How will this year differ from the last?

Two weeks ago Christmas commanded the attention of millions.
One week ago the New Year with resolutions commanding the attention of millions.
Today - not so much.

It has been said that, other than the books you read and the people you know, we don't change all that much.

I would argue this to be the case but would have used two slightly different words: wisdom and relationships. Thus, the phrase above can be said to focus upon:

The amount of wisdom a person possesses

The nature and character of the relationships in which a person finds themselves engaged.

Do YOU have a resource for Wisdom?
Have you chosen relationships that edify?

I believe ...
     if we don't actively seek wisdom,
          the wisdom we DO have slowly drains away.
     if we don't actively seek relationships that build up our relationship to Christ Jesus
          all other relationships can draw us away from Christ Jesus.

Let this year be the year that you grow and flourish!

Seek Wisdom!
Seek edifying relationships!

What has He done for you lately?

One of the easiest traps one can fall into - especially in America - is to catalog what God hasn't done yet. It is a simple thing - you list one thing, then another, and the focus can thus turn into a kind of perception of God's apparent eternal incompleteness. As if the only thing He can do right in your world is to knock just one more thing of the list of things He owes you.

I find myself there sometimes. And I inevitably turn into a kind of martyr.

The resolution is to change your paradigm.

Choose to begin the list with a least five of the things God has done in your life that has fundamentally changed who you are. You may not even be aware of some of them - if so, ask God to reveal them.

Here are some of mine:
God saved me while I was in boot-camp.
God erased pain and anguish from a huge volume of my memories.
God gave me grace to learn how to begin to be the kind of man my wife needed.

Challenge:
Ask God to reveal to you what He would like you to expect Him to do.
Then, ask God to give you grace to wait for that thing.
And wait upon the Lord.

Maturity is not a curse

One of the things I have most longed for in life is an opportunity to seek intentional personal maturity. This might fly in the fact of the public consciousness, where maturity is something to be avoided until absolutely necessary ... but I have found that those who are most able to function well and successfully have a level of personal maturity that is easy to respect and admire. Sadly, most maturity that a person adopts is the result of random events - I wanted a set of decisions and mindsets that allow a person to consciously seek after maturity. Oddly enough, I never saw that Scripture had the answer to this ... at least not something as simple as a to-do list.

I believe the bible does offer an opportunity for intentional maturity - a maturity that doesn't detract from our ability to appreciate and experience joy and a maturity that draws us closer to Christ Jesus. It is found in our relationships with ourselves, God, and others. It is found in identifying those things for which we take responsibility. And it is found in studying the Lord's scripture. In fact, the three reflect one another and lack of one will necessarily weaken the other two.

Inured and Confused

In speaking with a friend of mine, he smiled sadly and said "I fear our generation is being entertained to death."

It is easy to see what he means - no other generation before ours has had the shear breadth, depth, and variety of distraction available to them, some simultaneous. We have computers, hand-held gizmos with more computing power than was available on the earth only a few decades ago, and they now have a car that allows you to make use of the car's steering wheel and gas and brake pedals in a game whose console appears when the car is parked and with the appropriate switches. We are a society whose resources are so abundant we take them nearly for granite ... as in, so solidly present of endless character that they may well survive for ever.

In addition, we have never had more means of connecting with those around us - through the internet, telephone, and mass-production of means of transportation, nearly anyone can get nearly anywhere or at least in contact with anyone. Truly, the world appears to grow both larger and smaller by the moment.

All this technology, all these options, and all this variety lends itself to a very real confusion - for the more choices we have, the more we expect our own wisdom will rise to the challenge. Almost as if the presence of knowledge imparts wisdom by osmosis, many of us find ourselves feeling both wiser and smaller, thinking we know so little, but feeling as if we have a bit more control.

The question is - how many of our entertainments draw us closer to Christ Jesus? How many movies have you watched, games have you played, books have you read, friends have you spoken with, clothes that you have shopped for, gifts you have given, or tasks you have accomplished drawn you closer to God?

To be sure, each of those things has the potential to draw you closer to both the real things in life that are tangible expressions of God. Truly, God can meet you where you are ... and often does, simply because He is not the one who leaves when we are separated from Him.

We have become inured to the battle - the war - that God has won. He won it 2000 years ago and He is giving each of us a certain moment in time with which to choose Him.

What will your actions show you chose?

Call-to-action

• Write down one specific example in which you have not responded in a Godly to authority - this includes
• God
  
• your parents
  
• your grandparents
• your teachers
• your boss
• your spouse
  

• Identify the earliest attitude and/or decision that led to that poor response.
  

• Ask God to forgive you for not offering that decision to Him.
  

• Wait on the Lord to give you peace while NOT holding onto it
  

• Once you have peace, determine the best means of seeking forgiveness from the earthly authority you did not respond well to.
  

• Approach that authority and express as earnest, specific, and succinctly as you can your desire for their forgiveness.
  

• Wait on their response.
  

• If they forgive, give thanks to God for His grace.
  

• If they do not forgive, give thanks God allowed you to heal your conscience and pray for them.

Be Great

I have a theory. I believe every one of us can be great in the Lord. In addition to having a specific purpose and having some task, or set of tasks, I believe each of us has the potential to be great, to hearken unto that small voice that guides each of us, and to become an amazing and profound spokesperson for Christ Jesus.

I believe the potential for this truth is necessarily present in any cross-section of believers as well - for you will rarely find identical individuals or people with exactly the same strengths or weaknesses together when believers of the same stripe come together.

It is this spiritual melting pot that Christ Jesus makes available, through His guidance and His counsel, to His own purpose - and thus as a source of brotherhood, friendship, and re-stocking of the spiritual well. For in the same way we each need to be reminded of His strength and His love, we grow in sharing those reminders with others.

But having a purpose and achieving that purpose are vastly different things. Many a person would suggest this or that means of determining a meaningful answer to the question "Why are we here?” I know God knows and I believe He wants us to know too.

Ask Him today.

Hyper-challenge

Pray to God to provide you the courage, patience, steadfastness, and resources necessary to accomplish His will today

Pray that God reveal what that will is

Repeat until you rest

Abominations

Proverbs 29:27 (link)

An unjust man is an abomination to the just: and he that is upright in the way is abomination to the wicked.

There are certain words we don't observe often, especially words that are currently out of vogue. One such word is abomination. It has many applications, and if we stick with the worldly definition (link) we miss out on the depth and character that one would traditionally assign to such words.

A fairly good definition, as I understand scripture, is found here and is "Anything associated with the worship of other gods and any behavior that perverts the lifestyle God intended human beings to live." So the key here is something or someone that draws you away from the lifestyle God intended you to have.

It is an easy thing to miss.

This is primarily because, in the culture we live in, the labeling of something as an abomination is relative. Worse yet, most of us are not trained to recognize actual abominations.

It is an easy thing to dismiss as well.

Recognizing abominable events, objects, or people is fairly well defined in scripture. A fairly reliable list is encountered in Leviticus 18. They needed listing because the children of Israel, who had been freed by God through Moses, were potentially going to pick up the rituals, habits, and mores of the countries they would be visiting, and required a literal listing of areas where they might have emulated their new neighbors. This was a major problem because the neighbors were strangers and were worshipping other Gods.

We have no such list - our neighbors are people we have known our whole lives, people we work with, and people with whom we have relationships. We believers are adopted children of Israel, and thus should be conscious of the need to recognize and eschew abomination.

Thus the potential for Godly change is clear:

Do not emulate the abominations of your neighbors

Note: today's hyper-challenge requires an assumption I have observed to be true - all sinful actions are predicated upon an earlier decision to sin.

Hyper-challenge

• Be mindful of your activities and attitudes today, identifying when you are furthest from God
  

• Recognize the earliest point in your day it began
  

• Identify if a mindset, attitude, or decision you intentionally held or made was asserted at that moment
  

• Recognize the potential for it to have been caused by an actual source of abomination in YOUR life
  

• Remove it

To catch a thief

Exodus 22:1-4 (1, 2, 3, 4)

These passages deal with thieves - how to resolve their theft, how to deal with their crimes, and the like. In particular, it addresses what to do about a fundamental loss of livestock. At the time of this writing, livestock comprised the major source of providence for the majority of the population - they provided a perpetual resource of food, labor, and materials - and so the loss of even a single animal was of major importance.

The passages listed above cataloge God's approach to theft - they assume the thief will eventually be caught (which is not unlikely ... it isn't terribly easy to hide an ox, sheep, or cow, especially if the animal has been labeled), and that resolution will be implemented in like kind. Theft is to be rewarded with, at the very least, double what the animal is worth, more so if the animal is sold or killed. Likewise, if the thief was found after this theft and he was wounded in some way, the thief will be given no aid. And if the thief has been found and does not have enough to repay the theft-debt, the thief would be sold, presumably into slavery.

How far we are removed from this standard! Ours is a far more complex time - for our "livestock" is no longer alive, and can often come so small that it would be mighty hard to recognize a stolen "cow" as one's own. Likewise, our culture does not support slavery - and thus there is no culturally acceptable way to implement the poor-thief state. The closest our culture comes is credit-debt ... which people are willingly and actively seeking! And because of our credit-slavery and unliving livestock, we have become a culture whose treasures are almost abstract in expression.

Thus I ask one thing: when considering a purchase, what is your first concern: its resolution of some earthly desire or an opportunity to present the gospel or an expression of how Christ Jesus has guided you to seek first the kingdom of Heaven?

Hyper-challenge:

On a day in which you do the major portion of your purchases, before you begin your store-hopping, start the day off with prayer

Start by acknowledging His glory and in what manner you seek His path and guidance.

Ask Him to reveal in what way your particular purchases might honor God.

Hold up each purchase you plan to make in your mind and ask Him to show you whether each should be purchased.

Put special emphasis on any planned entertainment purchase, asking him to you peace for each purchase appropriate to their furthering His kingdom.

Expect Christ Jesus to answer your petition in His time.

And while shopping, expect Him to guide any and all of your purchases.

Are you ambivalently volitional?

Revelation 3:15-16

One of the more interesting verses in scripture declares just how much God wants for us to be about His will ... and to do so passionately! In the verses above, Christ Jesus wrote to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans clearly indicating that their focus was a kind of materialistic apathy.

The key here is the passion - God wants our hearts aligned with him. To not just be faithful to His guidance, but faithfully serving with Joy! This can take a number of different forms, from earnestly representing the only voice of character in the office where you work, making certain you never unintentionally offend others, or being patient and steadfast in the midst of some catastrophe. And this year, in the U.S., we have an opportunity to discern God's will for our lives with respect to our civic duty - voting!

The key to this post is conscious volition - to be actively involved in a decision one is making, and to do so with all the joy that comes from serving God. And thus, I challenge you to do that very thing with respect to our coming presidential election. In addition to regularly praying for our nation's leaders, please pray that He will guide you to selecting that leader that best represents the will of Christ Jesus will.

Hyper-challenge:

• Research what the bible says about selecting a leader, as well as evaluating what is published about how scripture guides one in the same subject.
• Submit each candidate to the standards defined by the previous step.
• Hold each candidate up to God and ask Him to guide your heart and mind.

Satisfaction Guaranteed

Job 27:14

Scripture speaks a great deal about satisfaction. It speaks on what the righteous are satisfied by (link), describes the character of those who are not satisfied (link), likewise it implies a kind of persecution if one is satisfied with things that are by nature not sufficient by themselves (link, link, and link). There are a large number of scriptures that address satisfaction ... and I believe it to be because God has a whole lot to say about being satisfied.

First and foremost, being satisfied requires the right character. If a person has not the right character they won't be satisfied by things that are designed to satisfy. This is akin to carrying water in a bucket with holes - the water will leak, no matter how well intentioned the person carrying the bucket. In the same way, a person's character must be of a specific nature to appreciate and be satisfied by satisfying things. It is one of the reasons that God ties sufficiency so often to whether a person is righteous - for an aspect of righteousness explicitly includes being satisfied. It is kind of a side effect of being righteous - though not an autonomous one for most of us. Likewise, the lack of a balanced and sufficient character will often skew the ability to discern and appreciate satisfying things.

Second, being satisfied requires the right satisfying things. Certain things have an innate capacity for being satisfactory. Food is satisfying in certain circumstances, as are music, exercise, companionship, and sleeping. If you have an individual who is misbalanced, they might seek an excess of sleep or food or music, to the exclusion of other necessary things - the result will be symptoms indicating a need that is dissatisifed. Similar things happen when a person attempts to fill their basic need for a relationship with God with other things - there will inevitably be symptoms of dissatisfaction. Indeed, if someone of discerning character spends enough time with dissatisfying things, a person's character can often be changed - to their detriment.

Third, being satisfied requires the right attitude. Attitude is separate from character (although the two often come hand in hand) and is certainly separate from the source of satisfaction ... but without the right attitude, even the most discerning person accepting the most satisfying things will ultimately lack. Curiously enough, it is our attitudes we have the most direct control over and yet the one of the three that is least addressed. If you were to poll the next 100 people you meet that seem the most remotely dissatisfied, it is likely that 100 of them would mention dissatisfaction due to some poor character on their part (too hungry, too fat, to ugly) or poor resources available (no hope, no love, no money), when often the thing that would help them reconcile their problem - a relationship with Christ Jesus - is most often an attitude-change away.

I believe that God can guarantee satisfaction - he has consistently and thoroughly laid out the plans about how to detect, acquire, and maintain satisfaction for each of us ... and through diligent study and acquisition of the right attitude and a steady relationship to Him, we can accept and maintain that satisfaction.

I challenge you to be satisfied by Christ Jesus and to seek to satisfy Him.

Hyper-challenge of the day:

Identify the most dissatisfying aspect of you life and discuss it with God. Challenge Him to directly address it and give it to Him completely, trusting that He will either fix it, give you peace about it, or direct you to the tools to resolve either the situation or your dissatisfaction.