know your yes

Opening Prayer: Yes, Father!  Yes!  And always yes! ~Francis de Sales

Scripture: Jeremiah 6:16

Journal: What is your yes?  How does that help you to say no?

Reflection: What’s your yes?  I know, I know, it’s a weird question, at least on the surface anyway.  But underneath it is profound.  In fact, it’s a question that forces you down to your core.  It is a question that begs you to discover who you were made to be and to define that thing, or those things, you were placed on this earth to do.  For if you don’t know your yes, how can you ever hope to become all you were dreamt to be?

One of the keys to the spiritual journey is to know your yes, and then to arrange your life around that one imperative.  To do those things that are important, rather than merely urgent.  To focus your life on what is central, rather than being constantly distracted by what is peripheral.  You must allow your yes to propel you to do only the things that help you to be all you were made to be.  And you must allow that yes to teach you what you are meant to do, as well as what you are not meant to do.  Knowing your yes is what allows you to also say no.  The problem is that most people have a hard time saying no simply because they have never really discovered their yes.

So we must stop and reflect and pray.  We must seek and listen and pay attention.  We must find our yes, so that we will not constantly be at the mercy of our circumstances.  So we can live proactive, rather than reactive lives. 

More and more, I find myself in conversations with people who feel like life is living them, rather than like they are living their lives.  Somehow, somewhere, it all spun out of control and they are having a hard time getting it back.  The truth is that so many of us tend to live at the mercy of our schedules, but I do not think this is how we were intended to live.

Let me ask you a question: Does your schedule control you, or do you control your schedule?  Are you schedule-driven, or God-led.  And no, the two do not have to be mutually exclusive, but most often they are.  It takes a good bit of thoughtful intention to achieve some sense of congruence between your daily schedule and the lives God wants you to live.  It all depends on where you start.  It all starts with knowing your yes.  It all starts by asking God who he made you to be and what he wants you to do.  That way your daily “to do” list will always flow from the more significant things in life rather than the trivial.  And you will begin to live the life that you most deeply want to live.  Or, more importantly, you will begin to live the life that God wants to live in and through you.   

Prayer

Closing Prayer: I have heard your call, my Lord, and respond with a yes from the depth of my being. ~A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God by Norman Shawchuck and Rueben Job

the pilgrim way

Opening Prayer: My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen. —Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton

Scripture: Psalm 84:5-7

Journal: Where are you on your pilgrim journey these days?  What is the landscape like right now?  What is God up to during this leg of the journey?

Reflection: “Blessed are those who find their strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.” Psalm 84:5)

“At the end of my trip to Canada, the United States, and England, about which I wrote in this journal, I met a young man who told me about his own spiritual journey in a way that helped me to think about this second loneliness.  He said, ‘First I was traveling on a highway with many other people.  I felt lonely in my car, but at least I was not alone.  Then Jesus told me to take an exit and follow a winding country road which was pleasant and beautiful.  People who passed by greeted me, smiled, and waved to me; I felt loved.  But then, quite unexpectedly, Jesus asked me to take a dirt road, leave the car, and walk with him.  As we were walking we did not see anyone anymore; although I knew that I was walking with Jesus, I felt very lonely and often in despair.  I was tired and felt forgotten by my friends.  Now it looked as if I was getting more lonely as I was getting closer to Jesus.  And nobody seemed to understand.’” —The Road to Daybreak by Henri J. M. Nouwen

 

the pilgrim way

is a lonely road

it leads away

from noise and clamor

from attention and acclaim

from impact and influence

it leads into the desert

where all we have

to hold onto

is the hand of God

Prayer

Closing Prayer:  Help me, O Lord, to not miss the journey for the destination.  Amen.

go out weeping

Opening Prayer: Those who sow in tears with reap with songs of joy.  He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him. (Psalm 126:5-6, NIV)

Scripture: Psalm 126:5-6

Journal: How do you “go out?”  What is your posture and your attitude?  What was the posture and attitude of Jesus?  What would it look like for you to “go out weeping, carrying seed to sow”?

Reflection:

“he who goes out weeping,

carrying seed to sow,

will return with songs of joy,

carrying sheaves with him.”

(Psalm 126:6)

go out weeping

always go out weeping

not cocky and confident

not prideful and arrogant

not critical and judgmental

not certain and sure

go out weak and vulnerable

go out humble and dependent

go out fully aware of your own brokenness

go out with questions rather than answers

go out as nobody rather than as somebody

go out as someone with much to receive

rather than one who has much to offer

go out to love and serve

for only then will you

return with songs of joy

carrying sheaves with you

Prayer

Closing Prayer: O Lord, how we go matters so much!  If we go out to take the world by storm, we will likely return with our tails between our legs, doing more harm than good.  But if we go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, we will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with us.  Help us, O Lord, to know what it means to “go out in tears.”  Amen. 

sabbatical

Opening Prayer: O Lord, thank you that you have intentionally woven seasons of rest and restoration into a life of work.  Otherwise, we would burn up and wear out.  Help us to be faithful to those seasons of rest, so that we might work for you, and for your kingdom, for a long, long time.  Amen.

Scripture: Leviticus 25:3-5

Journal: How does the idea of sabbatical need to take shape in your life? 

Reflection:  “What should I do on my sabbatical?” 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked that question through the years.  And it’s such a difficult question to answer, because it’s a question that’s dripping with irony.  “What should I do on my sabbatical?”  I always want to respond, “Wait, what?  Is this a trick question?”  After all, isn’t the point of a sabbatical not to do anything?  Isn’t it about making time and space to rest and renew and recover?  And isn’t the essence of rest to stop doing and to start being?  Which means that instead of asking, “What should I do on my sabbatical?” we need to start by asking, “What should I not do on my sabbatical?”  That would make a lot more sense, for a sabbatical seems to be a lot more about undoing than it does about doing.  Undoing all of those misguided beliefs, hidden agendas, and dysfunctional patterns that got us worn out, exhausted, and overextended in the first place.  

No matter how we try to dress it up, or rationalize it, the fact is that we are addicted to doing.  I mean, it’s a terrifying leap from doing to not doing.  Am I right?  Why else would we fill our lives so full of activity that there is no room, no margin, and no breath?  Mostly because so much of our worth and value is tied up in what we do.  Which makes not doing such a difficult, if not impossible, proposition.  Because in the deepest places of our hearts we are convinced that “If I’m not doing, then I have no value.”  We have bought into the lie, and it runs deep. 

Therefore, it is going to take a lot of time and space and silence and stillness and listening and prayer—a lot of undoing—to root it all out.  It’s going to take us turning off our phones and taking off our headphones and shutting off the computers.  It’s going to take a lot of shutting our mouths and opening out ears.  It’s going to take a lot of savoring the words of the Scriptures and giving the Spirit of God time and space to have free reign in the deepest places of our hearts and souls.  It’s going to require us to stop trying to produce, control, manufacture, achieve, and accomplish. 

A sabbatical is a time and a season where we lie fallow (Lev. 25:3-5) and allow God to renew, replenish, and restore us.  As Steve Macchia once said, “A sabbatical is to be a time of rest, not a time of redirected productivity.”  Which means that maybe the best answer to the question of “What should I do on my sabbatical?” is, “Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  Sit.  Relax.  Breathe.  Stroll.  Savor.  Enjoy.  Rest.”  If we can do those things, then we might actually be on to something.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Thank you, O god, that in order for the fields to be as fruitful as possible, there must be seasons where they lie fallow.  And if that is true for the fields, how much more so is it true for us?  Help us, O Lord, to find a healthy rhythm of work and rest, so that the work we do for you might be as fruitful as possible.  Amen.

stopping lessons

Opening Prayer: Lord God, thank you that stopping and resting are a part of who you are; they are woven into the very fabric of creation.  Help us to learn from you how to do them well, so that our lives, and our work, will have the presence and the power you intended them to have.  Amen.

Scripture: Exodus 20:8-11

Journal: Do you have a hard time stopping?  Why or why not?  Does resting make you feel guilty?  Where does that come from?  What would it look like to stop and rest the way God intended for you to?

Reflection: Some things look much easier than they actually are.  Stopping, for instance.

When we were first married, my wife won a free weekend at a ski resort in North Carolina as a part of a sales contest at her work.  Neither one of us grew up snow skiing, but it sounded like fun, and it was, after all, absolutely free.  So we went for it.

Our ski chalet was right on the slopes, so we rented equipment, walked out our back door, and watched the skiers swooshing by.  It didn’t look too hard, so we put on our skis and boots and decided to give it a try.

My wife took off first, heading straight downhill quickly and disappearing from sight, so I decided to do the same.  And as I picked up speed, I had a shocking revelation: I did not know how to stop, or even to slow down, for that matter.  In hindsight, it probably would have been something good to find out in advance.

So when you don’t know how to stop, there’s really only one solution; you start looking for the best place to crash.  Which is exactly what I did; hoping to crash in as good a place and as soft a way as I could.  But no dice.  The crash was epic.  And in the end, there I was, covered in snow, equipment littering the hillside.

As I was trying to gather myself and considering how I would gather all of my equipment, a bunch of little kids in ski school coasted by.  Their teacher encouraging them the whole time with the words, “Pizza!  French fries!”

“Ah, pizza,” I thought to myself.  “That’s what I’m missing.  That would have been good to know.”

We humans need stopping lessons.  We are really good at “french fries,” but not so good at “pizza.”  And if we don’t know how to slow down and stop, the only other alternative is to crash.  I guess that’s why God decided to weave stopping and resting into the story of creation (Genesis 2:2-3).  And then to remind us of it again and again all throughout the Scriptures.  He even put it in the Ten Commandments, reminding us that if God himself stopped and rested, how can we possibly expect it would be any different for us?

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy,” God told us in Exodus 20:8.  “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.  Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:11)

From the very beginning God was giving us stopping lessons, because he knew how vital stopping and resting were to our being able to live the lives he intended us to live.  How important they were in us becoming the people he dreamt us to be.  In fact, when we refuse to stop and rest, we actually tear away at the image of God planted deeply within us.

His stopping lessons included two things.  First they involved stopping.  That is what the word Sabbath literally means.  Thus, we must stop regularly, or we will crash and burn.  But, as I learned the hard way on the ski slopes, stopping is not as easy as it seems.  We tend to live our lives at a certain speed, which creates a certain momentum.  Therefore, we cannot expect to go one hundred miles an hour right up to the stop sign and stop on a dime.  It just doesn’t happen that way.  The momentum of our lives will carry us way past the stopping point.  You see, stopping is a process, not a moment.  Slowing must precede stopping.  We can stop physically, but it still takes a while for our heads and our hearts to catch up.  We need to give them time and space to finally come to stillness.  We need to install brakes in our soul, if you will, to combat the foot-on-the-gas, peddle-to-the-metal way that we typically live our lives.  And then we need to learn how to start applying those brakes well in advance of the stop sign.  That’s what many of the spiritual disciplines are for: silence, solitude, prayer, retreat, and Sabbath keeping, to name a few.  If we can learn to live at a certain pace, and with a certain rhythm, we will become much more proficient in the art of slowing and then stopping.  It will not just happen on its own.

But God didn’t just stop with stop, he also told us that we must settle in.  That’s the literal meaning of the Hebrew word used for rest in Exodus 20:11 (nûaḥ).  So not only must we learn how to stop, but we must also learn how to settle in to that stopping.  We must learn how to be fully present and alive and attentive to him and to ourselves in that resting.  We must learn how to dwell with him, abide in him, and savor the time and connection with him.  We must give free reign to the Spirit of God to form his very life in us, to breathe his Divine breath in us, that he may then breathe it through us as well.

We must make slowing and stopping and settling in a priority.  They must become a part of our rhythm of life.  Otherwise, the only alternative is to crash and burn.  And take it from one who knows, that’s not a pretty sight.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Lord God, you stopped and rested on the seventh day.  Why do we refuse to do the same?  Help us, O Lord, to learn the rhythms of the created order.  Help us to learn what it means to stop and rest in you.  Amen.

 

wait

Opening Prayer: For God alone my soul waits in silence. (Psalm 62:1, ESV)

Scripture: Psalm 62:1-8

Journal: How are you following God’s leading these days?  How are you following your own?  Will you wait for him alone in silence?

Reflection:

wait

psalm 62:1,5

for God alone

my soul waits

in silence

is so foreign

to my regular

mode of operation

i run ahead

i manufacture

i produce

i initiate

i lead

rarely do i stop

rarely do i sit

rarely do i listen

rarely do i wait

if i claim

that i am

following you

then how is that

even possible

for my life tells

a different story

it shows me that

i am not following you

but following me

how different

would things be

if i only did

what you told me to

for God alone

O my soul

wait in silence

Prayer

Closing Prayer:

It’s funny how my first tendency is to tell you

why I should or should not do something,

rather than to sit in silence and allow you to tell me. 

I must have patience.  I must take time and space

to allow the first wave of voices to die down.

So that my soul might be calm enough and quiet enough

to be able to hear your still, small voice.

 

pick up your mat and walk

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, I want to get well and I don’t want to get well—both at the same time.  What a mess I am!  Please give me the courage to leave behind my old story, in order to step into the new story you have for me.  Amen.

Scripture: John 5:8-9

Journal: What story is God asking you to leave behind?  Will you?  What story is he inviting you to step into?  Will you?

Reflection: In life with Jesus, there is always a story we must leave behind and a story we are invited to step into.  The problem is that we can’t have one without the other.  In order to accept the invitation to a new way of being and seeing, we must first be willing to leave behind the old.  That’s why Jesus tells the man by the pool that he must, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”

How is Jesus telling you that today?  What does "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk," look like?

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, forgive me when I am resistant to what you want to do in and through me.  Give me the strength and the courage and the grace to “Get up!  Pick up my mat and walk.”  Whatever that may look like.

freedom 2021

Opening Prayer: Set us free, Lord Jesus.  Set us free indeed.  Set us free from our bondage to self.  Set us free to love and serve you.  Set us free to be your hands and feet in this world.  Amen.

Scripture: John 8:36

Journal: How do you define freedom?  Are you free?  Why or why not?

Reflection:

freedom

freedom is not

doing whatever

i want to do

freedom is

the ability to

love and serve God

without all of my shit

getting in the way

Prayer

Closing Prayer: O Lord, forgive me when I come to believe that freedom is about doing whatever I want to do.  That is not freedom at all, but merely self-consumption.  True freedom is about our ability to be the people you made us to be.  Give us that freedom this day; the freedom to give, the freedom to serve, and the freedom to love.  Amen. 

rejoicing and trembling

Opening Prayer: Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.  Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment.  Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalm 2:10-12)

Scripture: Psalm 2:10-12

Journal: What do you do with the parts of God you don’t know what to do with?  How are rejoicing and trembling possible at the same time?  How has your knowledge and experience of God deepened your awe and reverence for him?

Reflection: What do you do with those parts of God you just don’t know what to do with?  Do you ignore them?  Do you deny them?  Do you try to rationalize ways that they cannot possibly be true?  Or do you just try, somehow, to hold them together in dynamic tension? 

“Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling,” say the words of this ancient prayer.  How in the world are we to do that? On the surface, rejoicing and trembling seem to be polar opposites, but are they really?  What if they are not contrary, but complimentary?  What if they are not enemies, but companions?  Always needing to be held together.  Always stretching us and pushing us to expand our tiny little images of God.  Trying to push us past the familiar, and on into the depths of mystery.

After all, familiarity should breed more awe, not less.  We should never get too comfortable with God.  After all, He’s God!  If we get too comfortable with him, it only goes to show that we really don’t know him at all.

That’s why I love the words of this ancient prayer.  That’s why I am so grateful for this psalm; it reminds me, once again, that my picture of God is far too small.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: 

Worship God in adoring embrace,

Celebrate in trembling awe. Kiss Messiah!

Your very lives are in danger, you know;

His anger is about to explode,

But if you make a run for God—you won’t regret it!

(Psalm 2:10-12, MSG)

the kiss of judas

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, forgive me that I am not much different than Judas.  I would like to be, but I’m just not.  Like him, my life is mostly about me, not about you.  I am so full of my own plans, schemes, and agendas, that there is no room left in me for your name, your kingdom, and your will.  Forgive me when my life becomes more about my wants, than it is about yours.  Forgive me when all I have to offer you is the kiss of Judas. Have mercy on me, Lord Jesus!  Amen.

Scripture: Luke 22:47-48

Journal: What was the kiss of Judas all about?  How do you do the same?

Reflection:

the kiss of judas

luke 22:48

rarely is a kiss

just a kiss

what seems

pure and beautiful

on the surface

might have a

different agenda

it might be fueled by

want and need

what looks like love

might actually be

manipulation

forgive me

Lord Jesus

when i offer you

the kiss of judas

when life becomes

more about my

need and agenda

than about yours

when what looks

like it is being

done for you

is actually being

done for me

have mercy

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Forgive me, Lord Jesus, when I give you the kiss of Judas.  When I become about my own glory and my own agenda, rather than yours—and even use ministry to do it.  Forgive me when what looks like it is being done for you, is actually being done for me.  Lord, have mercy!  Amen.