way that God intends to reveal Himself to us through scriptures, giving us layer upon layer of Himself, unfolding Himself one truth at a time.

Yesterday in church, I played "How Firm a Foundation" on my violin. Building this foundation through "His excellent Word" as the hymn sings, is this process of accepting one truth and then stacking upon it another... and another... and another. I used to think that the need to review something I'd already read was a weakness I should not allow myself. What a know-it-all! I now find that I love to reread novels and literary classics and passages of scripture. It's amazing what you can glean the second and third time through!

Now onto chapter two of Willard...

This second chapter led me to think about the role of marriage in God's kingdom. I'm probably not the only one who has ever wondered why in the world Christ would say that marriage does not exist in heaven. I think about how much time and effort goes into this primary relationship of our lives, and I wonder what is it all for if it is not eternal? Well, scripture answers this by referring to marriage as a mysterious earthly example of Christ's relationship to the church.

Willard says that "God’s speaking is intended to develop into an intelligent freely cooperative relationship between mature people who love each other [with agape love] (HG 31)." This cancels out what I was blogging about yesterday, the idea that we can simply go to God to receive our daily list of to do's, and an answer for all of our questions. This relationship with God is RECIPROCAL. It is a marriage relationship.

The ladies of my church are studying Debbie Pearl's Helpmeet, a book on the role of the wife in marriage. It occurred to me yesterday in Sunday school that it would be quite possible to go all of my married life doing all the things that the book suggests that I am meant to do (based on Debbie's interpretation of scripture). I could do these things and generate the APPEARANCE of a great marriage without ever really having a REAL marriage, a real relationship with my husband. By never really stopping long enough to seek to understand my husband - who he is, what his dreams are, what drives him to do what he does - I could in fact be married without having a marriage.

This is what we so often do to God, however. When we approach Him simply as someone to be obeyed and not questioned, someone who cannot be understood, someone who will always be out of reach, we are truly saying that he is UNREASONABLE. Willard often points out in Hearing God that one of our biggest drawbacks in our faith is the assumptions we have about God. He writes about one such assumption in the fact that we often approach scripture with the mindset that we are reading "a book of doctrine, abstract truth about God." This creates a barrier between the reader and God so that "one can search endlessly without encountering God himself or hearing his voice (HG 35)."

It is not until we begin to value the revelation of the character of God through His word, until we truly pray for the desire to know God intimately, that we will begin to journey toward the union that God so earnestly desires to have with us as His creation - that normal life of God's indwelling.

Willard leaves us with two reminders in chapter two regarding our attitude when God does begin to reveal Himself to us. First, he writes that "God’s speaking to us does not in itself make us important (HG 38)." When we receive direct communication from someone of importance, it is often difficult for us not to share this information with others in a way that indicates our own significance in the eyes of our audience. We tend to like to "be in the know," and to make others feel our importance. God's communication, however, should always encourage not our pride, but our humility. We are important to God, but He does not choose to speak to us because we are important.

Lastly, Willard reminds us that "God’s speaking to us does not prove us either righteous or right (HG 39)." I think that this may be hard to grasp, because it seems that God's speaking to us would be a way in which He imparts His will to us. If I follow that will, then it would seem that I were acting in a right way, that I were living righteously even. However, I think the attitude that Willard is exposing in this statement is one we might have when we begin to, again, puff ourselves up with the idea that we are somehow deserving of God's communication because of our own righteousness.

I do not think that God's overtures of communication toward us are conditional on our attitudes, our assumptions, or the general condition of our hearts. God called me when I was in sin, He can speak to any of us whenever and however He chooses. What is conditional on our attitudes, our assumptions, and the general condition of our hearts is our own ability to perceive God's voice and what He is saying to us.

Okay, I'd better get ready for work, before I follow another tangent of conversation on this topic. Feel free to comment...

Back to Hearing God - Chapter One

Okay, since it's been a long, long time since I posted anything on this book study, I've decided to start back at the beginning. After putting the book aside for quite some time, I decided there was more to be gleaned from finishing it. But here on the blog, I'm starting back with chapter one, hoping it might be helpful to me and to others to make some basic observations (bringing Willard out of the clouds and hopefully putting some of his ideas in laymen's terms)...

In looking at what I've hi-lighted, the first thing I saw as being important to reiterate is what Willard expresses as "the blasphemous idea that everything that happens in this world is caused by God (HG 18)." Not to delve deeply into what could quickly become a Calvinist/Armenian debate, there is a point at which a believer must realize that though nothing in life can escape God's control, yet not all things are DIRECTLY caused by God. If you look at the classic story of Job, I think this fact is fairly clearly evidenced.

God ALLOWED Job to suffer, but God was not the CAUSE of this suffering. In fact, contrary to what Job's friends believed, Job's suffering was not even a result of Job's own sin. There are times that we must recognize that God is not to be blamed for certain events in our lives, though He retains control of both our lives and the situations which effect them. I think parenthood might give us the easiest approach toward grasping this idea.

As a parent, my actions assist in bringing my child into existence (and facilitate its continuance). There are times that I directly intervene in my child's life, even cause what seems like suffering to my child as a means of discipline or protection. There are other times when my child suffers by his or her own hand, reaping the consequences of his own sin or poor choices. At times I may have the opportunity to step in to stop my child from experiencing the consequence, but I choose to ALLOW this peril to befall him or her, knowing that as James says in scripture, "the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."

This may seem like a tangential conversation, but it is essential that the believer understand that God is not to be blamed in suffering, which Paul tells us is the NORMAL existence for the Christian. Actually, I would venture to say that to be devoid of trials and suffering is to be devoid of Christ himself. In fact, what Dillard speaks about as "The normal human life God intended for us: God’s indwelling his people through personal presence and fellowship (HG 18)" has everything to do with trial and will involve its fair share of pain.

Willard laments (and I do with him), that far too often "Our relationship with God is treated as no more than a mere arrangement or understanding that Jesus and his Father have about us (HG 22)." I know I am guilty of thinking that way from time to time. With this attitude, we relegate God to an adopted philosophy, in turn not only missing out on the fellowship we could experience with Him, but also starving ourselves of what both Willard and scripture refer to as the "daily bread" of "personal communion and communication with God (HG 23)."

Out of the midst of trial and suffering so common in the Christian faith comes the instinctual desire to reach out to God Himself as the source of our comfort, relief, and REST. We cannot reach out to a mere god who is the central figure of our life philosophy. He is no more than the one on whom we can cast blame when events turn against us. Besides this, continually treating God in this non-relational manner will lead us "to abandon faith in our ability to hear from God," an action that Willard declares "is to abandon the reality of a personal relationship with God" entirely (HG 26).

Blasphemy of this sort is far more dangerous than blatant disbelief. Buy into the idea that communication with God is simply something that happened in the Old Testament and therefore no longer relevant in our day and age, and you have effectively ripped the very heart out of your own spiritual life. Perhaps as dangerous, though, is approaching communication with God as a means of determining every direction for your own life. Willard bluntly states: "Extreme pre-occupation with knowing God’s will for me only indicates my overconcern for myself (HG 28)."

Our goal then is not only to recognize that God has the power and desire to communicate with us as His creation regularly and intimately, but it is also to recognize that God desires much more than to provide a daily dictation of directions for our lives. Even more, it is not until we take the focus off of our selves and dedicate our full attention to God's greater purpose that we can fully accept the suffering that has been granted to us on behalf of Christ. This is what God wishes to communicate to all who long to have the normal life He intended - His indwelling of His creation on a daily basis, providing for every need, fulfilling every created purpose in human life.