Tag: Christ

Helping Our Children Live a Life of No Regrets

Posted on by FullLifeWord

Everyone needs purpose in their lives, the challenge we often face is in finding that purpose.

As parents we desire the best for our children. We recognize the importance the role purpose plays in their lives. For all of us, having a sense of defined purpose gives us hope, energy, and passion in life. Purpose allows us to engage, to bring positive change in our lives and in the lives around us. Without purpose we languish.

Often purpose takes on a role that transcends ourselves. Purpose doesn’t have to be great in the eyes of the public. Often purpose is of a much humbler persuasion. With genuine purpose comes a sense of inner peace. For some, purpose is caring for a family member, for others, purpose might be more public and evident.

For a follower of Christ, purpose contains a deeper, spiritual component. An element of eternity comes to the forefront. Such eternal purposes are most meaningful when aligned with Gods will and very nature. After all, it is God that plants the seeds of desire, that when nurtured, grow to maturity as life a purpose in each of our hearts.

As a parent, it is our high honor to help our kids in their search for meaningful purpose with eternal significance. On the journey to adulthood, our children are striving to understand their roles and purpose in life. As they do this, it’s incumbent upon parents, that we actively enable their quest to identify their life’s purpose. We aught to pray for our children and to engage them in meaningful dialog around this quest.

While on this path towards finding eternal purpose, we must remember to resist the temptation to identify our children’s purpose for them. We may coach, educate, and offer council, but we must allow God free reign in this aspect of their lives.

It’s possible that our children’s purpose may not be in harmony with our personal concepts of purpose for their lives. To be meaningful and to have eternal significance, their purpose must be in alignment with God’s nature. In this we must agree upfront to not interfere with God’s divine plan for our children. To do so would ultimately bring them a lifetime of regret. There can be no higher calling than to align our life’s purpose with God’s eternal purpose.

Such a goal should be sought with the understanding that God’s ways are higher than our own ways. We may not fully grasp the significance of His purposes in our lives or in the lives of our children. Instead we must trust Him, we must choose to walk on a narrow trail of faith that encompasses the reality of God’s constant grace to his children.

When William Borden graduated from a Chicago high school in 1904, he was heir to the Borden Dairy estate, which made him a millionaire. For his graduation present, his parents gave him a trip around the world.

As the young man traveled through Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, he felt a growing burden for the world’s hurting people. Finally, Borden wrote home to say, “I’m going to give my life to prepare for the mission field.” At the same time, he wrote two words in the back of his Bible: “No reserves.”

Perhaps his parents would have wanted him to take over the family business or enter into some other aspect of business. Yet despite such promising opportunities, Borden never wavered in what he believed to be a higher calling, a higher purpose, a purpose cloaked in eternal significance.

While attending Yale, Borden started numerous Bible study groups. By the time he graduated, more than half the student body were participating in his Bible study groups in one form or another. When he wasn’t ministering to students on campus, he was ministering to the poor on the streets of New Haven.

Upon graduation from Yale, Borden wrote two more words in the back of his Bible: “No retreats.”

With his family name and education, he was quickly offered several lucrative job opportunities upon graduation from Yale. In the face of these offers, he stayed true to his purpose and turned them all down, enrolling in Seminary instead.

Upon graduation from seminary, he traveled to Egypt to learn Arabic so he could work with Muslims in China. While in Egypt, Borden contracted spinal meningitis. He died within a month at the young age of twenty-five.

Prior to his death, Borden wrote two more words in his Bible. Underneath the words “No reserves” and “No retreats,” he wrote, “No regrets.”1

While we can’t always understand God’s plans and purposes, we can be confident that when we follow His plan for our lives, plans that are consistent with His character, we will live a life of no regrets.

In the eyes of those outside of God’s kingdom, Borden’s life may have seemed wasted, perhaps even unfair. But the truth is, none of us know how many years we’ve been given to live out our earthly life, but for Borden, he viewed his life from an eternal perspective, he trusted God for his eternal purpose, and that’s what allowed him to live his life fully (John 10:10) with no regrets.

For those of us that God allows to live for many years, we have the double challenge of keeping God’s purpose alive for the long run. Perhaps your purpose is to help others by working in a retail setting, perhaps it’s to bring comfort over a lifetime of service to countless patients as a member of the medical profession, or to minister to co-workers in a business setting, or to give hope to troubled students in the teaching profession. Whatever your eternal purpose, do it to the glory of God, and live your life with no regrets.

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1 Mrs. Howard Taylor, Borden of Yale (Bethany, 1988) Craig Brian Larson and Phyllis Ten Elshof, 1001 Illustrations That Connect (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2008), 276–277.

”We’re surrounded. That simplifies things.”

Posted on by FullLifeWord

Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller, was the most decorated Marine in American history. He was one of two United States servicemen to be awarded five Navy Crosses and one Army Distinguished Service Cross.

Puller retired from the Marine Corps in 1955 after 37 years of service. He lived in Virginia until his death in 1971 at age 73. In was during WW II and the Korean War that that he was decorated for his leadership and for numerous acts of bravery.

During the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in Korea, Puller’s forces became encircled by over a 120,000 enemy troops. The enemy were under orders from their leader, Mao Zedong, to destroy the UN forces.

His succinct and transparent assessment of the Chosin Reservoir situation was one for the history books. Upon the realization that they were completely surrounded, Puller declared; “We’ve been looking for the enemy for some time now. We’ve finally found him. We’re surrounded. That simplifies things.” Clearly his problem statement, coupled with the realization that his options were rather simplified, could not have been more understated. In the end, Puller was credited for his part in leading his troops to breakout and subsequently escape the entrapment.1

Unlike Puller’s assessment of his limited options, our modern lives seem to present us with an endless series of digital options for which we may choose. These options are found in our social media, video content, gaming, etc., are so numerous that they seem only to function as a fragile shield from reality.  Yet they offer little in the way of lasting value, instead they’ve become a facade of life, bringing only the allure of escape from our difficulties without actually contributing to anything of lasting value.

In some ways these digital options have led us to live out a life of dissatisfaction. They genuinely keep us from welcoming that deep contentment our souls really long for. Product advertisers work hard to continue our slide into dissatisfaction with waves of sound bites, ads, video clips and the alike, all aimed at one message: “The solution to your dissatisfaction in life lies in the purchase of our product or service. Buy it and you’ll have the contentment you’ve been seeking.”

Have you ever seen yourself in this situation? I know I have at times. It’s easy to drift into this labyrinth of distraction because we are surrounded by the constant message that we should be discontent with life.  But I want you to know that there is another path to choose that will lead to real, deep, and true contentment in this life. It’s a path found in a single choice, yet it offers us an eternal peace and contentment that reaches deep into our souls.

The scriptures speak about this deep contentment. The Apostle Paul wrote:

“I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

Paul was a man faimular with living life in times of good and in times of bad. He also suffered a medical condition that he asked to God to resolve, but the Lord didn’t heal him. Instead the Lord told Paul; “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness’ “(2 Cor. 12:9–10). You see, in this one act, the Lord revealed to Paul the frame of mind that he needed to carry with him in life. He was to find his contentment, not in his being perfectly healthy or in the many things of this life, but singularly in his dependency upon God’s grace for living out each day.

Long before Paul’s time, King David penned the first sentence in one of the most recognized Psalms ever to be recorded in all literary history. He wrote: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want“ (Ps. 23:1, emphasis mine)

For King David, all he needed was one thing, and he found that in God. Here was a King who could ask for anything, and I’m sure he had many options to choose from. But he saw only one option, and that was the option to love the Lord, and only the Lord with all his being. God was central to his life. He realized that true contentment could only be born out of a genuine relationship with God. With God at his side, he could live his life fully content, without want, because he knew God would provide for him.

Let’s face it, contentment is learned from experiences in life, and when we’ve found the true source of contentment, it will lead us to the ability to conquer circumstances and situations, rather than be conquered by them. The critical factor is in understanding where we get our contentment from. With real contentment we’ll be able to live out our lives with attitude that is the exact opposite of living with worry and anxiety.

Paul also wrote:

“Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:11–13, NRSV)

Outside of God, many fall into the trap of believing our contentment will come when we have more power, money, perfect health, the model family, the latest fashions, a new car etc. The desire to seek all these things overwhelms our senses with endless options that we must process each day. Living our lives this way simply ramps up our personal stress and anxiety. Mostly because our point of comparison (Other people, fashions etc.) are in continuous flux, which invariably leaves us in a disjointed state of contentment. Yet, if we were to practice contentment and rest in the Lord, the way he would desire us to, then the things we would focus on would be simplified considerably and we would experience true inner contentment, independent of life circumstances.

Does seeking our contentment in the Lord mean we isolate ourselves from the world around us, that we are not allowed to enjoy the pleasures of life that God has given us?

“No!”

There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying the blessings of God. Thomas Kempis said it well:

“Use temporal things but desire eternal things. You cannot be satisfied with any temporal goods because you were not created to enjoy them. Even if you possessed all created things you could not be happy and blessed; for in God, Who created all these things, your whole blessedness and happiness consists.”-(Thomas à Kempis 1380-1471) 2

What are the important and eternal things?

How about relationships? The very first one of which is our personal relationship with Jesus, without which we are unable to achieve lasting contentment. When our relationship is right with God, then every other options becomes clearer and their relative importance becomes easier to discern.

The bible encourages us to invest in the lives of those around us, whether they be our family, co-workers, neighbors, the recently arrived immigrant, or simply a person we bump into during our day to day activities. (Matthew 19:19)

When our relationship is right with God we can be at peace with all other relationships, even if the recipient is not receptive to us. The point is, we can live contently, because all of that extraneous stuff now falls within the purview of God, it’s really beyond our control. We cannot control how others respond to us, we can only control how we respond the them.

The same principle applies to life. I cannot always control my health situation, I may be able to influence it, but in the end I must remain content, knowing, that from an eternal perspective, my health is covered by God already.

Choosing to be content in the Lord is to simplify our options to the things that really matter in the grand scale of eternity. With God, we have contentment despite our life circumstances, and with that contentment comes a degree of peace for which nothing else compares.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesty_Puller

(2) Elliot Ritzema and Rebecca Brant, eds., 300 Quotations for Preachers from the Medieval Church, Pastorum Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013).

 

Sourdough Patience

Posted on by FullLifeWord

Some years ago I took an active interest in baking bread. After having to eat a few failures, I started to get the hang of the whole process and found myself enjoying the making of homemade bread on a regular basis.

One day, I came across some sourdough starter in a specialty baking store and thought I would give it a try. I like sourdough, and I’d always heard that making sourdough bread was a bit more challenging than baking regular bread. But I felt like I was up to the task after mastering the baking of regular bread. But it didn’t take me long to realize how different and challenging it really was.

In my early experience with sourdough bread, I chose to draw upon my traditional bread making experiences, but I failed miserably in the making a decent sourdough round. I sought out different approaches and read up on how to make such breads (This was in the days before Google) and could not seem to find anything written for the total novice. Most recipes used terminology that I was not familiar with and referenced techniques that I had no experience with.

After numerous failures, I set it aside and decided I would come back to it later, as I was just getting frustrated and not making any real progress. Over the years, I would occasionally think about taking up the effort again, but the many past failures and my busy life precluded me from going after the challenge.

Last Christmas, my wife purchased some sourdough starter for me, along with a number of cool things, a special jar to keep my starter in, some willow baskets to form the bread, a scraper tool to help handle the dough, a book, and most importantly, her encouragement and belief that I could master the necessary skills to be successful.

In the intervening years in my professional life, I had also learned a great deal about business process controls, and how to diagnose and fix process failures. This combination of skills played a part in my ultimate success in learning to make a proper round of sourdough bread.

First, I cracked open the book my wife gave me. The book was supposed to be for beginners, and the author made an effort in that direction, but he still wasn’t writing at a basic enough level for me. But what he did do well was talk about the science and history behind sourdough yeast. His deep understanding of the biology of yeast, and how yeast functioned, and the different types of yeast were a game changer for me. Once I realized how different sourdough yeast was from commercial yeast, I felt more confident.

My wife had ordered live starter for me, basically some raw sourdough with active yeast in it. There were instructions on how to get my starter going and how to care for it. I followed these to the letter, and within  a couple of weeks I had before me some healthy starter. While the starter was doing it’s thing, I did some more research (By this time Google was invented) and found another book written by this lady that really spoke to me as beginner. I ordered her book and using her approach plus my newfound understanding of the science behind sourdough, I attempted my first round of bread. It was closer than anything I had ever baked in the past, which was a huge win, but it was still a far cry from what I considered to be a decent sourdough. The bread was a bit flat, the crust was overdone. So I went back to her book and did some more reading and learned more.

I documented my recipe and the process I was using to make my bread step by step. Using my understanding of solving business process failures, I took an objective look at what I was doing and documented the factors that were potentially causing my bread to turn out poorly. With each successive try, I learned more and more, and after nearly a dozen attempts, I finally produced an amazing round of sourdough bread!

Now the real test was around repeatably. Could I use my cleaned up list and my newfound experience to repeat the same process and reliably get good results? I made several more rounds, and each came out perfect, confirming that I had finally mastered the basics of making sourdough.

There will be new things to learn, as I now shift from making basic sourdough to making different kinds of sourdough breads. After all, learning never stops and that’s half the fun.

But why did success ultimately happen?

There were several universal keys that are applicable to all things in life, not just mastering the art of making sourdough bread:

  1. Patience and persistence: All of life skills take patience and persistence in the face of failure. Even if it means we stand back for awhile and then re-engage to get better. One of the things I learned is that sourdough yeast is much less concentrated than commercial yeast, therefore, one must patiently wait much longer for the yeast to do it’s job of making the dough rise. There was no rushing this.
  2. Encouragement from others: Being encouraged by my wife and family really helped me be more persistent during those many failures that I experienced. Of course they were happily eating my mistakes as well.
  3. Knowledge: Without study, without a deeper understanding of the science behind sourdough, and the processes suggested in the baking steps, I would not have been successful in my later efforts.
  4. Application of knowledge: Of course, knowledge is pretty much useless unless I can apply what I learned in real life. Experience and  application of what we learn brings the entire subject to life, giving it purpose and significance.
  5. Consistency of process: I had to work very hard on this one. Consistency in the manner in which I prepared the bread dough, the steps in rising, controlling the temperature during the rise itself, and finally managing the bake times and temperatures to the exact minute, all were all critical to success.

The result of all of this was personal satisfaction and growth in my skills as a better baker.

These universal keys apply to many areas of life. When I think about my spiritual journey as a follower of Christ, there have been times along that journey where I  felt like I’d hit a patch, a place where I was kinda stuck. God seemed kind of quiet at times. But then I would be encouraged by others and realize that this was really a normal thing:

“The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on him.” (Lamentations 3:25–28, NIV)

In fact, I’ve had to learn that the grand meta-narrative that exists is really not about me at all, it’s really about God’s Kingdom and what it is that He has set out to accomplish. My part in all of this is to live out my life with Jesus, learn and apply his teachings, and allow my life to be used by God as a testimony of the Gospel itself.

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24, NIV)

I know that along that journey, it’s absolutely critical that I must take the time to pray, to read the scriptures, and to seek to apply the principles that God teaches me to live out in my life. It’s only through this careful and consistent approach that one gradually builds a sense of who God is, which increases our sensitivity to His voice in our lives, this in turn allows me to make better choices that are more consistent with his will and direction. To be sure, when I say hearing “God’s voice,” I don’t mean in literal audible sense,(Although scriptures record instances where God has spoken audibly) rather, I sense that normally God speaks to me through impressions that touch my heart, or in an idea that comes to mind. (Particularly one for which I would not have considered as my own.) Of course, because we are fallible human beings, it’s always good practice to validate God’s direction through prayer, the reading of scripture, and to take inputs from fellow believers whom you know and trust to have God’s heart first. This way I can better limit my personal self-serving agendas and allow God to set His course for my life.

Life is a grand journey, and I hope that each person reading this will be encouraged wherever you are. Be confident that God does have a plan for how you will engage in his Kingdom. If you don’t know what that direction is at the moment, be at peace, God will communicate direction in His own time. But in the meantime, study His word, pray, and where appropriate, seek out the council of fellow believers.

In the end, your life will be ultimately be in alignment with Jesus, who himself is the bread of life.

“Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:35, NIV)

 

Our Dismissive Hearts

Posted on by FullLifeWord

It was just another trip to the grocery store, one that I make every week. While I was awaiting my turn for the checker to scan my items, I saw a magazine on the news rack, an edition commemorating the life of the Reverend Billy Graham who had recently passed away.

I remember as a child watching Reverend Graham on TV with my Mom. One summer when college was on break, my Mom and I were able to see him live. Without a doubt he was an engaging speaker. Many that night stood and made the walk to the stage expressing their choice to follow Christ.

I reflected on all of this as I stood patiently in the long line, idly wondering if the store made the line go slow to get people to impulse buy things. If so, they got me. I placed a copy of the magazine in my cart. When my turn came at the check out, a twenty something, harried young lady started to scan my items. When she came to the magazine she paused for a moment, looked at the cover and said to me, “I never heard of this guy, but a friend of mine said he was like the ‘Elvis Presley of God’. My family tried the church stuff on me, but it never stuck. Just not my thing.”

She scanned the magazine and then totaled up my purchase before I had time to reply. As she was taking my payment, I shared that “I had seen Reverend Graham personally, and he was a real nice guy with a great message. I think he would have laughed at your friend’s choice of comparisons though.” She smiled and immediately turned to assist the next customer.

As I left the store my heart was troubled by the ease by which she dismissed the opportunity to follow Christ. I don’t know her background or how her family presented Jesus to her, or even if the church she was speaking of was Bible based.  My heart was saddened at the prospect that her heart had already decided that the Gospel was not for her.

I was reminded of a parable Jesus shared in the New Testament on the topic of our hearts and how much or little we are receptive to the message of the Gospel.

Jesus often taught using parables, which are illustrations of divine truth drawn from the everyday things of life. In Matthew 13, we see Jesus teaching using a parable about a farmer planting seeds. He told this story to illustrate the prophecy of the Gospel’s reception in the hearts of people.

In this instance, Jesus was sitting in a small boat teaching the crowds of people that were present on shore. One commentator speculated that perhaps he had observed a farmer within sight, working hard at sowing seeds into a field, and seeing that, prompted Jesus to share a divine truth using this real life example that people of his day could easily relate to.

For those of us who are not farmers, sowing seeds means to plant seeds. In Jesus’ day this was often wheat or some other similar crop. Seeds were planted in a number of ways, but it would not be uncommon to see a farmer carry a sack of seeds, and then cast them a handful at a time across his field as he walked about.

Jesus told the parable to the crowd and his disciples:

 “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.”

Fields in those days often had walking paths nearby and these paths became hardened as people walked upon them. Sometimes some of the seed would land on the path instead of the good soil in the field.

Later, Jesus explained the parable more fully to his disciples. He said that when “anyone who hears the message about the Kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path.”

Parables are often filled with a certain amount of symbolism. In this parable, the field represents the world we live in, the seed represents the message about the word of God,(1) the soil represents the heart condition of the person receiving the message about the word of God. The condition of the soil is commensurate with how receptive a person’s heart is to hear about God. In this specific part of the parable, the birds represent the evil one (Satan) who desires to never to allow God’s word to be planted in the heart of a person.

The lack of understanding that Jesus speaks of here is not owing to a lack of intelligence or intellectual capacity, rather it’s a reflection of a heart that has predisposed itself to discount God and his message of forgiveness and salvation. The attending blessings and gift of eternal life with God are then lost to that person. The hearer has traded the truth, and eternal life with God, for a lie. (Romans 1:25) And of course the greatest promoter of lies is Satan himself. (John 8:44)

The scriptures suggest that many people will have a heart already predisposed to adopting the falsehoods of Satan while rejecting the gift of eternal life with Christ. Jesus says straight up, that few will “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.” (Matthew 7:13)

Most people will elect to reject the world of God in favor of living life without God’s presence, in the end its a choice to live for self. This choice to reject God’s gift of grace and salvation, also means rejecting eternal life with God upon our bodily deaths.

Make no mistake, we all have eternal life, it’s simply a question of whether we choose to spend eternity with God or without God. The Bible describes life without God as living in a place called Hell. A terrible place, but one that in the end each person will have chosen for themselves. The choice to reject God is a weighty one, one that Satan, the father of all lies, has diminished in the minds of people so that they unwittingly elect to reject the message of Christ in favor of a lie with eternal consequences.

I share all this because I want you to sincerely search and test the word of God and God’s promises. Don’t be like the young lady who dismissed God out of hand. I want you to use that great intellect that God has given you, his greatest creation, to examine the truth claims of God, and those of the Bible. I can assure you that God is real and the scriptures are totally reliable. But don’t believe me, examine them for yourself and then decide.

Your eternal destination is at stake here, don’t allow others to sway you, do your own homework, you can’t afford not to.

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(1) Why compare God’s Word to seed? Because the Word is “living and powerful” (Hebrews 4:12, SCO). Unlike the words of men, the Word of God has life in it; and that life can be imparted to those who will believe. The truth of God must take root in the heart, be cultivated, and permitted to bear fruit. (Wiersbe, Warren W. The Bible Exposition Commentary. Vol. 1. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996.)