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| I'm not sure why, but I had never tied the two thoughts together before...
- 1 Peter 5:8a - "Be self-controlled and alert" (the "no fun" part of Christianity - always having to keep your eyes open, taking God and Christianity seriously, not going on auto-pilot, focusing, discipline)
- 1 Peter 5:8b - "Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (the scary part of Christianity - but also one of the more motivating, interesting dimensions of the whole thing - a cosmic struggle in which I play a crucial, vital role) ...could it be that God asks us to be self-controlled and alert because the battle that is raging around us demands such focus and attention? Could it be that God isn't trying to squash our fun, but is trying to give us survival skills for this conflict? Our Enemy is not messing around - he's in this for keeps. He has a focused plan to bring us down - is it too much for God to ask for His children to keep their eyes open and heads up, aware and alert, ready at any time to avoid a sneak attack or to press forward in attack on the Enemy wherever he reveals himself? If we are really involved in a spiritual struggle, with lives hanging in the balance, it makes sense that God would want His children to know that they are soldiers, and as such they have a bull's eye on their front/back/middle. God wouldn't be loving if he didn't tell us to wake up to the struggle and suck deeply of all the nourishment, love, and protection that He can offer to us. And yet so many times I think that God is trying to spoil my fun, ruin my day, cramp my style. I have no clue what's happening around me. I have no idea how the devil is trying to destroy my friends all around me - my wife, my son, myself. I just blithely walk into the battle, bullets flying all around me, friends dropping to the ground, the brains leaking out of their heads from the direct hits that they've taken, and I just settle into the couch and pick up the remote control. Shame on me. Shame on us all. We need to wake up. We need to take this thing seriously, because it makes a difference to the whole army if one soldier isn't functioning properly. We all affect each other. I can't pretend that my life doesn't impact those around me. If I'm not alert, and self-controlled, then the Enemy might get a jump on me or on the people I care about, sink his claws into them, drag them back into the darkness, and eat them alive. I've seen it happen. From time to time, I have felt the sharp pain of those claws in my own soul. No more. No more. Life is a battle (and apparently also a highway, as Racal Flatts has reminded us recently) and it's not optional. I don't want the Enemy to get at the ones I love. I want him and his purposes to be crushed and defeated and come to nothing. I want to set others free from his lies, his sticky nets of deception and hatred that pull us all in from time to time. I want to be the kind of man that when I wake up in the morning, God smiles and the devil shudders. Not because I am anything impressive of myself, but because I am so determined to walk with God and to set others free from the clutches of the Evil One that he knows he'll have his hands full with me today, that I will persist and persist until I win. I want the Enemy to know that he'll have to get through me in order to get at my family, my friends, the people who God has entrusted to my care. I want him to have to mark me as a man to be reckoned with. I want him to be reminded of his eternal destiny each time that I resist his lies and set another person free from his clutches. I want him to tremble each time I open my mouth to speak, hearing in my feeble words an echo of the roar of the Lion of the tribe of Judah who sealed his fate when He arose from the dead, victorious, the King. | | |
| "Most of us would rather know the future than create it."
- Erwin McManus, from "Uprising: A Revolution of the Soul." Can you imagine what life might look like if we worried less about what will happen to us and start to take action to shape the events that will unfold in our future? I know that my Calvinist training (if you have no idea what I'm talking about here, count yourself lucky and just move to the next sentence) has encouraged a passivity that already lives in the "old me." I worry about the future, and what will happen to me, and whether or not I will ever be successful or meaningful. Will I ever have a set of circumstances unfold in my life that will enable me to get ahead? I sit and wait for it to fall in my lap, for God to "show me His will," when maybe I should be moving into the future with confidence, making choices that will insure the kind of future that I want to have. What if you thought of the future of the world as unwritten, not set in stone? What if you played a huge role in the unfolding of the history of the universe? What if God deliberately chose to partner with you in bringing redemption to our world? What if you are much more important than you have thought? Would you feel free to move into the future with purpose and freedom and creativity, or would you feel paralyzed? Do we want to react to life, or create life? Maybe God doesn't answer our prayers because He wants to teach us to fight, to wrestle, to struggle to grab life. Maybe life is something that cannot be enjoyed on auto-pilot; maybe life is something that can only be enjoyed when you are an inch or two from the unknown, the edge of a cliff so high you can't see the bottom. Maybe God is always pushing us over the edge because He knows it's the only place that you can know that you are alive. I want to live. As my good friends and respected philosophers P.O.D. once said, "Jah say 'live free', Jay say, 'be free,' Jah say 'die free." What if that's God's primary goal for you? Not that you experience safety and blessing, but that you experience life and freedom? Is that what you thought you signed up for? | | |
| ...from Philip Yancey's book "Prayer" May God bless you with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace. May God bless you with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war,
So that you may reach out your hand and comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy. And may God bless you with enough foolishness
To believe that you can make a difference in the world,
So that you can do what others claim cannot be done
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor. Amen. | | |
| "Let people feel the full weight of who you are...and let them deal with it." John Eldredge (Wild at Heart) As I read those words I realized that I have spent the vast majority of my life trying to keep others from feeling the full weight of who I am. I have been a poser, a pretender for much of my life. Many of you who read this blog from time to time are people who have known me when I was younger (some of you, MUCH younger), and probably think that you know me, at least a little. Sadly, I fear that I have hidden much of who I really am from all of you. I am like Adam, hiding in the bushes of Eden, afraid that if you see me as I really am, you will kick me out of the paradise of your love and your hearts. I also hide because of the blows that I have taken on those few occasions when I DID reveal my heart for what it really was. Those attacks hurt deeply, and seem to hurt more sharply the closer that I get to knowing how God wants me to live - who He sees me to be. I got the message that what I really thought, what I really wanted, what I really believed was not good enough, not true, threatening somehow to the status quo. I am referring, of course, to my whole experience at BBC last year. I was teaching a class for someone who was very ill, and I showed some "love" and appreciation for some authors who have made a significant impact on my thinking throughout the class. Who I am has in some small measure been shaped by these men, and I wanted my students to have the opportunity to interact with them, as well, and perhaps learn something from them. Very quickly I was challenged, by both students, faculty, administration, and in a bizarre twist, even some influential alumni of the school. One of these critics challenged me directly, which I admire (even though it still hurt), but most of them challenged me to others. I came to be seen by some as another evidence of the "slippery slope" of postmodernism - someone who has been trapped by the world and culture around us. I challenged (and challenge) some of their presuppositions and some of their interpretations of Scripture, and instead of being invited into a dialogue and discussion, I was pressured to shut the whole thing down, to conform, to fall in line. Though I was never forced to remove the book from the class, my ability to influence my students' thinking was seriously compromised by the whole controversy. All of a sudden I saw students glaring at me in class - I began to wonder what they thought of me, what others had told them. I felt their eyes on me and I felt...exposed. Frowned upon. Disliked - or worse, pitied. Either way, some students chose to dismiss me. And it started to affect my teaching. I didn't say things the way that I really believed them - I came close, but I always shaded what I thought and felt in order to avoid those eyes, those glares. I began to be very suspicious, and to retreat inside myself. When I did interact with others about the class or the issues that the class raised, I would emerge from hiding (there's that word again) long enough to express a lot of bitterness and hurt rage, only to retreat back into my coccoon. Here's the irony of it all: those attacks were the best proof that I have seen in my whole life that I was beginning to live as a real man in a world of males. The fact that forces were aligning to silence me should have been all the encouragement that I needed that I was finally on the right track, and yet I crumbled in many ways. The pressure got to me, so I did my "Old Toby" thing - I put on a front, I went into hiding. Why didn't I confront my attackers? Why didn't I reach out to them in love and invite them to deal with me as a real person, a real man with feelings and dreams? Why didn't I stand my ground, and teach what I had come to believe? Why were those glares so painful to me? Why did they make me fold? Why did I begin to act like them, firing at them among my friends with unkind jabs and burning arrows, as they had fired at me? Why didn't I just let them feel the full weight of who I am and then make them deal with me? I didn't trust them or God enough, I now believe. In many ways, I don't know the man who lives inside of me, who God has made to dwell there. I am very familiar with the Old Toby and his strategies for success and survival in a hostile world, and it is more comfortable to follow his lead. But no more. I want to be me - I want to say what I mean, stand up for the underdog, challenge foolish policies, and fight the powers that be. I want to defend those who I love, and I want to be a force to be reckoned with as God's lion cub. I want my spine to be straight and unbowed when the Enemy unleashes his arrows at me. I want to challenge him with bravery and not bravado; I want him to know that I realize that I am weak and that I need my Father to fight my battles for me. I want him to know that I trust my Father and am safe within His arms. In short, I want to be a man worth killing. To all of you who have only seen Toby the poser, Toby the fake, Toby the "Super Nice Guy," I want to beg your forgiveness for not offering you the depth of who I am, the strength that God has put inside of me by His own power. I am sorry for not loving you as fully as I should have. I am sorry that I often pursued safety over meaningful interaction with you. I want you all to be witnesses - I am seeking from this day on to live in such a way that is real to who God has made me to be. My son and my wife need the real Toby, the Toby who is unafraid because he knows who His Daddy really is, the Toby who can shelter them with the strength he has on loan from his Heavenly Daddy. The people who God has called me to shepherd need me to say what must be said and to love as deeply as God has made me to love them. I was made for battle in this world at war; it's time that I pick up a sword and engage, for the glory of God and the good of His people. | | |
| Hey, everybody, if you miss hearing my voice and want to hear a couple of sermons that I have preached recently at the church where I am serving as an intern, check out this site: www.northbaptistchurch.org. You should be able to hear some stuff. If you don't miss hearing my voice, well, then...there's always more Piper!!! Lotsa luv! Toby | | |
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