Month: December 2016

I’ve never been too keen on New Year’s resolutions. After all, why should I need a calendar date to make any change in my habits or lifestyle? I can change something just as well on December 28^th as I can on January 1^st, but the fact is we mark New Year’s day as a new beginning and a place to start over. With that in mind, I’ve made a list of 3 things I want to do better in 2017.

 

1. Love my neighbor better.

Of course this begs the question, “Who is my neighbor?” My neighbor is anyone I encounter. It’s the single mom with her two kids in front of me in the check-out line at the grocery store who comes up a few dollars short to pay for her items and I happen to have a $20 bill in my wallet. It’s the guy on the freeway who carelessly whips in front of me to cut me off (I need a lot of grace on this one!). It’s the homeless man. It’s the guy who has the complete opposite political views than me. In a nutshell, I want to be less focused on myself and more aware that there are those around me every day who need love.

 

2. Be a better listener. (when my wife reads this, she’ll respond with an Amen!)

I want to be a better listener to other people. Instead of hearing a couple of words and immediately making a pre-judgment (prejudice), I could actually listen to them with an open mind and try to understand where they’re coming from. Sometimes we can be so anxious to let our point of view be known, that we fail to really hear the other person.

 

“Whoever answers before listening is both foolish and shameful.”

Proverbs 18:13

 

3. Pray better.

Not more, just better. When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, he said –

 

“In this manner, therefore, pray:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”     

 

Jesus didn’t just give them a suggestion, he gave them an actual prayer to pray. When I pray in this way, it aligns my life with heaven. This is not about praying eloquent prayers, it is about me aligning myself with heaven’s intentions. There is something powerful that takes place when we make time to pray.

I’m not talking about praying over your meal. This is about spending time, one-on-one, with Jesus. And in that time, not only talking to God, but listening to him as well.

This blog has been short and to the point this week. I could probably come up with many more, but these are the three “biggies” right now.

 

What do you want to do better in 2017? I would love to hear your thoughts.

 

See you next year,

 

Kevin                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

A couple of years ago I purchased a song on iTunes. There’s nothing unusual about that, except this particular song seemed so descriptive of where I felt like I was at this juncture of my life. The song was “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, by U2:

 

I have climbed the highest mountains

I have run through the fields

Only to be with you

Only to be with you

 

I have run, I have crawled

I have scaled these city walls

These city walls

Only to be with you

 

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

 

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a seeker. For as long as I can remember, there has been a cry from my innermost being that says, “there must be more!”

It’s a search for something real. Something authentic. Something genuine.

 

I liken it to pecan brittle. Yes, pecan brittle. I remember eating peanut brittle as a child and being somewhat unimpressed by it. I’ve seen peanut, pecan, and even cashew brittle fancy in packages in stores and have tried some of it. But then there’s Becky’s Famous Pecan Brittle. It’s authentic, it’s real, it’s original, and it’s like nothing you’ve ever tasted. No fancy packaging, just a little brown paper bag with a red ribbon around it, with a little tag on it. But inside is something delightful and delicious.

 

I, like so many others these days, have grown tired of the plastic, glossed over, loud and flashy, what-can-we-grab-their-attention-with-this-week church scene. Where is the authentic?

 

As this year comes to an end, I will have read 12 books, all of them good, but the last one could be considered the icing on the cake (or maybe the cake itself). The Book is “Water to Wine” by Brian Zahnd. Ironically, in the first chapter he quotes the first verse of the song I spoke of in the beginning.

 

I’ve read a lot of books in my life, but I don’t know that I’ve read one that so resonated with where I am in my search. Here’s what he says about the book on the back cover:

 

“I was halfway to ninety—midway through life—and I had reached a mid-life crisis. Call it a garden-variety mid-life crisis if you want, but it was something more. You might say it was a theological crisis, though it makes it sound too cerebral. The unease I felt came from a deeper place than a mental file labeled ‘theology.’ I was wrestling with the uneasy feeling that the faith I had built my life around was somehow deficient. Not wrong, but lacking. It seemed watery, weak. In my most honest moments I couldn’t help but notice that the faith I knew seemed to lack the kind of robust authenticity that made Jesus so fascinating. And I had always been utterly fascinated by Jesus. What I knew was that the Jesus I believed in warranted a better Christianity than I was familiar with. I was in Cana and the wine had run out. I needed Jesus to perform a miracle.”

 

Brian Zahnd, Water to Wine

 

The greatest impact this book has had on me has been my prayer life. I would be more honest and truthful to say my lack of a prayer life.

 

I have now begun using a liturgy of prayer outlined in this book that has not only changed my prayer life, but is changing me!

 

I’ll leave you with another quote from Water to Wine –

 

“The primary purpose of prayer is not to get God to do what we think God ought to do, but to be properly formed. Prayer is not about advising or managing God; prayer is about us being properly formed.”

 

To be continued…

 

Merry Christmas to all,

 

Kevin

As most of you who read my blog know, I talk a lot about changing the way you think. In one of my earlier blogs I wrote about a 21-day brain detox that I do on a continual basis. I recently decided to begin a series of detoxes based on the Sermon On the Mount found in Matthew’s gospel.

I have probably read these three chapters more than any others in the New Testament the past few years, yet I sense that there’s still something deeper that I need to see, understand, and experience. The Apostle Paul said it so well –

 

“…that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened…”

 

This, and the passage in its entirety in Ephesians, explains why I need to pick a portion of the Bible that I’m already so familiar with and let it transform me so completely that when I come out the other side, I look, sound, smell, taste, and act like Jesus. I won’t be allowed to turn back to that way of thinking that says, “Oh I know Jesus said that, but c’mon, we live in the real world.”

 

I have decided to follow Jesus.

 

Oh, the many times I sang that song growing up in an evangelical church and thinking it meant, “I have decided to punch my ticket to heaven.” If that is all it means, then it would have been better to have drowned me in the baptismal tank!

I am forty-seven days into this massive detox and I’m on Matthew 5:5 –

 

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

 

What is meekness?

The late Warren Piersol gave the best explanation of meekness I’ve ever heard. He gave the example of a horse, which as we know is one of the strongest and most powerful animals on earth. The horse is also one of the most useful animals known to man. But he is only useful if he has been broken and tamed.

Once broken and tamed, he becomes gentle and cooperative. But he still has the power and strength to kill you. Powerful, yet gentle. Gentle, yet powerful.

So it is with a man who is meek. No better example of this than Jesus.

He was God. He had the full disposal of God’s power at His fingertips. He had the power to do great harm to His enemies, even kill them. When the band of Roman soldiers, led by Judas, came to arrest Him in the garden of Gethsemane, Peter drew his sword and cut off an ear of one of them. Jesus, who could have slain them all with one command, healed the soldier’s ear instead. That is meekness.

I’m not sure at this moment that I would be able to respond like Jesus did, but I want to. I want to be like that.

I believe this world could use some meekness right now. A lot of meekness. Meekness is not weakness. In fact, it is the opposite. You and I have the power to kill our enemies. Not only physically, but with our words. I have that power. You have that power. But there is a power that waits to be unleashed on the world that can only be unleashed through meekness. It is the power of love. The power that comes only from the One who is love – Jesus. It is unleashed when we let Him put the bit in our mouth and let Him gently guide us with His reins.

 

In the kingdoms of this world, the powerful rule.

 

In His kingdom, the meek inherit the earth.

 

Learning meekness,

 

Kevin