Obey those who are in authority over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you. (Hebrews 13:17)
When our elders at Harvest Church were set in, two dear friends of ours, Neil Silverberg and Pete Beck were there to set them in with us. They both had weighty and wonderful things to say. One thing Neil said has lingered with me. He said, "You cannot disregard these leaders without doing damage to your own soul."
Obviously, that does not mean that Pastor Tim and our elders have a right to be authoritarian, and if you don't do exactly as they say, they will kick you to the curb. Men like that, insecure and law-oriented, are a dime a dozen, and shouldn't be made watchers-over-souls in the first place.
Neil meant that in the spirit, a pastor or elder has special authority.
There. I said it.
I know that is politically incorrect, but that is what the Bible says. I'll let you argue it out with God. You cannot act in a way that disregards authority, nor can you act in ways that bring grief or pain to the heart of those in authority, without sinning. And when you sin against a leader in these ways, you do damage to your soul.
You aren't punished for your sin...the punishment for sin was laid on Jesus Christ. You are, however, punished by your sin. Your sin will harden you, sear what soft places there may be left, and sit there accumulating and sowing to itself until it is dealt with. Gah. If that does not scare you, sin has already been hardening your heart. Your sinning against a leader does not affect your eternal destiny, but it sure will affect your days. And friend....days have a way of becoming years.
How do you bless a leader?
By not being a burden.
You thought I was going to say, "Make sure he is well taken care of." Yeah, the Bible does say that, especially those who labor in the Word, but that is a firm grasp of the obvious. You thought I might say, "Send him on a particularly wonderful vacation, all expenses paid." You thought I might say, "Take him out to dinner."
Nah. All you do to bless your pastor (or elders) is to not be a burden. Don't sin against your own soul by making his job more difficult. Rather, do everything in your power to make his job a joy. How can you do this?
Do your job. Do not do his job. Do not do the accountant's job. Do not do the elder's job. Do your job with excellence.
Stop whining. Stop questioning your pastor, coming and going. It does not validate your existence to do that. It will not create accountability between you and your pastor; rather it makes your pastor expect you to be the one to find fault. He'll overlook you for it, but is that really what you want?
Stop trying to make your hot button his hot button. His hot button has to be the gospel. Nothing but the gospel. Have I been clear enough? If your hot button is children's ministry, then get involved. If your hot button is prayer, then pray. If your hot button is missions, then give like crazy to your church's missionaries, and take a few trips yourself. If your hot button is the homeless, then go minister to them, and take a few church members with you.
Stop expecting a plug from the pulpit for your particular passion. If a pastor did that for every good thing, for every hot button, all he'd be doing is pushing buttons, regularly and randomly. That makes him the Great and Powerful Oz...but it will not make him an effective pastor. Let the man preach the gospel. Let him lead. You do whatever gift and passion and calling that blows your skirt up, without expecting the pastor to hold your hand.
I'll promise you, your pastor has a hot button. But if he is wise, he keeps it to himself, and refuses to create a "niche church" around his hot button. I know my Tim has several hot buttons, one of which is healthy marriages, home education, and yet more are hospitality and evangelism. He is strong in all those areas, and he has great passion for them, but he keeps himself to the gospel as it concerns leading Harvest Church. He sees his job as putting a foundation of grace under people, thus equipping the saints to pursue their hot buttons under the safety of oversight.
If your hot button is nursing home ministry, and you pursue that ministry with passion and purpose, then your church is a "nursing home ministry" church. If your hot button is missions, and you go on mission trips, and you support your church's missionaries, then your church is a "missions church". If your passion is worship, you can have a worship-oriented church even if you can't sing a lick. Make sure your worship leader has the best instrument he or she could use. Worship your butt off. Encourage the worship leader, and make your enjoyment of worship obvious. You'll have a "worshipping church" before you know it!
No one church can place an emphasis on everything. But you can emphasize what you are passionate about, with your life. I can't think of a more wonderful way to live.
One more thing...
Help take care of the building. Outdated fixtures and furnishings, overgrown grass, and general untidiness is one of the most off-putting things a visitor can encounter. They matter, more than most are willing to admit.
We don't think twice about making our own homes more welcoming. When our grass needs mowing, we either mow it ourselves or pay someone to do it. We don't think twice about tapping our home's equity to make improvements. We consider that a wise investment...yet we get queasy if the church sanctuary gets redecorated for the first time in ten years. We wonder where the money's coming from. Well, without good facilities, there soon won't be much money to worry about, frankly. That is just the reality of church in the 21st century. Get over it, and work with it.
Get on board with making your church building, its grounds, and its parking area to be the best, most useful it can be. Help with the grounds keeping, the care, the maintenance. Take as much pride in your church surroundings as you do your own home. It will be such a blessing to your pastor.
How to be a blessing? Just don't be a burden.
Grace - It's a Good Thing, Part II
Yes, in Galatians 4, Paul is basically saying, "What is good for the goose is good for the...other goose." Something like that. He says that the legalists "zealously affect you", but not for good. Not for a good reason, not with a right motive.
But, he says, it is good for the heart to be zealously affected in a good thing, always! Paul, a master of sarcasm, is doing a "back atcha, Pharisee". The more the pseudo law-lovers try to zealously affect God's people, the more Paul is going to zealously affect them.
It isn't a bad thing, at all, to be zealously affected. It isn't necessarily wrong for someone to try to zealously influence you. It depends on 1. What you are being affected for, or what you are being affected about, and 2. The motive of the person influencing you.
Paul's Great Goal was Grace. The legalists Great Goal was Performance.
And so it is today. The scary thing is, you do get to choose what you will be zealously affected by.
Reread Galatians, if you get the chance.
Grace...It's a Good Thing
Legalists "zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them. But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing..."
The gist of this passage out of Galatians 4 is that self righteous people are always zealous and sincere, and their top priority is to influence you away from the gospel-preachers, to separate you from a gospel-centered church. The Message puts it this way:
"Those heretical teachers go to great lengths to flatter you, but their motives are rotten. They want to shut you out of the free world of God’s grace so that you will always depend on them for approval and direction, making them feel important."
You will be wined and dined, you will be invited to the parties, you will get the friend requests on Facebook, you will be the friend of the Pharisee, so long as you allow yourself to be affected by them. Because their goal is to separate you from the teachers they disagree with. They will flatter you with their friendship, but the motive is to "exclude you", which in the Greek means to separate you out for themselves. If you are in the grace-camp, a Pharisee will target you to hang with them, to make them feel validated and important. A Pharisee craves admiration like a pig craves the mud. They have to have followers, and they will look you up years later (lucky you!), they will call you with an invitation when they never even really liked you, all because they are searching near and far for yet another person to join them. And because they don't want you hanging out with the likes of Paul...
It's lonely at the top. These high achievers don't have the means for emotional continuity in friendship, because all us low achieving little people have such glaring flaws. No wonder we talk so much about grace, we need it...take one look at us and our children, after all. We haven't achieved much, other than a middle class income and true friendships. We drive cars that aren't new, and our goals don't go much beyond loving God and loving people. We got nothing to show for all this grace-talk other than righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
A little law mighta' dun us good.
Ah, well. Legends in Their Own Minds always end up, in the words of Peter Pan to Captain Hook, "Old. Alone. Done for."
Give me the low place, any day. I will choose the least important seat. The one with all my rowdy friends close by. The seat with all those prodigal sons and daughters. I'll sit there, thankyouverymuch. Who knows? At the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, I just might be the one told, "Come up here and sit."
Wouldn't that be fine?
I agree with Paul - it is good to be zealously affected in a good thing. I do not plan on shutting up, not in this life, about the finished work of Christ. Gentle Reader, I am out to zealously affect you in a good thing...a very good thing. The Word of His Grace.
It will be good for you to be zealously affected. It will be health to your very bones.
Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.That good thing which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. (II Timothy 1: 13, 14)
The gist of this passage out of Galatians 4 is that self righteous people are always zealous and sincere, and their top priority is to influence you away from the gospel-preachers, to separate you from a gospel-centered church. The Message puts it this way:
"Those heretical teachers go to great lengths to flatter you, but their motives are rotten. They want to shut you out of the free world of God’s grace so that you will always depend on them for approval and direction, making them feel important."
You will be wined and dined, you will be invited to the parties, you will get the friend requests on Facebook, you will be the friend of the Pharisee, so long as you allow yourself to be affected by them. Because their goal is to separate you from the teachers they disagree with. They will flatter you with their friendship, but the motive is to "exclude you", which in the Greek means to separate you out for themselves. If you are in the grace-camp, a Pharisee will target you to hang with them, to make them feel validated and important. A Pharisee craves admiration like a pig craves the mud. They have to have followers, and they will look you up years later (lucky you!), they will call you with an invitation when they never even really liked you, all because they are searching near and far for yet another person to join them. And because they don't want you hanging out with the likes of Paul...
It's lonely at the top. These high achievers don't have the means for emotional continuity in friendship, because all us low achieving little people have such glaring flaws. No wonder we talk so much about grace, we need it...take one look at us and our children, after all. We haven't achieved much, other than a middle class income and true friendships. We drive cars that aren't new, and our goals don't go much beyond loving God and loving people. We got nothing to show for all this grace-talk other than righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
A little law mighta' dun us good.
Ah, well. Legends in Their Own Minds always end up, in the words of Peter Pan to Captain Hook, "Old. Alone. Done for."
Give me the low place, any day. I will choose the least important seat. The one with all my rowdy friends close by. The seat with all those prodigal sons and daughters. I'll sit there, thankyouverymuch. Who knows? At the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, I just might be the one told, "Come up here and sit."
Wouldn't that be fine?
I agree with Paul - it is good to be zealously affected in a good thing. I do not plan on shutting up, not in this life, about the finished work of Christ. Gentle Reader, I am out to zealously affect you in a good thing...a very good thing. The Word of His Grace.
It will be good for you to be zealously affected. It will be health to your very bones.
Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.That good thing which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. (II Timothy 1: 13, 14)
White Bean Soup Tutorial
Gather your ingredients: white beans (I used the "quick soak" method - which is to bring your beans to a boil, let them boil for two minutes, then turn off the heat, cover them, and forget about them for an hour or so...) 2 stalks of celery, some onion, some garlic (I'm out of fresh, so I used the jar), some diced tomatoes, some tahini, barley, red wine vinegar, chicken broth, and fresh spinach.
sweat out the celery and onion in about a tablespoon of olive oil. Add the garlic after a minute or two, because you never. ever. want to burn the garlic. Amen.
Add the diced tomato...stir...enjoy the smells. Yum!
Add your white beans, broth, one tablespoon of tahini, a splash of red wine vinegar, two or three cups of water, and a half-cup of barley...cover and simmer on low heat for a couple of hours, while you play with this:
shameless grandbaby plug, I know.
(Actually, I didn't get to hold him hardly at all today.)
Just before serving, wilt as much spinach as you'd like. Season with coarse salt and fresh ground pepper.
Merry Midwinter - 5 Tips For Beating Doldrums
A dusting of snow around our little pond...Doldrums: a period of stagnation or slump
It is a proven fact that this is the time of year people suffer most from mild to moderate depression. It can manifest as a few days of doldrums, or as a chronic malaise. But pretty much everyone experiences the "bleak midwinter blahs". We long for sun and spring.
I won't claim to have found a cure-all for midwinter malaise, but the tips you find here today are hard-won. They come from a knowledge that is first-hand and not book-read. I didn't google "midwinter malaise" - much like I didn't google "grace" or "George MacDonald" or "how to have a great marriage".
1. exercise - proven to be as effective as antidepressants.
2. produce - get something done. Pick one thing, and do it thoroughly and well. The sense of accomplishment will spill over into the next thing, and the next...and so on. Accomplishment begets accomplishment. A body in motion tends to remain in motion, a body at rest tends to remain at rest. Get something done.
3. coffee - this will seem unhealthy to some, but evidence suggests that it is actually healthy to have that cuppa Joe in the morning. It is full of antioxidants, and the caffeine does, in fact, make you sharper and more energetic. Just don't overdo it, and you'll be fine. Go on...have a cup of coffee when you feel the lethargy trying to set in on you. Mostly, simply enjoy your coffee. Preferably with a good book and the smallest bite of something sweet. My coffee breaks are akin to a proper southern woman's "tea time". It is my few minutes to breathe deeply, savor, look out the window and wonder at the world.
4. Get outside. Embrace the cold of winter. (Embrace the humid-heat of summer, too, but that is another post for another season....) I'm telling you, few things feel better than coming into a cozy warm house when you've been outside in the cold. Bundle up and get outside, get some sunshine on those retinas...15-30 minutes, studies show. My own experience leans closer to 30 minutes. It does not matter if it is a cloudy day. You still need to be outside, where the daylight is, however cloudy it might be, for at least 15 minutes. Adjust your perspective to be an Attitude of Gratitude for the seasons, the weather, the cold, the warm house you will go back to. This works!
5. Lastly, two tips straight from the Bible. (I know - I said "5 Tips". I have twin girls. I never could resist a two-for-one deal.)
Ointment and perfume delight the heart, And the sweetness of a man’s friend gives delight by hearty counsel. Proverbs 27:9
5a. essential oils. This isn't woo-woo, new age silliness. This is tried and true Biblical remedy. Orange oil works wonders for me in winter, as does peppermint. Simply put a drop or two in the palm of your hand, rub your hands together, put your hands near your face, and breathe deeply. Really. Breathe. I often huff lavender at night. And a couple drops of eucalyptus oil is fantastic in the floor of your shower, just before you turn on the hot water. One of the best purchases I made, was a couple of small vials of essential oil (it has to be the real deal) in a roll-on application. I carry these in my purse, and roll one into the palms of my hands when I'm sitting in traffic, and then I just breathe it in. Makes me happy. It rejoices my heart. It'll make you happy. Promise.
5b. Good girlfriends. The older I get, the more I value my girlfriends. Especially the ones that make me laugh. And give me little presents. The ones who need me, yet are not "needy". The ones who can handle a season of silence, yet will answer my email in a flash if they but glimpse that my heart might be aching. The ones I can count on to stick and stay, no matter how much I show my butt. If you have walked this earth and collected one True Girl Friend thus far, you are blessed and to be envied. Every woman proclaims her own goodness, but a faithful woman who can find? (Proverbs, tweaked to the female pronoun.)
Spend some time with a fun and funny girl. If she's a pretty girl, even better. I so love me a pretty girl - in the nicest sort of way. I got me some gorgeous home-girls. Some with blue eyes, some with brown...some who are plus-size, some who are size two - but they are all cute as can be, otherwise I wouldn't like 'em as much.
My daughters are pretty and witty. I have no idea where they got it.
(Big Barney Fife snifffffff)
We give each other space, and get all up in each other's business. They are my best girlfriends, too.
My home-girls rejoice my heart. They are just the thing on a frosty winter day...an email from one, a brief chat with another, catching a movie with yet another, its all good.
Grandbabies and Knitting...
What do you say we enjoy a little bit of pleasant randomness to start our weekend?
I cast off the last, long side of this rectangular lumbar pillow, stitched three sides together with matching embroidery thread, turned the pillow out, stuffed it generously, and stitched the short end closed. Done and done! I love how it turned out...so soft and full of texture.
I happened to look over across the bed and saw Poppy and the Grandson chillaxin' together...that little hand just lightly touching Poppy's lips...breathing those sweet, deep belly breaths. Tim can feel baby's breathing belly on his breathing chest, and the affect is pure bliss.
Nighty-night Poppy and baby Timothy...rest well. Saturday is going to be a fun day! Mommy and Daddy have plans to get you out and about, and you will love it...I think Grandaddy is going to take me out to breakfast in the morning. So here's a kiss on that little nose, and I'll tell you "goodnight" now!
Have a grace-filled weekend, friends.
I went shopping at Pottery Barn over the holidays, and was so inspired by their hand-knit, plush yarn pillows...So. Instead of paying $60 - $75 for one, I made a pillow of my own for about $12. I worked on it while we waited around the house for labor to start. I worked on it in the hospital while Hannah was in labor, and worked on it here and there in those first days back home, when we all were up every few hours around the clock, and my hands needed something productive to do. Finally, tonight, I finished it.
I cast off the last, long side of this rectangular lumbar pillow, stitched three sides together with matching embroidery thread, turned the pillow out, stuffed it generously, and stitched the short end closed. Done and done! I love how it turned out...so soft and full of texture.
I happened to look over across the bed and saw Poppy and the Grandson chillaxin' together...that little hand just lightly touching Poppy's lips...breathing those sweet, deep belly breaths. Tim can feel baby's breathing belly on his breathing chest, and the affect is pure bliss.
Nighty-night Poppy and baby Timothy...rest well. Saturday is going to be a fun day! Mommy and Daddy have plans to get you out and about, and you will love it...I think Grandaddy is going to take me out to breakfast in the morning. So here's a kiss on that little nose, and I'll tell you "goodnight" now!
Have a grace-filled weekend, friends.
To Know Him in the Now
Now is the time.
All your sins, past and future, are forgiven through the cross of Christ. You are free. You are free from guilt over your yesterdays, and free from anxiety over your tomorrows. This is only possible because God always inhabits the Eternal Now. It is well said that He is the great I Am, not the great I Was, nor the great I Will Be.
"Now" is always the acceptable, and in fact the only available time to receive the grace of God. (The Bible says, "Behold now is the day of salvation", which means the very same thing...)
This applies to me, though I first came to know His salvation 38 years ago. "NOW" is still the only possible opportunity I have to work out my salvation - now is the time to fear and tremble, lest I be found trying to add to His gift of righteousness. Now is the only possible opportunity I have to labor to enter His rest. Now is the only possible opportunity I have to practice His presence, to savor His sweetness, to taste of His goodness, and boast in His ability.
The only real obedience is now obedience. Planned obedience doesn't count, and past obedience counts even less. Past obedience doesn't accrue in some imaginary balance scale, the weight of which absolves me from present devotion.
I either love my brother now, or it is as though I never have and never will. (You know...your brother...your sister...the ones with names and phone numbers and addresses and children and burdens and joys and hurts and fears and they offended you and you can't quite get over it and now is your only acceptable time to make it right, to live in love again.)
I either practice His presence now, or He is only real to me in my memory, not in this moment.
Grace is not reserved for those weeks and months after I first believed. Grace is more for the present moment, a throne to which I now run with my actual life, not with my version of the story. God only deals in reality, He doesn't deal with my spin on reality.
I either hunger for Him now, or I am not hungry at all, with no guarantee of an appetite tomorrow. My heart is either tender now, or it is hard. Past tenderheartedness is not insurance in the event of future callouses. Past fire doesn't make up for present lukewarmness.
Who you are now....is who you are. You are not who you used to be, and you are not who you intend to be.
Does your "now" find you falling short? If so, you have just become human, because it is our "now" that forever finds us out. When we stop living in the land of memory and good intention, we always find ourselves in a time of need. Oh, how we need the grace of God.
"I need Thee, Oh I need Thee! Every hour I need Thee!"
Whatever you need to do to change your mind, to make things right, to take joy, to be unjaded and uncritical, to fully obey, to fully love, to fully forgive, to draw those you love straight to your heart....do it.
Now.
Now is all there is.
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