God Wants to Redeem You're Adversity

from In the Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, pages 73-74

I'm convinced that the people God uses most are often the people who have experienced the most adversity. That isn't necessarily what I want to write, and it isn't necessarily what you want to read, but it's true. Adversity can produce an increased capacity to serve God...

What pits have you fallen into? What lions have you encountered? What Giants have you faced? God wants to redeem the adversity you've experienced. He wants to recycle your adversity and turn it into a ministry.

I know so many people whose adversity has become their ministry. They go through a painful divorce or the death of a child or a destructive addiction, but God helps them climb out of the pit so they can help others in similar circumstances.

God is in the business of recycling our pain and using it for someone else's gain...

Now here is what you need to understand: If you don't turn your adversity into a ministry, then your pain remains your pain. But if you allow God to translate your adversity into a ministry, then your pain becomes someone else's gain.

I have a theory: The more problems you have, the more potential you have to help people.

One of the most paralyzing mistakes we make is thinking that our problems somehow disqualify us from being used by God. Let me just say it like it is: If you don't have any problems, you don't have any potential. Here's why. Your ability to help others heal is limited to where you've been wounded.

December's Blog

Today I did the mock-up for the face of December's blog. It should be festive. It may take some getting used to (like, it is borderline obnoxious), but I think you'll like it.

The Irony

Today Mike, our tech lead at "The Office," sent an e-mail to everyone that said, Please be advised that I have made a change to our email servers. All mail with a spam score of >= 15 will now be deleted before it even reaches your inbox. If you would like a lower number for automatic deletion please let me know. A score of 5 or more is generally considered to be spam. I do backup all incoming mail before the spam filter runs so if you believe you are missing an important message, please let me know and I will look for it in the backup.
--
Mike

The ironic thing is that his e-mail message went to my junk mail folder.

A Long Two Weeks

This could be the longest two week wait of my life. Or at least the hardest wait. Well, hard, but not as hard as the anticipation leading up to asking Jean to marry me, or waiting for my children to be born. But, it still ranks up there. I haven't heard from MHGS that they need anything more from me to help them make their decision about me, especially moving from the MDiv program to the Counseling program. Acceptance letters go out from the school on Dec. 1. I was told a decision on me might be delayed. I am just eager to know.

DUDE!

This commercial makes me laugh. Maybe it is because it reminds me of my life, minus the beer... This one has a few different scenes.

Are You Living Your Life in a Way that is Worth Telling Stories About?

from pages 56-57 of In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day...

"So here is my question: Are you living your life in a way that is worth telling stories about?

Maybe it is time to quit running and time to start chasing. Try something new. Take some risks. Start doing some things that are worth recounting in jaw-dropping detail. I think we owe it to our kids and grandkids. Imagine the bedtime stories Benaiah must have told his children. I can hear his wife monitoring him. Remember Benaiah, they're only four and five years old. Keep it G.

Too many of us pray as if God's primary objective is to keep us from getting scared. But the goal of life is not the elimination of fear. The goal is to muster the moral courage to chase lions.

I'm certainly not suggesting that you jump a fence at your local zoo. Please heed the warning sign on the outside of the lion cage. But I'm concerned that the church has turned into a bunker where we seek shelter when we're actually called to storm the gates of hell. Does that sound safe? I can't imagine a more daring or dangerous mission.

If the truth be told, the alternative to fear is boredom. And boredom isn't just boring. Boredom is inexcusable. Soren Kierkegaard went so far as to say that 'boredom is the root of all evil' because it means we're refusing to be who God made us to be. If you're bored, one thing is for sure: You're not following the footsteps of Christ.

At some point in your life you have to make a choice between fear and boredom.
Lion chasers choose fear."

Dad, Can I Help?

Most of the time when I am doing something Sam will say, "Can I help?" Sometimes it is easier to just do it myself. I often need to put my time line aside and engage him. I won't have these days much longer. The days that he calls me his bestest friend.

Thursday I was carving the turkey. Sam walked up and said, "Dad. Can I help?" No one ever showed me how to carve the meat for any big holiday meal. I was several years into marriage before I mustered the courage to brave meat cutting. It is a something that should be taught and shared. So, I answered, "Sure buddy! Grab a stool!"

Is it Really Comcastic????

We have been without cable television and internet since Monday afternoon. Jean needs the internet to work. And, it also gives her a look into the outside world. Monday afternoon she was told that it was a wide range service interruption. Yesterday morning all of those outages were taken care of, but we still had no cable television or internet. The Sweetpea wasn't happy. The Comcast people said that the soonest they could have someone out is Saturday. We are having Thanksgiving out our house. Hello! There is a game to watch!

Last night when we got back from Moe's I went out with my flashlight and checked the Comcast box by the road. Looked fine. Everything seemed in order where the Bill, the greatest of all transformers, ran the cable line under the deck (it had been on top of the deck for anyone to trip on since before we moved in). I called Comcast and after waiting my obligatory 17 minutes for the customer service person to come on, I explained that neither our cable tv or internet were working. I asked if they could diagnose the problem from there, or if they in anyway could get anyone out before Saturday. She asked, "Did you check the connection at the back or your tv?" I replied, "Now why would the connection at the back of my television cause the connectivity lights on my modem not to blink?" She replied, "I'M TRYING TO HELP YOU SIR!" Okay. Then, yes, I've checked it. She said that she would have someone out between 2 and 5 pm Wednesday. Excellent! And, someone was actually at our house fixing it by noon. The Sweetpea is now happy.

So, How was Seattle?

Seattle was terrific! Jean's blog has a lot of great information about our trip. I will most likely leave a lot of things out, so I won't even attempt to mention all that went on.

We visited the market at Pike's Place Thursday, it got dark early. Friday I interviewed. An hour's worth of writing, followed by a group interview. Then lunch at Anthony's Fish Bar. The afternoon was more just learning about different facets of the school. For dinner we went to Jai Thai for Thai food with several students and prospective students. It was good to know them as people, not just students. The evening wrapped up back at the school with a session by Dan Allender. It was great. Saturday was more learning and listening.

Acceptance letters will go out to prospective students on December 1. If I am accepted, my acceptance may be delayed. All of my application paperwork was sent in back in August with the intention of pursuing a masters of divinity, with my electives being used towards counseling. That evolved into wanting to do a counseling and masters of divinity program at the same time. When I got there I found out that the school had just determined that it was no longer giving the option of doing two programs at one time. I know that God uses me most in a counseling role, so I changed my program choice. Over the weekend they were looking at me as if I were applying for the masters of divinity program. Now, they will need to go back and look at me as a prospective counseling student. That may simply mean the delay of determining my acceptance, I may need to write another essay or two, and/or I may need to go back to Seattle in late winter for another interview.

And It Slipped Away

I went out to the ski hill today to ride what I assumed could be the last outside ride until at least the end of hunting season, perhaps until Feb. 1, and quite possibly until spring. Riding the ski area has proven to be a hard, challenging, awesome course. I was stretching and a guy in a red truck, who works for the ski area, asked if I was going mountain biking. I said yes. He said that I couldn't, that it was closed. I had thought today was the last day to ride since deer hunting season starts tomorrow. Nope. Saturday was the last day. Nuts.

Saturday I did ride with Sherpa and Brick. A great ride with two awesome friends. It was a great day that day. Good ride, great conversation.

But, it has slipped away. Riding this summer has been great and it is very hard to let go. Some great mornings riding alone with God and some very good conversations with him. I got to know some great guys, and got to know some great guys even more. It has been a sport that I hoped would better my physical shape, and it did (I lost 14 lbs. this summer!). The unexpected benefit was how much I would grow spiritually and emotionally by being pushed and challenged by God and by friends. Today is a sad day. Like saying goodbye to a good friend.

Should You Stay or Should You Go

A co-worker of mine sent me this link. Each of us knows it is time to go. The article confirmed just how much it is time for me to go. Wow is it time for me to go!

Thoughts on "I'm Sorry"

Thursday morning I finished reading Deadly Viper: Character Assassins. It was a book that was handed out free this year at Catalyst. It was a good read, and a very quick read. It was written in an Eastern Martial Arts format. Master Po, Grasshopper, and the Assassins that will attempt to defeat a warrior (the most interesting being the assassin of Boom Chicka Wah Wah, simply because now I like to walk around saying, Boom Chicka Wah Wah...). It was more moral than Christian. Yet, if the authors tried to force Christianity into the book, tried to force the correlation between Master Po and God, the book would have been cheesy. I digress...

After work Friday I was pondering the phrase I'm sorry. In one of the book's chapters there were a couple of paragraphs devoted to one of their leader friends who made a point when late for an appointment, in this case a lunch appointment, not to say, Sorry I'm late. It was the traffic. Instead he would say, The traffic was terrible. I'm buying you lunch. Basically a gesture, taking some ownership, of holding up the person he was meeting. Even if it wasn't completely his fault.

It made me think of how easy it is for others, for me, to say, I'm sorry. Yet, that I'm sorry really doesn't cost us anything. I started thinking about how the I'm sorry may be cheapened because it didn't really cost us anything more than the breath to spew those words from our lips.

When Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, God made Adam and Eve clothes. Their sin caused an animal or several to need to be killed in order for God to make them clothing. There was a cost.

I'm not promoting a victim mentality where if someone hurts you, you take on the attitude of You owe me, and big. That doesn't help. What I am contemplating for me is taking on the attitude of grieving and restitution when someone is frustrated, broken, angry, weary (you get the point) and I was involved, no matter how little control we had over traffic, getting held up by someone else, or whatever. The bottom line is we were involved in hurting someone else. We can't think, eh, it was no big deal. Or, they'll understand. Or, if they don't understand they need to grow up. That attitude is one of saying the other person doesn't matter. How often when I sin do I say an, Sorry God and go on. While God forgives, I have cheapened Christ's death for that sin. I haven't adequately grieved for the hurt I've done and that sin nailing Jesus to the cross. Saying I'm sorry should cost something. Even if it is as simplistic as healthy grief.

Books

Tuesday Greg and I were e-mailing about books. The subject ended up as a post on Greg's blog. Today I was at the bookstore, and a book jumped out at me because of it's cover. The black and yellow cover looked cool.

The book is titled The Danger Habit: how to grow your love of risk into life-changing faith. Seems interesting. The back of the book reads: You've been called adrenaline junkie, thrill seeker, permanently out of the box, extreme, and just plain crazy. And mostly, it's true. Whether you show your radical nature in extreme sports, supercharged business ventures, or high-risk relationships, you have a full-blown danger habit. As far as you can tell, you were born with it. And honestly, you wouldn't have it any other way... Except when your danger habit betrays you. Then your craving for adventure turns into magnet for disaster. You leave a trail of broken commitments and stupid decisions. You get trapped into binding addictions. You hurt the ones you love. And you end up feeling like a mistake. But what if you were created radical for a reason? What if the extreme life God has in mind for you doesn't have to come with a dark side? What if you were built this way for an important, even eternal, mission?

I hope you can judge a book by it's cover! I'll let you know how it goes once I finish Deadly Viper Character Assassins and In the Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. (For info on those books check out the widget on the right.)

Warning!

After reading Tyler's warning, it hit me. I realize I am alive because someone started a fight with me. I feel the pain. I am alive. Excellent.

Unusual Holidays

If there wasn't already a show called the office, a television show could be made using the characters from the office I work in. We have Mexican day, fun hat day, etc., etc., etc. On the intranet for our office we are told what unusual holiday it is. Today is "Marooned without a compass" day. Cartographers, remember this, NEVER be marooned without your compass! NEVER!

Tandem Cyclocross

Many of you know Brian (the guy in the front in this picture). He manages Village Bike Shop in Cascade, and attends Ada. He and his teammate finished 2nd on Sunday in a race of 12 tandem cyclocross teams. NICE!

What Describes This?

Friday night after work I bought 60 wall pavers at Home Depot. I wasn't sure how I should title this blog... The exhaust was 2" off the ground. It was little difficult to steer at 45 mph, and scary at 55 mph. The picture doesn't begin to show what was going on...

Friendship

I have needed to give up serving in ministry because of needing to focus my attention on getting our house in selling condition.

This "time away" has proven interesting. It is hard going to church because there are places where I see help is needed, mostly in the lives of hurting people, yet I'm up to my armpits in Seattle plans. I dig in where I can, but I can't be there longterm for anyone.

Another interesting thing has been friendships. Some guys I have served with a long time. It is hard because the only time I hear from them is when they have questions about Men's Ministry. There are no questions about how I am really doing. I have served with these guys A LONG time.

But, there are others. Those brothers who check in on my daily because they care about ME. Not about what I can give or do for them. They ask the deep questions about my heart. About where I am struggling. Where my joy is. How my family is dealing with the transition. They have me in mind. That is awesome friendship.

What Does He Want From Us?

from The Ransomed Heart - Daily Readings...

The gospel says that we, who are God’s beloved, created a cosmic crisis. It says we, too, were stolen from our True Love and that he launched the greatest campaign in the history of the world to get us back. God created us for intimacy with him. When we turned our back on him he promised to come for us. He sent personal messengers; he used beauty and affliction to recapture our hearts. After all else failed, he conceived the most daring of plans. Under the cover of night he stole into the enemy’s camp incognito, the Ancient of Days disguised as a newborn. The Incarnation, as Phil Yancey reminds us, was a daring raid into enemy territory. The whole world lay under the power of the evil one and we were held in the dungeons of darkness. God risked it all to rescue us. Why? What is it that he sees in us that causes him to act the jealous lover, to lay siege both on the kingdom of darkness and on our own idolatries as if on Troy—not to annihilate, but to win us once again for himself? This fierce intention, this reckless ambition that shoves all conventions aside, willing literally to move heaven and earth—We’ve been offered many explanations.

From one religious camp we’re told that what God wants is obedience, or sacrifice, or adherence to the right doctrines, or morality. Those are the answers offered by conservative churches. The more therapeutic churches suggest that no, God is after our contentment, or happiness, or self-actualization, or something else along those lines. He is concerned about all these things, of course, but they are not his primary concern. What he is after is us—our laughter, our tears, our dreams, our fears, our heart of hearts. Remember his lament in Isaiah, that though his people were performing all their duties, “their hearts are far from me” (29:13 italics added). How few of us truly believe this. We’ve never been wanted for our heart, our truest self, not really, not for long. The thought that God wants our heart seems too good to be true.

(The Sacred Romance , 90, 91 )

It Will Be Messy

from The Ransomed Heart Daily Readings...

The family is…like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy.

Chesterton could have been talking about a little fellowship (our true family, because it is the Family of God). It is a royal mess. I will not whitewash this. It is disruptive. Going to church with hundreds of other people to sit and hear a sermon doesn’t ask much of you. It certainly will never expose you. That’s why most folks prefer it. Because community will. It will reveal where you have yet to become holy, right at the very moment you are so keenly aware of how they have yet to become holy. It will bring you close and you will be seen and you will be known and therein lies the power and therein lies the danger. Aren’t there moments when all those little companies, in all those stories, hang by a thread? Galadriel says to Frodo, “Your quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true.”

We’ve experienced incredible disappointments in our fellowship. We have, every last one of us, hurt one another. Sometimes deeply. Last year there was a night when Stasi and I laid out a vision for where we thought things should be going – our life-long dream for redemptive community. We hoped the Company would leap to it with loud “Hurrahs! Hurrah for John and Stasi!” Far from it. Their response was more on the level of blank stares. Our dream was mishandled – badly. Stasi was sick to her stomach; she wanted to leave the room and throw up. I was…stunned. Disappointed. I felt the dive towards a total loss of heart. The following day I could feel my heart being pulled towards resentment. It's moments like that which usually toll the beginning of the end for most attempts at community.

(Waking The Dead ,197 )

Halloween 2007

photo taken by easy bake, er... K Bake...

Promise Me

Tuesday when I came home Jean was hemming Alina's Halloween costume. Alina was going to be an angel. She was so beautiful. I got real close to her, my eyes welling up a bit, and asked her to promise me that she would never grow up. I know that is selfish, and isn't what Jesus intends for her. I just love the way she is and who she is. I know I will continue to love her as she becomes the woman she was created to be. It will be hard to let her go one day.

My Rant

About a month ago I exchanged my dinosaur phone for a Razr. With downsizing for school, it really wouldn't have been a wise choice to switch from Verizon to ATT just to got the more expensive iPhone. The cost of the ATT plan was more for the exact same calling plan. And, even though my first generation iPod died over the summer, a $350 sweet saucy iPhone would have been over the top.

Earlier this week I downloaded "Audacity." It's a free program that lets you record, edit, etc. I downloaded it just to make sweet ringtones. I figured out how to allow my mac to talk to the Razr via bluetooth, etc. I would send a file from my mac, to the Razr. The files were so small, right down to the bit rate, that it should have been an easy thing. One problem. The firmware (Verizon's software) doesn't allow file sharing on Verizon phones. I was sure there was a way around it. I read for days during my downtime at work (read, at least half a day for three straight days) hoping to find a way around it. There isn't. It's Verizon.

The thing that makes me rant isn't that I didn't get a saucy iPhone, or that everything non Apple is such a pain to use. The frustration comes from not being allowed to be creative. Making cool ringtones isn't the point of happiness. Being creative and innovative and problem solving is part of a person being an image bearer. Not being allowed to do that is what makes me frustrated... and rant. Okay. I feel better. Thanks!

A New Month, A New Look

Another Cartographer used to change the look of her blog at the beginning of every month. I think that is a good idea. So, I am going to try that.

Two weeks from today, Jean and I fly to Seattle. We will have Thursday to enjoy and look around. Friday I have my interview at the school, and a lot of other things to experience the school. We take the red eye back Saturday night/Sunday morning, and arrive back in Grand Rapids Sunday about 9:30 am.

The picture above is of Lake Union. In the distance you can see Mt. Rainier. Lake Union is on the map below. It lies between Puget Sound and Lake Washington. It is the first body of water north of the word "Seattle". The second body of water north of the word "Seattle" is Green Lake. We are hoping to live in Bellevue, which is east of Seattle. Though Bellevue is close to the dreaded Microsoft, Bellevue does have one of the best school districts in the area – probably because of all the good people that work at the bad corporation...