We have more ways to hear God’s Word than any generation before us. Me? I have three Bible apps, several audio bibles, and e-bibles on my phone. That phone also sends me a chime and a verse every morning at 6:00. I have a great church family with access to daily resources, great Sunday worship and a Sunday School class.

Hearing the word?
No problem.

I can nail that every day and twice on Sunday. But then James reminds me, “But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” I shudder a bit when I read James 1:22. Being a veracious hearer of the word but not a doer of the word is utter craziness, but I’m so good at the “hearing of the word” part! It’s my jam. But doing the word trips me up every day. Now that I’m in my 60’s, you’d think I would have arrived. I haven’t. The difficulty is in the doing.

What is Easy?

It’s so much easier to label than to love.
It’s so much easier to be entertained than to be involved.
It’s so much easier to hoard than give.
It’s so much easier to fear than to have faith.

It’s so much easier to win the internet with half truths, mocking memes, and snarky comments than it is to step into the middle of another real person’s trauma and offer grace through our acts of Christian charity and mercy. We often build walls to keep us away from the people He called us to love and reach.

What is Difficult?

Our words are deadly serious: “But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Jesus Christ, Matthew 12:36)

This is a difficult saying that I have to remember every. single. day.

Because we don’t have much time, it’s important that we become acutely aware of our spiritual illnesses and give them up quickly. We should be throwing off the chains of dead religion with hilarity and abandon so that we can enter into the narrow, eye-of-the-needle Gospel.

What is Impossible?

Like the flabbergasted disciples said after another of Jesus’ revolutionary challenges, “Then how can
anyone be saved?” I completely relate to their astonishment. But how amazing would it be if we all were a different kind of crazy! For instance, when Jesus said, “love your enemies,” what if we actually loved everybody–even our enemies, to the extent that our enemies would actually look at us and say, “Wow, those crazy people love me!” What if we listened to people like Jesus listened to them instead of feeling like we had to win debates and put people in our own neat little categories? Our magnificent obsession would be to see how much time, money and encouragement we could give away. We would be more compelled to “go” than we’d be to “stay.” We’d seek to serve more than to be entertained. Our heroes wouldn’t be found in the Marvel universe, but missionaries in mud huts and rice fields half a world away. We’d have the audacity to believe that all things are possible. And when we have that kind of faith, they absolutely are.

What about you?

Do you long to see your ideological villains embarrassed and humiliated? Do you enjoy the rhetorical violence of politics? Do you love it when you get the applause or become the preferred? Do you relish the time you spend on the pews of your amen corners? Are you constantly designing your argument or apologetic strategy before listening, really listening to people?

If you read the Word and stop there, you are safe, at least for a few years. If you obey the Word, you are a revolutionary. Every revolution begins in the soul. Revolutions are dangerous, unpopular, and messy but in 10,000 years from now, you will have no regrets.

You can measure one’s faith by their ability to move on. Jesus encountered many people who fawned and queried Him, looking to work out some kind of bargain, complete with caveats and clauses. He presents each follower with a moment. These moments connect us to a point of decision. When that moment comes, you’d better grab it because it’s singular in transcendence.It transports you into both adventure and holy consequence. In Luke 9, we see three symbolic responses to the Jesus call. Each representing different ways

During times of hardships

The first declaring voice makes an enormous claim. The would-be follower meets Jesus on the road and says, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

So often I have longed for a 10 year plan. I’ve dreamed of putting down roots and knowing exactly where I will find myself at the end of every day. I hate surprises and Uncle Murphy who shows up when everything that can go wrong does. He enters the arena of my personal world in force and fanfare. I don’t like it. I hate it. I hate surprises. And I HATE MOVING BOXES. What will happen next? Only God knows and He won’t tell. Sometimes life is void of parachutes, exit plans, and emergency funds. Sometimes we exit the scene of the fire, smelling like soot and hopping in the car of a loved one with little explanation, because life is just that unpredictable. Don’t feel abandoned because you lack the certainty of addresses and schedules. He’s there. He’s just silent.

When we anticipate grief

Some of us see grief just around the corner instead of 10 years down the road. We catastrophize tomorrow and we say like Jesus’ next potential follower, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” The context is probably not a hospice situation. Burying your father in that culture is committing to be there to the very end for your earthly community. This person’s father could have been in perfect health and 40 years old. Jesus’ response would seem terse and unsympathetic if the dad was presently at death’s door but probably that was not the case. Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

We love to be tidy, even obligatory in life. But with Jesus, we don’t loiter in the obituaries of our mind. We hug their necks, bid farewell and trust God. No one has funerals on their calendar months in advance. Life goes on and Jesus calls us into life which, at its core, can’t be tethered to future sackcloths.

When we have to leave home

Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Sometimes our exits are protracted. We don’t know how to hang up the phone or walk out the door. We do postmortems where we look at our past and wonder if we could have left later. We burden ourselves with feeling of guilt for not being with the same people in the same town, facing the same problems. We have to stop rubbernecking our history and move forward. Sometimes you have to cry the tears, hug the necks, and pack it in- all on the same day. We don’t have time to worry about what will happen in our wake.

There has never been a time when I left a ministry, job or town that everything suddenly fell apart because I left. I can’t think that much of me. None of us are indispensable. You’ll be missed but the people you have to leave will be fine. Don’t idolize your importance to an organization or a community. To do so limits your perspective on the sovereignty of God.

So when you are faced with a sad, yet mandatory farewell and you find your beloved friends questioning, speculating and bargaining regarding your departure, here’s a good response: “I love you. I must be going.”

Our trust in God’s plan should be:

• Unconditional

• Unwavering

• Undaunted

• Undeniable

• Unadulterated

It means giving God a blank check.

It had been an especially difficult year for our church. A number of key long-standing members abruptly left our church in protest to the changes we had incorporated in our schedule in the hopes of reaching new people. At our monthly leadership meeting, we were discussing the issue when Carl stood up, grabbed his coat and surrendered with a shocking declaration.  “I’m out. I’ve had enough of all this!”

As his pastor, no one was more surprised that I was. What had led him to this sudden outburst? After the meeting I called and asked him to meet me at a coffee shop nearby. Well into the night, I listened to him share his story. Carl had bottomed out and had nothing more to give. The demands of a new baby, a wife with postpartum depression, teaching a small group, coaching his son’s soccer team and the constant care of his father in the late stages of Alzheimer’s had so wearied him that his despair was unmanageable. I wept with him and realized that I had completely failed to put the pieces of his story together. It was a stern reminder to me that we are all strugglers. The storms of circumstance and over-commitment can send the best of us to the brink.

None of us are immune to the ravages of adversity. We all have stories of troubles that come in bunches mixed with the trap of over-commitment. This includes pastors, wives and all leaders. The choices we make will ultimately determine our success in surviving and thriving in the midst of a perfect storm.

By the way, if you are in one of those seasons where everything is manageable, you might want to bookmark this.  Chances are, you’re going to need it in the future.

These following five choices are lifesavers that you’ll need to have on board when you feel overwhelmed and overextended.

• Connect

As believers, we often want to be that lone silent warrior holding everything together singlehandedly. Read this slowly: This is not biblical. There was a reason God created the church. The Bible implores us to connect and collaborate in a shared journey of discipleship. If you are struggling or feeling overwhelmed, tell someone. Phone a friend. Yes, pray. But pray with other men who will have your back and walk you through the fire. David, find your Jonathan. Moses, find your Aaron. Shadrach, find your Meshach and Abednego. Connect biblically, or you may be Samson looking for his Delilah and we know how that turned out!

• Condition

In other words, get moving. Make physical conditioning a part of your daily routine. Hit the gym. Take a walk. You might not feel like it when you are overwhelmed. If you get to the place where you are saying, “I just don’t have time to exercise,”then you probably need to more than ever. Keep the body working even when life isn’t working. Drink lots of water. Stay away from food that’s handed to you through your car window. Fast food will send you on the fast track to burnout.

• Clear

Prioritize the important responsibilities you have on your plate and clear the rest of it off your plate. I grew up believing that God was most pleased with me if I had more things to do than anyone else. In my forties, I had to create new nuero-pathways in my brain to fully accept that busyness is not next to godliness.

The following is NOT in the Bible.

Thus Jesus hurriedly got up realizing what an important day this was going to be. He ran to Galilee and there He created 13 lesson parchments, visited 15 lepers in one night. Exhausted, the disciples verily tried to keep up with the Son of God but nay, they could not. They marveled at his time management skills and his strength in persuasive skills. People flocked to him and stayed with him for they knew that if He could accomplish such management tasks with great haste, effort and fluidity that he knew the habits for being an effective person.

Nope. It never happened.

For me, living a clear life means spending some time clearing off my desk so that I can think. It also means that I need to look critically at my calendar and begin to say the most difficult two letter word in the English language. “No”. I confess. I don’t like the way it sounds when it comes out of my mouth. Especially when I have to say it to someone I love and admire.

Clear your schedule, clear your desk, and clear your mind. It’s truly amazing how simpler life becomes when your clear it up.

• Cool Down

Take time to recover from a difficult meeting, hospital visit or funeral. Don’t put tape over the dummy lights on your dashboard. If the pace of your life is overheating, take time to cool down. Start turning stuff off. Put your phone on silent mode and become mindful of what your body is saying to you. If you are overheating, you’ll get nowhere fast. 

• Confess

I’m not referring to making a confession of your sins, although that’s a good thing we should constantly do. By confessing, I mean turning to God and confessing that you are weak. I used to believe the following statement was scripture:

“God will never give you more than you can handle.”

It’s not in there and it’s not true. God will often give us more than we can handle for the expressed purpose of showing us that we must confess our weakness. However, God will never give us more than He can handle. And that’s good news.

So what happened with my deacon friend, Carl? Our amazing group of deacons rallied around him, and stood in the gap as he navigated through the storms and recalibrated his life. He learned that he didn’t have to do everything. He’s still serving today but this time with more focus and support. His prefect storm served as a reminder of God’s grace in our times of weakness and over-commitment.

 

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