An Intro to My Great Struggle in Nouwen's Prologue

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Moving from teaching university students to living with mentally handicapped people was, for me at least, a step toward the platform where the father embraces his kneeling son. It is the place where I so much want to be, but am so fearful of being. It is the place where I will receive all I desire, all that I ever hoped for, all that I will ever need, but it is also the place where I have to let go of all I most want to hold on to. It is the place that confronts me with the fact that truly accepting love, forgiveness, and healing is often much harder than giving it. It is the place beyond earning, deserving, and rewarding. It is the place of surrender and complete trust.

Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son (p. 13)

This guy knows. He knows the utter absurdity of trying - trying to control everything including how we approach God and what we receive from him.

It doesn't stop us from trying, though.

Some Thoughts Upon Reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to My Daughter

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In the opening chapter of Umberto Eco's book Foucault's Pendulum, a young couple is described by the character Casaubon, having watched them barely breeze by an amazing piece of art and physics, like this: "A moment later the couple went off - he, trained on some textbook that had blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitive to the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomeness of their encoutner - their first and last encounter - with the One, the Ein-Sof, the Ineffable. How could you fail to kneel down before this altar of certitude?"

This is one of my very favorite sentences in the English language because it describes the way I and many others encounter God: our capacity for wonder blunted, inert and insensitive to the thrill of the Infinite.

O may I be like Lucy Pevensie!

"And Lucy felt running through her that deep shiver of gladness which you only get if you are being solemn and still."

Annual Conference After Show

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Thanks to Andy Ihnatko (yes, I spelled his last name from memory, thank you very much) from MacBreak Weekly, I finally have an iOS blogging client that doesn't make me want to injure myself or anyone else. His "pick of the week" on the show this week was an iPad app called Blogsy and it is fantastic. That takes me one step closer toward being able to abandon my computer for all but about 10% of my tasks (image & video editing, Skype, writing really long pieces, and desktop publishing).

Enough of the tech talk, though, for that is the subject of my other blog.

I returned last night from the Arkansas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. It was a long week. The United Methodist Church meets every four years at General Conference and there we make decisions concerning the polity and structure of the whole church. Ou next General Conference is in 2012 so we elected delegates at our Annual Conference this year who will go next year. The clergy and laity groups each elect 6 delegates, 6 more delegates to Jurisdictional Conference (where new bishops are elected), and three alternates. In all, 30 people were elected in 3 days. This was my first time to vote as I wasn't eligible to vote last time because I hadn't yet been ordained.

OK, enough of the nerd talk, right? Actually, the voting was pretty important because it meant that we had to stay in the conference most of the time so that we wouldn't miss a ballot. I spent less time visiting with people this year than years past because of this. The Asbury Seminary alumni were pleased to host J.D. Walt for our alumni lunch. It was great to visit with him and to hear of some exciting things going on in the world of Wesleyan Methodism.



The Confessing Movement of Arkansas hosted Dr. Chris Bounds from Indiana Wesleyan University. Chris is a great guy and one of the smartest people I've ever met. It was great to catch up with him and hear him speak at both the CMA breakfast and on the floor of the Annual Conference.



We also passed a new and radical direction for our conference called Imagine Ministries. That was a significant deal and am proud of the work the IM team did and look forward to joining in their work for years to come.

A Couple of Good Books

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Finished two great books today.

The first is Robert Coleman’s The Master Plan of Evangelism. My copy of this book is the same age as I am to the month according to the title page. The book isn’t so much about what we think of in terms of evangelism today but about making disciples. This clearly involves evangelism but contains so much more. The book originally came out in 1963 and isn’t a gimmicky method for evangelism like many books one might read today on that subject. It is concerned with one thing: how did Jesus make disciples and how did he intend for the disciples to make disciples? It is nothing if not thoroughly biblical. That’s what Coleman relies on and what makes the book timeless.

The second is David McIntyre’s The Hidden Life of Prayer. I’ve been devouring books on prayer lately, and this one is good, but I have to admit that it was hard to read. First published in 1891, McIntyre’s style isn’t quite what I am used to and I didn’t labor over the sentences as much as I should have. Also, there are zero footnotes in a book that used quite a few quotations. I would really like to look at the primary sources but, alas, there’s no way for me to find many of them. Still, a very helpful book and one I’m sure I’ll come back to in the future.

Power Through Prayer

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In the last three days these things have happened in my life:

  • I left church on Sunday feeling neither high or low about the sermon I preached. I left confident in the Word of God and God’s power to work in the hearts of people. I was able to rest in that.

  • I deleted a couple of tweets. I grew up thinking that giving someone a hard time was a way to show someone you liked them and appreciated them. That’s pretty dumb. About 20 minutes after posting them, I felt this impression in my heart not only to delete those tweets but to start paying attention to how I give people a hard time and to stop doing it. It honors no one.

  • I apologized to my wife this morning. Yesterday, I was gruff with her for a moment in the middle of my yard work. It’s no way for a man to speak to his wife who just happens to be a daughter of God.


(If that last thing seems strange to mention, I have a really hard time apologizing. I’m that wicked.)

So, what’s been going on? It seems like I’m surprised at these good things. I am, a little. What’s been going on is that I recently finished a book called Power Through Prayer by E.M. Bounds. More than anything, that little book is an indictment on prayerless preachers who work so hard to create power and strength in their ministries while neglecting the only true power in their lives - prayer. I have repented and have devoted more - much more - time to prayer than some of the other things that tend to crowd my attention during the day. You know what? God’s been working me over. And it is awesome. The Holy Spirit has moved me in each one of those bullet points. No joke. It’s one of those weird moments in life when I think, “Man, this rebuking by the Holy Spirit is hard and it hurts. Do it some more!” (If this keeps up I’m sure my wife and church will be saying, “Do it some more!”)

I’m not writing to brag but to give those of you who are experiencing prayerlessness either some encouragement or a kick in the pants. Especially you preachers who walk into the pulpit thinking that your three points are going to totally change someone’s life when you haven’t sought the one who is already at work in the lives of those who hear his word.

Here’s three links you can try on for size (You’re in luck if you’re a Kindle-user).

Complete Works of E.M. Bounds on Prayer
The Complete E.M. Bounds on Prayer - Kindle $3.99
Power Through Prayer - Kindle is $0.99!

The Heavens Declare the Glory of God

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The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. (Psalm 19:1)

One of the things that stirred my heart as a college student was a gift that a friend and fellow Wesley Foundation student gave me in my last semester of college. It was a tape of a plenary address that John Piper gave to the Evangelical Theological Society in 1998. Few ideas have stuck with me as much as  his exhortation to those professors, that the greatest need in training the next generation of pastors and missionaries is "to know God and to find in him a Treasure more satisfying than any other person or thing or relationship or experience or accomplishment in the world."

I've had a copy of that message both in audio and in print for 12 years and it wasn't until recently that I listened to it again and gleaned another gem which has been a part of my spiritual life or growth or whatever you want to call it for the last few months.
Plead with God that he not leave you unmoved by the glories revealed every day in the sky and in the Scriptures.

Make that your prayer as you watch this video (via my friend Geoffrey who retweeted Alan Hirsch)

http://vimeo.com/22439234

The Head is Meant to Serve the Heart

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I’m reading The Pastor as Scholar & The Scholar as Pastor right now and this quote from John Piper absolutely nails it:
Right thinking about God exists to serve right feelings for God. Logic exists for the sake of love. Reasoning exists for the sake of rejoicing. Doctrine exists for the sake of delight. Reflection about God exists for the sake of delight. Reflection about God exists for the sake of affection for God. The head is meant to serve the heart.

O, yes! If theology doesn’t end up in worship, it’s a waste of time.

Links are What You Share

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When you just haven't been able to finish a bunch of the stuff you've been working on. It took me nearly two months to write up - ever so briefly - my Acts 29 experience and it's been nearly a month since I attended the Gospel Coalition Conference in April so look for that in June.

Links I Liked Today:

That's just today. So far. I haven't even gone through Instapaper yet.

Seminary on your iPhone

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My late-friend, Michael Spencer, used to promote The Theology Program on his website and podcast. I never checked it out because, hey, I have a Masters of Divinity and after four years of seminary why would I need something like this? Oh, brother. I've since discovered that if I want theological stimulation, I'm going to have to seek it out and books just aren't enough to keep me sharp.

The price of The Theology Program was a little too steep for me. Until now. They have just released an iPhone app for $6.99 which contains 60 hours of theological training, 1200 slides and 1800 pages of workbooks. On your iPhone. That is simply incredible and a heck of a deal.

I would encourage all of our lay people to try this out. You won't agree with all of the perspectives (indeed, you shouldn't) but if you're willing to think and process, this will be a very valuable tool in thinking theologically. I've already downloaded and am looking forward to giving it a shot.