The Five Vows

This past weekend at our Men's Retreat, I gave a little talk I called "Five Vows Real Men Make." This talk was a total rip-off from a sermon A.W. Tozer first gave called "Five Vows for Spiritual Power." I think it applies well to men because these five declarations stand in direct defiance of what our culture teaches about manliness.

I thought you all might appreciate them, as they have universal application, and not just for men. These are "forgotten ideas" anymore in a culture obsessed with self, luxury, and pleasure. May you be challenged and reminded today of what real life in Christ looks like. (All of these words are Tozer's. If you want a longer version which also ran in the magazine aLife, let me know!)

"Some people object to taking vows, but in the Bible you will find many great men of God directed by covenants, promises, vows, and pledges. The psalmist was not averse to the taking of vows. He said, “Thy vows are upon me, O God, I will render my praises unto thee” (Psalm 56:12).

My counsel in this matter is that if you are really concerned about spiritual improvement—the gaining of new power, new life, new joy, and new personal revival within your heart—you will do well to make certain vows and proceed to keep them. If you should fail, go down in humility and repent and start over. But always keep these vows before you. They will help harmonize your heart with the vast powers that flow out and down from the throne where Christ sits at the right hand of God.

There are five vows I have in mind which we do well to make and to keep.

1. Deal Thoroughly with Sin

Sin has been driven underground these days and has come up with a new name and face. You may be subjected to this phenomenon in the schools. Sin is being called by various fancy names – anything but what it really is.

The whole thing is ridiculous, because sin is still the ancient enemy of the soul. it has never changed. We’ve got to deal firmly with sin in our lives. Let’s remember that “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Righteousness lies at the door of the kingdom of God.

2. Never Own Anything

I do not mean by this that you cannot have things. I mean that you ought to get delivered from the sense of possessing them. This sense of possessing is what hinders us. All babies are born with their fists clenched, and it seems to me it means, “This is mine!” One of the first things they say when they begin to speak is “mine” in an angry voice. That sense of “This is mine” ‘is a very injurious thing to the spirit. If you can get rid of it so that you have no feeling of possessing anything, there will come a great sense of freedom and liberty into your life.

3. Never Defend Yourself

We are all born with a desire to defend ourselves. And if you insist upon defending yourself, God will let you do it. But if on turn the defense of yourself over to God, He will defend you. He told Moses in Exodus 23: “I will be an enemy unto your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.”

4. Guard Your Words about Others

Never pass anything on—about anybody else that will hurt him. “Love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). The talebearer has no place in God’s favor. if you know something that would hinder or hurt the reputation of one of God’s children, bury it forever. Find a little garden out back – a little spot somewhere – and when somebody comes around with an evil story, take it out and bury it and say, “Here lies in peace the story about my brother.” God will take care of it. “With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.” If you want God to be good to you, you are going to have to be good to His children.

5. Never Accept Any Glory

God is jealous of His glory and He will not give His glory to another. He will not even share His glory with another. It is quite natural, I should say, for people to hope that maybe their Christian service will give them a chance to display their talents. True, they want to serve the Lord. But they also want other people to know they are serving the Lord. They want to have a reputation among the saints. That is very dangerous ground – seeking a reputation among the saints. It’s bad enough to seek a reputation in the world, but it’s worse to seek a reputation among the people of God. Our Lord gave up His reputation, and so must we.

These vows cut against the old human nature. They introduce the cross into your life, and nobody ever walks back from carrying his cross. When you make these vows, remember they strike at the heart of your self-life and there is never a place to go back to. Turn everything over to Him, and you’ll find your life begin to lift. You’ll blossom in a wonderful way.

From Five Vows for Spiritual Power, published by Christian Publications, December 1990.

Back from Sabbatical

Today is my first day back in the office after seven weeks of a sabbatical. During that time, I was able to write over 77,000 words towards a book, and by God's grace I will add the finishing touches on it sometime in the next few weeks. Whether or not the book will be of any significance to others is in His hands, but it has been a significant experience for me. I found that I both enjoyed and wrestled with writing more than I expected to. At times, putting thoughts and experiences into words seemed a very natural, life-giving process. At other moments, I felt intense struggling over my own inadequacies- trying to find exactly the right words to capture a thought and never finding them exactly right.

I do hope to share more about the writing experience later, but for just a moment today I want to reflect on emotions. As I step back into the world of helping lead a local church, I find myself inundated with emotions. Here are just a few of them:

PEACE: I have a firmer sense than ever that this is God's church and these are God's people. I do not own them nor control them. I have been placed over them as a steward, under them a servant, and with them as a friend.

ANXIETY: As I read through a stack of mail and several hundred emails, I opened more mental boxes than I care to count. If you tend to think that all pastors do is sit around and write sermons for Sunday, you need to ditch that idea! The sheer variety of issues awaiting my direction creates a mild panic about my ability to handle it all. The anxiety whispers into my brain, "Hurry up and get stuff done!"

JOY: After seven-weeks of being often secluded, it is nice to be with people again. It's nice to go out for coffee with a co-worker and answer the phone when it rings. God has blessed me with great people to work with and for. I like what I do. The joy whispers into my brain, "Slow down and enjoy people!"

EXCITEMENT: God is doing good things in me and in the church. I can't wait to see what happens next. I can't wait to preach again and bring forward some ideas that have rambled about my skull for several months.

FEAR: I have no idea what's going to happen next. People make mistakes. People come. People go. Ministries start. Ministries end.

I hope this short list highlights one thing: I am a complete contradiction of emotions today. When I feel this way, I have a tendency to allow emotions to define my life. I am either up or down with each email read, each thought of work to be done, each report of past events that I missed. How can I simultaneously feel so many different things? My guess is, you have been there as well. You love your kids to death, but sometimes you feel they will be your death. Work is a joy; work is a pain. We are up, we are down. The emotional roller coaster takes us all over the place.And if we're not careful, our emotional state of mind begins to define our lives.

What I am trying to keep in perspective today is this: I am not my emotions. Emotions tell me something about my environment and my reaction to it, but emotions are not who I am. The differing emotions I feel are like warning lights on a pilots instrument panel, alerting me to something deeper going on. Rather than focusing on the warning light, a pilot traces the meaning back to the core issue to be dealt with. I find that when I do this, I am not controlled by my emotions, but rather informed and aided by them.

The key for all of us is that something greater is happening in our lives underneath the emotions we feel. When the mail arrives and we feel excitement or fear, God is asking us to trust him. When the kids won't listen yet again and our anger flares, the Spirit invites us to seek Him for patience. When that phone call or emails comes that raises our temperature, we look underneath the emotion to see what hidden fear or joy God is bringing to life. In all of this knowing of self, we learn to trust Him more completely.

So today I am walking in many opportunities, sometimes dozens in an hour, to trust God with who I am.  I suspect you are as well. May your emotions alert you to the deeper things God is doing in your soul.

Journey On!

Nick

Lessons from Ikea

Yesterday was a long day.

We spent a nice morning visiting a church and then headed down the I5 to Ikea. This store has relatively cheap and tasty food, so we thought it would be fun to have lunch and then hang around a bit for some shopping. In my "guy" brain, I hadn't really thought much past the food.  I figured we would maybe spend an hour or so shopping.

Some of you have already begun laughing. You know the time warp that is Ikea. Now try and image this behemoth of a store with 4 small children, who all need to either eat, pee, or whine constantly. About four hours in, I had lost my sense of direction and my patience. I just wanted out. In that emotional place, I found myself noticing how I was treating others. My wife's desire to "just look some more" was aggravating. My kid's insistence on trying out every bed and chair was irritating. Other shopper's plans to simply walk by us was annoying. I was rude, impatient, arrogant and aloof. At least that's how I felt on the inside. I'm not sure how much of it actually spilled out, but likely more than I care to admit.

I wrote this line in my journal today: "I will not be tomorrow anything I am unwilling to be today." In other words, I won't magically become someone in the future without putting work and effort into that desire today. If you were to ask me who I would like to be 5 or 10 years down the road, I would tell you that I want to be more patient, more humble, more engaged with my wife and kids, and kinder to people around me. I desire these things. But am I living them today? Perhaps not perfectly, but am I moving this way? Yesterday felt like I took a step back.

So today I will try again. With the constant questions or neediness of my children, I will work on being patient. With my wife's interests and ideas, I will remind myself to stay engaged. With strangers around me and neighbors beside me, I will seek to be loving and kind as Christ would be. I will attempt to think not only of my own interests, but in humility to consider others as more important than myself. If I have any hope of being that person tomorrow, then I must begin today.

You will not be anything tomorrow that you are unwilling to be today. It is easy to have grand ideas about the kind of person we will be in the great blue yonder. Somehow, we think we'll just wake up one day and be the person we have always wanted to be- kinder to our spouse, healthier in our habits, more disciplined in our day, more deeply dedicated to God- but the truth is we will be an amplified version then of what we are now.

Who are you being today?

May you behave today like the kind of person you would be happy to be tomorrow.

And know this: God's grace is with you on that journey today. And tomorrow.

Just rambling-
Nick

Christ is in the Coffee

Perhaps you are like me, and you find that at times it is all too easy to separate your spirituality from practicality. This is the constant temptation we face to be religious- to believe and know all of the right things without much thought put towards whether or not these things are actually being lived. In a sense, I find spending time with God and His word to be easy; I sit, I read, I drink coffee, I enjoy His presence. But to take all that I learn in these moments into the rest of the world- ah, well, that can be another matter entirely.

I have been encouraged this week by a couple of readings I ran across, and so I would like to share them with you. These thoughts are for all of you that hunger for a faith that touches on every aspect of your real life:

In our community the other day, there wasn't much coffee. Coffee does me good down here in the desert. I was worried about not having any, about spending a few hours feeling dull and weak, and so- without perceiving the evil I was doing- I went into the kitchen before the others and drank up all that was left.
It seems a tiny thing, yet in that cup of coffee, taken and not shared with my brothers, is the root of all the evil which disturbs us, the poison of all the arrogance which selfishness, riches, and power create.
The difference between me and Jesus is right here, in an affair that seems simple, but isn't at all; after a whole life time it is still there to make you think. Jesus would have left the coffee for his brothers; I excluded my brothers.
 Carlo Carretto- The God Who Comes

Everyday things, relationships with other people, daily work, love of our family- all these may breed saints. Jesus at Nazareth taught us to live every hour of the day as saints. Every hour of the day is useful and may lead to divine inspiration, the will of the Father, the prayer of contemplation- holiness. Every hour of the day is holy. What matters is to live it as Jesus taught us.
And for this one does not have to shut oneself in a monastery or fix strange and inhumane regimes for one's life. It is enough to accept the realities of life. Work is one of these realities; motherhood, the rearing of children, family life with all its obligations are others.
Carretto- Letters from the Desert 

Spirituality that does not touch on these topics- life, parenting, even coffee- is not spirituality at all. If our faith in God does not lead to greater love for our friend, our neighbor, our spouse, it is not faith at all. In a season here where I am more prone to contemplation, thinking, and writing, I am striving to keep these words in mind. The way I speak to my kids during the break I take for lunch is just as important as the way I speak to Jesus in prayer. The manner in which I treat the cashier in the check out line is as significant as the manner in which I write my book. The two- inner devotion and external action- must walk together at all times. This is the heart of what Jesus taught.

Today, may you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and may you love your neighbor as yourself. And may you share the coffee.

Peace-
Nick

Should This Poem Go in the Book?

Hey all-

I have a favor to ask today. As many of you know, over 2+ years ago, I reached a real crisis point in my struggle with pornography. It was undermining everything I valued and destroying my marriage. On February 16, 2010, God met me in a unique way and began a process of healing in my life that continues to this day. At that time, I wrote a poem for my wife that expressed the emotions I was feeling, and communicated a vision of what needed to happen.

Here is that poem. What I would like to know is: should the poem go in the book? Is it "publishable"?
Please vote in the comments below! Thanks-

My Beauty and My Beast

One day my beauty and I went out

               And spread a blanket beneath the trees

Our minds were set upon one task

To spend the day in love’s blissful ease

My beauty laid her head upon my arm

               And rested in peaceful security there.

I gazed deeply into her loving eyes

               As I gently stroked her golden hair.

But our idyllic scene was broken by

               The sudden shaking of a bush so near

Bursting out from behind this leaf

               Came a beast to inspire great fear

My beauty cowered in my shadow

               Fearing the worst to come

But in bravado I comforted her,

               “Don’t worry, I know this one.”

For indeed, this lustful animal was mine,

               Who tracked with me day and night

“I can handle him, so be at peace

               There’s no reason for such fright.”

So over I went to reason

               With our uninvited guest

I conjured and cajoled with him

               Till he went away to rest.

I returned to my beauty’s side

               There in our peaceful glade

Unaware that on her chest

               A deep cut my beast had made

For time on end, this scene

               Predictably played over and over

Each time inflicting a deeper wound

               Near the heart of my true lover

But blind I was to the pain it caused

               Until at last she began to weep

“I’m perishing” she cried,

               “At the cruel hands of your beast.”

And there she wilted in my arms

               Alas her strength was spent

I cried out in anguish to the Heavens

               My own heart was finally rent.

And then the gracious One

               Who is wise beyond all measure

Came unseen and laid a sword

               Silently there upon the heather

I grasped it firm and strode

               To where my beast must again appear

And when he did I boldly cried,

               “Beast your end is near!”

How cunningly he softly sang

               That it didn’t have to be this way

Just let him be, he begged of me,

               And promised to stay at bay

But with one more glance at the wounds of my beauty

               I knew that I could delay no more

I plunged the sword deep into the heart of my beast

               And pierced him to the core.

In agony and screams of death,

               My beast crumpled at my feet

As at that moment a voice began to sing

               Gently, softly, perfectly and sweet

It was freedom’s song finally loosed

               From chains within my heart

I lifted up my voice in chorus,

               Singing, My God, how great thou art.

And back I turned to my beauty there,

               Still lying at death’s door

I held her tight and looked to Heaven

               Pleading for mercy once more.

Then in astonishment I watched the wounds

               Which had covered her gracious form

Begin to fade and disappear

               And her skin began to warm

Her eyes she opened in new found love

               Gazing up at me

“Is he gone?” she asked

               “Can we finally be free?”

“Forever, my beauty” I said to her

               “The battle at last is won.

You and I shall ever be

               Joyful dancers beneath a clear sun.”

One day my beauty and I went out

               And spread a blanket beneath the trees

And at last we knew that we were free

To spend the day in love’s blissful ease

 (NJS, February 18, 2010)