Lessons we Learn from our Kids

I wrote this blog post more than a year ago – in June of 2011.  I shared it with my daughter Kyla but never got around to actually posting it.  It is now a year later and my daughter Kyla’s dreams of serving the Lord in Africa have come true, but these words of mine are still true, more now than they were before.  We miss you Kyla.  Love, Dad.

 About a week ago, our family attended the local home school graduation ceremony.  It was held at a church down the road and a number of our youth group kids were celebrating their graduation from high school.  When it came time for the presentation of diplomas to the graduates, each set of parents came up front with their graduate, said a few words and presented them with their diploma.

My oldest daughter is nearing graduation.  We don't know exactly when she is graduating because her plans in the next few years include finishing the bulk of her academic work a year early and then working as an intern for 6-9 months at an orphanage in Tanzania, Africa.  We don't even know yet if she is interested in going through a formal grad ceremony or whether I would ever get a chance to formally share this with her.  In spite of all that, I found myself sitting there in the crowd and thinking – what would I say to my oldest daughter on the event of her graduation in a year or two?  This is what I think I would say: 

Kyla, as a pastor, I am always teaching people.  And as home school parents, your mom and I are always wrapped up in making sure that you and your siblings are being taught what you need to know.  But sometimes in the midst of all that teaching, I forget what you are teaching me.

Thank you, Kyla, for teaching me patience.  As you know, I am not a patient person by nature.  I am easily frustrated and at times, easily angered.  And yet I look at your and your patience with Gracie (our Labrador retriever).  I am amazed at how you work with her and teach her and are patient and gentle with her.  And of course, the results are on display in the form of Western Montana Fair trophies by the box load.  Such patience is a fruit of the Spirit, a product of the work of God in you.  Thank you for reminding me of the importance of patience.

Thank you, Kyla, for teaching me compassion.  Compassion does not come easily to me either.  I have always relied on others like your mom for cues regarding compassion.  And now I see such compassion in you.  Special Olympics. Sign Language.  Your desire to train helper dogs.  The Mexican orphanage.  Your plans to serve in Africa.  All those things show your heart of compassion for those who are needy and powerless in our world. And of course, that compassion is in line with the compassion of God toward those same people.  Thank you for modeling compassion for me.

Thank you, Kyla, for teaching me submission.  Your constant headaches drag you down.  I cannot begin to imagine what that is like.  You have patiently weathered and continue to weather all our attempts to solve the problem.  We don't know if the problem will ever be solved.  In times past, you allowed yourself to be defined by your headaches.  And while you still have hard days, I have seen that change.  I have seen your submission to the Lord grow in the midst of this thorn in the flesh you bear.  I have seen you grow in contentment.  I have seen you persevere.  I have seen you trust and seek God more.  I have seen you more and more offer your life as a living sacrifice to him, in spite of your headaches.  Thank you for living a life of increasing submission before me.

Kyla, you and I know that none of us are perfect.  I understand you have not perfected any of these areas of your life.  But I want you to know that I see wonderful growth.  I see the work of God in your life.  And I want you to know that this is my prayer for you, from Philippians 1:9-11: 

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

If you want to follow Kyla during her African Adventure, check out her blog at http://kylasafricanadventure.blogspot.com/

A Fresh Perspective on Church History

Book Review:  The Triumph of Christianity by Rodney Stark

One of my favorite non-fiction authors is Baylor University professor Rodney Stark.  One of my favorite topics to read about is history.  So imagine my interest when a favorite author releases a book on a favorite topic of mine.  That's what happened with Rodney Stark’s book The Triumph of Christianity:  How the Jesus Movement became the World’s Largest Religion.

In a world where people assume that Christianity has become increasingly irrelevant and marginalized, the title of Dr. Stark’s book comes as a shock.  Modern people do not often use the words Christianity and Triumph together in a positive way.  In response, Dr. Stark’s book offers a much needed corrective.  He sets out to give his readers a historical and global perspective on how Christianity grew from a handful of followers of Jesus to a faith that encompasses the whole world.

The Triumph of Christianity is a selective history of the Christian church.  If you are looking for a comprehensive history of Christianity that leaves few rocks unturned, look elsewhere.  But if you want an interesting, well-written and at times counter-cultural history of pivotal moments in church history, this is the book for you.

One of the reasons I like Dr. Stark’s books so much is that he has a wonderful ability to overturn some of society’s (and my own) most basic historical assumptions.  The key to his perspective is the fact that Dr. Stark is not an historian, but rather a sociologist.  As one who studies human society, he approaches history with a different set of evidence and reveals conclusions many historians fail to see.

So what are some of Dr. Stark’s different conclusions?  Here are some examples.

a. Early Christianity was not a religion that attracted only slaves and the lowest classes – many prominent and powerful people of the day became Christians. 

b. Paganism was not stamped out by a triumphant and intolerant Christianity, but rather disappeared slowly but never completely.  

c. The heart of the Christian faith was found in the Middle East and North Africa until those cultures were destroyed by Muslim invaders.  

d. The Christian crusaders were motivated not by greed, but faith and travelled at great risk and expense, many knowingly going bankrupt because of the journey.   

e. The so-called Dark Ages were one of the most inventive and progressive times in Western history. 

f. Despite the dominance of the church in the Middle Ages, most Europeans were Christians in name only, did not know the most basic doctrine and rarely attended church. 

g. Science arose not in opposition of the church, but because of the fact that the church taught the existence of a rational creator who set the laws of nature in place. 

h. The Spanish Inquisition caused few deaths and saved a great many more lives, opposing witch hunts that swept through the rest of Europe. 

i. The religious monopolies like existed (and still exist) in Europe only result in a lazy church – the Christian faith thrives in competition.  

j. Luther’s Reformation grew at first not because it reached the hearts of the common people, but because it appealed printers and to lords who were overburdened by Catholic Church control. 

k. American faith was truly unique, especially when compared to European church monopolies and attendance.  

l. Although prominent atheists argue religion is passing away, faith is actually growing all over the world. 

m. 40 percent of the world belongs to the Christian faith and their number is growing more rapidly than any other major faith. 

Do you want to argue any of these points?  Read the book and argue away.

Although I enjoyed this book, I found I did not agree with Dr. Stark on everything.  He and I disagree on the issue of the inerrancy of Scripture, the role of women in leadership and a few other areas.  But I don’t want that to turn you away from what is otherwise a very good book.  The Triumph of Christianity gives the reader a healthy historical and global perspective on the church, a perspective that is often sadly lacking these days.

The Dark "Benefits" of Unforgiveness

A few weeks ago, I posted an article entitled The Harvest of Unforgiveness.  It was a bleak picture of what happens in a relationship when forgiveness is not applied.

If a lack of forgiveness is so damaging to a relationship, why don’t people just forgive?  Why do spouses refuse to forgive each other, even though forgiveness can be profoundly beneficial to their marriage?  The answer is not pretty.  The unfortunate fact is that there appears to be “benefits” to not forgiving.  As Paul David Tripp explains in What Did You Expect?, these “benefits” are dark and ugly, but for some provide just enough reason to keep them from forgiving their spouse.

Debt is Power:  The first “benefit” to unforgiveness is that putting someone in debt means we have power over that person.  As one Christian financial counselor has repeatedly noted, the debtor is a slave to the lender.  In a similar way, when we choose not to forgive our spouse, we have something to hold over their head, some weakness or failure to use against them if we need it.  And in those times when things in our marriage are not going our way, it appears to be useful to one of our spouse’s past wrongs or failures to use as a trump card to get our way.

Debt is Identity:  People can get their identity and bolster their self-worth through unforgiveness.  After all, if we have a spouse that has failed us, perhaps repeatedly, holding onto those failures makes us feel superior.  By dwelling on the times our spouse has failed, we can convince ourselves that we are really the righteous one or the mature one in the marriage.  The result is that we get our sense of self-worth from comparing ourselves to our spouse, rather than from what has God called us to be.

Debt is Entitlement:  When our spouse wrongs us and we hold onto those wrongs, we can convince ourselves that they owe us.  Entitlement makes us feel deserving and comfortable with being self-focused and demanding.  We start to think – “if I have to put up with you, don’t I deserve…..”  Personally I have seen this type of thinking played out in how money or time is handled in a marriage.  When a spouse is wronged and refuses to forgive, entitlement seems to give them justification to spend money on themselves or frequent the trout stream or the golf course more often because, as the one who is “owed,” they “deserve” it.

Debt is a Weapon:  When we choose not to forgive, the wrongs of our spouse are like a weapon we can carry around with us everywhere.  As time goes on and the unresolved wrongs mount in a marriage, that loaded gun becomes easier and easier to put out and use against our spouse.  After all, when we are hurt, it is easy to hurt them back with some past evidence of selfishness or immaturity.

Debt Puts us in God’s Position:  Out of all of these “benefits”, this is the scariest one.  When we choose not to forgive, we set ourselves out to be God, to be judge over the sin of our spouse.  In fact, we set ourselves up as being more righteous than God, because when we do not forgive, we apply a standard of forgiveness to our spouse that is even higher than God’s own standard.  As human beings, it is not our job to dispense consequences for our spouse’s sin or to make sure that they feel the appropriate amount of guilt.  It is always tempting for us to ascend to God’s throne, the very place we should never be.

This is a nasty list.  These so-called “benefits” of not forgiving are selfish, they are ugly, they are unloving, and they are all about pleasing ourselves and not God.  They also make us blind to our own situation.  We become so focused on our spouse and their failures that those things blind us to our own failures, our own struggles, and those times when we wronged our spouse.  They blind us to the fact that we desperately need God’s grace continually applied to our lives and that we should offer the same kind of grace to our spouse.

The Harvest of Unforgiveness

Over the years, I have had the opportunity of counseling many couples who were experiencing problems in their marriage.  And while there always are a number of factors in play in any struggling marriage, there is one problem that seems to come up over and over again.  That is the problem of unforgiveness.  Most – dare I say all – couples who are struggling in their marriage have a hard time practicing forgiveness.

The fact is people in healthy marriages find joy in cancelling debts.  I love being able to offer forgiveness to my wife, and I know that when I ask with a broken heart, my wife is always willing to forgive me.  Forgiveness does have a cost, but when it is done, the return in a marriage is so much greater.

But what happens when we don’t forgive?  What does our marriage look like when we do not cancel the debts we have piled up against each other?  What does the harvest of unforgiveness look like?

Paul Tripp, in his book What Did You Expect?, breaks that harvest down into a number of descending steps.  These steps are from his own experience and are based on the principle found in Galatians 6:7-8:  Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.   For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. (ESV)

             

Step 1:  Immaturity and Failure.  Many people who enter marriage are immature and relatively naïve.  They do selfish, dumb things.  The aftermath of that immaturity and selfishness is all too often hurt, blame, accusation and judgment rather than confession and forgiveness.  These initial responses are poor and can often set a direction for their marriage.

            

 Step 2:  Comfortable Patterns.  Forgiveness is hard – it carries an emotional cost.  Due to its cost, couples often find it easier to fall into other behavioral patterns in their marriage.  For some, it is easier to flee the problem.  Others give in to bitterness.  Still others formulate a list of their spouse’s wrongs.  Some get angry, either holding that anger in or letting it loose at one’s spouse.  Every one of these “easier” patterns is destructive.

             

Step 3:  Establish Defenses.  The natural result of being hurt and not having that hurt resolved through forgiveness is for a person to build up walls of defense against the wrongs wrought by their spouse.  Walls may protect the person, but they damage communication and trust.  Other couples go on the offense against each other – returning criticism for criticism.  In this environment, a couple quickly goes from being partners to adversaries.

             

Step 4:  Nurturing Dislike.  When hurts are not dealt with, our tendency as human beings is to dwell on them.  We meditate on the wrong caused by our spouse, rather than celebrating God’s gift of our spouse.  We quickly gain a negative perspective on our marriage and as a result interpret our spouse’s actions and words through that negative lens.  A couple living in this perspective simply does not like each other anymore.

             

Step 5:  Become Overwhelmed.  Eventually every spouse gets tired of defending themselves from their spouse’s criticisms.  They get tired of bearing the brunt of what they consider the other person’s faults.  The same problems resurface again and again, never to be completely resolved.  As a result, their relationship becomes one of dread and caution, never knowing when the ticking time bomb of emotional hurt will explode once again.

             

Step 6:  Envy of Other Couples.  Couples who find themselves emotionally overwhelmed start to wonder what it would be like to be married to someone else.  They use comparison on their spouses.  “Why can’t you be more like….?”  Of course, they only see a small part of those other marriages – they don’t see the hidden things or the hard things that those couples do to make their marriages work.

             

Step 7:  Fantasies of Escape.  The ultimate result of forgiveness always, eventually leads here.  When a spouse or a couple is angry, hurt, overwhelmed and without hope for change, they want to escape their troubles by escaping the person who is the source of their troubles, leading to separation or divorce.

             

Are you depressed yet?  It is a pretty bleak picture.  But it does not have to be like that.  That cycle can be broken by genuine confession and forgiveness, both between the members of a marriage and between each spouse and God.  Our God is a God of new life.  His mercies are new every morning.  As God applies His grace to our lives, we learn to apply His grace to our spouses as well.  The end result is not a depressing spiral of a despair, but a marriage in which you have even deeper respect, more tender affection and an even greater appreciation of your spouse than you did when you first got married.

The View from the Other Side – From NIV to ESV

Recently our church switched over from the use of the New International Version (NIV) in Sunday worship to the use of English Standard Version (ESV). What a pain! I don't mean to say the transition has not gone well – it has. But it is frustrating to me on a lot of levels that this transition had to be done.

I have been a fan of the NIV (1984) for many years. I received one when I moved from junior high to high school. I used the NIV all the way through high school and college. I have been preaching out of the NIV for more than 20 years. I have read it through many times and memorized countless verses in it. The NIV was my translation.

So, you might ask, why change? In 2011, a newly revised NIV (NIV 2011) was released. I don't have a problem with translators updating a revising translations. And the newly revised NIV was quite a bit better than the troubling Today's New International Version (TNIV). At the same time, the NIV 2011 contained some content that was hard for me to swallow.

A lot of it stands and falls on gender neutral language. I don't want to get in a big debate about the merits or lack of merits of this kind of language. I don't have a problem with some, perhaps even many, gender neutral changes. If someone has an issue with “mankind”, I don't care if they prefer “humankind” instead. I also understand that language changes and we must seek to translate the ancient document that is the Bible into language that people today can read and understand.

At the same time, some of the gender neutral changes are troubling. Some muddy theological waters, such as the NIV 2011 translation of John 14:23 which obscures the personal nature Jesus Christ's presence with each, individual believer. There are many other similar examples where a plural pronoun is used to replace a masculine singular pronoun with the result that the meaning is distorted. Other changes are simply silly, like in 1 Samuel 18:12 where the translators want to avoid the polarizing word “father” and in 2 Samuel 23:8 where David's mighty men become David's mighty warriors because “men” is another bad word. (Never mind that these guys were all men – that appears to be inconsequential to the translators.) Translations like the last two make me wonder if the reason for this change is to help people understand, or to pander to some level of political correctness.

The quality of the translation aside, there is another reason we switched. Zondervan, the publisher of the NIV (1984) and NIV (2011) have decided to end publication of the NIV (1984) in favor of the newly revised version. So, if you go to a store today and buy an NIV Bible off the shelf, it will be the gender neutral version. One of the families in my church did just that, thinking to get a Bible for their daughter, only to be disturbed and disappointed at the changes. The philosophy of the publishers of the NIV seems to be, “Since the general public did not like the TNIV when we released it, we are not giving them the choice with this version. Love it or leave it!”

As a result, we are leaving it. Reluctantly. Painfully, especially for me. But we are leaving it. I need to be sure that the folks in my church are hearing a reliable translation from the pulpit and that they are reading a reliable translation at home.

Do I like the change? Not right now. After decades of reading and studying and preaching from the NIV, the wording of the ESV seems foreign. Just last Sunday I caught myself stumbling over the benediction at the end of the service. It was a passage I had used frequently in the NIV and I stumbled around as I read it from the ESV. Will those times pass? Sure they will. And in reality, those embarrassing and mildly frustrating times are very minor in comparison to the peace of mind I have in knowing that my flock is hearing and reading a more reliable translation than the troubling NIV 2011. So Zondervan, I hope you are happy. We don't love it, so we are leaving it. And so far the view from the other side, while different, is pretty good.

Kyla's African Adventure

Imagine you had a 15 year old daughter. And imagine, one day, that your daughter announced out of the blue, that she wanted to go to Africa to work in an orphanage. And imagine, a few years later, that her desire was soon to come true. That is where I am today.

Our daughter Kyla has been on two short term Missions trips with our church to Mexico. The first time, she went with her mom. The second time – last year – she went by herself with our church team. She loved both experiences and her view of the world was altered by both trips.

After her first Mission trip, she announced to her mother and I that one day, she wanted to go to Africa and work there are a missionary intern. My wife's sister and brother-in-law, Dan and Bethany Tanner, started an orphanage ministry called Mavuno Village a few years back in Tanzania, East Africa. (www.mavunovillage.org) The AIDS crisis is epidemic in Tanzania, leaving many children without parents. In many cases, extended families take these children in, but even that has its limits. The ministry of Mavuno Village is to care for and raise African children to know and love God as well as giving them skills that will allow them to succeed in the future. Mavuno uses a family-style program in which children live in family units led by godly, African parents.

Kyla would be working at Mavuno as a missionary intern for about 8 months. As an intern, she hopes to put her skills to work to enhance the ministry of Mavuno. These include sign-language, sewing and any other place she help fulfill the mission of Mavuno Village. Over the past year, she has worked very hard to get ahead in her school work and now is on track to finish her senior year this summer. The plan is for her to to leave in September and spend what would be her senior year of high school serving the Lord in Africa.

So – how do I feel about all this? Well, I am proud of my daughter. She has worked and is working hard at school. I am glad she feels the prompting to use her abilities to serve the Lord in Africa. And I look forward to how God is going to shape her life for the future as a result of this experience.

Yet there is also something daunting about knowing that this daughter of yours – the one you saw born, the one you held in your arms, the one you played with on the floor – is old enough and mature enough to be overseas for 8 months as a missionary. It is not about me being old. Rather it is about the ever shrinking window we have with our kids. Every parents needs something to refocus and recharge them occasionally – I guess this is mine.

Sunset on Lake Victoria

We invite you to follow Kyla on her adventure. She has just started raising funds – her first fund-raiser will be the food stand at our church's AWANA Grand Prix this Saturday. We have prayer card and an informational brochure designed. She has started a blog at www.kylasafricanadventure.blogspot.com, although I do not know if she has posted anything there yet. And she is always in need of your prayers – both as she prepares to go and as she is in Africa. And I know, as one of her parents, I would covet your prayers for her as well.

On Being Heavenly Minded

“You are so heavenly minded, you are no earthly good.” I first came across that phrase early in my ministry. I was teaching a class as pastor of Drummond Community Church. I used an illustration of a certain type of people I frequently came into contact with while I worked at the local Christian book store. These people would come into the store, walk straight to the prophecy section, pick a book out and purchase it without glancing at anything else. All they read, all they thought of and all they discussed was prophecy. And as I got to know some of them, I discovered that many of them could not find a church that met their standards and they were among the most critical and argumentative Christians I knew. And so, in my class in Drummond, when one of the members of the class piped up with the suggestion that these people were so heavenly minded that they were no earthly good, I agreed.

The problem is, Christians are supposed to be heavenly minded. Not necessarily in the way the prophecy nuts were. But in a way that recognizes that this world is not our true home. It is not our final destination. We need to realize that the only one who is pleased when we do not regularly dwell on the reality of our heavenly home is Satan, who would like to see our understanding and anticipation of that place diminish, rather than grow.

So how can a Christian be correctly heavenly minded and still be earthly good? That is a much needed question, because I suspect most Christians err the other way – they we are so earthly minded we are no heavenly or earthly good. As C. S. Lewis once said, “It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one.”

In his book, In Light of Eternity, author Randy Alcorn gives us some suggestions about how to cultivate our sense of the eternal.

We should dwell on the Scriptures that talk about heaven. Admittedly, there is much we do not know about what heaven will be like. It is easy to enter into speculation about heaven, which while fun, is still only speculation. But Scripture does give us much to think about regarding our eternal home. We know it will be place prepared for us. (John 14:1-2) We know Jesus, our Savior, will one day return to take us to where he is. (John 14:3) We know it will be a place of resurrection, transformation and glorification. (Phil. 3:20-21, 1 Cor. 15:50-57, 1 Thess. 4:13-18) And we know it will be a place where we will be united eternally with God and be freed from all the things that trouble us here on earth. (Rev. 21:2-4) Meditate regularly on what Scripture says about heaven.

We should also talk about heaven. Talk about it with our spouses, our parents and our kids. Discuss it with our friends. Teach about it. Preach about it. Make its glories clear – after all, it is our ultimate destination. As I think back to discussions in our house, we have, to our detriment, spent much more time discussing vacations then heaven. We spend hours planning and discussing a trip to a place where we will spend at most a little more than a week, but we don't talk near enough about our ultimate destination, our eternal, heavenly home.

Finally, we should invest in heavenly things. Our lives are too often defined by the treasures we accumulate down here. God wants us to store up treasures, but he wants us to store them up in the right place. A few quotes are in order here. Thomas a Kempis once wrote, “Let temporal things serve your use, but the eternal be the object of your desire.” Or A. W. Tozer, who said, “Any temporal possession can be turned into everlasting wealth. Whatever is given to Christ is immediately touched with immortality.” Do you want a heart for God? Put your treasures where God is at work. Invest in eternal things with them. After all, Jesus words are still true – for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt. 6:21, NIV)

Our hearts should be tuned to heaven. Let's make sure that we are so heavenly minded that the impact of our life right here and right now will last for eternity.