No You Don’t!

“I just want to know what God wants me to do,” the man said to me.

His eyes filled with rage at my answer: “No you don’t!”

“What do you mean?” he protested. “I do too; I want to know God’s will!”

As we sat across the table in my office, I reminded him that he had asked me to help him determine God’s will in his finances three times before, over a period of about six years. Each time I brought him to the same conclusion from God’s Word: “God’s will is clear—give to His work. You cannot look past His clear teaching that connects all of His financial promises to your faith in Him. You must trust Him enough to give before you can expect His guidance and blessing concerning your money situation.”

But here we were, going around the same block, considering his same questions, and reviewing God’s same answer.

Don’t Ask If You’re Not Willing

It’s dangerous to ask God for directions unless you are willing to follow them! When the wicked idolaters who had fled to Moab and Edom as the Babylonians poured into Jerusalem returned to try to wrest power from the puppet king, they asked Jeremiah to inquire of the Lord for them. When Jeremiah told them that the Lord wanted them to stay in Jerusalem, stop their idolatry, and submit to the Babylonians, they accused him of lying, took him prisoner, and forced him to flee to Egypt with them where they worshiped their “Goddess of Heaven.” (Jeremiah 41-44)

The Father tires of those who are simply curious about his will or come to him only in a crisis to see if he offers a pleasant option for deliverance. This is the state of so many Christians. In the merry-go-round of their lives, they just repeat the same mistakes and live under the same pathology year after year. They sometimes ask God what to do, especially when these pathologies cost or hurt them. Then, they decide once again not to do what God says and to return to their idols of career, materialism, and recreation.

How sad, but the Lord wants better for His children…for you!

When He directs, follow. I believe that too many refusals just cause the Father to know that we are not really serious about doing His will. So He stops speaking, as He did to the unbelieving generations of Israel and Judah.

“But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).

Promises, Promises

I vividly remember riding my bike home after an adolescent sinfest and promising God I would never do it again, if He just wouldn’t send me to hell.

Of course I didn’t keep my promise. A few years and about a million broken promises later I figured, “What the heck? I mean if I’m going to hell anyway, the best plan is to have as much fun as possible along the way!”

But the guilt and shame just got worse.

Then I met Jesus in the Jesus Movement of the 60s and 70s. As I grew in my awareness of His perfect work on the Cross and His love, mercy, and grace, my self-esteem grew. Not because I had made myself better, but because He had remade me into a better person.

Authentic self-esteem doesn’t come from within. It comes from Someone else.

His name is Jesus.

And when He tells you He loves you so much that He died for you, that He delights in you, and that you are not who you used to be, you know that you have been delivered from the religious mythologies that tell you to “get your life together for God.”

Question: Are you tired of trying to keep your life together for God?

Gotta Have A Plan!

I’ve found that if I don’t have a plan, I’ll sit down in my big comfortable chair left of my big mug of extra bold K-cup coffee and mentally swim around the pool of journaling until I just decide to get out of the pool and say, “Maybe tomorrow.”

I bet you’re the same way.

We need a routine, don’t we?

You’ll have to figure out what’s best for you, but this is what works best for me:

I’m already committed to journaling.

I’ve already settled on my time and space.

My Routine

1) Something easy and motivating. For me that’s the 3X10 prayer: 3 sins to confess from the last 24 hours, 10 works of God in the last 24 hours to praise Him for.

Some of my friends begin with a favorite hymn or praise song on their ipod. Others like to read something light from a Christian biography or favorite blog.

2) Review yesterday’s journal entry. You’ll be surprised at how much you forgot from yesterday!

3) Read the Bible! I think the Bible comes next because the Word of God is our Father’s most effective way to talk to us. In an upcoming blog I’ll give you some of the books that have helped me focus on the Word of God every morning.

4) Wait. Oh, this is the toughest part of the routine for me. Probably will be for you too. You’re itching to write something. Don’t. Wait, and listen to God.

5) Write. Fill up your page with whatever is on your heart that day.

• What are you apprehensive about? Let the Father know.
• What did you learn from His Word? Tell Him.
• What do you want to remember never to forget? Record it.
• What breaks your heart? Put it down.
• Whatever you feel like writing, write it. Nobody’s going to read it anyway until you’re in heaven. And you won’t care then!

6) Pray. I have five or six life prayers at the front of my journal that I pray every morning. After that, I spend some time with God talking about my life. It’s a morning conversation that His Spirit brings to mind all day long.

Just Journal!

There’s no right or wrong way to journal.

This is the routine that I use.

How about you? What journaling habits do you have that might encourage others?

CRAZY BUSY!

My life is crazy busy and it always has been.

There’s never been a time in my adult life that a lot of pressures weren’t competing for the time I need to devote to my relationship with the Lord Jesus. I’ve been a fireman, university student, Army officer, seminary student, pastor, Bible teacher, and author. All extremely demanding.

And then there’s family, friends, community…

You know the drill.

My Time and Space for Jesus

This is why I’m so committed to journaling. No other spiritual discipline has kept Jesus at the center of my life more than journaling. If focuses my mind, my thoughts, and my prayers like no other spiritual exercise.

But I’ve found that just saying, “I’m going to start journaling” doesn’t work for me.

I must have a special time and a special place to meet Jesus with my Mead Notebook, my Bible, my pen, and my heart.

For me it has to be early morning before our home wakes up, and in my special chair left of the table in our den so that I can accommodate my caffeine habit left-handed. I keep all my journaling stuff right there, never move it, and never vary from that place and that time unless I’m on the road. (And that’s the topic of another blog!)

Your Time and Space for Jesus?

If you’re crazy busy, journaling is a great discipline to create time and space for Jesus.

I can’t know what your best time and space will be. But I do know that if you’re serious about keeping the Lord Jesus at the center of your life, He’ll show it to you.

Oh, and another thing: NO LAPTOP, MOBILE PHONE, OR OTHER DISTRACTING INSTRUMENTS ALLOWED.

That’s what works for me. I’d love to hear about your special time and space where you meet the Lord to journal.

I’m a journaling freak.

The reason is extremely personal.. My journal is where I meet the Lord Jesus every morning, how we carry on our most intimate conversations, and where I record my prayers, hopes, dreams, discouragements, fears, sins (yes sins), and successes.

I’ve been journaling for years and challenge every man I’ve ever discipled, every couple we’ve ever helped, every group I’ve ever led, every friend and loved on, and every congregation I’ve shepherded to journal.

The challenge gets a little “preachy” when people are thinking about New Year’s Resolutions because it’s the time to begin anew.

One question seems to be on the mind of all prospective journalers:

How do I get started?

Five Steps:

1) Make it simple!

We Christians tend to complicate the heck out of everything. We’re so hard on ourselves. Don’t wait until you find the perfect journal, perfect pen, get the perfect idea, and are ready to write perfect sentences. Just start journaling. I use a cheap Mead® Square Deal® Black Marble Journal Composition Book. It’s durable and each page is just about right for my personal wordiness. I’ve baptized mine in a high mountain stream, spilled about six gallons of coffee on every year’s edition, run over them in my pickup, and pulled them from the clinging hands of two-year-olds. They’re tough. They dry out and I just keep writing.

2) Make it you

This is between you and Jesus, not you and me. I tend to write out my prayers to begin each day’s journal. Sometimes I journal about what I’m reading from the Bible. Other times I journal thoughts from a Christian book I’ve read. Phil Yancey and NT Wright have filled up many pages of my journals.

3) Ask For Help

The best way to make journaling meaningful is to journal. Why not ask the Lord to give you the discipline to journal say three times a week for a month. See how that goes, and then ask Him again for the next month. Before you know it, you’re journaling.

4) Do a page

This has been important to me. I tell the Lord that I’m not going to get up from the chair that I journal from early in the morning until He gives me a page full of prayers, praises, questions, insights, tears, sorrows, joys, perspectives…I just start writing and keep writing until I’m done.

5) Prime the Pump! 3X10 and High Test Coffee

I prime my journaling pump with lots of caffeine from my beloved Keurig–bold, bold, bold K-cup–and as I’m waiting for that first taste of God’s gift of the coffee bean, I confess and praise. I prepare for my journaling time by asking God the Holy Spirit to bring to mind three specific things from the day before I need to confess as sin and ten specific praises from the day before. He’s never failed to tell me what He thinks and it gets me going.

It’s not that profound, but it’s what works for me. Hope it helps.

How about you? You have any journaling insights for the beginning journaler?

ThenI will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocateto be with you forever –the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept,because it does not see him or know him.But you know him, because he resideswith you and will bein you (John 14:16-17).

These words from the Lord Jesus raised the expectations of His discouraged disciples. Something new and wonderful was about to happen. In just a few days, when the Spirit would come, He would live inside them. Unlike their Master who was about to leave them, the Spirit’s presence would be permanent. This had never happened before. Note even with the greatest leaders of the Old Testament.

The Holy Spirit’s ministry in our lives can be confusing. The religious lingo seems so unfamiliar—indwelling, sealing, baptism, gifting, filling, walking. How do you know if any of these have happened? When should I expect it? How will I know?

Dividing the ministries of the Holy Spirit into three primary categories helps us appreciate their importance in our Christian experience:

¨      The Holy Spirit and eternal life—indwelling and sealing.

¨      The Holy Spirit and everyday life—filling by and walking in the Spirit.

¨      The Holy Spirit and body life—baptizing and gifting.

When it comes to everyday life, an understanding of the filling of the Spirit is absolutely critical to experiencing the joy and confidence of living by (walking in) the Spirit

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Personal discipline and commitment seem to be replacing grace and mercy as the start points for Christianity.

The results are predictable; just read about the Middle Ages.

Unless we admit our own powerlessness to change ourselves, we’re going to continue churning out failing, hidden, and frustrated church-goers.

We need another reformation, from Protestant works-righteousness!

“The reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof grace–of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly.” (Robert Capon, Between Noon and Three)

Throw-Away Week?

I use to think of the week between Christmas and New Year’s as a throw away week. It was a time to decide to somehow stop eating everything in sight and try to put together a few New Year’s Resolutions I knew I wasn’t going to keep.

Or Year In Review?

Then I got an idea that changed my mind about this week. I now view it as maybe the most important weeks of the year.

Instead of watching and listening the mindless dribble of television and radio reviews of what happened on earth last year, I spend time with God thinking about what heaven thinks about my life last year.

Since I’m addicted to journaling, I dedicate this week to reading through the pages of my spiritual journal from the year before. Using a red highlighter, I underline and make notes asking God to help me condense the pages into the one lesson He was teaching me last year.

At the end of the week I complete this sentence and write it on the first page of my journal for the next year: “Last year God taught Ed…………………………………”

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The Lost Week

For most of us, the seven days between Christmas and the New Year feel like a lost week. The blur of our Christmas schedules—big events, big meals, and big expectations—have depleted our emotional reserves, and the challenges of a whole new year feel overwhelming.

Want some encouragement? I devote this time every year to look back over the year to develop what I call “Hindsight Faith.” I generate my “God’s Top Ten List” from the previous 12 months. If you keep a journal or a calendar, this will be easy. But even if you haven’t recorded the major events of your life last year, they’re still fresh in your mind.

Set aside some time to be alone with God, and ask His Spirit to help you determine the ten greatest things God did for you last year.

SEVEN DAYS FOUND!

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The Good Shepherd Came Down

Meditations on Psalm 23:5

On Christmas morning I’m going to lead Church of the Open Door through meditations of the wonder of Psalm 23 in light if the Incarnation. Because of Christmas, King David’s words describe the reality of our lives as Christians. The Lord is my Shepherd.

I’m journaling through a verse every morning this week, meditating on the actuality of Christ being my Good Shepherd who showed up in a manger in Bethlehem so that all that David says and feels about his Good Shepherd is true of me.

Here’s Day 5, Verse 5. You may want to subscribe or go to edunderwood.com to keep up with the series daily.

Day Five: You prepare a feast before m in the plain sight of my enemies. You refresh my head with oil; my cup is completely full (Psalm 23:5, NET Bible).

Best Christmas Ever!

“This is shaping up to be a pretty good Christmas.”

“Best Christmas ever!”

These are the sentences we all use. Sentences that betray our deep need to maximize the experience of this special season.

Problem is that when we’re honest with ourselves, there just aren’t that many “best-ever Christmases.” Even when we’re in the middle of a good one, we know that this is a happiness that can’t last.

All I have to do is think about some of our friends around the world or in our church who walk with Christ. In spite of their devotion to Christ, 2011 has been a year they’d just soon forget. Their prospects for a “perfect Christmas” are bad, very bad.

This is where verse 5 of David’s song about and to his Good Shepherd comes in.

Really David?

When I read the narrative accounts of David’s life, I have a hard time placing Psalm 23. When exactly did he experience all of this goodness? King David was constantly at war and dealing with the political intrigue and pressures of life “within the beltway” of Jerusalem.

His family was a mess. His own son tried to take his throne.

He sinned terribly. His adulterous and murderous behavior scandalized his administration.

He lost a baby.

So when exactly was this time when his cup of life was completely full?

A Good Shepherd in a Bad World

The secret to David’s joy in verse 5 was that he chose to focus on his Shepherd rather than his circumstances.

On his worst day, David knew that his Shepherd was still good.

David’s secret can be our secret. If ever there was a season we should concentrate on the goodness of our Shepherd rather than the badness of our life, it’s Christmas.

Question: What are some ways you’ve found that help you think more about the goodness of your Shepherd than the badness of your life during Christmas?