How Long?

One of the hardest things for me to do is wait. I don't know about you, but I don't like to wait. It is not that I am overly action orientated, it is just that when I think something is over, I want to move on. To be honest with you, I don't like waiting for others. I tend to give myself all the time that I need, but when it comes to giving others the same courtesy, I seem to come up short. Grace for me, from me; and hurry up for you, from me. Sounds great, until of course we get to God. 

Waiting on God and for God is hard. You can't manipulate him or control him. You have to wait for him. You can't adjust the timing to fit your schedule. It seems liking planning works up to a point, then you find yourself waiting and wondering. 

One of the questions you read often from the OT writers is How Long?. Read David's words from Psalm 13:1-6; 

 "How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, Having sorrow in my heart all the day? How long will my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; Enlighten my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, And my enemy will say, "I have overcome him," And my adversaries will rejoice when I am shaken. But I have trusted in Your lovingkindness; My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, Because He has dealt bountifully with me."

This is just one example. You could find more. Below is just a sample from the Psalms

•  Psa_35:17  Lord, how long will You look on? Rescue my soul from their ravages, My only life from the lions. 
• Psa_62:3  How long will you assail a man, That you may murder him, all of you, Like a leaning wall, like a tottering fence? 
• Psa_74:9  We do not see our signs; There is no longer any prophet, Nor is there any among us who knows how long. 
• Psa_74:10  How long, O God, will the adversary revile, And the enemy spurn Your name forever? 
• Psa_79:5  How long, O LORD? Will You be angry forever? Will Your jealousy burn like fire? 
• Psa_80:4  O LORD God of hosts, How long will You be angry with the prayer of Your people? 
• Psa_82:2  How long will you judge unjustly And show partiality to the wicked? Selah. 
• Psa_89:46  How long, O LORD? Will You hide Yourself forever? Will Your wrath burn like fire? 
• Psa_90:13  Do return, O LORD; how long will it be? And be sorry for Your servants. 
• Psa_94:3  How long shall the wicked, O LORD, How long shall the wicked exult? 

I think you get the idea. I like what one author said about the Psalms. God has provided us with his words that we can say back to him. How Long was part of the Psalmist prayers. It was part of the great prophets prayers. It was God giving us words to talk back to him with.

Waiting is hard work. Maintaining our hope and confidence while we wait is hard work. David at the end of Psalm 25: 20-21 says: 

"Guard my soul and deliver me; Do not let me be ashamed, for I take refuge in You. Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, For I wait for You."

David asked that integrity and uprightness, while he was waiting. would preserve him. Isn't that part of the test during waiting? Isn't the temptation during waiting to take matters into our own hands? To circumvent integrity and uprightness for expediency? The OT is full of stories of those who instead of waiting, instead of letting integrity and uprightness preserve them (maybe this was Jesus idea of the narrow way) found a short cut, one that cost them integrity or uprightness. 

Of course, most of these Psalms start out by asking how long and end up in thankfulness around the goodness God. That is how Psalm 13 ends. The word "But" at the beginning of verse 5 transitions away from David's concerns to who God is. 

Even though it seems appropriate to ask How Long, it also seems appropriate not to stay there, but to move on like most, if not all of the Psalms do, to the goodness and faithfulness of a trustworthy God.

Of course, these are Just My Thoughts.....

Integrity - The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality. - Chapter 1

I am currently reading Dr. Henry Cloud's book, Integrity, the courage to meet the demands of reality. I thought I would review each chapter. I liked the title and approach of this book. It reminds me of Charles Simpsons message on Internal Integrity and External Integration. Follow along or by the book.

Dr. Henry Cloud’s Book – Integrity, the courage to meet the demands of reality.

Chapter 1

Dr. Cloud starts off in his book by sharing his journey into why he was writing this book. He wants to make it clear that when talking about integrity, people typically move into a conversation about moral issues such as honesty or ethics. But when he is talking about integrity he is going beyond just morals or ethics into character. He wants to make it clear that having integrity or character is not developed so that you “don’t get into trouble” but that, “who a person is” will ultimately determine if their brains, talents, competencies, energy, effort, deal-making abilities and opportunities will succeed. It is character and integrity that make you productive and successful.

DC states that to be successful you need three ingredients:

1.     You have to have some set of competencies in your field

2.     You have to have the ability to build alliances with others that is mutually beneficial.

3.     The have to have the character so that they do not screw up.

DC’s focus is on Character.

He asks the question:

“How many of you have had a situation in your work experience where someone was very bright, talented, competent, and good working deals, but there was something about who he or she was as a person that somehow got in the way of all of that ability?”

“How many of you can also relate to there being some way in which you feel like if you were different in some way, that you could go further than you have or reach the full potential that your brains, talents, and competencies would allow?”

DC is trying to differentiate between a person with good character, morals, ethics, honesty, trustworthiness (he doesn’t minimize this) and what he calls their “personhood” - Who they are as a whole person. I think this is an important distinction. It is the difference between a character that keeps you out of trouble versus one that when others are working with you and for you, you are able to be productive and meet your goals.

Here is the center of what DC is trying to convey. People who are blind to the shortcomings of their “personhood” will not see the need to develop their skills and abilities. Thus they will not be able to do the following:

1.     Gain the complete trust of the people they were leading, and capture their full hearts and following.

2.     See all of the realities that are right in front of them. They had blind spots regarding themselves, others, or even the markets, customers, projects opportunities, or other external realities that kept them from reaching their goals.

3.     Work in a way that actually produced the outcomes that they should have produced, given their abilities and resources.

4.     Deal with problem people, negative situations, obstacles, failures, setbacks, and losses.

5.     Create growth in their organization, their people, themselves, their profits, or their industry.

6.     Transcend their own interests and give themselves to larger purposes, thus becoming part of a larger mission.

From this DC states that the issues he outlines above have nothing to do with a person’s IQ, talents, brains, education…. Instead they have to do with aspects of a person’s character that is given too little attention and never seen as important enough to develop.

DC states, “The most important tool ultimately is the person and his or her makeup, and yet it seems to get the least amount of attention and work.”

DC is making the argument that it is a person’s character or personal make-up that has more to do with someone’s ultimate ability than we have been recognized.

He believes when we focus on the person as a whole the following three pitfalls can be avoided:

1.     Hitting a performance ceiling that is much lower than one’s aptitude.

2.     Hitting an obstacle or situation that derails you

3.     Reaching great success only to self-destruct and lose it all.

I Wonder

I wonder why the gospel message doesn’t “up end” our world like it should. What are we missing? Why doesn’t the radical message of a new and different order, an order that Jesus announced, lived, died for and was resurrected, doesn’t impact us in a deeply personal way?

I wonder if we have so compartmentalized our Christianity that we end up seeing Jesus' teachings through the lenses of our current Christian life and church experience. Instead of challenging that life style we end up reducing the message to something that sees it justification in our current religious activities. Or even worse, we have decided to legalize and ritualize his words to the point that they lose their life and meaning. The light and life become darkness and death, a burden to bear. We then find ourselves having a hard time agreeing with John that God’s commandments are not burdensome. The yoke we bear is a mixture (which is never good) of our current religious life and an attempt to follow the commands. One is holding us back, the other calling us forward into life, real life.

The call to biblical Christianity, to live in and serve the king and his kingdom, will have a hard time finding its fulfillment in our current structures. They are too tight, to constricting. They lack creativity and life. It is like doing the same thing only with a different look. Is it lipstick on a pig? I don’t know. But there is a risk when we decide to communicate and release God’s people to move beyond, to embrace the gospel message of the kingdom of God. If you sow the seeds of life, you have to expect they are going to sprout up in ways that you don’t expect. But, if the Holy Spirit is at work in the Word given, if his breath is breathing on those listening, than we have to expect growth, change, and above all Life. Jesus made it clear to Nicodemus the unpredictability of the Holy Spirit’s work. He said you don’t know where it came from or where it is going, but you will see evidence in the wind blowing through the trees. The evidence of the Holy Spirit at work is seen in the world, God’s creation. How it happened and where it is going from there, only God knows. Is the church willing to lose its life, or will it attempt to save it?

I wonder if when we read the scripture that we find ourselves reading it through the lenses of those who considered themselves “IN”, not “OUT”. By “IN” I mean those who thought they had figured it out, who had in some sense arrived, who considered themselves the protectors and communicators of God’s ways and laws. They could recite the 10 commandments, knew all of the rules, could recite clearly all of the current doctrines and ensure all of those in the synagogue, at least outwardly, conformed to them. They had all of the words and terminology down pat. Their subtle and at times deceptive self-justification rested on the fact that they were the defenders of the faith. The “IN” didn’t like there service disrupted, their conventional wisdom challenged, and the security of their lifestyle, taught and imposed, challenged. Their way of living was clear cut. Very little faith and a lot of conform. Those who were considered “IN” were clearly seen and those who were “OUT” were also clearly seen. A nice arrangement which kept the leaders in control and those both “IN” and “OUT” in their defined roles.

The back drop of much of Jesus teaching is to reach those who were not “IN” but “OUT”. He challenged the “IN” in their way of thinking, to see that their world view was clashing with God’s ways. That in reality they were “OUT”. To those who were “OUT” Luke writes this about Jesus,

And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written, "THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED, TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD." And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

The “OUT” were clearly on Jesus’ mind. His identification with the poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed were on His Father’s mind. I am not sure this was on the minds of those who were in the synagogue.
Those who were “OUT” certainly saw this as good news. Those who were “IN” would see this message as disruptive to their world view and they would do whatever was needed to preserve that order. Even to the point of killing Jesus. Think of it: Healings on the Sabbath! Healings in the synagogue! Parties with sinners! Forgiveness and Grace versus condemnation and isolation! Certainly disruptive!

Why am I saying this? I want us to grasp the reality of Jesus message. To see the Gospels in a fresh way. To quit placing Jesus words in the context of a self-justifying religious belief that sanitizes and moralizes the words of Jesus to the point of obscurity. To get us to see that in many ways we are the “IN” that are really “OUT” and that the “OUT” are really the “IN”.

I probably could have said all of this a lot better. I don’t know. Hopefully you will get the heart of it and not just the words. I am challenged to follow the Christ of this kingdom. I don’t want to be “OUT” because the “OUT” is the new “IN”. I want, like Paul, to say, “That I might know Him”. And where ever that leads me well…I wonder!