our blog
Jun
Community Promotes Formation
Everyone is terrified to be known! With that first tentative step into community, you risk being known. That includes the good, the bad and the ugly. Putting yourself out there is scary, but what if you ignore God’s commission and live in isolation? What is at stake when we fail to live life as God defined it? It is not our acceptance by God. Your salvation was eternally secure from the very moment you entrusted yourself to Jesus. However, your unbelief and mistrust of God will short-circuit the life God desires to give you.
It is easy to play mind games with yourself and think if you disregard what God is saying to you in one area, that your unbelief won’t adversely affect other areas of your spiritual life. The truth is, as many of us have learned the hard way, disregarding God in any way will eventually corrupt every aspect of our relationship with God.
Hebrews 3:12-13
12 Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Sin is seductive, enticing, deceitful and, eventually, hardening. It cannot deliver what it promises. Sin promises pleasure, but that is fleeting, which only fuels the fire of addiction. “Hardness” in Hebrews 3:13 is translated from the Greek word for callus. Calluses form on the palms of your hands from constant hard use. Calluses, like a hardened heart, do not form overnight.
We are so depraved that, left alone, we will fall into unbelief and will deceive ourselves the entire time we are spiraling more and more out of control. This is why we need the protection of honest involvement with others who are trying to listen to God’s voice.
COMMUNITY PROMOTES FORMATION. In community, we can not only grow in our faith by reading and studying God’s Word, but by sharing our struggles, confessing when we have gotten off-track before it goes on too long, and challenging each other. The encouragement we receive from members of our community prevents us from falling away and becoming hardened.
Jun
Hide & Seek
As odd as it might sound, when I am walking outside sometimes I am looking for places that would make good spots to hide. I blame it on the numerous summer days spent playing Hide and Seek with my friends. All the kids would fan out through the neighborhood searching for a place to disappear hoping that the person who was “It” would never locate them. Climbing up trees, ducking between bushes, hiding underneath a set of stairs – anywhere where they were out of sight would do. Yet, being the last one found was a badge of honor on our block.
It was a sense of accomplishment to hear someone scream out “Olly Oxen Free!” This expression is familiar to anyone who has spent anytime on a playground. It is used in children’s games to signal that the game is over or that the main player has given up hope of winning.
Now as a father of two young girls, I watch them play hide and seek and it is charming. However, during my time walking alongside people as a pastor, I’ve come to realize watching grown men and woman still playing this game is nothing but depressing. The sad truth is that there are some who are still hidden behind that bush waiting for someone, anyone, to make that call: Olly, Olly, Oxen Free!
The game is the same, we’ve just come up with different hiding places and the players have perfected the craft of disappearing. True community will never take place if we remain hidden behind our jobs, fake appearances, social status, or pat Christian answers. The game of hide and seek will continue on from sun up to sun down.
Somebody has to have the courage to make the call: Olly, Olly, Oxen Free! It only takes one person who is willing to lay down their agenda for others to realize they can come out hiding without the risk of being caught. There is no fear of being caught—only found. There is no longer the pressure to hide.
Community is essential in our transformation process. Without being known others, the likelihood of true inner change occurring is very slim. Every one of us needs a few people to tell us the truth about our heart, point out our weaknesses, and also celebrate our successes. It is imperative that we all have someone who will ask those difficult questions.
- Read Proverbs 27:17, Hebrews 10:23-25 and Ecclesiastes 4:9-12. Why is being known inside of community critical to our individual growth?
- Think of the area where you are most vulnerable to stumbling as it relates to your One Word. What are you risking by keeping your struggles to yourself? What benefit is there to becoming transparent before God and inside community?
Are you looking for a way to keep your word in front of you all year long? Register for a My One Word account! One of the key features of a MOW account is an online Word Journal that allows you to capture your thoughts to reflective questions like you see above. You can go back at any time to read your completed journals to see how God has been moving in your life through your word in 2011. If you already have an account, the questions from this blog have been posted to your Word Journal –log in to your account to start your Word Journal today!
Jun
House Of Mirrors
When the leaves begin to turn colors and the air gets a littler crisper at night, fall festivals start taking place in cities and towns all across America. It’s a special time of year when everyone in town comes together to celebrate their community over amusement rides, chili cook-offs, and funnel cake. There is so much to see and do at the fair you don’t know where to begin.
You and a few of your friends hand over two tickets and enter one of the favorite attractions in the House of Mirrors. As everyone goes their separate ways, you get misplaced from your group and lost amongst the hundreds of mirrors. Out of the corner of your eye, you see reflections of your friends in a few of the mirrors. Numerous reflections, but only one is where you friends will be found. You try to pursue them and head towards a reflection. WHAM! Your head smacks up against a mirror. Wrong reflection.
Your second and third attempt produce similar results. Just when you think you are on the right track there comes another dead end. Frustrated and sore you give up your pursuit and head towards the exit. From the way the walls are constructed to the angles of the mirrors, the purpose of the ride is to mess with someone’s spatial and visual senses. The shapes in the House of Mirrors give the participants unusual and confusing reflections of themselves and those around them.
Whether we realize it or not, we tend to live our lives like we are in that House of Mirrors by engaging in the game of self-preservation. Even though we crave to be in relationships with others where we are known, vulnerability is something we fear at the same time. Our culture has programmed us to keep people at arm’s length. We have grown into a society that seldom trusts the intention of other people and because of this we are often apprehensive about letting people know us.
This is not meant to imply that you don’t have close friends or anyone in your life that really knows you. But even in those relationships there are often barriers that are erected to manage an image that we want to maintain. The barrier to developing authentic relationships is self-preservation. In general, we want others to perceive us better than we even perceive ourselves. We often struggle with disappointing other people or not measuring up to some standard that always feels out of reach.
We are afraid that if we take off our masks or expose our problems, we will be rejected. At the fall carnival, we shun the rejected like the Bearded Woman, Two Headed Boy and Midget Lady to the House of Freaks. We pay our money and snap our pictures as we gaze at people who don’t fit in to normal society. We struggle with whether others will perceive us as normal or not.
What we fail to realize is that everybody has a habit they struggle to control, a past they can’t undo, an insecurity they hide, or a flaw they are desperately trying to correct. The good news is we don’t believe anyone is normal or has it all together. Everyone is crazy. Unfortunately, if things remain the same and we allow self-preservation to exist, we hinder our spiritual formation and growth.
If we are to survive and continue to grow out of our struggles we need a community around us to encourage us. If we are more concerned with our own self-preservation we will hide behind an image that we want others to have about us. Our desire for self-preservation is often at the expense of developing authentic relationships with those around us. So how do we start? As with all things, we center on God.
If we are going to develop authentic relationships, we have to be authentic ourselves and authentic with God about where we are. Authenticity is an accurate reflection of truth. Authenticity enables us to truly reflect where we currently are in our relationship with God. Whether it is good, bad or ugly, our honesty serves as a starting point for conversations to begin and change to occur.
- There are many reasons we have for not engaging with others. What barriers are you constructing that are preventing others from seeing the real you? How is this hindering your pursuit of your One Word?
- Read 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, Colossians 2:9-10 and Psalm 139:23-24. According to these verses, what does it mean to be authentic before others and God? Would you say you are being authentic before God or engaging in self-preservation? What makes you answer in the way that you do?
Are you looking for a way to keep your word in front of you all year long? Register for a My One Word account! One of the key features of a MOW account is an online Word Journal that allows you to capture your thoughts to reflective questions like you see above. You can go back at any time to read your completed journals to see how God has been moving in your life through your word in 2010. If you already have an account, the questions from this blog have been posted to your Word Journal — log in to your account to start your Word Journal today!