Pulling a Rachelle

Re-reading this book that I love this week called Messy Spirituality: God's Annoying Love for Imperfect People by Mike Yaconelli, I came across this bit that I thought was also pretty relevant to last Tuesday's HC.

What keeps many of us from growing is not sin but speed.
Most of us are going as fast as we can, living life at a dizzying speed, and God is nowhere to be found. We're not rejecting God; we just don't have time for him. We've lost him in the blurred landscape as we rush to church. We don't struggle with the Bible, but with the clock. It's not that we're too decadent; we're too busy. We don't feel guilty because of sin, but because we have no time for our spouses, our children, or our God. It's not sinning too much that's killing our souls, it's our schedule that's annihilating us. Most of us don't come home at night staggering drunk. Instead, we come home staggering tired, worn out, exhausted, and drained because we live too fast.

Speed is not neutral. Fast living used to mean a life of debauchery; now it just means fast, but the consequences are even more serious. Speeding through life endangers our relationships and our souls.

Voices surround us, always telling us to move faster. It may be our boss, our pastor, our parents, our wives, our husbands, our politicians, or, sadly, even ourselves. So we comply. We increase the speed. We live life in the fast lane because we have no slow lanes anymore. Every lane is fast, and the only comfort our culture can offer is more lanes and increased speed limits. The result? Too many of us are running as fast as we can, and an alarming number of us are running much faster than we can sustain.

Speed damages our souls because living fast consumes every ounce of our energy. Speed has a deafening roar that drowns out the whispering voices of our souls and leaves Jesus as a diminishing speck in the rear view mirror.

Spiritual growth is not running faster, as in more meetings, more Bible studies, and more prayer meetings. Spiritual growth happens when we slow our activity down. If we want to meet Jesus, we can't do it on the run. If we want to stay on the road of faith, we have to hit the brakes, pull over to a rest area, and stop. Christianity is not about inviting Jesus to speed through life with us; it's about noticing Jesus sitting at the rest stop.

While the church earnestly warns Christians to watch for the devil, the devil is sitting in the congregation encouraging everyone to keep busy doing "good things." I just received a letter from a woman minister who was on the edge of crashing and burning. She and her family had joined a growing, active church and quickly volunteered to help. But two years later, she realized that her entire family was speeding by each other in unrestrained zeal to lead one activity or another at church every week.

"Run faster!" this woman's church bulletin screamed, but the only way she could save her soul from death was to slow down, which meant finding a new job.

Sin does not always drive us to drink; more often it drives us to exhaustion. Tiredness is equally as debilitating as drunkenness. Burnout is slang for an inner tiredness, a fatigue of our souls. Jesus came to forgive all our sins, including the sin of busyness. The problem with growth in the modern church is not the slowness of growth but the rushing of growth.

Jesus came to give us rest.

We know we are ready for God to work in our lives when we're tired. When our lives begin to weigh us down, God is present in the heaviness. It turns out that it's weariness that's next to godliness, because when our souls are tired, we are able to hear his voice, and according to Matthew 11:28, what he's saying is "Come. Rest."

The ugly truth, however, is that many of us do not know how to rest.

Actually, we do know how to rest; we simply refuse to rest. Rest is a decision we make. Rest is choosing to do nothing when we have too much to do, slowing down when we feel pressure to go faster, stopping instead of starting. Rest is listening to our weariness and responding to our tiredness, not to what is making us tired. Rest is what happens when we say one simple word: "No!" Rest is the ultimate humiliation, because in order to rest, we must admit we are not necessary, that the world can get along without us, that God's work does not depend on us. Once we understand how unnecessary we are, only then might we find the right reasons to decide to be with Jesus instead of working for him. Only then might we have the courage to take a nap with Jesus.

love.

Yeah, that was productive . . .

What does it mean to make good use of your time?

I pondered this briefly today at the gym. This morning I spent three-and-a-half hours in a medical clinic, saw a doctor for maybe ten minutes of that time, and walked away with no x-rays, no real action plan, not even a tentative diagnosis. They simply informed me that I would get a phone call, after a few days, from someone about seeing some radiology lab somewhere that could do something for me at some future date if I paid them some uncertain amount of money. Fortunately (providentially?), during the hundred and fifty minutes that I spent in the waiting room, I discovered a copy of Richard J. Foster's Prayer and was able to mow through a few chapters. It was a good morning, I think.

At the gym, I at least "did something" (on a Precor EFX 576i, to be exact), and it was a decent workout, notwithstanding the time I irrevocably devoted to watching "Commando," a Schwarzenegger film where the hero throws around heavy objects and scowls a lot. In my partial defense, I had been watching the Miami (OH) RedHawks take out Bemidji in the NCAA "Frozen Four" semis, but it wasn't close in the third period, and there's a strange magnetism about indestructable people that drew my eyes to the silent film on the big screen. Anyway, despite the impressive feat that suplexing an occupied phone booth is, I felt palpably less intelligent even after viewing probably less than half of the movie.

Then I went over to the weights area to sculpt my guns.

Just kidding. Seriously, though, I like to get things done, and today was a good reminder that productivity isn't always what it seems.

Pretty much the best thing I've ever read

From Brian "Head" Welch's Save Me From Myself, page 218:

"While I was in Korn, I had people waiting on me left and right. Anything I wanted, I got. Anywhere I wanted to go, I went. All I had to do was give the word and it happened. I had the world in the palm of my hand, people, and I have to tell you one last time: there's nothing there. I promise you.

Jesus Christ is the only one that can make you complete."

The gospel is everywhere, part 1000

One of my all-time favorite books is Michael Lewis' Moneyball (pictured above). While nominally about baseball, in reading the book you'll realize it's actually about being efficient in life.

One of the themes that stuck with me is that of a decision being evaluated not on the result, but on the process involved in making the decision. So, if you trade for a bad player who coincidentally sets the world on fire upon his acquisition, that does not mean the trade decision was a good one. To use a real world example: my friend Wesley once survived a car accident only because she wasn't wearing a seat belt. Just because she survived, however, does not validate the decision to drive without wearing the seat belt*.

I always thought this "the value of the decision is not in its result" philosophy extended to the gospel as well. Like, if I talk about the Lord with a stranger but it does not result in the stranger coming to the Lord, I shouldn't feel like I made a bad decision**.

Reading Luke 4, I found my scriptural reference. Here, Jesus is tempted by Satan, who offers Jesus authority and splendor over all the kingdoms in the world. One problem: while the result would make a certain amount of sense, the process by which He got there would be, well, a bit troubling.

I think Christians can be similarly tempted by the allure of a seemingly positive result. What I think we need to remember, though, is that the result we ought to always be seeking is not one of worldly pleasure, or even one which looks good to other Christians. The result we should simply, unequivocally be seeking is the approval of the Lord. After all, it is He, not men, who ultimately judges us.

* = I know this sentence is a double negative. If you have a better idea of how to phrase it, please do let me know

** = same thing

Quote to start your week

From Free Byrd, a wonderful book I've just begun reading:

The truth is, my love was considered so valuable by God that he gave his Little Boy over to a torturous death in hopes of getting a little back from me. A friend once told me that if I were the only sinner on the planet God would still have sent his son down here for me in order that I might come home to him one day. (p. 20)

More to come...love this book

Under the Overpass

I'm reading this book Under the Overpass, which details two young Christians' voluntary six months of homelessness. One of these two was my friend Sam.

Why did they do this? As outlined in the first chapter (p. 19), they wanted to:

1. Better understand the life of the homeless in America and to see firsthand how the church is responding their needs;
2. Encourage others to "live out loud" for Christ in whatever ways God is asking them to;
3. Learn personally what it means to depend on Christ for [their] daily physical needs and to experience contentment and confidence in Him.

I'm in love with this book's message and, even during an extremely busy period in my life, will probably finish it within three days of purchase. Here are some of my favorite quotes through the first half of the book:

• "When you're sitting on a sidewalk, you're at eye level with babies and kids. It's a different world down there. As toddlers stumble past holding their parent's hand, they lock you in their unashamed gazes or they peek curiously out from their strollers. They haven't yet learned to ignore what they see, so they can actually take in the world as it is. While kids might pretend people who don't exist do, it's the parents who pretend that unwanted people who do exist don't." (p.65)

• "I think I often pray 'Thy will be done' not really meaning that...I think I mean more often, in all honesty, 'Thy will be done because I already know what I'm doing today.' "
  (p. 85)
  
  
• "What's your definition of a Christian? Is it broad enough to encompass the drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, and broken people of the world? Jesus said that he came to heal the sick. Drug addicts are messed up just the same as liars are messed up, just the same as all humans are messed up. We all need Jesus. We all struggle with personal ways in which sin plays out in our lives." (p. 105)