He was born Giovanni Francesco Bernardone. His father was a successful cloth merchant. His childhood and adolescence were by all accounts carefree, marked by the ease and education of relative wealth. He was a sometimes-benefactor of his friends’ rowdy adolescent forays. As a young man, he was captured in battle and spent a year in a damp prison cell. Upon his return, he sobered up, and began spending long times in prayer. In one such time he had a vision in which he heard Christ asking him to “go repair my house, which, as you can see, is falling completely to ruin.” Although at the time, he began by repairing the dilapidated church in which he had been praying, his followers would later come to understand this as his call to reform the worldly and corrupt practices of the church.
His merchant father was furious at his change of behavior and had him brought before a local bishop, complaining that his son had thrown off all his responsibilities. In response, our young friend stripped off his clothes—which represented his wealth and position—and put them at his father’s feet. He said, “Up to today I called you ‘father,’ but now I can say in all honesty, ‘Our Father who art in heaven.’” With these words, he abandoned his place in his father’s house and went out to live as a hermit. His work would leave a mark on Christians for generations to come. History would come to know him as St. Francis of Assisi.
It was a year ago. I sat in a room filled with pastors, seminarians, and local church members. We gathered for the day to learn about one thing—the Syrian refugee crisis. It was already five years into the civil war which would send millions fleeing for their lives, but as horror piled on horror we were finally asking "What do we do?"
After lunch, the World Vision presenter diverged from his presentation to draw our attention to a young woman quietly sitting in our midst. With tear-filled eyes, he passed the microphone to her. She had only recently come from this war-torn world we were talking about in the safety of a New England seminary. Curling hair framed her face as she shyly spoke in accented English. Her words were simple: "I just want to say, thank you for caring for my people." Even now, my eyes get watery.
In the year since that day, the refugee crisis has become an increasingly charged topic. The word "refugee" swirls in the midst of a political firestorm. And sadly this political battle has spilled into our Christian communities, creating division, anger, and pain. I'm convinced, though, this is an issue Christians could surround with united concern and compassion. We have a uniting call—to fight our way through the mess of the conflict to see the path of Jesus. We can work together—as the body of Christ—to clear away the fog of politics and of culture and the stories we see on social media to see what Christ-likeness looks like in these particular circumstances.
Yesterday I shared about the idea of a “frontline.” If you haven’t read yesterday’s post, give this one a pause, and take a moment to read it here.
Are you left wondering what to do with your frontline or how you can be faithful in it? That’s what today’s resource is about.
Mark Greene’s book Fruitfulness on the Frontline (another LICC resource) lays out a “6M” framework for fruitfulness on your frontline. Please note that I am simply pulling the basic framework of this resource and sharing it with you. For a much more in depth exploration, get a copy for yourself. The adapted 8-week DVD series would be great for a small group to study and discuss together.
When we talk about our frontlines, it’s easy to reduce their importance to one thing—who can I share the Gospel with? While this is important and definitely something we should consider with more boldness, this is only one piece of how God can be using us and working in us on the frontline. He can use us in ways beyond just a simple sharing of our testimony.
I get asked often what I want to do with my life (read: what kind of work I want to do), particularly once people know I went to seminary. I also get frequent questions about Spiritual Formation, this thing I spent three years of my life studying. So, I thought I’d take a moment to answer these questions.
Last May, I graduated from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary with a Master’s in Spiritual Formation. Because of the broad application of spiritual formation, at least as encapsulated by this particular program, graduates go on to a variety of things. I know one fellow student who is a full time counselor and another who works full time with a college ministry. Others receive training to become spiritual directors. Spiritual formation can be applied to a wide variety of ministries, including worship, educational ministries, counseling, discipleship, and others.
Simply put, spiritual formation considers how we are spiritually formed as Christians. It considers how our spirits (and lives) are shaped by the Holy Spirit into the likeness of Christ. It asks how we can encourage this sort of development in the lives of believers. In my opinion, this is at the heart of what the church should be about—creating a space for people to come into contact with the living God and have their lives transformed as a result.
Have you ever had one of those moments when someone finally put clearly into words what had been echoing and churning in your heart? You know, when you listen and want to scream “Yes—this is what I’ve been trying to say!”
I had one of these moments when I heard Neil Hudson speak last year at the seminary I was attending. Neil is from the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity, which was founded by John Stott (that name might ring a bell for some of you) in the early 1980s. I hadn’t heard of Neil or LICC when I went. I went because I resonated with the title of the day-long conference: “No Time for Mission? Cultivating a Missional Imagination for Over-Busy Christians.” But I found there, finally, a clearly and powerfully articulated expression of what has been stirring in my heart for years—the need for, as he calls it, “whole-life discipleship” in the church.
The work of LICC aims to give churches and individual Christians a vision to see beyond what is often portrayed as a sacred-secular divide in the life of the Christian, and instead see how the Gospel impacts all of ordinary life.
I remember the sessions from my high school days, a moment intended to create a self-evaluation of the use of my time (good), which ended in guilt (not-good).
“How many hours are there in a week?”
Twenty four each day, times seven days. One hundred sixty eight hours.
“How many of those hours do you spend sleeping?”
If I’m trying to get eight hours of sleep a night…fifty six hours.
“How many of those hours do you spend at school or work?”
About eight hours five days a week…forty hours, maybe more.
“How many of those hours do you spend doing extracurricular activities? . . . How many of those hours do you spend recreationally, doing something fun with friends?”
On and on it went, with the activities and responsibilities of my week slowly chipping away at the hours allotted to me each week.
And then of course came what was to be the climactic question: “How many hours a week do you spend dedicated for the Lord?”
Two hours at church on Sunday, two at church on Wednesday night, and maybe 30 minutes for devotions each morning…
My teenage self looked at the meager sum. Not even eight hours a week.
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)
Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:18-20)
Give thanks always, we read. This is a command more readily fulfilled when life is smooth and all is well. Our list of blessings runs long, and our thanksgiving is free flowing.
But how do we give thanks when our hearts are aching? How do we give thanks when reality is grim and our world is crumbling?
To the people of Israel being sent into exile, the prophet Jeremiah sent a message from God: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile.” He tells them to build houses, do work, and nurture families. He tells them to pray for the Lord’s blessing on the foreign land to which they’re sent.
It’s a bit of a strange instruction, isn’t it? They are to seek the good of the pagan land that has wrecked and ravaged their land and either slaughtered or carried off their people?
The word for “welfare” here is rich with meaning. It’s the Hebrew word shalom, which has a holistic picture of peace, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, security, and health. “Seek shalom for the city where I send you,” he says.
In the New Testament, Christians are said to be in exile. Peter calls the believers to whom he writes “sojourners and exiles” (see 1 Peter 1:1, 2:11). There is a clear understanding that we are to be involved in the world, even honoring the government in place, while retaining a deep awareness that we are citizens of a different land. This is not where our hope lies. This is not where our confidence lies. This is not where our loyalty lies.
My dad carried the small package to his office and carefully began to open it. It had weathered its Atlantic crossing well, and the array of international stamps on the cardboard box told the tale of far it had come. The smell hit him when he opened the plastic bag inside, and it was strong enough to trigger a gag reflex. With two reluctant fingers, my dad pulled out what was purportedly the most disgusting pair of socks he has ever seen. The filthy pieces of cloth were peppered with holes and frayed at the top—and the stench! It would have required extra effort to concoct a specimen this wretched. His face broke into a wide grin, and he burst out laughing, “He got me good this time.” A small donation for your ministry in Pennsylvania.
This infamous pair of socks came from a good friend, who has spent most of his lifetime as a missionary in Europe. It was the crowning glory of a humorous exchange over the (for lack of a better word) junk he and his family have received over the years in name of charity. They are not alone. Holey socks, used underwear, ratty clothes—things in such shape they can’t even find a home at the Goodwill. Fortunately he has a sense of humor—and friends to make light of the situation.
dis·trac·tion:
noun 1. a thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else.
In a culture obsessed with accomplishments and performance, the word “distraction” has taken on a negative connotation. Distractions are things to be avoided, to be overcome. They keep us from our work, from our goals. They detract from something more important. And in many instances, this is the case. The drivel that keeps me captivated to Facebook, or at the very least keeps me entertained enough to avoid my work, is definitely a distraction to eliminate.
But not all “distractions” are bad ones. Take for example a phone call from a distressed friend, or an invitation to get coffee, or a conversation at the store. They could be things that get in our way, slow us down, and keep us from accomplishing our tasks for the day efficiently. But they may also be invitations from the Lord to follow His plan for our day (and lives as a whole).
Do not misunderstand me, some of us need to work on good old-fashioned self-discipline to finish the tasks at hand. A distraction can be just that—a distraction, which keeps us from more important things. But something or someone that we could at first consider a distraction could actually be the main event, and our sense of drivenness or our desire to set our own agendas could be the true distraction to what God has put in our path.
I know a dear woman living out her “mission field” from the assisted living center in which she resides. Each day, she walks down to the connected nursing home and spends time with the residents, talking and praying with them, or quietly singing the old hymns of their younger days. She brings them friendship and comfort in the ways she can, in the hope that now in the winter of life, they would see Jesus. Though limited herself, she sees the purpose of her life and the continued sense of calling to be a faithful disciple. There is still work to be done. And the joy and peace radiating from her are so evident.
When I leave from our all-too-infrequent visits, my soul is refreshed and encouraged to keep living faithfully and seize each little opportunity the Lord gives me to be a blessing to another person. I leave saying, “Lord, please, that’s how I want to be when I grow old.”
It seems growing old is a watershed, and one cannot stay neutral. We become wise and winsome or sharp-tongued curmudgeons. We seem to face the choice of joy or misery, and living out delight or bitterness.
The sheep hear [the shepherd’s] voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out … and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. … My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
– John 10:3-5, 27
When I was a child, we lived across the road from a sheep farm. Every spring, fluffy white lambs ran through the fields. Bleating sheep was part of the natural symphony of our country home. (Let me comment here that sheep do not make a delicate baa-ing sound, as some would lead you to believe. Delicate is not even close to the word I would use to describe it. Unfortunately, I cannot perform my best bellowing sheep imitation for you. But I digress…)
During those years, my dad chased many a sheep that had escaped through the old wooden fence around their pasture, and my mom and I would watch him and our neighbor, Bill, heaving on the escapees’ rear-ends to push them back into the safety of the pen. Those bits you hear about sheep being stubborn? We were eyewitnesses to it.
One sheep we will never forget. His name was Buster. I have a photo of my young self, my arms wrapped around him. I’m probably ten or eleven, in the glasses and braces stage of life. When Buster’s mother died during the birthing process, Bill took the small lamb into his home. He was bottle-fed and kept inside more like a dog than a farm animal. And this early experience gave Buster, let’s say, an interesting personality. He was just as stubborn as the others, but his familiarity and perhaps something akin to affection gave him particular audacity. Our poor neighbor was knocked a few too many times onto his elderly hips by Buster’s head butt of greeting or protest. But Buster knew his name—Bill had only to go to the edge of the barn, and yell Buster’s name, and before long, you would see him making his way over the pasture to where we stood. In spite of his stubbornness, he knew his name, and he knew the sound of the one who called him.
When the winter finally thawed, I could go outside and sit looking over the creek, my back propped again the rough bark of a tree. Other days, I’d slip through the heavy doors of the chapel and sit in the silence of cold stone. I’ve been bent over the kitchen table sipping my morning coffee, curled in a hammock listening to a chorus of birdsong, seated on the cement porch of a cabin at dawn—all with Bible and journal in hand.
I grew up with a brand of spirituality which told me that the key ingredients to my growth as a Christian were to read my Bible and pray. We called it a “quiet time,” preferably alone, preferably in the morning—and the closer you got with God, the longer it was (or at least that’s what my teenage ears heard). Journaling and Scripture memories were other important practices. I think a great number of my generation who grew up in the church have had similar experiences. Many of us feel guilty for missing quiet times. We also feel guilty for not experiencing the prescribed emotional longing for our “quiet time” or the emotional uplift after its completion. It seems that so much of our spiritual life is defined by these times alone with the Lord. Our spirituality of private, personal piety is the measuring rod for the intimacy of our walk with God.
Is this really the measure of spirituality? Why must the emphasis be so internal? What if the emotions aren’t there? What if dryness sets in?
In all of our emphasis on internal piety, we can easily overlook plain old ordinary obedience. Perhaps out of our obsessive fear of works-righteousness, we’ve forgotten the biblical emphasis on our actions of obedience as disciples of Christ. Our actions matter. Our obedience matters. Jesus (and many other voices in the New Testament) seems to suggest that it’s connected to the validity of our salvation. Yes, we are saved completely by the gracious act of God on our behalf. We were hopeless—and he did everything. And yet Jesus spends so much of his time teaching us how to live. The moral of the parable I sang about as a child—“the wise man built his house upon the rock” (Matthew 7:24-27)—is not primarily about some abstract sense of putting Jesus on the throne of your heart but about obeying what he says.
