iLife - Intentional Living

This is Ike Taylor, a $6 million a year defensive cornerback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Ike grew up as a poor kid in New Orleans without access to fancy gyms or training equipment. I love the way a Sports Illustrated article told his story. As a teenager and high school football player in the blue-collar outskirts of New Orleans, Steelers cornerback Ike Taylor didn't have access to cutting-edge workout equipment or techniques. He and his uncle Herman Francois, with whom Taylor went to live in seventh grade, had to improvise. Most days -- summer and school year -- Taylor and Uncle Herman woke at midnight to work six hours for a janitorial and construction firm run by Taylor's aunt Judy. Around dawn they gathered whatever equipment they could find and headed to a nearby field. That’s Uncle Herman riding the tire in the picture! Using bricks, flour, ropes, tires -- and even a live rabbit at one point – Uncle Herman devised a fitness regimen for young Ike. Soon, says Taylor, “I started noticing that in the fourth quarter of games, guys were taking deep breaths, but I felt great. He trained me into who I am, especially mentally. I realized if I could do Uncle Herman’s workout, I could do anything.” Eventually, young Ike Taylor, who once pulled his uncle around the yard on a tire, would win a Super Bowl ring.

Do you suppose Ike Taylor intended to become a good NFL football player or help his team eventually win a Super Bowl? Do you suppose it was just a lucky accident that the great Pittsburgh Steelers decided to pay this guy $6 million a year? Did Taylor mean to be good?

Or how about “controversial” Tim Tebow? I learned the other day that one of the many reasons this young rookie has won such respect from his teammates is his always monster work ethic; he spends so much time in the weight room that young quarterback Tim Tebow is known to bench press almost as much as his huge offensive linemen! Is it an accident this guy won a Heisman? I know he’s always had great players around him, but is it an accident a guy like this seems to have an uncanny ability, even as a rookie with an awful lot to learn, to win games? Even if this good kid never amounts to anything as a football player, I’d be willing to wager the last dollar in my wallet he’s going to be successful in whatever he intends to do. Intentionality!

What role does intention play in our lives? I know only an infinitesimally small number of people will ever become professional athletes or world renowned in any field as if that even matters, but what are we actually intending to become? What, if anything, are we intending to become? What sort of “workout” regimen of any sort have we designed for ourselves to help us achieve whatever God intends us to achieve? Or do we intend to accomplish anything at all?

Are you living your life as though you really mean it?

Savaging The Narrow Way

"Enter by the narrow gate.

For the gate is wide and the way is easy

that leads to destruction,

and those who enter by it are many.

For the gate is narrow

and the way is hard that leads to life,

and those who find it are few."

~ Jesus in Matthew 7:13-14  (ESV)

Now I know what that pastor was weeping about...

I've made a very intentional point of not reading Rob Bell's latest book for months now.  I have been so unimpressed with Rob Bell's recent thinking (his sloppy handling of Scripture and generally unfair treatment of the church) that I just wasn't interested in wading into the fray on this one.  I have far too many great and enjoyable books on my "to be read" shelf to spend time engaging stuff not worth my time.  I am also working very hard at “minding my own business” as the Apostle Paul encourages in 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12.

But I finally knuckled under and read the book because I noticed two things.

First of all, I noticed several new books published, many of them written by people I deeply respect, taking the time to thoroughly repudiate Bell's thinking - and some of these books were written by people who don't typically like getting involved in controversy.  I haven’t read them all and I don’t plan to, but Francis Chan’s book “Erasing Hell” is particularly gracious, thought-provoking and worth reading – for Chan this conversation is more about the sovereignty of God than heaven and hell.  Many solid, Christian pastors and thinkers seem to believe rejecting Bell's book is a tragically necessary use of their time.  Last Friday night, I discovered that for Lifeway Christian Bookstore, this book became the final straw in their thinking about Rob Bell. They not only refuse to carry this book; they’ve now actually pulled all other Bell products off their shelves.  At Lifeway, there has been friction with Bell’s thinking for a while, but this book was more than they were apparently willing to tolerate.  The online Christian megastore, Christian Book Distributors, has also made the decision to not carry “Love Wins.” It seems an awful lot of good people are lining up against this book.

But secondly, much more disturbingly, I've noticed a few Christians, in their admirable efforts to be gracious and loving toward the world, don't seem to see why so many good pastors and Christian scholars are upset. That stuns me. How can good, Christian people watch Scripture shredded and the church brutalized and not be troubled?  I understand their good intentions, but this time we just can't look past it or look away.

While there are many true statements salted here and there throughout Rob Bell’s book as there are in almost any book, in my mind there can be no denying that this book is a biblical, theological and spiritual train wreck.

This book is the next logical step in the pattern Bell, and others like him, have been following for years. He once again drives his arguments by painting a picture of the church using only the ugliest possible paints and brushes. He mostly ignores centuries of positive, loving, intensely sacrificial Christian engagement with the world and instead focuses the reader’s attention on stories like that of a girl whose supposedly Christian father raped her repeatedly while teaching her to recite The Lord's Prayer. Almost any awful, obnoxious aberration labeling itself Christian religion; anything that is graceless, unloving, unfair, unbalanced or just downright stupid and evil is left for the naïve, already church averse reader to consider normative, typically American Christianity. Then Bell attacks this unbalanced, straw man caricature of the contemporary church with the shallowest logic, chaotic theology and freshman philosophy imaginable. And in the process of doing all this, he eviscerates Scripture and the sovereignty of God, twisting sacred truth into whatever pretzels he wishes.

I’m really sorry to be this blunt, but I truly believe this book is just that awful!  I had to respond.

Intentional Living

“…I focus on this one thing: forgetting the past and looking forward

to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive

the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.”

~ Philippians 3:13-14

Are you living your life as though you actually mean it?

When my girls were little, making all the various mistakes little kids make on their way up, a common excuse, when confronted with their inevitable sins and errors, was, “But Daddy, I didn’t mean to!” I didn’t mean to break that valuable thing or damage that chair. I didn’t mean to spill that spaghetti. I didn’t mean to hurt my sister. Frequently, their defense rested almost entirely on their lack of intention. Somehow, the lamp was supposed to be a little less broken or the food a little less spilled if they didn’t mean to do it.

That’s a cute reaction when you’re two…

At a certain age, our accidental mistakes and damages are understandable. But as we grow older and wiser, the “I didn’t mean it” defense works less and less. Insurance companies establish the cost of our premiums not because of what we’ve intended to do, but by what we’ve done. They don’t seem to care that we didn’t mean to rear-end that other car last year. When we reach maturity, we finally begin to understand how little our intentions often matter. The world judges everything by result. We may not have intended to be a mediocre football coach, but if the team isn’t winning, the coach is usually responsible. We may intend the very best in all our conversations and actions, but sometimes even our best intentions are still inadequate.

The Anchor of Hope (Heb 6:13-20)

"I will be your anchor in this storm" says our narrator...

That sounds great, but honestly, what does that even mean in practical terms?  I know in my head what the Bible says about God’s ability to anchor my life and give me hope in even the worst of storms, I know how much I long to feel like I am anchored – that my life is resting securely on something solid, but how do I get there?

An Oregon man, William Geary, was on his way to work Dec. 21, 2010, stopped at a red light and innocently waiting to turn left, when his life changed forever. A trailer pulled by a too fast-turning semi-truck tipped over and slammed into his Chevy Silverado, trapping him inside under a mess of glass and metal for 90 minutes. Six months, four surgeries, numerous broken bones and about $250,000 in medical bills later, Mr. Geary, now 60, has a long road of recovery ahead of him. Where’s the hopeful anchor of God in a storm like that?

Last Sunday, we walked together through the beautifully hopeful words of Psalm 146, reviewing together all the wonderful blessings a genuine hope in God brings us. But it is one thing to say how much we should appreciate Almighty God as creator, faithful, provider, justice, vision, freedom, courage and righteousness; it is entirely another to experience all those godly, hopeful things first hand. I love and want all those things, but how do I translate those nice, good ideas into the anchor of hope I need? How can all the nice ideas about God truly become a hopeful anchor in God? I want an anchor; how do I truly grab hold of the anchor?

Ground Hog Bliss

This is just a generic wallpaper photograph that came with my new computer months ago.  But isn't this just the most serene looking spot imaginable?  I can smell the air!  Some day I hope to have a small reading and writing shack on the rise just up in the left side of this picture.  Does anyone perhaps know where this picture was taken?  Or who might have taken it?  Just wondering...

If you haven't seen this picture full size before, click on it for the full effect.

Where’s Your Hope? (Psalm 146)

Well, it’s Super Bowl Sunday again and my ghosts and I are going to once again be watching the game from the sad comfort of my living room couch! Oh, speak to me dear Misters Page, Eller and Blair! May the hopeful, greedy interception skills of Sir Paul Krause and the wily, Wally thinking of dear Hilgenberg return to our fair city! Oh dear purple eaters of all that is people and Packer, please return to our village and give us hope and a reason to go on! My pathetic Tarkenton’s ghost continues to wander around our home yet another tragic year – his harried, scrambling eyes hopefully scanning each horizon for better things to come, yet finding only Staubachs and Pearsons bitterly stealing away fleeting championship dreams.

Oh, the horror! What are we to do? Yea verily, where is our hope and future? We’ve spent millions on men of sport – we have offered unimaginable time and treasure on the gory, gruesome altars of the NFL. We have dutifully, faithfully gathered each week to worship and adore and yet still we once again find ourselves hopelessly cast adrift in the dead of winter.

Where is our hope, dear sir and madam? Where can we find hopeful reason to go on?

It’s fun to make hopeless Vikings jokes, especially at this time of year. Having been a rabid Minnesota Vikings fan for almost 40 years, you have to learn to laugh or days like today get really depressing. But all joking aside, there really is a good metaphor there, isn’t there?

Where is our hope exactly? We all know placing our hopes and dreams in a football team would be a pretty pointless thing to do. While it’s a fun way to pass some time, even the simplest among us know sports victories are a pretty fleeting thing. Everybody knows that…

The Cross in the Stone

Signs and wonders declare God’s work in our everyday lives

World Magazine Issue: "Tour D'America Road Rage" 

February 11, 2012 ~ An Editorial by Andrée Seu

The first time Nan told me the story of the cross in the stone, I smiled and thought her quaint.

Angry at her family and desperate to change herself, my friend cried in the gray drizzle on a beach in Nova Scotia and looked heavenward: "Please just show Yourself to me." Seating herself on a large rock, she dug with her hands and found a stone. "There was a perfect cross on both sides. I held it. It held me. We went together to find my husband. I asked his forgiveness for my stony heart. ... His response: 'Let's all go out for a nice hot lobster dinner.'"

I have really had only one question in the last 40 years: How involved does God mean to be in our lives before Christ's return? What is His way with us?

Letter from a Texas inmate: "Dear Andrée. ... The other night I ... was getting ready for bed. My cellie was in his bed with his headphones on and couldn't hear a thing I said, or just barely, because when I said good night he removed one side of his headset and asked what I said. I repeated the good night and climbed into my bunk. I went into prayer and asked the Lord if he could, if he would, let me know sometime that he loves me, like he does Kenneth Copeland and Jessie Duplantis. I had no sooner made the request and my roommate said these words, 'You don't know what it's like, you don't know what it's like, to love somebody, to love somebody, the way I love you.'"

"I thanked the Lord for his mercy and grace as the tears streamed from my eyes, telling him how much I love him too. After I recovered my composure I looked down at my cellie and motioned for him to remove his headphones. He did as I requested and I asked him if he knew what he had just said. He didn't remember, I suppose because he was simply singing along with the tunes on his radio. So I repeated the words he said, and then told him what I had asked from the Lord, and how the Lord had used him to answer my petition."

Was God in Nan's stone? Was He in Nathan's radio coincidence? Some Christians will say flat-out no. Others will say yes, but will mean it like a psychologist means it—that there was an "event" in Nan's mind and in Nathan's mind, a subjective reality that we may poetically call God.

I am not interested in gobbledygook. Either let me be a clean Deist and say that God wed us to Himself and then ditched us in the parking lot of the church to fend for ourselves; or let me declare that it is really the Lord who sends the cardinals I love when I need cheering up. I want to mean by the question about Nan and the stone what a child means before we fill his head with college essays. Is our life full of ongoing encounters with God? Are signs and wonders happening around us a regular part of Christian experience?

The Apostle Paul asks the Galatian church: "Does He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" (3:5). The apostle is talking to an ordinary and settled church when he says that (albeit a congregation with problems). He thinks it an ordinary thing in the church of God that there should be miracles. Even Christians who say signs and wonders have ceased deny their own position whenever they ask for the healing of Uncle Bob's cancer.

Our God is "the living God." He placed stones to be found by women weeping on beaches in Nova Scotia, and Bee Gees songs for the prisoner hungry for reassurance of His love. It is important that we thank Him when He does because a spiritual principle is involved: To the one who has, more will be given; to the one who does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken away.

Nan ends her account like this: "The stone now holds a prominent place on our bedroom bureau. It is a reminder of the One broken for me."

A link to the online article and the rest of the current issue is here.