I am taking a break from blogging until February 1st.
Until then can I suggest an AMAZING new book on prayer that you MUST read?
It’s called The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson.
From the first page until the last its packed with profound insights and practical tips to take your prayer life to places its never gone before.
Buy a copy and share it with those you love.
It will change the way you pray.
I promise.
Here’s a picture of what REMAINS of my personal pastoral library…
A few months ago I gave away of 3/4 of the books in my personal library. Books are the lifeblood of any spiritual leader, so I was pretty surprised during a recent prayer time when I felt the spirit’s nudge to “clean this place out.” And yes, this is what was LEFT.
I believe the nudge to clean my library out was more than an effort on God’s part to simply create more shelf space. I’m pretty sure it was the spirit’s prompting to take stock of the ideas that had influenced me up to this point in my journey and, to begin, both literally and metaphorically, to make room for new ideas.
I approached each book in my library with one simple question: “Has this book so profoundly influenced me that I can see myself reading it 2-3 more times and sharing it with other people?” If the answer was no, it went into the “give away” pile.
Here were a few things that crossed my mind as I did this:
1. Besides biblical study and language resources, I quickly learned that I had purchased two kinds of books over the years: timeless books and quick-fix how-to books. Books I’d throw in the timeless category were books like Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald and Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration by Warren Bennis; both books that continue to speak into my life years after they were written. Quick-fix how-to books all focused on the latest church fad to come down the pike.
A question that’s been bugging me lately is, “What precedes temperance?”
Our church just finished the second week of a series called, “Do This, Not That.” It’s a series on the seven deadly sins – a collection of sins that have proved to be the most troublesome for Christians to eradicate from their lives.
The solution, Galatians 5 and other scriptures exhort us, is to focus on cultivating a corresponding virtue that ultimately supplants the vice we struggle with.
This past Sunday we discussed the deadly sin of gluttony, and how focusing on temperance (i.e. “tempering our impulses to spend, eat, speak rashly, whatever) cultivates the spiritual strength to withstand all forms of gluttony.
But what precedes temperance? When you see someone who oozes self-control, what causes them to be so? What gives them the inner drive to control themselves?
Every time we turn around there’s a new book/pastor/church/sermon/bible study/seminar or conference telling us that we are wholly inadequate in our commitment to Christ.
The formula is always the same:
Who wouldn’t feel fat, lazy, shallowly committed and innately self-centered after being bludgeoned by that?
The problem is American Christians eat this stuff up, and it has nothing to do with Jesus; it’s all about the formula.
Imagine you became a little league baseball coach and were tasked with taking over a team of fourth-graders and turning them into MLB superstars. What would you say to them to motivate them?
My hunch is you’d be tempted to…
And the fourth graders would eat it up.
But would they actually get any better because of it?
Of course not.
Why?
“Acedia is like morphine. You know the pain is there, yet can’t rouse yourself to give a damn.” – Kathleen Norris, Acedia & Me
Throughout church history, those tasked with leading men and women in personal transformation quickly realized there were seven persistent sins that continually set traps for Christ followers.
Over time those sins became known as “the seven deadly sins.”
The key to overcoming each deadly sin is not by focusing on the sin itself, but by practicing a corresponding virtue which over time supplants the vice we each struggle with.
In short, spiritual growth comes by “doing this, not that.”
This past Sunday we kicked off DO THIS, NOT THAT by talking about spiritual apathy, or what the ancients called “Acedia,” which in Greek literally meant “not caring.”
Last night I had a dream that I was sitting in the back seat of a car driving around the streets of 1950ish Clearwater, Florida.
Everything I saw in my dream had a yellowish tint to it, like the way the Cohen brothers filmed the movie “No Country For Old Men.”
At some point in my dream the scene shot changed and I saw who was driving the car. It was Francis Chan (or it could have been Daniel Dae Kim from Hawaii Five-O…I don’t know…Francis is bald, right? Daniel has hair…well this guy had hair…but looked like Francis Chan).
Anyway, Francis Chan was driving the car, in my dream, with a wig on, trying to look like Daniel Dae Kim.
Whoever it was, we had that “wiser older Master Po Asian guy / young David Carradine grasshopper thing from Kung Fu” going on in the back of an old Studebaker cruising the streets pasts palm trees and shiny new houses.
At some point Francis looks in the rear-view mirror and says, “I don’t see it. Brian, I don’t see the obedience in your life.”
There’s a small company in our area called ‘The Perfect Plan.”
They’re in the “helping people move” business. If you get transferred out of the area they’ll coordinate all the details of your relocation from turning off the electric to handing you the keys to your new home when you arrive. It’s seems like a great service.
Every time I drive by their sign I laugh and think to myself, I stopped trying to come up with one of those years ago.
I tried.
Lord knows I tried.
But the problem is every time I sat down to come up with a perfect plan for my life – complete with where I’d be, who I’d be with, what I’d be doing, and how I’d be doing it – every time, and I mean virtually every time, I ended up way off target.
Thank goodness. Some of the best things in my life have come as a result of not planning for them, but simply accepting them as they came.
Proverbs 16:9 reminds us,
In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps.
I take that to mean that planning is a good thing, especially when it comes to things like moving. Relocating your entire family out of state and having your refrigerator end up in Biloxi and your cat end up in Las Cruces is not a good thing.
Here’s a drama we did for the final week of the “If Hell Is Real…” series. Special thanks to Church on the Move in Tulsa for the idea.
For more information about Keith’s work in Nairobi click HERE.
