January 27

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.   This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.  Galatians 5:19-21 The Message

Our true, in-Christ self is called to desire and love and let go. 

Our false self wants to grab and get, attach and depend upon something outside ourselves in a vain attempt to calm our inner experience.

We must unlearn much of what we thought it meant to be a spiritual person.

January 26

Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.  John 12:24 The Message

We have got to stop protecting ourselves from the mercy of God.  We must let go of our conviction of certainty; our need to be right, good, and respected.  This is a hard message.  I know that I, personally, prefer all those wonderful verses about being a new creation in Christ, capable of doing his good, pleasing and perfect will. 

But idealistic hoping and believing in God without trusting his process results in a faith that is unsustainable.  It’s sincere – just not very authentic.  The guy with the porn issue is a dedicated and faithful church member – a deacon in his church.  The fellow who wants to work in our ministry once was a youth pastor.  That young girl who is now on stage at the “Pleasure Palace” once enjoyed going on mission trips with her church youth group.  These people are not in need of salvation – they are all baptized believers.  They are desperately in need of transformation.

Scripture isn’t asking us to thump these folks on the head with a bible, it is pointing us to change.  It describes the changes we need to make.  It says things like – don’t commit adultery (and spells it out as even looking at someone who is not your wife with lust), it demands that we live at peace with others, it requires that we examine our sexuality in light of our image bearing status – children of God embrace sexuality as a sacred act, not a nightclub performance.

It isn’t the men or the woman that the bible is inviting us to study – it is ourselves.

January 25

But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. Romans 7:17-20

I don’t get this – but it is certainly true for me and lots of my friends. God’s grace is quite surprising, in that it rarely is experienced until we can accept that we are dangling from the end of a rope, staring down into the deep abyss of personal powerlessness.

Until there is something we cannot manage, we probably will not experience transformation. Until we know we can’t, we will keep trying to muscle our way into the kingdom of God.

What do we need? Do we need a spouse who turns a blind eye to our porn problems? Do we need our church, spouse, children and co-workers to be more understanding and patient? Do we need our parents to trust us more and judge us less?

More on what we really need tomorrow….

January 24

Why would a guy with a porn problem spend all his time trying to convince me that his wife was the issue?

Why would a man think he has services worth selling to a church and/or recovery community when even his church thinks something is wrong with him, his wife and children are estranged from him, and his business partners were willing to part with a large sum of cash to get rid of him?

Why would a beautiful young woman with a degree from a fine Ivy League school spend time bashing her parents rather than talking about her crack addiction?

I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary. Romans 7:14-16 The Message

• I believe that the husband wants a good marriage. I believe him. And I suspect he knows that the porn is a problem.
• I doubt that the guy with all the issues hasn’t had at least one or two moments of clarity in the lonely darkness of a sleepless night when the thought hit him – Could this be my problem?
• No one dreams of growing up and becoming a crack addict and an exotic dancer. At least no one I ever met – including this young woman with the attitude.

Ahh, the sins of others are so clear.

Any powerless, confusing, unmanageable choices in your life?

January 23

Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor. Matthew 7:1-5 The Message

It is unfortunately true that until we fall hard, we usually live in denial about our part in making the world a less congenial place.  We can disguise it, overcompensate for it, dress it up with subtlety and hope no one notices – but the truth of the matter is, we are all addicted, attached, and addled – particularly with regards to our way of thinking.  I write this devotional on a Tuesday, here’s what I’ve already heard this morning:

• I receive an email from a man who tells me that he wants nothing more than to save his marriage.  The email is one long blame-fest.  His wife doesn’t do this, she does that…she cannot do anything right.  This, he thinks, is his problem.  His wife, he says, needs to be as committed to his marriage as he is. It took 90 minutes of listening about how his wife can’t cook like his mother to get to the part where he says this latest marital crisis arose after she found porn on his computer (because she is a nosey Nancy).
• I got a call from a man in another state, who upon discovering our website, wants to provide us with his ministry expertise and recovery services for a large fee.  He’s at loose ends in doing ministry because his church fails to appreciate him.  In fact, his church has asked him to leave their community because he has been so disruptive.  His wife has left him; his children won’t speak to him.  He is currently unemployed because his partnerships “conspired” to buy him out of the business – they thought he was causing problems and chasing away customers. 
• I had someone’s adult child explain to me over breakfast this morning that her parents did not understand her.  She is really upset that they are taking such an attitude with her about the decision she made to dance at a “gentleman’s club”.  After all, she explains, this isn’t a career decision, just a momentary way to make some good money using her natural skill sets.  It’s not her fault, she says with a completely straight face, that God gave her rhythm and a love for people.

I would love to tell you all the ways these people have failed to understand Matthew 7:1-5 and offer strong words of correction, until I remember how just yesterday, I sat in judgment of my husband, one of my children, and even one of my friends.  I spent time ruminating over how each of them could make a couple of different decisions, and life would be easier for them (and me).  This is judgment (and self-serving).  Those precious minutes were a waste of time.  More subtle than spouse bashing, less blatant than the guy who has lost everything because something is wrong with how he is relating to others, certainly more acceptable than stripping at a men’s club – but it is the same issue.  So, I find it quite by surprise, really a God thing, in my heart to empathize with the two husbands and one daughter as they pour out their sadness and feelings of abandonment.  I nod with real empathy as they tell me how disrespected they feel.  I understand how very, very hard it is to see myself with any degree of accuracy.  I may not know how to improve this guy’s marriage; I will not hire that other guy to come work in our community; I probably cannot find it within me to judge either this girl OR her parents.  Why?  Because to do so would require me to ignore my own incapacity to see myself as you see me.  And that is no longer acceptable.

January 22

Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code—don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.  Romans 13:8-10 The Message

A careful read of scripture reveals a narrative of love.  It points us to caring as a higher value than being careful to follow all the rules.  My children are well aware of my limitations.  Today, they find this annoying or amusing or confusing.  But I suspect, even dream of a day when they have their own families to nurture.  I hope one day my children will have children and occasionally call them by the dog’s name.  Or forget to pick them up from the church nursery just once in a long line of remembering to bring all the children home from church.  On that day (of hopefully small and not too consequential forgetfulness), maybe they will say to themselves, “Oh this was bad.  This was very very bad.  I will never do this again…”  Later, perhaps will come, “I remember the time my mom did a similar stupid thing.”

It would be my prayer that this generational forgetting and forgiving of self and others will build an atmosphere of grace, mercy, and mutuality in my family. 

We humans do dumb stuff; there is a way to move beyond it. 

What is that way?  

In The Spirituality of Imperfection, there is this story retold – A man of piety complained to the Baal Shem Tov, saying:  “I have labored hard and long in the service of the Lord, and yet I have received no improvement.  I am still an ordinary and ignorant person.”

The Besht answered:  “You have gained the realization that you are ordinary and ignorant, and this in itself is a worthy accomplishment.”

There is a crack in everything God has made.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

It seems absolutely necessary for most of us to get over the idea that man is God.  ~Bill Wilson correspondence

It is a relief to tell the truth about our limitations.  There is little we can confess that others don’t already know about us – we are the ones with the vision problem.

January 21

Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code—don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.  Romans 13:8-10 The Message

Following Jesus is more than learning how to follow rules for right living.

Here’s what I am learning about me…It is hard for me to get beyond the narrow confines of myself.  I have a tough time caring enough about someone else to actually take the time to learn how to love them well.

In our house, we have, like most families, a varied assortment of food preferences – and even some limitations.

My daughter is allergic to fruit.  And yet, year after year, my inclination is to buy her fruit platters.  Why?  It’s simple – when she was a little girl she LOVED fruit (before the allergy onset).  She loved kiwi and apples and mandarin oranges.  Now if she eats fruit, her throat closes up and she turns blue. After years of believing that serving fruit to my toddler was good parenting, I continue to have an urge to buy her fruit.  My two sons have strong preferences for rice and potatoes.  One likes rice, the other is a potato man like his dad.  I never can remember which is which.  These guys are in their twenties – shouldn’t a good mom be able to remember which one likes rice?

How do we move beyond this? 

I have not found a system to solve my inability to love well.

Jean-Pierre Caussade, an eighteenth-century Jesuit spiritual director offered this advice, “Don’t fuss too much about yourself”.  Don’t fight the truth about yourself.  In weakness, strength is discovered.  As we try to pay off debts, not sleep with someone else’s spouse, not commit murder, remember to avoid serving fruit when our daughter comes to visit, serve rice to Scott and potatoes to Michael (ahhh…there is that memory)… we will discover our complete inadequacy.  At that moment, we have to choose – deny, deny, deny, or acknowledge.  Following Jesus looks like an act of outward obedience that is often beyond us; the fruit of grace is experienced within us. 

What choices are you making in this area?

January 20

Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code—don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.  Romans 13:8-10 The Message

As a child, sitting in the paneled den at my grandparent’s home, reading out of an encyclopedic-sized series of commentaries on scripture, it was easy to get the message that godly people needed to be good people. 

As a teacher of youth, there was always plenty to teach.  Talking about behaving better to a group of tenth grade boys does not require a lot of creative brain power.  They are living, breathing, walking examples of why we adults feel the urge to follow behind them and yell admonitions and warnings of impending doom if they do not change their ways.  (Lugging along first aid kits for them, and defibrillators for ourselves.)

As a parent, I want my children to reduce their risk of acquiring a list of offenses that will hinder the fulfillment of their potential.

As a semi-regular visitor in the prison system in our state, I understand that the thin barbed wire that separates prisoners from visitors is indeed, extremely thin.  Most offenders in the penal system have committed non-violent offenses – often related to the desperation and survival instincts associated with poverty, addiction, and too little hope.  A few wrong choices, a couple of stupid decisions – and each of us could find ourselves behind bars.  That’s the truth of it.  Mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives sit behind bars each and every day.  Once they are out, if you run into them at Walmart, these women will remind you of yourself.  They have kids to feed too.

I leave my times in the prison with a strong urge to phone my children and remind them of the risks of breaking the law. 

Behaving within the confines of the laws of the land is both scriptural and recommended. In many ways, spirituality is simple.  It’s ordinary.  It requires us to not spend more money than we make; we need to get a job and pay our bills; we need to avoid abusive relationships; we need to not take stuff that isn’t ours.  Spirituality is not complicated or particularly special – it is taking one next right step after another.  If this is true, why is it so hard to actually do?

January 19

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.  Winston Churchill

Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code—don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.  Romans 13:8-10 The Message

Acknowledging our flaws and foibles is not the same thing as saying, “Hey, do whatever you want.  God loves you anyway.” 

One of the things I love about the process of the 12 steps is its unflinching commitment to acknowledging our own wrongdoing.  Google them.  Notice what is missing – no step on making a list of all the people you need to forgive and demanding that they make restitution.  Not there.  Look it up.

The 12 steps are all about us taking responsibility for our choices – even as we tell the truth about the circumstances surrounding our decisions. 

To do nothing is in every man’s power.  Samuel Johnson

There are many things we can do nothing about, but one choice is always at our disposal:  tell the truth about ourselves.  No one can steal this from us, this power to acknowledge our own wrongdoing, powerlessness, and unmanageable lifestyle.  This we can do. 

However, we need some information in order to actually accomplish this confession of imperfection.

To be continued…

January 18

But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.  Romans 3:21-24 The Message

There’s an old story that tells of a tourist from the United States who visits a famous Polish rabbi.  He was amazed to see that the rabbi’s home was a simple room filled with books.  “Where is your furniture?” asked the tourist.

“Where is yours?” replied the rabbi.

“I am only a visitor,” answers the tourist.

“So am I,” said the rabbi.  (paraphrased from The Spirituality of Imperfection, p.34)

Anything that becomes an attachment drains us of our spiritual curiosity.  Obsession with “things” stunts our spiritual maturation.  I am not suggesting that we become as evolved as this rabbi!  But I would ask each of us to pay attention to ourselves, noticing our attachments.

A favorite coffee mug, a required breakfast item, a particular side of the bed…what are you attached to?  Just notice it.  The beauty of acknowledging our imperfections is the ability to see ourselves with compassion, even humor.  Make a list of all the small creature comforts you cannot live without.  See what you discover…