Who doesn't love a good shortcut? Even if the shortcut saves us just 5 steps, we will almost always choose the shortcut.
In the early to mid 19th century, a devout woman by the name of Phoebe Palmer, felt that the path to holiness, or to perfection, that some people took a lifetime to walk, was unreasonable. She wanted to feel the presence of God in her life with more immediacy.
She didn't want to walk ALL the way around that corner on the sidewalk. She wanted a more direct route...through the grass.
So, she began working on a shortcut to holiness. Sounds great, doesn't it?
Who doesn't want the "Six Simple Steps to Perfection"?
She lived a life of discipline and practice, yet the emotional experience of conversion and assurance of salvation eluded her for many years. She tried and tried to reach perfection in her own time rather than in God's time. She waited faithfully. She continued to resist the voice that attempted to alter her focus. She tried and tried of her own power to achieve perfection, but it remained "an attainment beyond her reach," as is written in her book, The Way of Holiness.
It wasn't until she realized that holiness wasn't something to be achieved, but was a gift from God, that her heart was changed. When she let go. When she stopped trying so hard, and instead, opened herself to fully receiving whatever God would do in her life, she was empowered by the Spirit to live a life giving back to God that which was already God's.
What are you seeking with all of our might?
Is God the absorbing desire of your heart as it was Pheobe's? What would that even look like?
Watch "The Marshmallow Test" and then listen to the message below as you ponder these questions:
Are we called to live in a state of perfection?
Is perfection possible? If so, how? If not, why not?
How do you live in light of your answer above?
Would you act differently if your answer was the opposite?
Watch this video first. I promise, it's worth it.
How are you living differently? How do you stand out as a Christian?
I like to think of myself as a pretty intelligent person. Not
mathematical genius status like Mary there, but intelligent none the less. I
make wise and logical choices for myself and my family. I can give advice to
others that is practical and can help them reach their goals.
Knowledge is a funny thing though. It can only get us so far.
Too often in life, we can believe with our whole hearts that we are doing the
right thing. That our words and our actions are the best they can be. We can
obey, follow the rules, and never upset the status quo. We work well with clear
boundaries sometimes. Yet, as Christians, those who are seeking to LIVE
Christ-centered lives, our lives should look a lot less “right” in the world’s
eyes, because we are learning to live by faith.
Jesus broke down
barriers, he crossed lines, disregarded tradition, threw away most conventional
thinking about God and, as a result, change lives like no one else. They were
not prepared for Him, and sometimes we aren’t either.
Because living a life
of Faith is living in that that sliver of space between our greatest fears and
our wildest dreams.
Between living in regret and living beyond anything you could have imagined for
ourselves. Between hiding and authenticity.
Our greatest fears…Our wildest dreams….. We are to live right
here…in a life of faith.
Scripture, long before Jesus was even known on the earth,
told us that this was what God intended.
61 The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.
Isaiah 61: 1-3
In our prayer statement, we say the words “Learning to live
Christ-centered lives.” Learning is the key word here. As I talk about living a life of faith, we
have to be careful that we aren’t just jumping off cliffs and asking God to
catch us. Living a life of faith does require getting to know the character of
God and being in tune to those ideas that are faithful versus the ideas that
are just plain dumb. At Hope Church, our small groups are where that learning happens.
Through theological thought and conversation, we gain a deeper understanding of
what being faithful can look like, and if theological thought and conversation
sounds too complicated. It’s getting together with a group of people and
sharing life. and As we share life, we end up witnessing the faith of others,
which can be the very best teacher. Anyone can tell you how to live a life of
faith, can tell you the rules of life as they see them. but what makes a
difference is when you see someone live it out.
In my faith life, as I strive to be more Christ-centered each
day, I find myself not driven towards the logical and practical, but towards
choices that make me, and those around me a little less comfortable. Choices
that require faith. Choices that cause logic... everything in me to say, "Get as far away from this pain as possible. Run." Faith says, "Draw near. Get in the sliver of faith and see what God is doing here." It's not an accident that these choices have been put in my path, that these choices have entered my life.
Coming out, quitting a job, adopting, moving in, moving on, speaking out, taking the next step requires some part of us
to believe that we will not only survive, but that things may actually be
better, freer, more hopeful on the other side.
Remaining hidden…Living in absolute authenticity. That takes
faith to cross over from fear to hope.
Sharing the story of your deepest rejection or pain, making
yourself vulnerable in order to educate another or encourage them. It doesn’t
make sense. It requires faith.
Placing our hearts in front of others not knowing if they
will remain intact or be broken…. finding your experience is an inspiration that
saves another’s life. That takes faith.
Adopting a child from across town or around the world makes
no sense. Taking a child into your home with someone else’s DNA and raising
them as your flesh and blood requires faith. It disrupts your entire life, your
entire family. It’s not logical. Your heart can be broken…. or you can change
the trajectory of a human being’s life. We must live in that sliver of faith.
Interrupting our lives to help others, whether that means
postponing your yard work to be available to a friend, being late to a lunch
date to help someone change a tire, or even just stopping briefly to see if you
can help a stranger on the street who looks lost or in distress.
The choices that we make out of faith are often the riskiest,
most wonderful choices we will ever make. They make us second-guess ourselves.
They require our whole hearts, and in the end, they turn out to be some of the
choices that make our lives worth living. And if you haven’t gotten there yet, if you haven’t yet gotten to the hope
and the joy…your wildest dreams, then it isn’t the end. Keep going.
Living a life of faith, whether that comes from a Messiah
named Jesus or not, allows us to go beyond practicality and venture into the
realm of the impossible. If we make our faith about facts and rules and
requirements, we’ve missed the point. I venture to say that anyone who tells
you they have it all figured out, or they know the one and only way, or that
you have gone so far out of the boundaries that you are no longer acceptable,
lovable or correct. They have missed what is incredible about faith. A life of
faith is about hope, joy and possibility. It’s trusting that it might all just
work out.
In Gifted, 7 year-old Mary is being raised by Uncle Frank in
a dirty little cottage by the beach where he fixes boats for a living. We later
find out that Frank gave up a career in academia in order to raise this little
girl as he thought his sister would have wanted her raised. Now he may not have
called his choice faithful, but in order to make that choice, he had to have
some inkling that it might turn out alright. It might even be what is actually
the best. That there was some possibility that his illogical choices may
actually be correct.
There was opposition for sure. That is the part that makes us
second-guess ourselves.
To Mary’s wealthy grandmother, this simple life on the beach
is a waste of little Mary’s life. To be fair, Mary is technically a genius, a
mathematical prodigy, as is her wealthy grandmother, as was her mother. While
her grandmother was unable to make history by solving one of the seven unsolved
“Millennium Prize Problems” in her lifetime, she was sure that Mary, if trained
properly, had what it took and should live a life devoted to mathematics. The
grandmother sought to live her dream through this little girl, whereas Uncle
Frank was willing to give up his own dreams in order to help Mary live into her
own wildest dreams.
Heart-break causes us to second guess ourselves. Rejection by
family, failed adoptions, being told we are wrong can all make us want to crawl
back into the security of the lives that we are used to, the lives of logic and
practicality, but what about our wildest dreams? What about our greatest hopes?
Intellect was big currency in little Mary’s family. Frank
decided to give up everything comfortable and even risk his relationship with
his family in order to change the currency to one of love and faith. He didn’t
do this by teaching, he did this by living.
In the end, he finds a beautiful balance for Mary where her
mathematical gifts continue to be developed while at the same time she is
available to make crafts and play at the park with her girl scout troop after
school. This balance, this well-rounded life that both honors Mary’s incredible
gifts and yet assures her that life is about so much more than simply her
gifts, is only found by being willing to venture into that sliver of faith
between our greatest fears and our wildest dreams.
May the currency in our lives, the priorities, the values, reflect a life of love and hope that we might live into our wildest dreams.
My incredibly precious husband was so eager to hear me share the message, that he forgot to begin the video right away. You only missed a little bit. The full text is below.
What a gift it is to be called to share words of grace and hope with the world. I am honored.
Cara
March 26, 2017
We are in the middle of a sermon series called, “Name Your Fears,” where we have been exploring common fears. Regardless of what the topic has been each week, (fear of failure, fear of being alone, fear of church, fear of money) we have consistently discovered that there is power in acknowledging our fears and calling them out. While our tendencies may be to avoid thinking about the things we fear, we are empowered in the process of identifying and overcoming the fears that hold us back from peace and wholeness.
There is a quote that I remind myself of often, and it says, “Of the things we choose to worry about half never happen, and the other half we can handle.”
As I was searching for the original author of this line, I came to find out that many wise folk have said similar things.
In fact, five hundred years ago, Michel de Montaigne said, “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”
There has even been a research study done that looked into how many of our imagined calamities never materialize. In this study, subjects were asked to write down their worries over an extended period of time and then identify which of their imagined misfortunes did not actually occur.
Sounds like an interesting practice to me. Imagine if we began identifying our fears, writing them down when they come to mind, and then look back on our list in hind-sight.
It turned out that in the study, 85 percent of what people worried about never happened, and with the 15 percent that did happen, almost all of the subjects discovered either they could handle the difficulty better than expected, or the difficulty taught them a lesson worth learning. This means that 97 percent of what you worry over is not much more than a fearful mind punishing you with exaggerations and misconceptions.
So, there is perspective in that, I believe. We are capable of much more than we give ourselves credit for.
Though our fears aren’t based on anything concrete, they can affect us physically. Each time a fear crosses our mind, our heart may race, our awareness is heightened and our defense mechanisms are activated. Fight, Flight or Freeze…our bodies are ready.
So, this week, the Fear of Rejection. Most of us have been rejected at some point in our lives. There is no way around it. Relationships end, you are turned down for the job, you are judged unfairly by someone else. You’re picked last for the kickball game, you’re not in the club. It happens.
And just like our other fears, we worry about being rejected more than we are actually rejected, and in those cases of being rejected, it typically turns out that we do make it through the heart-ache better than we expected.
Sometimes, rejection can even end up being a motivator for us. If we disagree with the other person’s assessment of us, we can go out of our way to work harder and prove them wrong. There are countless success stories which follow that exact story line. A simple Google search turns up “35 Famous People Who Were Painfully Rejected Before Making it Big,” including Walt Disney, Oprah Winfrey, Jerry Seinfeld, JK Rowling, Madonna….the list goes on.
Too often, though, we simply agree with the person’s evaluation of us and we go on with life carrying a feeling of inferiority or of being "damaged goods.”
Even when we know on a cognitive level that that they are wrong, we allow their rejection to confirm our worst fear — perhaps that we ARE unlovable, that we ARE destined to be alone, or that we are not worthy of goodness and success in life.
At the core of rejection is a spiritual issue. And the spiritual issue is that until you are right with God, until you understand that you are loved apart from anything of this earth, you will always maintain your fear. Because if people who are supposed to love us can reject us, then what is stopping God from doing the same?
The answer to that question is “grace.” In the Methodist Church, we believe in God’s prevenient grace, a grace the “goes before.” A forgiveness, an acceptance, an unconditional love that is freely given to you before you do a single thing. It’s a grace that goes before anything you have ever done. It’s a grace that goes before anything that has ever been done to you. It’s a grace that goes before any of the hurtful, demeaning words that have ever been said to you or about you.
What stops God from rejecting us? It’s God’s grace.
Romans 5 “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ….
And how are we justified? How are we made right to have that peace? While we were weak, while we were yet sinners, when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready...at the right time, Christ died for us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
What about the times when we are the rejecters? When we reject the things that are happening to us in life. We fight with all that is in us to control our circumstances, to change the things that, if we are honest, we have no control over.
Again, we’re faced with a spiritual issue. Until we can view our lives through the eyes of God, we are only able to see that which is right in front of us. We are looking at a single puzzle piece, when God can see the entire picture. We judge the parts that we see as good or bad, and when the bad outweighs the good, we reject it. We reject the day, we reject the year, we throw it all out as bad.
How many people do you see do this at the end of each year? “Oh, 2016, that was an awful year. I can’t wait for 2017.” As if on January 1st, something is going to magically change, or as if no good actually occurred in 2016. Life is made up of both.
Anyone here watch the show, “This is Us?” Oh, love that show. That’s a good thing that happened in 2016. On the after show, Chris Sullivan, the actor who plays Toby was talking about relationships, and he said, “You share the joy…and the pain. The only way to true connection is through the second part. There’s not much to learn from pure joy, you just experience it.”
I want to share with you a story about a man who was able to see more than the single puzzle piece that was his life.
There once was a wise man who won an expensive car in a lottery. His family and his friends were very happy for him and came to celebrate. “Isn’t it great!” they said. “You are so lucky.” The man smiled and said, “Maybe.” For a few weeks he enjoyed driving the car. Then one day a drunken driver crashed into his new car at an intersection and he ended up in the hospital, with multiple injuries. His family and friends came to see him and said, “That was really unfortunate.” Again, the man smiled and said, “Maybe.” While he was still in the hospital, one night there was a landslide and his house fell into the sea. Again his friends came the next day and said, “Weren’t you lucky to have been here in the hospital?” Again he said, “Maybe.” (A New Earth, By Eckhart Tolle)
This man could have won the car and been ecstatic, viewing his life as good. But if it weren’t for winning that car, he could have avoided the devastating accident that left him injured and viewing his circumstances as bad. Of course, if he hadn’t been in the hospital, he would have suffered a much worse fate when his house fell to the sea.
He was able to live into the events of his life, not embracing them or rejecting them as they came, but simply experiencing them and accepting each without judgement.
We know the joy in life, we appreciate the joy, because we have experienced pain. We resist discomfort with all our might, but we also learn and grow from it.
I have a friend who prays deep, incredible prayers. Being with her in prayer makes you feel God’s presence in an incredible way, and I want to pray like her. I want to feel God in that way when I speak to him. Then, I consider her life. I reflect on the events that gave her the opportunities to cry out to God with no filter and bare her soul to God because she had no other choice. She let God have it as she fought against events in her life, and it was only on the other side of that raging against God, that she found herself still safe, in the loving embrace of God’s grace, that she was able to talk so personally to her Creator.
How can we possibly accept the parts of our lives that devastate us?
As we learn to live Christ-centered lives, we hurt, we grieve, we take it out on God, and at the right time, we move forward in hope.
I don’t want to step over the process of grief, here. It is not spiritual or admirable to pretend that all is well. It is not healthy to hide or try to fight despair. Just as we can’t stop tragedy from entering our lives, we cannot stop the natural process of grieving from take place. We must allow it to have its time. We give grief the time to sit in our lives as long as is needed. And when we are ready, we move towards healing, with hope.
Romans 5:3-5 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
