I have updated Prayer Ops, but that’s about it.

I’m fine. Just needing to make choices about my use of time and blogging has been put lower on the priority list — at least for a season.

If you read this with any regularity, you know this happens.

Thought provoking.

I’ve heard the complaint before. I’ve complained the complaint myself. Jeff used the power of words-used-well to illustrate the issue. Religion is not God’s gift to us. God gave us HIMSELF. But, as we do with everything God created, we have reformed Him into something we can control and use. Ugh!

As I watched this video this morning — thanks to Trisha who posted it on her Wall — I began to ask myself some questions that I probably should ask myself more regularly. We all must, I believe, do regular personal audits of our thinking and doing.

One overarching question: How would I approach/think about/address the top two or three challenges and opportunities facing me today if I were thinking rightly about WHO GOD IS and WHO I AM IN HIM?

One really specific question: Who are the people in my life who are most consistently reminding me of the truth about who Jesus is?  Have I thanked them lately for being image-bearers, light-shiners, truth-tellers?

What questions does this piece urge you to ask yourself?

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Jeff Bethke graduated from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon in May of 2011. With a degree in political science, Jeff moved back to Tacoma, Washington to live and work where he grew up. Currently attending Mars Hill Church in Federal Way, Jeff has a heart to carry the life changing Gospel of Jesus Christ to the inner city.

With the release of his Sexual Healing poem on Youtube, Jeff has been invited to speak at several churches both locally and across the country. He’s passionate about people understanding the magnitude of God’s grace and the freedom it provides from their past. Currently Jeff works for Jubilee Reach, a non-profit community center that exists to be a bridge between the city and the church.

I’m also supportive of the food-crafting that is motivated by making meals more interesting for picky-eater kids or just more fun for kids in general. This spaghetti through hot dogs is crazy clever and weird. I’m a fan. Whoever said that kids shouldn’t play with their food must have hated kids who, well, play with their food.

But friends, I believe we’ve stepped over the crazy-people line of excess-ivity this time. I’m talking Super Bowl Sunday.

I laughed out loud last week when I discovered the display in Super Target for football Oreos. But this is marketing and I get that.  If making Oreos with blue filling sells them better at Easter then it stands to reason that making them in the shapes of footballs might sell them better in January. I don’t see the point, personally. Oreos are for dunking and eating. I do see that with this shape I might be able to keep my fingers out of the coffee when I dunk. Bonus. But, not my point.

I was on Pinterest over the weekend and found an image that had been pinned and repinned (Pinterest talk for “shared”) multiple times and then some. It suggests myriad themed crafty foods for Super Bowl Sunday. This is where I draw the line. You can feel free to draw it somewhere else — it is a free country and I fully support your right to go overboard.

But really?

These are offered as “Game Day” treats — and I suppose the really over-board among us will think they should be created every weekend.

As for me and my house, I’m more of a traditionalist when it comes to football fare. Maybe it’s because the stuff I associate with football games is not the kind of food we eat around the house any more and so one Sunday a year — while watching the commercials between the plays — I like to go crazy and eat nachos.

But, maybe that’s just me.

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I do think that this menu would be appropriate for a WOOOHOOOOOOOOO kind of celebration at the great news my young friend Jimmy (#10)received from his doctor this past week — the news that he is cleared to play football.

That may not seem like a big deal –but I promise you, it is huge. Jimmy was injured 4 months ago and along the way of healing was told that he might never play again. Not easy news for a 16-year old kid who loves the game. Who loves sports. So hearing that there is complete healing — no evidence of injury at all — THAT is reason to make all your food into shapes and celebrate.

I am a dog person. I’ve only had a couple of dogs in my life, but that is more circumstantial than intentional.

I love that dogs run in packs. There is something extraordinary about the way a pack of dogs works together toward a common goal — the trust they have. It is not a blind trust either. It has usually been established through conflict.

I love that puppies especially are so uninhibited. Yes, I wish at times they were all more concerned about certain behaviors that really don’t need to be public, I confess that. I guess I love that dogs are not at all afraid to express their affection.

I love that dogs know how to balance gentleness and strength. That they are such good companions and protectors at the same time.

Dogs make any old thing a toy. They’d don’t need the latest whatever. A sock. A stick. A ball.

And I love that dogs are already ready.

Ready to play,

to run,

to go.

Hmmm.

I better check my calendar and see when Cootie comes again.

I want to be more like Bruno, the eight-year old boy whose life is turned upside down when his father is given a promotion and their family is moved to a new assignment, leaving Berlin behind.

Bruno loved to imagine flying planes and killing bad-guys and making the world a better place.

He was sure that is what his father’s life was committed to and I’m convinced that His father believed so, as well.

It was Bruno’s natural curiosity and desire for companionship after the family moved way out in the country that motivated him to explore the back garden — despite the warnings to not go back there — and then to escape out through a window in the shed into the woods behind the house. He ultimately found a friend and they played through the fence that separated them.

I’m not going to retell the story here. It is,in my opinion, a story that needs to be experienced in the context of at least a movie if not the book. It would be too trivial, at best, to reduce these relationships into summary. To understand why I want to be like Bruno, you need to spend time with him yourself.

Still, I will say that it is his love for exploration and quick willingness to believe the best in people no matter what others around him are doing, and his longing to be a real friend even when he knows he’s not as good at is as he hoped to be that endears him to me.

The pharisees cry “FOUL!” at this sinful behavior. Their fingers point. They accuse these men of breaking the law.

Before you misunderstand, the itinerant snacking is not illegal. They were not stealing nor were they being thus accused. The problem was that is was Saturday — the Sabbath. They were, by their actions already described, gleaning, thrashing, winnowing and preparing a meal. Sin, sin, sin, sin — because each of those activities were defined as WORK by their accusers.

Read Jesus’ response. It is beautiful. Liberating. Truth-filled and grace motivated. He came, according to his own words, to FULFILL the LAW (not abolish it). He provides the experts of the law a 4-point argument for why they are incorrect — an argument that demonstrates precedent, based on both law and tradition, and that is dripping with the authority of the Lord of the Sabbath. They weren’t so happy about any of it.

Here is the really odd thing. After this encounter is over, the pharisees go and begin plotting Jesus’ murder. So, they point fingers for Sabbath snacking but apparently it is okay to plan murder on the Sabbath. That is not work.

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I looked back at my 2008 blog postings for January to see what I was thinking four years ago. I found a challenge in this post from 07-JAN/2008 and decided to re-post it here. 

One of the questions I’m asking myself this morning is this:  How am I hypocritical like these Pharisees?

Okay, I admit that I’ve done it and I admit that it drives me crazy — this generic praying that asks God to bless this and that and him and her.  ”Lord, bless the missionaries in Africa and all the people in my family and the Dallas Cowboys. Amen.”

Yes, sometimes we can truly  mean “bless” and then using the term is powerful — kind of like the terms “love” and “friend” and “hope” when used well.  Often, though, I’m afraid this word — like God’s name and a lot of other religious verbiage — becomes, at the least, a cliché and at the worst, a replacement for “um and uhh.”

Go beyond that to the “bless me” praying that includes a pretty self-centered view of life and, well, don’t get me started. Oh, right. Too late.

Earlier today a Facebook post from Mindy in Fishers, Indiana knocked me on my proverbial butt (I was already sitting down, literally). This is something that she read to her 4 kids this morning from a children’s devotional book. I’m pretty sure I need this book myself.

Don’t ask Me to bless what you have already decided to do. Ask Me what I want for you. I may fill your heart with a dream that seems impossibly far beyond reach. And that dream will be bigger than anything you can do on your own. But remember, *nothing* is beyond My reach. Yes, you will mess up sometimes, and you will make mistakes. But when you depend on Me, I will use your mistakes to grow your faith and to help you win…..My way!

How different would our lives be if this were the posture we’d take every day: “God, show me what you want of me and give me courage to do it even knowing I can’t!”

That’s what I want to be when I grow up — a woman who seeks hard after God’s heart and is transformed by His dreams finding fulfillment in my willing obedience that worries more about missing out on His best than on looking silly or feeling inadequate.

Amen.

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NOTE: I don’t know what book Mindy was reading. I’m pretty sure it was not any one of these whose covers I’ve used as illustrations. I’m also not condemning these books particularly. I have no idea whether they are self-centered or God-focused. I just wanted to illustrate the “bless me” thinking that pervades our cultural thinking.

Ultimately I landed back in the Word:

“And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4:19 (NIV)

What are my needs?

Well, no matter how often I’ve said it (and even believed it on occasion) I don’t need chocolate or new shoes or any of the other things I so easily declare a need to posses or experience. That said, I also don’t think my needs are limited to eternal salvation, period.

It is too easy for me to see Jesus as being not enough when the need I think he is not meeting is not a need at all, but rather something I think I need.

So, this year I am praying that I will see my needs more like He does. And in that I’m praying that I won’t get caught up on this point of detail but will get beyond it to Him.

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Ideas and wonderings flail about in my head without too much restraint until they start to form into patterns and then I start to pay attention. This is how I work. I doubt everyone thinks (or experiences thinking) this way, but I’m also rather confident that I’m not the only one. When I was younger, I was not so sure.

In my flailing and wondering, I ran across this rather long statement by Charles Spurgeon which appears to be mostly about the eternal salvation sufficiency of Christ — but embedded in it are challenges I’m still pondering. 

Remember, sinner, it is not thy hold of Christ that saves thee–it is Christ; it is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee–it is Christ; it is not even faith in Christ, though that is the instrument–it is Christ’s blood and merits; therefore, look not to thy hope, but to Christ, the source of thy hope; look not to thy faith, but to Christ, the author and finisher of thy faith; and if thou doest that, ten thousand devils cannot throw thee down…

There is one thing which we all of us too much becloud in our preaching, though I believe we do it very unintentionally–namely, the great truth that it is not prayer, it is not faith, it is not our doings, it is not our feelings upon which we must rest, but upon Christ, and on Christ alone.  We are apt to think that we are not in a right state, that we do not feel enough, instead of remembering that our business is not with self, but Christ.  Let me beseech thee, look only to Christ; never expect deliverance from self, from ministers, or from any means of any kind apart from Christ; keep thine eye simply on Him; let his death, His agonies, His groans, His sufferings, His merits, His glories, His intercession, be fresh upon thy mind; when thou wakest in the morning look for Him; when thou liest down at night look for Him.

I’ve seen this Thoreau quote a few times recently (on Pinterest and Facebook) and it has given me pause. Fodder for my resolution pondering.

If I am going to resolve anything for 2012, I believe it is that I want to invest more of my life in the things that I really value or want to value more and thereby invest less of my life in the things I don’t value as much or want to value less. I want to use this investment of myself as a way to change what I value. And no, this is not a new resolution. It is the same one from many years in a row — maybe with a new coat of paint.

Now the question left to answer — and I don’t feel that there is a midnight deadline — is what do I want to value more and what do I want to value less?  I’ll be tempted to make lists that are too long. I think that for the sake of keeping me on track I will limit the lists to 3 things on each side and add 1+1 if I need to later.

VALUE MORE:

1.

2.

3.

&

VALUE LESS:

1.

2.

3.

You didn’t think I was going to just make this up after 5pm on New Year’s Eve did you?

Well, maybe you did.
Sorry.
I’m going to think on this one a bit more and, well, I’m just getting started.

Well, not all of them, actually. And used poorly, even words I like can annoy me, that is a certainty.

But used well, I am smitten.

“In times past though not long ago, there lived pigs–in stature, little; in number, three– who being of an age, both entitled and inspired to seek their fortune, did set about to do thusly.“