Thursday, March 17, 2011

My Motivation Is Around Here Somewhere!

Five days a week I force myself out of bed before 5:15 AM to torure myself doing exercises and walking. It is torture and no one can make see it as anything else! I eat less than I used to eat. I eat less of the foods I really enjoy than I used to eat. I take fish oil pills everyday. Have you ever thought what led someone to discover that fish oil is supposed to be good for you?

Genetically I am destined to make it to 95 assuming that cancer or a Mack truck doesn't wipe out my genes first. If I am to live that long, I want to be healthy throughout most of the process. Besides I promised my wife that she would not have to bury me. That's my motivation.

My Kentucky Wildcat basketball team is playing in the NCAA tournament. That's motivation for me to look up game times, get into a bracket guessing competition, and hope certain other teams that wear dark blue get beat early. I get excited about college basketball, even more so with my alma mater playing. I get motivated to do something, even silly stuff.

Motivation is from the inside. It's kind of like anger. No one makes you angry. You allow yourself to become angry. No one motivates you. You allow yourself to become motivated. Your value system determines what is worth getting the blood pressure up, the heart rate up, the expenditure of energy up, maybe even the expenditure of material resources. If you are not motivated, you don't make the sacrifice, expend the energy or time. It's all about your value system.

Your value system determines if your material resources take you where you want to go or your time or general abilities or your relationships or perhaps life itself, your own life. What you value the most determines where you will find motivation and so be willing to make the sacrifice.

Sure, it's the same old life lesson. Based on my faith in Jesus Christ, how motivated am I to live out Luke 9:23? I take time to scream for those Wildcats. Am I as willing to act foolish for Christ, live daily for him, carry my cross for him, just follow him wherever he says to go?

Motivation. We want it. Sometimes we are just not as willing to go where it should take us.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Make All the Money You Can!

This past Sunday I was blessed with a wonderful sermon on the Christian responsibility to address the needs of the poor. The text was the classic statement by Jesus in Matthew 25 framed around the brief parable of the shepherd separating the sheep from the goats. We have the task of showing the kind of love God has for us to those around us regardless of how they came to be in their current circumstances or how much they may deserve to be in their current circumstances based on our codes.

I never read that text without asking myself how much can I spare. Then I am reminded of the widow in the temple giving her two small copper coins, her entire bank account. Those two coins joined the bags of silver being donated by the wealthy to go eventually to places unknown. The widow didn't question that. She simply gave what she had.

How much can I spare? I love the passage in Ephesians 4:28, "Let the thief no longer steal, rather let him labor, doing honest work with his hands, so he may be able to give to those in need." (RSV) How much clearer can it be that the question should never be how much can I spare but rather how much do I personally need in light of the needs around me?

The story has come to me of a preacher early in the last century who said, "Make all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can." In a world that is filled with poverty on anyone's standards, we should be about the business of work, not to raise our own standard of living, but to raise the standard for others, to give all we can. For so many that higher standard would mean simply having one decent meal a day, being able to get a clean drink of water, having a roof over their head, or being spared the brutality of people around them.

Paul's directive was simple. Work so you can help others. No one of us can end world poverty. The process can begin, however, by just one of us helping one other person to be better off than they were. That's reason enough to work and try to make all the money you can, legally of course. Bear one another's burdens. Fulfill the law of love. I am my brother's keeper.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Seeing the Pastors

Last Sunday I preached in one of my associational churches on the text Luke 7:36-50. The episode involves Jesus accepting an invitation to eat at the home of a Pharisee, Simon by name. During the course of the meal, a woman of the streets, a "sinner", comes into the home and proceeds to show Jesus a lot more honor than his host has done.

Jesus asks Simon one of those rhetorical questions that are so life-shaking, "Do you see this woman?" The ability to see the obvious is not always strong in some of us. We have to be reminded of what is right in front of us. Our perceptions of reality will always be shaped by our priorities, our prejudices, our worries, and our worldview. I am not different from Simon. There are many times when I have a difficult time "seeing".

One of the things I am learning as a DoM is to "see" the church fields served by each of the pastors with whom I work. Every church field just like every congregation is different. Each pastor faces a unique set of circumstances. He may have problems and opportunities that others have faced, but he is not like others. He brings his own unique set of gifts and faults into the mix.

Compassion is born out of seeing the church field as the pastor sees it. Encouragement is born out of the need to stand by the pastor while he also comes to see his field as God sees it. Patience is a fundamental part of seeing the pastor and seeing the field as well as seeing yourself.

Thankfully God is patient with us as we come to have our eyes opened so that we can encourage that pastor in the proper way. We will have compassion as we see him struggle with frustrations and anxieties. We will have patience as we remember it is not all up to us, either one of us, that God expects us to do what we can do, not what we cannot.

There is no helping others or walking with others until we "see" them. That takes the work of the Holy Spirit, and we must be brave enough to open ourselves to that. That can be scary.