Category: Wildman Journey (Page 74 of 87)

The folks who produced the Christian films, “Fireproof” and “Facing the Giants” have produced a new film entitled “Courageous.”  If you haven’t seen it men, I encourage you to go and take your wife with you.  Every father needs to go.  Judy and I have seen it.  It’s about four cops in Albany, Georgia.  They do a great job at protecting and serving the community.  They are courageous and they uphold their duty no matter what.  But at home they are not the fathers they should be.  As fathers, these cops decide to make a change.  They pledge to embrace the principles of biblical fatherhood, and live as courageously at home as they do at work.

The producers of the film emphasize the connection between the failure of the fathers and crime.  “If fathers just did what they were supposed to do,” says one of the cops, “half the junk we face on the streets wouldn’t exist.”  As Charles Colson on his “breakpoint” blog noted in his reveiw of the movie, “Our prison systems are full of people who never had the example of a courageous father – or any father at all.  Over 70 % of long-term prison inmates comes from broken homes, and young men raised in fatherless households are at least twice as likely to be incarcerated as those from intact families.” As Colson goes on to say, “Take it from someone who has witnessed the destruction of failed fathers for over three decades: you’ve got a duty to your children.  And you can change the course of their lives and society.

Casting Crowns has recorded the song “courageous” to go along with the movie.   I have already used it for one of my “Wildman” Saturdays.  I encourage you men to download the song and let it sink into your heart and spirit.  Here are some of the words from the song.  I personally find them convicting as a man and father.  “We were warriors on the front line standing unafraid, but now we’re watchers on the sidelines while our families slip away.”  Wow!  The implications are that the warrior will fight for his family.  The chorus reinforces this truth. “We were made to be courageous and we’re taking back the fight.  We were made to be courageous and it starts with us tonight.  The only way we’ll ever stand is on our knees, with lifted hands.  Make us courageous, Lord, make us courageous.”  There you have it men.  It’s time to be a warrior, by starting on your knees at home. 

I want to quote one more phrase from the song. “We will reignite the passion that we buried deep inside.  May the watchers become warriors.  Let the men of God arise.”  I like this phrase.  It speaks right to the heart of the vision of “wildmen.”  A wildman is someone who has allowed himself to get in touch with his real passion for God.  I want to tell you men; it is there within you.  The problem is that we have ignored that deep passion, while fiddling around with lesser passions, that will never give us to energy and desire to serve God.  Listen men, God has put into your heart the desire to be a warrior for him.  He has put deep in you the passion to be their for your family.  He is asking you to stand and be courageous.  As the song says, “In the war of the mind I will take my stand.”

A very effective part of the song is the segment in which you hear the voices of children singing.  Guess what they are singing.  They are singing a paraphrase of Micah 6:8, “And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with hour God.”  The Message puts it this way. “It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, and don’t take yourself too seriously – take God seriouly.”  I never thought of it as beginning at home.  Yes, God wants us to be warriors and it begins at home.  So let’s be courageous, by doing what is fair and just, while walking humbly with God, not taking ourselves to seriously, but rather taking God call on our life seriously.  Remember, “the only way we’ll ever stand is on our knees with lifted hands.”

If you are like I am, as a committed Christian guy, I am pulling for Tim Tebow.  I want him to succeed as the quarterback of the Denver Broncos.  But I agree the jury is still out as the whether or not he will make it as the starting quarterback.  What I find interesting is the public fascination with Tebow.  There are many of us who admire him for his strong faith and his willingness to be so public regarding his convictions.  There are others who respect him for his character, what the people in pro football call ”’the intangibles.”  Others pay attention and just don’t know what to make of Tim Tebow.  The fans in Denver wanted him to have his shot at quarterback.  Time will tell if he will remain a favorite with the fans as a player.

As a result of his bowing, on one knee, and praying on the sidelines next to his fellow teammates while they waited for Matt Prater to hit the 52-yard field goal that gave Denver an 18-15 victory in overtime, a new trend called “Tebowing” has sprung up.  According to Tebowing.com the word means, “to get down on a knee and start praying, even if everyone esle around you is doing something completely different.”  My questions to the guys who read this blog is this, “Why this sudden phenomenon of Tebowing?”  What do you think?  Are you in favor of the practice?  Would you practice Tebowing?  I have asked myself that question.  I also wonder what skeptical nonbelievers thinks of all this.

For me, Tebowing has made my evaluate my public witness for Christ.  Should I have a bolder witness for Jesus?  Am I more concerned about what others might think of say?  What is appropriate in a pluralistic culture such as ours?  I know that words of Mark 8:38 from The Message give me pause to wonder about my public witness. “If any of you are embarrassed over me and the way I’m leading you when you get around your fickle and unfocused friends, know that you’ll be an even greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when he arrives in all the splendor of God, his Father, with an army of the holy angels.”  I have to admit that I feel embarrassed in some secular settings.  Jesus is not rejecting me for my weak public witness, but I could be embarrassing him.   

But I do think that Tim Tebow is a challenge to all of us men.  We are to be public witnesses to our faith.  We are to have courage and boldness.  We are to be ready for opposition and ridicule. Jesus said this would happen. “If you find the godless world is hating you, remember it go its start hating me.  If you lived on the world’s terms, the world would love you as one of it own.  But since I picked you to live on God’s terms and no longer on the world’s terms, the world is going to hate you” (John 15:18-19 – The Message).   After the game against the Detroit Lion, one lion’s lineman, Stephen Tulloch, celebrated tackling the Denver quarterback by dropping to one knee and imitating Tebow’s “Tebowing” prayer pose.  Tight end Tony Scheffler added salt to the wound by performing the move following his touchdown in the first quarter.  You can be sure this will not be the end of how people react to Tebowing.

I personally rejoice in the fact that here is a young man who has the courage of his convictions.  He is honest and sincere.  He wants to use his national platform to be a witness for Jesus.  So I take Tebowing  as a challenge to godly men who live in a more and more hostile culture.  Let’s examine our public witness.  Let’s allow ourselves to ask some hard questions about wanting acceptance and favor, while not seeming to be out of place.  For each of us, there has to be a line as to how far we go to be polite and “politically correct.”  When do we witness about Jesus by simply telling our story.  I believe you will be hearing more about Tebowing among your friends who are NFL football fans.  What a great opportunity to give a simply witness to your faith in Jesus.

We all know about the ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff.  It was worth more then $60 billion.  But now in prison Madoff says he works in the one of the stores of his prison as “a glorifed bag boy” for $170 a month.  He believes he deserves to go to prison and to he punished.  As I read part of Barbra Walters’  interview with Madoff I thought of the words of scripture, “God opposes the proud, but give grace the humble.”  I wondered if Madoff is experiencing the grace of God after his fall to the bottom.  It is hard to imagine how far he has fallen.  But remember; a man can be lifted up in the arms of grace and mercy when he as been humbled and repents of his wrong doing.  I pray that for Bernie Madoff.  He has ruined the lives of countless people because of greed and arrogance.  Proverbs tells us, “There is a way that seems right to man, but its end is the way of death.”

In prison Madoff says,  “I feel safer here than outside.  Days go by.  I have people to talk to and no decisions to make…I know, that I will die in prison…I lived the last 20 years of my life in fear.  Now I have no fear…nothing to think about because I’m no longer in control of my life.”  What do you make of this comment?  Here is a man who lived in the lap of luxury as one admired for his investment skills.  He was rich and well connected.  People trusted him with their life savings.  Yet he lived in fear.  Fear of what?  I suppose it had to be the fear of being found out.  His whole enterprise was a lie.  He had to deny his very soul.  Jesus tells us, “What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself?  What could you ever trade your soul for?”  Bernie Madoff had to deny his very soul, while living in fear of others and probably himself.  Men, let me testify that there is nothing quite like the incredible freedom of being a man of integrity.  In other words, what you see is what you get.  What peace there is to be able to look others straight in the eyes with a “clear conscience.”  Bernie Madoff was haunted by his secret life.  Men, don’t go down that path. Don’t compartmentalize your life.  You will begin to lose your soul, that is, the person that you really are created to be.  Bernie Madoff was a fraud and he knew it.  That’s why he lived in fear, fear of his past and great fear of the future.  Now in prison he has less fear of the past, because he is “locked up,” but he most be haunted about the future.

We also have a small window into his family life.  After his son, Mark committed sucide in Dec. of 2010 Madoff’s daughter-in-law, Stephanie blamed him.  She said, “I’d spit in his face” if she saw him.  His wife visited him in prison after the sucide, where they had a very emotional meeting.  She said to her husband, “let me go.”  They have not spoken to one another since.  To me, this is the saddest reality of life in prison.  Bernie Madoff is in prison, separated from the rest of the world he once knew.  He says, “Ruth (his wife) hates me.  She has no one.”   He said, “Not seeing my family and knowing they hate me” is hard matter to deal with as he lives alone in prison.  Let me ask you men, is this worth all the deception and duplicity of a $60 billion ponzi scheme. 

Again I say loud and clear to whoever reads this blog, that your life is made up of relationships.  It’s how you live with God, others, especially your family and yourself.  So my encouragement to men today, is to pay attention to your relationships.  Be a man – stand up – and live open, honest, repentant and transparent lives before God, others and yes, yourself.  Don’t be like Bernie Madoff, allowing yourself to be cut of from the life of your soul.  I have found that living as honestly as I am able with those closest to me is the most humbling aspect of my walk with Jesus.  But as I cry out for mercy, He give me grace to live with integrity and honesty.  Listen to these words of Jesus. “Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat.  But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.  In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life.  But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal” (John 12:24-25 – The Message).

Steve Jobs died on Oct 5th at 56.  As I write this blog, his book is hitting the book stores today.  I read a post today on the interview given by his biographer Walter Isaacson on “60 minutes.”  The post talked about some of Jobs’ religious views.  I want to draw attention to two quotes and them make a couple of comments.  The first quote: “Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t.  I think it’s 50-50 maybe.  But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more.  And I find myself believing a bit more.  I kind 0f – maybe it’s cause I want to believe in an afterlife.  That when I die, it doesn’t just all disappear.  The wisdom you’ve accumulated.  Somehow it lives on….Yeah, but sometimes I think it’s just like an on-off switch. Click and you’re gone. And that’s why I don’t like putting on-off switches on Apple devices.”  The second quote: “I saw my life as-an arc.  And that it would end and compared to that nothing mattered.  You’re born alone, you’re gonna die alone.  And does anything else really matter?  I mean what is it exactly, is it that you have to lose Steve?  There’s nothing.”

God bless the memory of Steve Jobs.  I along with many other Christians have committed him to the mercy of God.  We are all deeply in debt to Jobs for what he has given us.  Yet in these few comments on religion we see that in the end, Jobs is left with some deep questions about the meaning of life.  For all his fame, fortune and genius, Steve Jobs could not find the answer to the basic questions of life.  In the first comment, he equates a relationship to God to that of “an on-off switch.”  Men, never forget, God made you for a loving relationship without himself.  He is passionately desirous that you know his love for you.  Jesus tells us that he came to seek and save those who were lost.  He also said that he came to give us life, life that was abundant.  We live in a personal universe.  The truine God of love, invites us into the “great dance” of everlasting life.  There need not be any doubts about this.  Remember we are not talking about nothing.  God has revealed who he is in Jesus.  Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”  Don’t get you eye off of Jesus.  He makes life real and personal.

As for his second comment, he compares his life to that of “an arc.”  You begin with nothing and you end with nothing.  You die alone.  This is a classic statement of a truly modern man.  One whose life is self-enclosed, self-contained and with the absence of any sense of transcendence.  As “self-made” man who seemed to have it all.  But like some many in our culture, living with a deep emptiness.  Again we were meant to be filled with the life of God.  Jesus died, rose again, and ascended into heaven so that the very presence of God might come and fill our hearts.  He said he would not leave us orphaned, but that he would come.  He compared the life of the Spirit to that of a river. “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” 

Men, may the life and death of Steve Jobs be a “wake up” call to any man who is caught in the deadly trap of wanting to be a follower of Jesus but also being pulled into the obit of what the world admires and desires.  Listen to these words from I John 2:15-17 ( The Message). “Don’t love the world’s ways.  Don’t love the world’s goods.  Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father.  Practically everything that goes on in the world – wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important – has nothing to do with the Father.  It just isolates you from him.  The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out – but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.”

In my last blog I talked about the appeal in our day of the Desert Fathers.  As one observer stated, “The flight to the desert represented both a protest and an affirmation – a protest against a decadent and overly institutionalized ecclesiastical body and a restatement of the gospel teaching to fit the changed conditions of the times.”  The movement into the desert was not so much to escape problems but to engage them.  The desert actually became a place of combat.  Those who went into the desert considered themselves ” bloodless martyrs” and “athletes of God.”  They felt they had to escape  a worldly church and a corrupt society, while facing the greatest battle of all, that is, the battle of the soul. 

The desert was a place of solitude.  Solitude suggests Henri Nouwen, “is the furnace of transformation.”  In the desert many things that we believe are vital for life are stripped away.  It is just you, God and the desert.  Y0u have to face your real self.  This is the battle.  Most men feel from such battles.  Nouwen observes, “in solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me – naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived broken – nothing.  It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something.” 

For the men who read this blog, a flight into the desert is neither realistic nor necessary.  But there is a real sense in which we need solitude, that time alone with ourselves in the presence of  God to examine how attachment and plugged in we are to the world around us.  We lose our real sense of who we are in God, because of the constant need and pressure to be someone other then who God sees us to be.  We live life through the presentable and acceptable veneer of the false self, which is a product of our own making.  We need the desert experience to see how  conformed we are to this world.  Our focus is so often on what I have, who am I, and what do others think of me.  This is all self making.  It comes so naturally that we forget who we really are.

A man has to come to the place where he will fight for his heart.  It will take a desert experience to bring us to the place of vulnerabilty, that allows us to let go of the attachments to our false self.  Abba Antony, one of the desert father once said, “The man who abides in solitude and in quiet, is delivered from fighting three battles – those of hearing, speech and sight. Then he will have but one battle to fight – the battle of the heart.” 

My encouragement to the men who read this blog, is to find a group of men who will “fight for your heart.”  Join a group of guys who want to do the work of dying to the practices of the false self, so that they can find their true self in Christ.  I find the principles of AA give permission for men to fight for each other’s hearts.  In an AA group men know that they have to escape the temptations of the culture and find life in God.  They know what the desert is life.  “The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ” (Nouwen).  An athlete for God is will to do the hard work of “soul care,” coming to grips with the real condition of the inner life.  Listen to Paul’s words in I Cor 9:26-27, “I don’t know about you, but I’m running hard for the finish line.  I’m giving it everything I’ve got.  No sloppy living for me!  I’m staying alert and in top condition.  I’m not going to get caught napping, telling everyone else all about it and then missing out myself” (The Message).

Back in the early 80’s I read a book by Henri Nowen entitled “The Way of the Heart” in which he introduced me to the desert fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries.  At that time I was just beginning to understand the need for silence and solitude in my life.  He gave a quote from Thomas Merton that had a deep impact on my way of looking at life.  Merton wrote in the introduction to his “The Wisdom of the Desert, “Society…was regarded [by the Desert Fathers] as a shipwreck from which each single individual man had to swim for his life….These were men who believed that to let oneself drift along, passively accepting the tenets and values of what they knew as society, was purely and simply a disaster.”  They believe they were moving to the edge of society, to be a voice and influence on a decaying culture and badly compromised church.

Merton goes on to say these desert fathers “were men who did not believe in letting themselves be passively guided and ruled by a decadent state, and who believed that there was a way of getting along without slavish dependence on accepted, conventional values.”  In leaving the world, they were helping to “save it in saving oneself” observed Merton.  Leaving the ship wreck of the world  did not mean just saving themselves.  “They knew that they were helpless to do any good for others as long as they floundered about in the wreckage.  But once they got a foothold on solid ground, things were different.  Then they had not only the power but even the obligation to pull the whole world to safety after them.”

I can confidently say that there is a significant movement in our culture among sincere followers of Jesus to learn again from the desert fathers.  This new movement, which is called “the New Monanistism” is being embraced as a means of deepening one’s walk with God, while still trying to effect change in the decaying culture.  It could be thought of as “a Third way” when compared with conflicting voices heard on the left and right of the church.  I for one have embrace this movement.  As many of you know, Judy and I live up in the woods of Northeran Minnesota.  I call the two of us “a monk and a nun.”  What give me the most clarity for ministry and service in the kingdom at the ripe, old age of 70, is to think of myself as a monk on the edge of the culture, trying to be a voice that speaks back into the culture. 

As I write this blog today, I have a sense that I might write more about this movement and how it is effective the lives of sincere followers of Jesus.  But for now – for this blog- I guess the thought I want to leave with the men who read this blog, is the need to be counter -cultural.  While we need to remain connected and engaged in the culture lead there is a real also the need to be disconnected in spirit and outlook.  I like to think of Jesus as “the third way.”  I will just give one small example in my life.  I am still connected with the ELCA  branch of the Lutheran church.  God has placed that on my heart.  I know that I am part of a sinking ship or, changing the metaphor, part of a body that is sick spiritually.  But from where I am on the edge of things, I still can speak a prophetic word from within.  So my word today, men, is don’t abandon the ship, but rather flee to the edges of the church and culture, so that you can be renewed and made alive in Jesus. 

A watchword for us men might be the last words of the Old Testament. “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.  He will turn the hearts of the fathers to thier children, and the hearts of the children of their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse” (Malachi 4:5)

As I was working on the sermon for Sunday from Matthew 22:1-14, I was reminded of something that David Benner pointed out about this text.  It is the parable of the wedding banquet.  The king prepares a banquet for his son.  He sends out his servants to tell those who have been invited to come because the banquet is ready.  But they refuse.  “They paid no attention and went off” to do others things.  In Jesus’ day it was unheard of to turn down an invitation to the wedding banquet. 

So the king sends his servants out to invite anyone they can find to attend the banquet. “So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.  Benner suggests that we use our imagination to visualize an invitation to bring our whole self to the banquet.  That is, be honest and open before God about who we really are.  There is both the good and the bad in our personal make-up and story.  We are conditioned to bring only good parts of who we are into the presence of God.  But he invites us to bring all that we are; that good, the bad and the ugly.  I know that I spent many years hiding the bad.  It made for an unreal relationship with God, in which I never experienced his unconditional love and mercy for me

By bringing the bad into the banquet one can find a new freedom and acceptance before God.   Our tendency, which is the result of a life long conditioning is to always present our best face or side to others, including God.  So what happens to the bad.  It gets buried.  But the bad is still a part of who we are.  This is reality.  God sees all of who we are.  He waits for us to bring both the bad and the good to the banquet.  Again, men I tell you from experience, it is not until we bring our whole self into the presence of God, that we can experience and know his unconditional love.  When you experience acceptance in all your shame and vulnerability, you will know that you are home in the presence of a loving Father, who calls you are his beloved. 

A new insight that come to me as I pondered the bring of the good and bad into the presence of God, is that this invitation is to a celebration.  What does this mean for us as men?  I know for myself  it means that I can come as I am, both with the good and bad, and celebrate in the presence of the Father.  The parable also includes a guest who came without wedding cloths.  This never happens at a banquet put on by the king.  Wedding garments were provided for those who did not have them.  For us this means that we can come to the banquet, with the good and bad, and know that we are robed in the righteousness of Christ.   Jesus makes me worthy to be with the king.  The king accepts me as I am, because of what Jesus has done for me.  He covers me.  I can really celebrate in the presence of the king, because of Jesus.  To me this is joy, knowing that I am free to be me, with all the good and bad, in the presence of the king because it has nothing to do with me, but it has all to do with what Jesus did for me.

Last sunday the gospel text that I preached on was from Matt 18:21-35.  It is the parable of the unforgiving debtor.  I sensed the urgency of communicating the joy and freedom of living “a lifestyle of forgiveness.”  After over forty years of being a pastor among Lutheran folks, I know there are many who live in a deep, dark cave of their own making, because of unforgiveness.  Church people can be some of the most unforgiving people on the planet, because they think their good behavior can cover their dark side.  My greatest challenge has been forgiving church people. But at the ripe, old age of 70 I sense that I have been able to embrace a lifestyle of forgiveness.  It has not been easy. I know I will be tested in the future.  There were years when I lived in the “far country” of anger and resentment because of my unforgiving spirit.  But by the grace of God I have tasted something of the freedom and joy of living in forgiveness.  I pray that each man who is reading this blog today will know the freedom of forgiveness.

We have the choice, says Father Albert Haase, of either being “a velcro personality” to which all hurts stick or “a teflon personality to which all hurts slide right off.   For the velcro personality, “treasured emotional wounds and scars become like fish bones stuck in the throat.  Even the smallest bones can be excruciating,” observes Father Haase.  The teflon personality might not forget, but they choose to forgive.  They decide it is better to stop picking and nursing the scab.

Father Haase paints a sad picture of the velcro personality. “It takes a lot of emotional and psychological energy to keep a wound open, to keep a grudge alive.  And the more we work to keep it alive, the more emotionally drained we become as the grudge saps us of our strength.  The longer we allow a wound to fester, or the longer we keep picking its scab, the more bitterness, anger and self-pity poison our blood and eat at our hearts.”  I personally identify with the experience of Ann Lamott when she describes her experience. “I went around saying for a long time that I am not one of the Christians who is heavily into forgiveness – that I am one of the other kind.  But even though it was funny and actually true, it started to be too painful to stay this way… In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.”  I had a hard time admitting that I was drinking rat poison.  I had to come to the place of humility and repentance before the cross.

Why do I say before the cross.  When I look up at the Lord Jesus on the cross, I see him taking into his body my sin, opening the way for my forgiveness.  “He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross” (Col 2:14).  Granting me forgive, was very costly.  But Jesus did it all so that I might be set free from my sin.  He paved the way so that I might have a forgiving heart.  Paul tells us in Ephesians, “be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you” (Eph 4:32).  When Jesus lives in my heart, he is the one who is forgiving others through me.  He gives me the ability to have a telfon personality.

I have been reading Richard Foster’s new book entitled, “The Sancturay of the Soul.”  I assume that most of the readers of this blog are familiar with the writings of Richard Foster.  I stumbled unto his first book back in the late 70’s entitled “The Celebration of Discipline.”  In those days I was fully immersed in the Charismatic Movement.  His book was an early wake up call, forcing me to examine the shallowness of my experience of God.  I consider Foster one of the early pioneers in the evangelical movement that has gone ahead as a scout informing us that there is much more to the Christian life.  What was needed was a new awareness of the great contemplative tradition that had existed from centuries.  Many of us, including myself, had never been introduced to this tradition.  Most was to be found in the Catholic tradition.  Then in the early 80’s I jumped into this vast spiritual stream of historic spirituality.  I have never turned back since jumping into the stream.

Anyway, Foster’s new book talks about “heart work.”  He quotes a 17th century Puritan writer by the name of John Flavel as observing that the “greatest difficulty in conversion, is to win the heart to God, and the greatest difficulty after conversion, is to keep the heart with God….Heart-work is hard work indeed.”  In Rev 3:20 we hear Jesus tells us, ” Here I am!  I stand at the door and knock.”  He is really speaking to  followers, wanting to be welcomed at the center.  He longs to have intimate communion with each of us.  We, however, are easily  distracted and preoccupied with outward affairs.  We content ourselves with good thoughts about God.  But God does not simply dwell in our thoughts.  Think of how limiting that would be.  We cannot contain God in our thoughts.  Intimacy of relationship is a matter of the heart.   We need to practice keeping our heart open to his Spirit.

So there will need to be a renovation of our hearts in order to make the heart a dwelling place for his Spirit.   There is much cleaning up that needs to take place.  As Terea of Avila reflected on the evil in her own heart, she observed, “O my Lord, since it seems You have determined to save me, I beseech Your Majesty…don’t You think it would be good….if the inn where You have to dwell continually would not get so dirty?”  When the Spirit of God comes into your life, he goes to the center.  It from the center that the Spirit radiates out into the rest of our inner life, cleaning the house.  This occurs as we allow him into the dark corners and the hidden cellar of our sin. 

But there is something in us the flees from the light.  “Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure.  But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is” (John 3:20-21 – The Message).  These words of Jesus help us to see that heart work is God’s work.  We can’t do the renovation work.  Our task is to be willing to expose the darkness and let the light do the rest.  Trust me men, it works.  I know from my life and many who I have prayed with over the years.

Listen again to Foster on the inner change. “We are utterly, utterly dependent upon God to do this transforming work in us: the work of heart purity, of soul conversion, of inward formation, of life transformation.  This solitery and interior work within the heart is the most important, the most real, the most lasting reality in human life.”  God gives us a new heart and spirit. “And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you.  I will take your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.  And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations” (Ezk 36:26-27 NLT).

To be trully human and fully alive involves enormous vulnerability and risk. It is a journey into maturity.  Most men choose the bondage of addiction over the anxiety and freedom that comes with being fully alive, fully awake and fully aware.  David Benner has pointed out that “the primary function of any addiction is to numb and desensitize.  Task number one is to keep us asleep and unaware”.  Our egos work hard at anesthetizing us to the terrors of real living.  For in real living we will come face to face with the unavoidable mystery of being human.  This we cannot manipulate or control.  We simply are who we are, in all our glory and fallness.  But we are addicted to the illusion of control in our attempt to manipulate the image of self.  It is like being addicted to playing God.  Again it is not reality.  “It is this terror that we most want to control and from which we most want to escape” says Benner.  “The demon in the dark of our inner basement is nothing more or less than our fear of being fully alive.” 

Not only does the need to control distract us from our deep inner fears of being found out,  but addiction help us avoid the “longing to surrender.”  But if men listen to their deepest longings, they point in the direction of surrender to someone bigger then themselves.  For men surrender feels more like defeat or failure.  The ego never wants to admit to surrender.  From early childhood we learned that if we are to receive the love and esteem of others we needed to be in control to seem successful and presentable.  The primary task of the ego is that of controlling our drives and impulses, control of emotions, control of our behavior and control of how others see us.  The ego become like the CEO in the organization of the self.

The key to finding our true self, the self that is created in the image of God, that has been rescued and redeemed by Jesus, and in the process of being restored in our life, is to surrender.  We have to give up the need to create an image of self that fits our sense of reality.  Remember our sense of reality is limited and distorted.  All that work we have done to create an image of self that we think is presentable to the world and who we would like to be has been built on sinking sand.  It takes an enormous amount of work to keep up.  I know – I did it for years.  I am still being set free from my imaging making.  The more I can be truthful about the good, the bad and the ugly in the presence of a loving God, that more I can let go of the image making .  I can testify that it bring freedom and authenticity.  I don’t fear all the dark stuff in my tank nearly as much.  Once you taste the fruits of liberty and freedom, you will not want to go back’  The risk of being more fully alive is worth the surrender

Listen to these words from Jesus in the Message. “What I’m saying is, If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up; flat on your face.  But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself” (Luke 14:11  –  The Message)  I take the idea of “walking around with my nose in the air” as a metaphor of taking pride in my image making.  Sooner or later I will fall on my face, since I have my nose in the air, living in my illusions of self making.  But if I am simply content to be Al Hendrickson in all my glory and woundedness, I can then become more of myself.  This is the self that was created before the foundations of the world.  “Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy in his love” (Eph 1:4 – The Message)  Wow, God had my image in mind before time.  “No, we neither make or save ourselves.  God does both the making and saving.  He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”  (Eph 2:10 – The Message).  Remember God does all the making and saving.  Praise the Lord!!