Personal Training and Spiritual Direction

This marks the 30th year I've been going to a gym. The very first one, besides my basement, was Heavy Metal Gym in Union Lake owned and operated by Rick Black. I've had many memberships in other gym since then: Lifter's (Fayetteville, NC), Iron City (Pontiac), Powerhouse, World's and Bally's (Waterford), Champions (Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor), Powerhouse, Ray's and the YMCA in Adrian to name the ones I can remember. I've learned a lot over the years. But I still learn new things that help me get bigger and stronger or leaner depending on what I'm training for. There are guys at my current gym, Jeff Willet's Powerhouse, who I pick up tips from (Rex, Dave, Josh, John and Jeff to name a few). Without them I wouldn't be working out as hard or as efficiently as I should. I consider myself a seasoned veteran of the gym, but I still need help in my fitness journey. 

The same is true in my spiritual journey. I'm a pastor with a wall full of degrees, but without a spiritual director I wouldn't be all that I could be or anywhere close to what God desires me to be. A spiritual director helps us on the journey. Even the best of the best guides that lead expeditions up Mount Everest need Sherpas to help them on their journey. Just as a personal trainer can help you in the gym, a spiritual director can help you in your walk with God. None of us are to the point where we've arrived and no longer need assistance.    

On Writing

This is my first blog post in a while and it is not because I haven't been writing...well sort of. I've been writing in my head, just not on paper (I keep waiting for someone to install a USB port at the base of my brain for easy downloading). But most of the writing (in my head) that I've been doing is on a novel that I'm working on for some time now. I've come to realize that fictional writing is like having a baby.

For months the idea grows in you. It grows and gets stronger with each and every passing day. It takes up a lot of your thinking and doesn't ever stray very far from the forefront of thought. Then comes that wonderful, painful day when you actually give birth to the novel. It explodes from inside you onto paper. Sometimes joyous, sometimes painful, but nonetheless you can't hold it in any longer. Then for years (this process is shorter or longer depending on who you are) you nurture it. You guide and develop it; you refine and mold it until that day your confident it can function in public and you set it free. How frightening it is when you let that which you love so much enter the world to be criticized! But you know that is what it was created for.

Right now I'm giving birth--it has been a long labor (since my Sabbatical) but the head is crowning and it is ready to come out. "Time to chase the unicorn!"  

George Kell

I don't know when it happened...I guess sometime over the last year--it has been a while since I thought about it. But this week when I thought about my all-time Tiger team Miguel Cabrera had replaced George Kell at 3B. It kind of broke my heart because I loved George Kell. I never saw him play, but he was the Tiger TV play-by-play man of my youth. I also had as one of my prized possessions a 1952 Topps George Kell baseball card. In case you're wondering here is how my All-Time Tiger team breaks down (in parentheses is the All-Time team that I actually saw play--mid 70s).

1B Hank Greenberg (Norm Cash)
2B Charlie Gehringer (Lou Whitaker)
SS Alan Trammell 
3B Miguel Cabrera
C Mickey Cochrane (Lance Parish...I-Rod and Freehan were right there)
OF Ty Cobb (Kirk Gibson)
OF Harry Heilman (Willie Horton)
OF Al Kaline
SP Hal Newhouser (Jack Morris)
SP Denny McLain (Max Scherzer) 
SP Justin Verlander
SP Mickey Lolich
RP John Hiller

They've had other greats who didn't play with the Tigers very long and players who had amazing seasons, but I took longevity into account (Eddie Mathews, Willie Hernandez, Mark Fidrych, etc...).

DEPRESSION

If you are fighting depression you are not alone. Depression seems to have been the bane of many of life’s great leaders. In the Bible, Moses, Elijah, David, and Job had to deal with it. In the world, Sir Winston Churchill called depression his ‘black dog’, and Ernest Hemingway referred to it as ‘the artist’s reward’.

President Abraham Lincoln battled depression and suicide all his adult life. There were times when for his own safety he would not allow himself carry a knife. Lincoln often turned to the Bible to relieve his depression. Let the Scriptures help you just like they have helped so many of us.

This little prayer helps me as I meditate on each line:

Be still and know that I am God

Be still and know that I Am

Be still and know

Be still

Be

(Based on Psalm 46:10)

More Scripture passages:

Anyone who is among the living has hope (Ecclesiastes 9:4)

The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms (Deut 33:27)

Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall (Psalm 55:22)

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and PEACE as you TRUST in him, so that you may overflow with HOPE by the POWER of the HOLY SPIRIT (Romans 15:13)

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering…but rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ (1 Peter 4:12-13)

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7)

As Rev. Fred Prince always reminded his congregation "Remember you are loved!!!"

Get over it!

We live in a world where nearly everything is available immediately: information, books, results, etc... I remember as a teen waiting patiently in the afternoon for the newspaper delivery man so that I could look at the box scores from the previous night's baseball game. Now I'm irritated when mlb.com doesn't have them updated after every inning! So it is no wonder that when I spoke with someone that was grieving this morning they lamented how they couldn't shake their grief--the event causing the grief happened less than a month ago!

We assume that because we can cook a hotdog in 30 seconds or have our questions answered by wiki in the time it takes us to type them that we should get over grief quickly. It doesn't happen that way. Grief is that one thing that we cannot rush. There is no button, no internet website, no pill that we can take that will expedite the grieving process. It takes time and often a long time. So please, for the love of God, never tell anyone "Get over it". Give them time, give them your unconditional presence, but don't try to fix them or rush their grieving process.

Spiritual lessons from BJJ

"If I tap, I start again in 3 seconds. If I don't, I start again in 3 months." 
~ Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy 

I am sincere believer that in our spiritual lives we sometimes need to tap out and admit we've been defeated so we can get back to our feet and start again. Sometimes we just miss the mark and fall short in our spiritual journey--too often we try and hide that fact. When we hide it, when we fail to admit that we are in a bad position, we are at great danger of putting ourselves in a worse position where we will incur severe damage and set our journey back a great deal.

The greatest example of this is King David. If he had simply admitted he was lusting after Bathsheba, he would have encountered a lot less grief. However, let us even say he had the affair--if he had admitted his failure then and not tried to cover it up he would still have encountered a lot less grief. In King David's case lusting put him on the slippery slope to murder all because he was too tough to tap out and admit defeat to his lustful desires.

We are a culture that likes to express toughness. I can do it, I can fight through this, I can make this right, etc... There is nothing wrong with tapping out, admitting defeat, getting on your feet and continuing the journey.

Humanity

Let me begin this post by saying what happened in Boston is a real tragedy and my heart goes out to all who are affected. This post is not meant to make light of that horrible event or dismiss it as frivolous, if you interpret it in that way I apologize in advance.

I was watching the news in the lobby of a waiting room yesterday and a woman said to me: "What is wrong with humanity, what is wrong with the United States...we're becoming barbaric like other nations."

I know she was grieving the Boston Marathon bombings in her own way, but right away I was struck by our short sightedness when it comes to thinking the United States was/is a beacon of morality. As the movie "42" reminds us it wasn't that long ago that we treated African Americans horribly--and a short time before that when we treated them like property to be beaten and sold. I'm also reminded of the genocide that we perpetrated on the Native Americans from our moral high horse.

I wanted to tell this woman, "no ma'am we've always lacked respect for humanity as a whole." Instead I shook my head with her and said "it is sad." 

How can we move forward in peace? How can we live the life we're called to where we all love one another?

Tailgating

I was ready to enter the office today and write a blog about how angry it makes me when people don't use their turn signals. I was going to write how it is just plain selfish as well as dangerous. I was in such a hurry to get home and write about this that I became more enraged when the car in front of me was doing at least 10 mph below the speed limit. To show my frustration I pulled up as close to their bumper as I could so that they couldn't miss me in their rear-view mirrors. Finally the car turned and I was able to proceed at a reasonable rate of speed. I got to my office and turned on my computer and scanned some blogs that I like to read. One of the blogs was about the selfishness of people who are in such a hurry that they feel the need to tailgate. Ouch! Now this wasn't the person I had tailgated; the person who wrote this lives in a different state, but the timing was spot on.

Sometimes I feel like I'm able to look around the 4x4 in my own eye so easily!

I want to live in a world . . .

I want to live in a world . . .
where people aren't judged
where there are no jobless or homeless people
where animals aren't mass produced for slaughter or scientific testing
where we don't feel the need to have weapons
where differences are celebrated
where there are no stereotypes
where the gift of creation is celebrated and not hoarded
where there is no disease

What I am I doing to help create that type of world?

Genocide

I was reading the homepage of my new Logos 5 software and there was an article on the Walls of Jericho. It was interesting and then it became disturbing. I've copied the disturbing part:

"Like the Genesis Flood and the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Israel’s extermination of the Canaanites was a judicial act. They were to be destroyed because their sins were so great and their religious corruption so complete that extermination was just."

It scares the bejeezus out of me anytime I see anyone say that a people's group "extermination was just". I am sure Hitler thought his attempted extermination of the Jews was just. I am sure the Hutus thought they were just in trying to exterminate the Tutsis.  Stalin thought he was just in exterminating the enemies of the people. The list could go on and on.

So what do we make of the seemingly God-ordained genocide in Scripture? In my opinion the early Israelites were a lot like the Christian Crusaders and justified their conquest by calling it God-ordained, but that is just my opinion that I'm still wrestling with. Greg Boyd has a couple of thought provoking blogs on the subject. 

But my main point is that people can never determine extermination of a people group is just. It is horrifying to think of all the killing we blame on a God who is love :-(   

Cross Roads

I finished reading William Paul Young's new novel Cross Roads (he is also the author of The Shack). 
Three things I absolutely love about Young:
1) He knows how to get me emotionally invested in a story...I laughed, wept and smiled a lot while reading this book.
2) He does a masterful job of presenting a relational Trinity that is not far away, but active and involved in our lives.
3) The unique way that he pushes against our stereotypes of each person of the Trinity causes me reflection and ultimately makes me feel closer to God.

I know some don't like Young's books, some even call him a heretic. Remember, he isn't writing dogma, he is telling a beautiful story--a parable if you like.

This story presents Tony who has lived a solitary existence with success and self preservation as his goals. An accident leads him on an unexpected journey where he is given the opportunity to make choices that will allow healing for his many failures.

I loved the book! 

I don't want to do the work

For the last 2 months my Logos Software has been crashing every time I tried to use it. I contacted customer support via e-mail and we tried some different things. Finally they suggested I call the customer tech support line. I hate talking on the phone so I put it off, but after a few weeks I realized how much I was missing this valuable resource tool so I called.

The tech walked me through hooking up my computer via remote to his computer which took only a few minutes. Then he did the rest. I watched as he moved files on my computer, changed names and rebuilt databases--it was like he was sitting in my chair! After about 20 minutes he fixed the problem and we were through. It was amazing how painless and easy the process was!

There are times when I wish God would fix me like that--where I didn't have to do any of the work. If only I could just sit back and watch God fix all my flaws and then walk away completely loving. But we are relational beings. We are in a relationship with God and with people. And relationships take work and often the work is messy and uncomfortable. I read this quote from Young's book Crossroads yesterday:
Much of what you must forgive others for, and especially yourself, is the ignorance that damages. People don’t only hurt willfully. More often because they simply don’t know anything else; they don’t know how to be anything else, anything better.
I thought about how many times I have hurt others based on my ignorance and I want that fixed. I want the tech to come in and fix the corrupted files so I no longer do this. However, I am called to do that work alongside the Trinity. I have my part to play and I know I am better off for working alongside God.

But I still wish I could just sit back...

A Game of Thrones

I just finished reading A Game of Thrones. It was the first fictional book that I've read in quite some time and I have to admit I couldn't put it down. George R.R. Martin kept me on the edge of my seat and kept me in a mindset of not being able to wait and see what happens next. There is romance, political intrigue, battles and a looming sense of dread. I would not classify it as an epic battle between good and evil because the reader is not always sure who is good and who is evil...perhaps, like life, the propensity for both is in everyone. If you like fantasy novels with Kings, Kingdoms, and uncertainty you will find this entertaining.

This is not a happy-go-lucky, feel-good novel. As matter of fact it made me depressed at times. But at the same time it is not predictable and that is what makes it a great read. Martin does his best work in setting the mood of dread right from the beginning and even escalates it throughout the book...winter is coming!

The downfall of the book is that it really doesn't end. It seems to stop in mid-story and invites the reader to seek after the next book in the series.

I've started watching the HBO series and I am disappointed. It follows the basic story line, but inexplicably adds sexual plot lines and gratuitous nudity where it wasn't found in the book. I'm not saying the book is PG-13, but HBO seems to take an R book and tries to make an X out of it for no reason.

Since starting the book I wonder how many people live with a sense of dread in their life...I wonder how many have no hope. I think that would be a terrible way to live. If my atheist friends are right at least I've gone through life happy and with a sense of hope.