Category Archives: following

Don’t plan. Prepare

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I’m built for the second chair. That’s the associate, the person that helps accomplish the vision, that makes sure the room is ready, that helps the stories be told, that translates. I love this calling. But I have a hard time planning, at least in the way that people who run their own companies and lives talk about planning. We hear about goals, about strategies, about personal visions. We read about building disruptions, independence. But some of us are rooted in interdependence.

Just before Christmas, my friend Becky told me, “I think you plan completely differently than most accepted definitions. It’s more like you prepare than that you plan.” 

That statement gave me great clarity. Preparing is about being ready for what might come, for what could come. It’s about building capacity. It’s about building a heart that has the resources to respond to the needs of others. It’s about leaving space around the edges so there is room for the unexpected.

Here are four things preparing includes:

Ezra is a great example, a person who committed to study, obey, and teach. He ended up leading a major spiritual renewal.  Being a disciple is being committed to preparing. A disciple is about learning.  A disciple of Jesus is learning to obey what Jesus said to do.

People often follow before they believe.

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Twelve guys signed up to follow Jesus.

Sometimes another teacher sent them. Sometimes a friend invited them. Sometimes a family member invited them. Sometimes Jesus himself invited them. We can see all four ways in a few sentences in the first chapter of John. One big story, four individual stories. (A video version.)

What becomes clear as we read those four stories is that the five people who followed Jesus in John 1 (Andrew, Peter, Philip, Nathaniel and someone who is not identified) didn’t understand who Jesus was, what his plan was, what his power was. And as we keep reading, over and over events happen and they ought to understand, but from where we sit, they didn’t get it.

In Mark 6, there is a set of stories that can be summarized like this:

Jesus, You can do miracles! Cool.

We can do miracles? Cool!

Jesus, You can feed 15,000? Wow!

Wait, who is that walking on the water? Nah, couldn’t be Jesus. That would take a miracle.

Clearly, they didn’t always understand. They didn’t always believe. Although they were following Jesus and saw him every day and were wanting to be part of this thing he was doing, they often misunderstood.

Even at the end, even on his last day on earth, after watching all kinds of cool things including a resurrection, some of them believed, but some of them were uncertain (Matthew 28:17).

Because we think that being a disciple means understanding everything, believing everything, doing everything, we talk like this:

“Are you a disciple?”

“I’m trying to be one.”

How do you try to be a disciple? How do you try to follow? At some point, you acknowledge that you are following. That you don’t understand what it means always (or often) but like the twelve, you are watching closely.

—

This is from Making Disciples (PDF), an ebook.

Psalm 1.

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When you pick up a book of poetry or a book of song lyrics, you have to work.

You cannot read Gerard Manley Hopkins or W.H. Auden or Bono the same way you read Malcolm Gladwell or Donald Miller. With poems, you have to stop often, read out loud at times, look in your heart for images and understanding.

The book of Psalms is a book of poetry. It takes time to read and reread. But that what keeps people going back.

Here’s a reflection of the first of the psalms.

Psalm 1

It doesn’t make a lot of sense, now, does it

if a person wanting to live a blessed life

gets all his advice from people who are against God

or walks along a path that leads away from God

or sits on the sidelines being snarky all the time.

Instead, think what would happen if she decided

to focus on God’s words

like words from a lover

and day and night reflected on them.

It’d be like a planting a tree right by a river,

roots well watered,

branches bearing great fruit.

The things people like that do, they prosper somehow.

A person who is against God isn’t going to grow this way.

Without the water of life, you end up more like chaff,

the hull on the outside of a grain of wheat,

blowing away in the harvest wind.

At the end of everything, when considering how life was lived,

the ones who chose to be wicked

will find their legs collapsing under them.

And the ones who joyfully wanted “sinner” as their pursuit

will find no room in the “righteous” section.

Those who trail along after God

find protection along the way.

Those who are committed to avoiding that path

will find themselves among the ruins.

Writing for you and me

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When I sit down to write 300 words, I often don’t know whether I’m writing for you, for me, or for both of us.  Sometimes the writing is for me. It’s therapy. It’s working out what’s going on in my life.  Sometimes the writing is for you. It’s teaching or challenging. Sometimes, the very best times as far as I’m concerned, are when I’m writing for both of us. What I write is growing out of my walk or my wrestling, but is helping you, too.

As I’m writing this on Sunday night, I want to say thank you. I can’t tell whether that’s for me or for you or for both of us.

Thank you for the birthday greetings yesterday, both the simple touches which let me know you are there and the longer words which, this year anyway, ended up being more prophetic and healing and direction-affirming than you know. Yes, you.

Thank you for talking to God on behalf of me and my family during the past month.  The day after my dad died, my mom said “I know I’m not the only one [going through grieving like this] but he was my only one.” She was exactly right. At any given moment, many people are going through a death, a tragedy. And for each of them, it looms large. We can do comparative grief (yours isn’t as bad as mine) or we can simply let pain be pain.

Thank you for trusting me with your questions about God and faith and following. You often don’t ask them out loud. But I know that you have them because you tell me sometimes, in private conversations, in inferences, in hints. Those questions push my thinking and writing.

Tomorrow I’ll be back to normal. For today, thanks for letting me thank.

what are you learning?

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Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, a couple groups I’m part of discuss the previous week’s sermon. It’s not to criticize, it’s to explore.

I decided to let you sit in on our questions from last week.  Pastor Bill was talking to our high school graduates.  I wanted our adults to think through some of the same issues. (Here’s the actual study guide with a bit more explanation.)

Here were his sermon points.

1. Forget the grades. Get an education.
2. Don’t do what’s easy. Do what’s hard.
3. Learn who to ignore
4. Live for what matters. And it’s not money.

Here are my study questions:

1. What do you want to set your heart to learn about God in the next three months? What would you love to know better at the end of the summer? What will you read? What conversations will you have? What do people keep asking you about God? What question keeps coming up? 

God helping me, I want to learn as much as I can about:

2. What will you have to give up doing in order to accomplish that learning? What ‘addictions’ have to stop? What accountability do you want to put in place?

God’s been reminding me that my attention is being spent on:

So here’s how I will learn to refocus my attention (specific actions):

1.

2.

3.

3. What are the names of the people whose voices you know you need to stop paying attention to? What critics are you allowing to run your feelings? (Read through Psalm 1:1-2. It talks about who to avoid.)

Who it is                             What they tell me                         Why it’s killing me

1.

2.

3.

4. What do you actually want to live for?

Try this exercise:   I’ll be content if at the end of my life I can say “I don’t have much  ________   but at least God allowed me to ______________.”