Category Archives: Happy Tensions

Weighty Words: SENT.

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(Maybe it should be called Pure Words instead. Read on.)

[John 17] Jesus is about as calm as the eye of a hurricane as He awaits an inevitable betrayal, arrest, conviction and crucifixion. So He intently goes to a familiar place to pray. An urgent conversation awaits Him. His closest friends are oblivious to the weight of the scene; the only weight they feel is their eyelids shutting as they sleep instead of watch. I would chide them expect for the fact that I would have done the same.

What Jesus prays is both shocking and re-assuring. He wrestles with the Father, resigning His will to what must be done. (For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, despising the shame [Hebrews 12:1-3].) Then His prayer takes the tone of a man giving his final resolution, a battle cry of certainty. Jesus doesn’t say much after this, at least not for a few days. The risen Christ had much to say on the other side of the grave.

He had just said His peace to His betrayer, Judas, who would come onto the scene soon after this hour of prayer. Earlier, at the Last Supper, celebrating the substitution of the Passover Lamb, Jesus told His adversary to get on with what he intended to do.

What Jesus needed to say next He said to the only one who did not betray Him. Though the Father would soon turn His face away, He is the only One in Jesus’ life who would keep all His promises.

This was a moment of sweet communion and a glimpse into the most pure conversation to ever take place on planet earth. No pretense or manipulation. No one ‘winning,’ and getting his way through whining or verbal abuse. The strength of Their wills is unfathomable, their rights as Deity immeasurable. But — check this — neither asserts His rights.


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Grow your emotions.

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How are you growing your emotions, like as one tending to a garden? Matthew Elliott writes in FEEL:

“At the time the New Testament was written, there was a lot of talk about the emotions. Stoics and Epicureans saw emotions as a disease, something we were to be cured or by using the power of reason. Later Stoics, following Plato, looked at the emotions as irrational forces to be defeated. As we’ve seen, their model, and their solution to emotional problems, was tragically wrong. And yet, the New Testament, coming out of the same time and place, takes a very different view and adopts a totally different model—one that scientists and psychologists today are embracing. The Bible brings emotion and reason together into the unified ‘heart.’

I believe this three-part garden of emotions — Grow, Keep, Done — along with the gardener’s toolbox we’ve already put together — Focus, Know, Value, and Believe — can significantly help us if we are struggling in our emotional lives. It can also be a guide to help us develop the Christlike character God wants in us.

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The Bible specifically indicates four emotions that God wants us to grow:

  • Love for neighbors, God, and goodness
  • Joy in God, good relationships, and the good things in life
  • Hope in [Christ who is the focus of] our eternal destiny, in God’s supreme power, and in his promises
  • Hatred of evil
  • (One can rightly add the Fear of God, which is a complex reality.)

Each of these emotions is not just hanging out there by itself. It is very important to remember that every emotion is connected to an object. It is tied to what we think, know, value, and believe about something. Determining the place that a particular emotion should have in our lives involves understanding why we feel it and the nature of its focus on a particular object — a person, idea, or thing.”
—Matthew Elliott, FEEL: The Power of Listening to Your Heart, pp. 164-65.

 

When you’ve been hacked.

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We’ve all been hacked, in one way or another. You know the drill: messages send from your email to your whole address book, selling health products or hacked pharmaceuticals shipped from an unnamed country north of here. (I receive at least one of those every day.)

Maybe it was your Facebook account (a grease fire waiting to happen). If you’re like me, your Twitter account was hacked this morning. I guess hackers want everyone to lose weight. Continue reading →

 

4 steps to good decisions.

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From Matt Perman, “4 Steps to Good Decision Making“:

  1. Understand the objectives
  2. Consider the alternatives
  3. Consider risk
  4. Decide

He summarizes: “Very basic, to be sure. But it is surprising how often we go into important decisions haphazardly, without taking an intentional (albeit simple) approach.”

For an over-analyzer like me — who thinks through opportunities, risks, and rewards on every little thing — this streamlines things. Plus, for those of us prone to living in the past (“hindsight is always 20/20” is actually a dumb adage, don’t you think?), second-guessing our decisions that are not of a moral nature, we can confidently move into the future knowing that no real damage has been done. When you consider the options to good decision-making, a little process is worth the risk.

Go … you are now free to make good decisions. (In the good will of God.)

 

Looking the part.

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From Q:

We all feel it, sense it and see it. Everything in popular culture – from entertainment to advertisements – pushes us to be something we aren’t. This creates an unspoken tension for followers of Jesus who are called to presence, honesty and authenticity. How can Christians promote depth and character in a society that thrives on hype? Jason Locy and Tim Willard, coauthors of Veneer: Living Deeply in a Surface Society, challenge us to strive for a more meaningful existence.

  • Watch their whole talk, “End Veneer” [17 min] at Q Portland 2011
  • Read the book, Veneer
 

Who would stop you now?

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“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
—Ayn Rand

We live in a passive society. Certainly many people speak up and act courageously each day. But how many people you know are actively pursuing good things? It seems rare, doesn’t it?

Perhaps our society is not so much passive as we are non-confrontational. Isn’t that part of the whole allure of gossip? To say slanderous and even scandalous things about others. When confronted the gossiper usually minimizes their guilt, “Well … it’s true!” As if deflecting one’s sin to the ‘truth’ in the rumor will make one justified.

I am grateful for the people who have the courage to confront me, and the generosity to see me restored. We should all have people like that, who we give openness and authority to speak into our lives. We cannot afford to be surrounded by yes-men. Sometimes love must be confrontational.

There are at least two close friends in my life who know they have full permission to break my legs if I ever am unfaithful to my wife. We had them stand with us on our wedding day, and their pledge to us was no less serious than Kari and my covenant with one another. (I told these wise guys they would want to take a wooden bat to my kneecaps for good measure. They smiled, and I know they would do it. Sound extreme? That’s far less harmful than the ongoing pain our kids would have to endure if their father was unfaithful. Kneecaps can heal but sin destroys trust and true faith.)

The question isn’t who will let you do what you want to do. Who have you given permission to stop you?

 

Healthy people grow.

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  1. healthy people grow
  2. growing people change
  3. change challenges us
  4. challenges drive us to trust Jesus
  5. Jesus calls us to obedience
  6. obedience makes us healthy
  7. healthy people grow!

Growing healthy and whole is a never-ending cycle. We never grow beyond our need to change and grow.

Only Jesus can change us, and we can only grow as we trust in Him, continually.

—adapted from James Ryle, “Healthy Things Grow.”

[HT: Jon Furman in real-time.]

 

Influence. What are you telling yourself?

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Relationship drives influence. In every sphere of life. How are you influencing yourself?

Another question: Do you talk to yourself more than you listen to yourself?

“No one is more influential in your life than you are because no one talks to you more than you do. You’re in an unending conversation with yourself. You’re thanking to yourself all the time, interpreting, organizing, and analyzing what’s going on inside you and around you.”
—Paul David Tripp, A Quest for More

“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?”
—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression

And by “talking to yourself,” we cannot mean just telling yourself positive thoughts or psych yourself up with messages to “stay positive!” That could be part of it, but no amount of positivism can overcome reality. What are you telling yourself that is true?

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
—Philippians 4:8-9

 

Our lives are a pursuit of pleasure. How are your deepest desires met?

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“For many people, Christianity is a tedious and ultimately unsatisfying aversion to temptations they would much prefer to indulge. Nothing depresses me more than to think of expending my one life on earth merely suppressing my deepest desires, always acting contrary to what my soul continues to crave. But there is little hope of it being otherwise so long as I seek satisfaction in something other than God.”
—Sam Storms, One Thing: Developing a Passion for the Beauty of God, 127.

Thankfully, that is not what Christianity is all about, because God is not a killjoy. He offers far better pleasures than any alternative available to us. His promises are not empty, which when when you think about it, that cannot be said of much else. We spend our lives in the pursuit of pleasure. What kinds of pleasures are we pursuing?

Consider these lyrics:

You make known to me the path of life;
in Your presence there is fullness of joy;
at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
—Psalm 16:11

Because God is good, we do not have to look for a satisfying life anywhere else.

Sam Storms describes in his book, One Thing: Developing a Passion For the Beauty of God, a significant story from Greek mythology. Perhaps you already know the story of Jason and Ulysses, as they encountered the Sirens. In Greek mythology, the Sirens are creatures with the head of a female and the body of a bird. They lived on an island (Sirenum Scopuli; three small rocky islands) and with the irresistible charm of their song they lured mariners to their destruction on the rocks surrounding their island.

The Sirens sang when they approached, their words even more enticing than the melody. They would give knowledge to every man who came to them, they said, ripe wisdom and a quickening of the spirit. Countless unwitting sailors had been lured to their death by their outward beauty and the irresistible song of the sirens. They would unwittingly follow the song, crash their ships on the rocks surrounding the island where the sirens would devour them. Any crew passing by needed a fool-proof plan to steer clear of disaster.

Ulysses and the Sirens

Ulysses had been repeatedly warned about the song of the sirens so he had his crew put wax in their ears to block out the seductive song. He commanded his men neither to look to the left nor to the right, but to row for their lives. But Ulysses had other plans for himself. He commanded that he be strapped to the mast of the ship, leaving his ears unplugged. He wanted to hear the song and he instructed the men that he was not to be removed until a safe distance way.

Were it not for the ropes that held him, Ulysses would have succumbed. Though his body was tied, his soul said yes to the temptation. He made it through safely, but the fact that he didn’t give in was only due to the external shackles. Sadly, this is just the way many of us try to resist the appeal of sin, with our hearts chasing the passing pleasures of sin while we shackle ourselves to legalism changing only the outward behavior.

Contrast the approach of Ulysses to Jason, who had also been warned of the seductive siren song. Jason brought with him a man named Orpheus, a musician of incomparable talent. When his music filled the air it had an enchanting effect on everyone who heard it. There was not a lovelier or more beautiful sound in all the world.

When the time came, Jason declined the ear plugs, nor did he ask to be tied. He had no illusion about the strength of his will, instead, he ordered Orpheus to play his most beautiful and alluring song. The Sirens didn’t stand a chance! Jason overcame temptation with something better.

(Which is where the quote from the top comes in.) Storms, and the story of Ulysses and Jason, shows us we do not need a “tedious and ultimately unsatisfying aversion.” We need to find more joy in God, more satisfaction in His promises, than we feel in the alluring — and empty — promises of this fading world. His music needs to be louder than all others, for it’s far more beautiful. He offers us pleasure beyond our wildest dreams.

 

When 5-1=0.

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Our son loves to make up math equations. For some reason, he likes to insist that two plus two equals five. He may end up being a genius, become a trusted expert in the field of quantum mechanics, or write, prove and publish theorems in differential geometry. But we all know that his math right now is not so good. Of course, 2 + 2 = 4, just as 5 – 1 = 4.

But what about when 5 – 1 = 0 ?

A quick lesson in divine mathematics, for all of us; or, at least for me.

First Corinthians 13:1-3:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Paul makes the same point five times:

  1. If I speak eloquently, but do not have love, then I have become a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal.
  2. If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, but do not have love, then I am nothing.
  3. If I have great faith, but do not have love, then I am nothing.
  4. If I give all my possession to feed the poor and do not have love, then it doesn’t amount to anything.
  5. If I surrender my body to burned, but do not have love, then it profits me nothing.

Do you see that? If we have the five, but lack the One, then we have zero. In this way 5 – 1 = 0. I love math, and have always felt I’ve been apt to do well in problem solving. The issues here are not so simple, though, because without God’s Love at work in my heart I have nothing, because I am nothing.

If you’re like me, you long to have the gifts described — eloquent speech, prophetic powers, great faith, treasures to share with others, even the courage to give up your life when needed — but can be certain none of those are ends in and of themselves. Each is meant to be used in the service of others, motivated by a deeper motivation of sacrificial love. This will no doubt take determination and courage, coupled with true generosity to embody the grace given to us in Jesus. It is far easier to do that other five than the One.

Who will join me in living a love of love, no longer okay with being a zero?

 

Enemies with benefits?

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Why don’t people just forgive?

Paul Tripp responds:

That is a very good question. If forgiveness is easier and more beneficial, why isn’t it more popular? The sad reality is that there is short-term, relationally destructive power in refusing to forgive. Holding onto the other’s wrongs gives us the upper hand in our relationship. We keep a record of wrongs because we are not motivated by what honors God and is best for others but by what is expedient for ourselves.

Tripp then offers Five Dark “Benefits” of Unforgiveness, on why we choose unforgiveness in our relationships:

  1. Debt is power.
  2. Debt is identity.
  3. Debt is entitlement.
  4. Debt is weaponry.
  5. Debt puts us in God’s position.

(Read the full post for descriptions of each point.)

Tripp continues:

The Ugly Lifestyle of Selfishness
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