2011 Goals, Personal & Otherwise

Since I believe firmly that my personal (aka "inner") life is directly related to my professional (aka "outer") life, the following goals blur the lines between work and home.  But I know me, and if I don't find a way to articulate these things, I will inevitably forget what I have set out to this semester / year.  So, in all their relentlessly honest glory, here are my goals for 2011:

• Work out a minimum of 5 times a week
• Read a successive chapter of Celebration of Discipline during the first week of each new month and work to incorporate that discipline into my life during the remainder of that month
• Write a minimum of 1 blog on some aspect of Christianity / faith / religion each week, to be posted here and at sfaxa.org
• Implement and stick to an envelope system of budgeting for our family
• Discover and make steps towards becoming a person who consistently honors the people in my life
• Discover and make steps towards becoming a grateful person

Well, there you have it.  Obviously, if you read the wording carefully on the last two, you will see that I don't know exactly how to DO those.  But I am excited in my life right now to be developing plans to move forward.  No matter how small the step is, as long as you make it, you're making progress, right?  That's my hope, anyway!  That God will honor my feeble attempts to grow in His grace.  I trust that He will make up what I lack if I just give Him what I have!

Friendship = Obedience? (aka 6 pages with Spurgeon)

So, this is an interesting line of thought I've been confused about for some time. During my ongoing study of the fruit of the Spirit, I ran across this verse in John 15:

¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command.

At first reading, my thought was something like... "WHAT?!? That doesn't even make sense!"

I haven't gotten much further in my thinking since then either. I assume it has some connection with the sentence just before it:

¹³Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Either way, it has been some months since I last thought about it... until yesterday morning when I read 6 pages of a book by Spurgeon called Being God's Friend.

Referencing Hebrews 11's summation of Abraham, Spurgeon draws a comparison between obedience that is motivated by fear and obedience motivated by faith (as was Abraham's - "By faith Abraham... obeyed.") I think I have only known in life and religion the obedience motivated by fear. Let me explain. We do what we're supposed to do, and avoid what we should avoid, because we want to escape punishment. I tell Derrick constantly not to speed because I do not want to pay a ticket. As a child, I obeyed my parents' rules so as not to get spanked or grounded. As a believer, there is this constant background noise in my head saying "This is what good Christians do" or "Real Christians would never do that." All such comments are only a positive statement of fear - fear of rejection, fear of not being good enough, etc.

I guess bottom line is I am confused about how friendship = obedience... maybe all of this is somehow tied into submission... I don't know. But it's fun to try and find the answers!

Spiritual Maturity

"The only test for spiritual maturity is the fruit of the Spirit."
(Mary Gautreaux)

What is happening through you that you cannot explain?

Were your friends better for having seen you yesterday?

I am a problem-solver by nature. I love puzzles - any kind: word puzzles, sudoku, ken ken, crosswords, cryptograms, jigsaw puzzles, riddles... anything that gets my mind thinking. So learning has always been fun to me, at least the form of learning where you're not just memorizing facts. If there is something to figure out, like in math and science, I loved it. That's right - I'm probably the only math-loving artist you've ever met. I'm twisted, what can I say?

Because of my propensity towards things that need figuring out, I've always been very interested in theology and apologetics. I actually LOVE to study the Bible - not just read it, but really study it, like a textbook. So when I come upon something either in life or Scripture or reading that I don't understand, it's really exciting to me. And I will pour myself into studying that thing until I feel like I have it figured out, until I understand it.

My latest case in point has been the topic of growth / maturity / fruit of the Spirit. Aside from a recent hiatus due to morning sickness, afternoon sickness, and evening sickness, I have spent the last 4+ months reading, thinking, studying about the fruit of the spirit and several connected topics. After that much time, I feel like I have found some level of understanding. (Even though, honestly, I would like to continue studying the fruit individually for at least 6 more months...) Then there was service last night...

I realized my tendency is to study and learn and ask questions and find answers until (and only until) I reach as much understanding as I can on a given topic. Once that happens, I'm done. What this means is that I often have a good amount of understanding with no real evidence of it in my actions and attitudes. Ouch. Mary got quoted last night: The only real test of spiritual maturity is the fruit of the Spirit... and fruit is not understanding, it's being.

Full Circle aka Morning Thoughts (call it a devotion if you want)

The Lord continues to speak about pride, sin, knowing oneself, etc. This morning's email from the Ravi Zacharias team:

Self-Deception and the God Who Sees

I followed that up with two of my favorite verses:

Psalm 139:23
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.

1 Corinthians 13:12
12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

I am really good at deceiving myself. I find devil's advocate a fascinating role to play and have perfected my skills over the years - my husband's convinced I should have become a lawyer. A detail-oriented person (that's putting it kindly), I can argue the points of one word in a sentence into oblivion! Applied to others and situations, this trait is particularly annoying - applied to myself it could be downright destructive.

There is something in me that does NOT want to see myself for who/what I really am. So I revert to childhood and pretend, make up stories, etc. But that's not maturity (something I'm learning alot about the last few months) and it's not reality.

Truth is I'm so good at avoiding the truth that if I'm ever going to really know something about myself, I will need someone else to tell me. Someone whose opinion is always just, always accurate, always filled with grace, always loving, always true. I think this was David's cry when he prayed for God to know his heart, to try (or test) his thoughts. Our God is the God Who Sees.

There is something in me that longs to be known. Maybe it's because I'm a female, I don't know. But I want to be heard... to be understood... to be known. In honest moments, I can admit that the reason I allow myself to be deceived is because I am wholly afraid that once known, I will not be accepted or loved. I think we all fear this.

Do you love grammar? I don't, but I do have a healthy respect for it! The statement in 1 Corinthians is particularly packed with grammatical interest. It is set up as a comparion between the state of things now and when "that which is perfect has come." Until you get to the last phrase. It's true that we shall know on that day. But it is not true that we wait until that day to be fully known. In the verb "I am known" a grammatical tense peculiar to the Greek language is employed - it's called aorist. The aorist tense is without respect to time. Stated positively, it can mean at any given time. We would say always. We are always fully known by God! This at once fulfills both my desire to be known and my fear of being rejected - the God of All has embraced fallen humanity!

It's in this revelation I find the greatest joy known to man - that of a sinner washed clean!

1 John 3:1

1How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

More Thoughts on Growth

"There are some things which can only be grown - they cannot be made."
--Earl Creps

Early Morning Thoughts

A man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge. But he prays because his soul is hungry for God.
--Leonard Ravenhill


Zechariah 4 - "Who despises the day of small things?"


The foolish man says he has no need of God - but it will be scarier still for the one who says he has need of Him, but lives like he doesn't.



The greatest need we have is not to do things, but to believe things.
-Oswald Chambers


Why aren't they hungry? Because they don't have to be - they are entertained.



"Entertainment is the devil's substitute for God's joy."
--Leonard Ravenhill


Leonard Ravenhill said "we don't have revival because we are content without it." But what is revival? What does it really look like? I remember during all the amazing stuff that happened that one semester at Sam, Daniel Savala kept saying, "If it's really revival, your grades will go up." I thought that was weird.


Growth is not more knowledge or increase of years: it is simply more of Him and less of me. He increases as I decrease. This is what it means to be a disciple.
--Chip Brogden (from watchman.net)


Psalm 103: "He made known His ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel."
* I know much of His deeds - the Bible stories from Sunday school, history lessons about the church... but I know little to nothing of His heart, or of why He has done the things He has done.



"One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organization do no constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always."
--AW Tozer


Psalm 127: "Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain."

"What I have seen in the past 10 years of traveling- performing at a church one day and a casino the next- is that a lot of people in the church want to be entertained, and people in casinos want to be ministered to. That's hard to understand, but I see a hunger in the world that I don't see in the church."

Growth?

QUESTIONS:

How do you tell if something is growing? (By what is growth measured?)
How is growth stimulated?

Should Be...

I have realized the source of the majority of my frustrations in life, and I admit they are many. I think in terms of what should be, not what is, and those two things very rarely line up in my thoughts, actions, attitudes, relationships, decisions, etc.

Great revelation, right? But what to do about it...


Edit: I decided to come back and tag this post into the growing (pun totally intended!) list of thoughts on the subject of Growth because, even thought I certainly didn't intend it to be when I originally wrote this down, it seems to me now this is at least part of growth. Maybe. Just in case.