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A pastor should not be admonishing people to “Get in a fight!”  He should however be admonishing folks to “Get in the fight!”

A fight is generally a disagreement or interpersonal animosity that gets so intense that it comes to verbal or physical blows.  Please do not do that.  This is not right and not like Jesus.

The fight is the battle for people to put their hope in Jesus—both locally and globally, the battle for people to cultivate inner adoration for God, the battle for the reign of God to grow, the battle for restored relationships, the battle for people to grow up, the battle for relational vitality, and the battle for people to have their basic needs met. 

This is a worthy fight and it is not a fight, it is the fight.  It is the battle that Jesus battled and that He left for us to battle.  It is the noble cause, the preferred future, the biblically and morally right thing, the heartbeat of God, the compelling picture, the great hope, and the “something meaningful” to which we can give our whole lives.  This is the fight to which Jesus gave Himself without reservation.

There are at least four stances a person can take in relation to the fight.  A person could throw themselves into the fight—not reserving anything—full heart and effort.  Or, a person could get into the fight half-heartedly and give just enough effort to be respectable.  Or, a person could ignore the fight and try to turn God into a cosmic sugar daddy that runs around making their life good and fun.  (The operative word here is “try” since God is not going to be shaped by us.  First, He is perfect now.  Second, we are His slaves and He is not ours.)  Or, a person could sit on the edges of the battle field and criticize those who are in the fight.

I read a profound quote by Teddy Roosevelt that addresses this last option—the option of observing those in the fight and critiquing their performance.  The quote was so compelling to me that I typed it up and pinned it on my office wall.  Here it is.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”  Teddy Roosevelt  

I wish with all my heart that every person who calls CBC “my church” would be a passionate “doer of deeds.”  What if every boy, girl, man and woman were a sold out “doer of spiritual deeds?”  What if we like Jesus gave ourselves without reservation to the noble cause that Jesus outlines in the New Testament?  What if we each lived in our own unique personalities and giftedness and threw ourselves into the Great Commandment (Matthew 22) and the Great Commission (Matthew 28)?

Please understand that this kind of whole-hearted commitment to the work of God is not an effort to be like someone or to be gifted like someone.  This is the effort to discover my own unique giftedness and passion and live into these well.  It is the effort to be like God wired me and to honor Him in my place in the army.

It is tragic—personally and globally—for a person to merely criticize the “doers of deeds” who are in the fight, or to ignore the fight, or to join the fight with half a heart.

Years ago I watched a film entitled The Earthling.  It is a very provocative story of a young boy who is left alone in the Australian wilderness after his parents are both killed.  The boy is helped by a dying man who is going into the wilderness to die at the abandoned ranch where he was born.  When they get to the ranch the old man and the boy are sitting at a fire and the old man says, “I always made the mistake of thinking that today was some sort of a rehearsal for tomorrow.”

Guess what?  Today is not a rehearsal for tomorrow.  Today is the play!  Today is the fight!  Today is the contest!  Today is the opportunity to figure out your wiring and your passions and your spiritual gifts and dive into the fray!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (the Supreme Court Justice from 1902-32) once said, “Many people die with their music still in them.  Why is this so?  Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live, anticipating life in some dreaded, ill-defined, or very tentative future.  Before they know it, their time runs out.”

Don’t die with your music still in you!!!!  Play it all in the cause of Christ.  You do not need to be like Bill Hybels or Brian Carroll or Chris Alexander or Billy Graham or Franklin Graham or Rob Bell.  You need to be just like you and join the fight.

Today is the fight!  Please don’t die with your music still in you!

I have been ambushed this week.   There was no time to circle the wagons.   Here is the background of the ambush.

Months ago I scheduled to take off work on Friday in order to go camping.   I chose to camp on this week and on this Friday because my calendar was pretty clean.   I still have my regular work.   So, I have regular work plus taking Friday off.   “I can work some on Saturday to finish up the week and everything will be fine,” was my reasoning.   Sounds like a plan.   Now here is the ambush.

I had a huge amount of work to do on some home projects that I did not see coming.   I had a once a month meeting fall on this week and I had not anticipated that.   I had an eight hour meeting come up that I did not see coming.   I had a one hour dentist appointment turn into a two and three quarter hour appointment.   I had several logistical details for my sabbatical that needed to be finalized this week.

By Wednesday at noon I was struggling.   I owed this article and my sermon outline and Walking Papers and Companionship Papers to my assistant.   I need to review my lesson for small group tonight.   My sermon is not in good shape.   I must do some prep for my long meeting tomorrow.    I owe an email response to a person that is getting urgent.

I was going about my merry way and not harming anyone and:   “Bang, ambushed!”

As the ambush happened and intensified the emotions inside me “happened and intensified.”   (Don’t get me wrong these emotions are my personal choice.   I was ambushed by the circumstances but I chose the emotions.)    I was angry, frustrated, and annoyed.   At times I neared panic and then drifted into self pity and then veered back to anger.   

So, here are some lessons from the ambush.   I am writing these for my own benefit and I am happy if you want to read them and hopefully benefit as well.

Ambush lesson number one:   I do not choose to be ambushed but I do choose how to respond.

Ambush lesson number two:   From eternity past God knew this was coming and allowed it to come.

Ambush lesson number three:   The more negative emotions I choose the more I exacerbate the consequences of the ambush.

Ambush lesson number four:   Take a deep breath and calm down.

Ambush lesson number five:   Do the next thing.   Prioritize and do the next thing.   (The universe goes on even when I am too sick to get out of bed—it is doubtful that it will fall apart today.)

Ambush lesson number six :   On the weeks when you get ambushed one of the things you can do is make your article for the e-link shorter.

The Olympics hook something in us.   Maybe it is our latent desire to be a big-time athlete.   Maybe it is the regrets that we have in some other arena of life where we did not strive or where we did strive and then failed.   Maybe it is the wish, just one time in life, to be “on the podium” and be recognized for our efforts and accomplishments.

One thing I am sure the Olympics hook in us is the reality that life is pretty much a competition—maybe not always with other people but always with the world.   Thus, we look at the challenges the athletes face and we feel our own challenges weighing in on us.   We feel keenly the disappointment of the skater who falls because we too have fallen.   We feel the pain of the skier who finished .08 seconds out of the medals because we at times have fallen short too.   We feel deeply the thrill of the unknown skater who wins the gold—coming out of nowhere—because we have had those rare times in life when we have won against the odds.

The athletic challenges of the Olympics simply feel like life to us.   They feel like life with all of its hurdles, joys, pains, and defeats.

In all of us, unless we have just given up, there is an ache to do better—to live better and to be better.   We want to be different people and we want to be more Christlike.   We want to be more sacrificial and kind.   We want to be more truthful and honest.   We want to be more gracious and less anxious.    We want to be more effective and we want to make a real difference—if not in the whole world at least where we live.  

In short, we want to live like champions.

For the next seven weeks in our Sunday morning worship services we are going to examine the life of Jesus and uncover the keys to living like a spiritual champion.   We are going to see what He said, what He did and thought, and how He went about life.    And in seeing all this we are going to strive to imitate Him.   Strive to be champions.   Strive to “finish in the medals” and stand on the spiritual podium.   We are going to strive in the power of the Holy Spirit to rise above mere survival to true spiritual thriving.  

Our next seven messages will focus, in what I believe will be a fresh and compelling way, on Jesus’ baptism, temptation, transfiguration, triumphal entry, resurrection, final commission, and current activities.   And in that focus we will see the compelling choices that made His life so full of joy and impact.

In “teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 28:30, 31) there is potential for terrific transformation.   He is the one compelling Man Who ever lived on the globe.   Other people have done well and inspired many but Jesus is the utterly unique Person.   He is the flawless life around Whom we can build our lives.

I have had so many times when I came out of a movie that was based, however loosely, on a real life person and wanted to be a better person myself.   I have seen films like “A Beautiful Mind” and “Blindside” and “Amazing Grace” and “Luther” and “Braveheart” and “Hoosiers” and “Rudy” and “The Pistol” and “The Rookie” and “Chariots of Fire” and “Miracle”—and I have walked out of the theater and back into the sunshine wanting to live a better life and make a greater impact.   I have come out truly inspired and made a new commitment, right on the way to my car, to live a better life.  

The life of Jesus, accurately and deeply considered, is the essence pure motivation.   If we walk away from the study of the life of Jesus as revealed in the Gospels and are not motivated to imitate Him then we were not paying attention with our hearts.

Please, please, please, please:   For the next seven weeks will you give serious attention to the life of Jesus and faithful energy to the journal that we are providing in order to imitate Jesus, the one compelling life that was ever lived?  

Will you listen from the heart and be able to walk out of the sanctuary with a fresh and compelling motivation to imitate Him?   His life is far more compelling than any movie figure you have every seen!

I believe there is a lot of confusion in America today about the purpose of corporate worship.   In other words, “Why do we come together for worship?”   Or, to say it another way, “What is supposed to happen when we are gathered and how should we evaluate what happened when we were together for worship?”

At one level the answer should be terrifically obvious:   To worship God.   And certainly that is theologically and foundationally what corporate worship is about.  

But practically I am afraid that very often corporate worship is not assessed around this foundational answer.

There are many different beliefs about why an individual would come to corporate worship.   Those different beliefs obviously have terrific impact on why a person comes to worship with the gathered Body and on what kind of experience they have while with the Body in worship and on how that person assesses the worship experience.

In an attempt to approach this question from a different angle please take this multiple-choice quiz.   There are 26 possible answers.   Please choose the one most comprehensive answer to the following question:   “What is the purpose of attending corporate worship on any given Sunday?”

A.  To feel good.
B.  To make a critical evaluation of the preacher and the sermon.
C.  To see my friends.
D.  To make a critical evaluation of the Sunday school teachers.
E.  To get away from the trouble of life for an hour.
F.  To make a critical evaluation of the music and the musicians.
G.  To be seen by others as a spiritual person.
H.  To make a critical evaluation of the building and the decor.
I.  To keep up the family tradition.
J.  To do what my parents say I must do.
K.  To learn the deep things of the Bible.
L.  To serve the people there.
M.  To sing the kind of songs that I like to sing.
N.  To make a critical evaluation of the ABF and the ABF teachers.
O.  To influence others toward my views.
P.  To make a critical evaluation of the greeters and greeting system.
Q.  To see if the church will meet the needs of my family.
R.  To experience the fellowship of Sunday morning.
S.  To make a critical evaluation of the attire of my fellow believers.
T.  To get my life fixed up.
U.  To see if there is anything interesting and/or entertaining in the service.
V.  To make a critical evaluation of who is and who is not in attendance.
W.  To have an emotional experience.
X.  To find out what is happening in the lives of the others at the church.
Y.  To make a critical evaluation of the coffee in the Commons.
Z.  To express my personal worship and my overflowing heart of adoration with the gathered Body as we honor, praise, connect with, obey, reflect on, give testimonies about, commit to, and serve the greatest Being Who could possibly exist—the Audience of One—and thus, as a by-product, give courage and spiritual help to those worshiping with me.

Choose one.

It is clear from the Bible that God is the greatest Being Who could possibly exist.   His glory is the greatest good in the universe and we must—absolutely must—respond to him with hearts of adoration.   We must adore him in spirit (from our hearts) and in truth (as He really reveals Himself to be and not as we might like Him to be.)  

God poured out His Son for us and we must, as an act of worship, pour out our lives for Him.   We pour out our lives at all times for Him but we must be particularly conscious of pouring out our lives together when we gather to worship.   We pour out our lives to Him together as we sing His praise, give focused attention to what is happening, pray, give our financial gifts, and respond with zeal to His Word.

While we give great glory to God we also build up the faith of those around us.   In serious worship we say to those around us, “God is great, and you are not alone in your dedication to Him, and I am with you in the pursuit of Him, and walking in the light with you, and I ache for you to succeed and thrive spiritually.”   We give and receive spiritual courage when we worship well together.

One of our core pursuits at Cypress Bible Church is to “Celebrate God with our whole lives.”   This is a core pursuit not because it seemed to fit nicely into some plan or acronym.   This is a core pursuit because it is right and good and morally essential—biblically, theologically, and spiritually.

In order to be better worshipers I think we as American Christians need to get much better at two things.  

First, we must be much better at preparing our hearts in the adoration of God and anticipation of connection with Him as we come into the corporate worship setting.

Second, we must be much more disciplined about focused attention on meeting the God of eternity through what is happening during the gathered worship and about the greatness of the God Whom we are meeting there—the Audience of One.

Corporate worship is difficult work and important work.   God deserves diligent worship and we need to help each other with our focused worship.

Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the first man to stand on the South Pole.   Amundsen reached the Pole on December 14, 1911, just 5 weeks before his English rival Robert Scott.   (Sadly, Scott and the four men with him died on the way back from the pole due to insufficient food and fuel in their supply depots.)

Amundsen traveled to the pole at the very end of an era.   He was the last of the arctic explorers to travel without motorized vehicles.   Soon after Amundsen’s trip explorers began to travel with motorized vehicles and even with airplanes.

Amundsen and his four companions skied 1,860 miles in 99 days carrying their supplies on sledges pulled by sled dogs.   The team traveled 15 miles or more every day while encountering blizzards, steep climbs up to the polar plateau, traveling under their own power at 10,000 feet, temperatures well below zero, dangerous glaciers, almost constant wind, the death of many of their sled dogs, and pioneering a route that no one, obviously, had ever traveled.

An epic trip like Amundsen’s required determination, vision, perseverance, planning, money, team building, courage, risk, and frankly a bit of luck.   (Clearly God allowed the men to make it safely to this pole and back—Amundsen however was not a God-fearing man and did not recognize this.)   Amundsen was clearly a man of vision and determination.   He had all that he needed by way of courage, team building, perseverance and luck.

Just as importantly, one of the more subtle and frankly most important elements required for success on Amundsen’s trip was an obsessive attention to details.   Amundsen was without doubt obsessive about details—he was obsessed.   He thought of everything and he researched everything and he honed everything and he innovated a great deal.   For several years before the trip he was learning about polar travel and doing polar travel.   He was adopting things that worked and jettisoning things that didn’t.   He invented things and improved things and attended to the big things and little things.   Amundsen left nothing to chance and delegated nothing of importance.   He was obsessed.

Among the details in Amundsen’s obsessive focus were these: innovative polar clothing of reindeer fur, modified light-weight sleds, carefully chosen sled dogs, modified skis, modified ski boots, modified ski bindings, innovated goggles, an aerodynamic tent with a sewn in bottom, stove fuel in sealed containers to prevent evaporation, carefully measured meal portions for each man for each day, nearly double the needed amount of food and fuel, intentionally chosen meals and energy foods, elaborately marked fuel and food depots for their return trip, multiple navigational aids and backup systems, pre-fabricated hut for their staging station as they made final preparations for the trip, and many, many other details.

As I read about Amundsen’s trip in The Last Place on Earth by Roland Huntford I was continually struck, for more than 600 pages, about Amundsen’s attention to details.   His reward for this was being the first man to the South Pole and bringing himself and all his men safely home to Norway.

The moral of the story: Details matter.   Most of us know this.   We give attention to the details of our careers and our finances, our homes and our lawns, our cars and our relationships.   We know that details matter in all these.

Details matter in our spiritual lives.   Jesus gave obsessive attention to His spiritual life—more diligent attention than Amundsen gave to his South Pole preparation.   He was diligent about prayer—not just the amount of prayer but the timing and focus of prayer.   He was diligent in His study and memory of the Word.   Jesus was spiritually diligent.

What about you and me?   Spiritual diligence matters more than redesigning polar exploration goggles.  

The obvious question for us then is this:  “Am I giving serious attention to my spiritual life—to my prayer, study of the Word, worship, fasting, service, and spiritual reading?”

Details matter in polar exploration and even more so in our spiritual lives.

“Every great movement of God can be traced to a kneeling figure.”
D. L. Moody

I just read a very short book called The Go-Getter. The book was written by Peter B. Kyne and published in 1925. The Go-Getter is probably the first book in the “business parable” genre. It was published about 80 years before Who Moved my Cheese? The Go-Getter is the story of a partially disabled WWI veteran named Bill Peck who goes to work as a salesman for a timber company. Peck is soon given an almost impossible challenge to find and buy “The Blue Vase.” Bill Peck gets it done, against staggering odds and to the amazement of his boss. Bill Peck is what is known as a “go-getter.” (If you are interested in getting a copy of the book it is available at www.daveramsey.com.)

I have never completed the challenge of the Blue Vase but for most of my life I have been a go-getter. A striver. An over achiever. Driven. Type A. Press forward. Persevere until it gets done. Plodding. Head down and slogging forward as long as it takes. I am not proud about this—in some ways it is not good. But I am conscious of this. I know this is basically how I go about life. (I am writing this article at 11:01 PM after the Super Bowl even though I need to get up at 5 AM to get to a seminar tomorrow—on my day off.) I continue to be a get it done guy.

I believe that being a “go to guy” or “go to gal” is basically a good thing. It is basically a good thing unless, like me, a person is more of a get it done person than a praying person.

I think the Bible is clear that great impact is a result of “depending and striving.” (Philippians 2:12, 13 is one example.) My problem is that I have done far more striving than depending. My further problem is that I have too often done my striving first and my depending in prayer second.

In the past few years, in the timing of God, I have experienced a substantial recalibration about the centrality of depending on God through prayer. In just the past two months this issue has been even clearer to me. I am finally, finally coming to see that prayer is the first and most important work. (I said I was a striver, not a fast learner.) As Hudson Taylor said, “When we work we work but when we pray God works.” To my discredit I have only come to believe this recently as I see only small results from long years of arduous, striving. My paraphrase of Hudson Taylor is this: “When we work we get tired but when we pray God works.”

A prayer warrior and speaker named Colin Milar says, “A weak prayer life is a declaration of independence from God.” I have been, for large portions of my adult life, the poster boy for this statement. It is my sin and today I have both confessed it to God and also have deep regrets about it. I am also depending on God and striving to be transformed in this area. So, it is also true that “A strong prayer life is a declaration of dependence upon God.”

God is gradually and faithfully transforming me in this matter. I am both grateful and excited.

All that said please understand that I have been a “pray without ceasing” person since I came to faith in Christ. By that I mean I pray off and on all day long. Given my propensity for anxiety I almost always pray throughout the course of my day. Every little issue and fear has been a catalyst for prayer to me. What I have not done faithfully is stop, set aside the to-do list, and intentionally focus on prayer for a period of time. This is changing and I am very encouraged.

Some of the specific changes that I am initiating are these: setting aside a block of time for prayer every day, praying through a daily prayer list, publishing a monthly leadership prayer email (this month the CBC leadership is praying for God’s great work in our Kid’s Ministry, our Global Outreach Week and our financial situation at CBC), leading the staff in an online/Facebook prayer session each Thursday, working with Rob to be more intentional about Kingdom prayer in our leadership meetings, and working intentionally on our Sunday worship prayer focus.

I have a long distance to go but I am very grateful for the track I am on. This renewed prayer energy, along with a faithful focus on the “300 Second Challenge” each day, has given me substantial spiritual help and courage. It is the work of God. I am not where I need to be but I am moving toward a better balance of “depending and striving.”

So, have you measured your “KQ” lately—your “kneeling quotient?” How are you doing on the issue of “depending and striving?”

Please remember Mr. Milar’s message: “A weak prayer life is a declaration of independence from God.”

“I will not participate in your denial.”
Dave Ramsey

The Emperor’s New Clothes is a classic tale of denial—one of the best telling of embracing obvious falsehood. It is the story of a salesman who convinces an emperor that he is selling invisible fabric and then has the fabric made into invisible clothes and sells the clothing to the emperor. He brings the emperor to believe that he is wearing the most beautiful possible clothing. The emperor goes on parade in front of everyone to show off his new clothes. Both the emperor and those watching the parade are in denial about his “invisible clothes.” No one will speak up. Finally a little boy says what is true, “The emperor is naked!” The boy refuses to participate in the denial which has been embraced by both the foolish emperor and the foolish people. And when the boy says what is true the emperor and all the people embrace what is true.

In one area or another we are all, to one degree or another, naked—living in denial. These areas of denial are sources of terrific harm to us and those around us. Here are a few of the hundreds of thousands of statements of denial:

“I do not have a problem with greed.” “I do not have cancer.” “I have lots of time to get my finances together.” “I am spending enough time with my family.” “There is lots of time to pursue God.” “I can stop any time I want.” “You are not right about me.” “Because of all this trouble God doesn’t care about me.” “This habit is not hurting me.” “My personal priorities are just fine.” “You have no right to say hard things to me.” “We can afford this.” “A church is like a restaurant—if it does not serve me well I will find a new one.” “I cannot make any difference in this situation.” “It is OK to do the major things in life and coast on the little things.” “I am not materialistic.” “No one will ever know.” “I have skillfully covered my weaknesses and other people do not see them.” “I am wearing new, beautiful, invisible clothing.”

If we took all the statements of denial that were ever uttered and laid them end to end they would reach to the sun and back. We have all done it and we can all be good at it from time to time. Some people live in continual and wide-spread denial—absolutely rejecting what others see is plainly true. Some people have narrow areas of their lives where they are in denial. They are well connected with reality except in the case of one or two or three areas of their lives. Some people have the maturity, humility, and wisdom to seldom be in denial about their lives. Jesus was always in perfect connection with what was true about life and about His life.

The first issue is this: Are you or am I in denial about one or more pieces of our own lives? Do we go along with the prevailing view or are we willing to say, at the risk of opposition and ridicule, “The emperor is naked!”?

I believe, and I hope I am not in some form of denial or falsehood here, that one of the major denials of many American believers is this: “My life is fully centered on God and I am pursuing Him in a very healthy way.” I believe that many American Christians have been profoundly captured and captivated by materialism, capitalism, pleasure, leisure, entitlement, affluence, and an upper-middle-class brand of Christianity that is removed from an authentic pursuit of God. They do not realize the extent to which God and their relationship with Him is a little appendage which has been awkwardly glued on the side of their lives. Having been captured by all of this they are in conscious or unconscious denial about what a serious relationship with God and a serious obedience to God even look like.

I find myself living in this denial. I find myself constantly drawn to security and upper-middle class pursuits and leisure and the good life. The problem lies not in enjoying the good gifts from God but in allowing these to supplant the great life of relationship with God.

“My life is fully centered on God and I am pursuing Him in a very healthy way.” Are you in denial about something and will you participate in this denial? Will you courageously examine the evidence or the fruit of your own life? Will you look at your time and your checkbook and your thought life—especially when you have some leisure time—to see if the evidence points to a life deeply centered on God or a life perilously leaning on other things?

The second question is this: Are you or am I participating in someone else’s denial about some part of their life? Am I willing to say that someone near me is actually naked or do I prefer to “go along in order to get along?”

One of the central areas of falsehood in the lives of those around us may be: “My children must be the center of my focus right now to be sure they have everything I want them to have—money, things, lessons, experiences, and the best schools.” And, in embracing that falsehood, a person goes into denial about the centrality of God in their life and into denial about the harm caused to their spouse in that lie and the harm caused to their children in this lie. If I believe this to be true and I am in denial about this at least three bad things happen. First, God is supplanted by my children. Second, my spouse is supplanted by my children. Third, I raise a generation of narcissists.

If you know someone living in this denial will you participate in that denial? You can participate in this denial in one of two ways. First, you can believe it is true and join the falsehood. Or, second, you can know it is false but not say anything and join the falsehood through silence. It is fear or needing to be liked that most often drives the silence. If I see the denial and do not speak up I am participating in the denial and I am perpetuating the harm that comes from the denial.

Loving people refuse to participate in denial. Courageous people refuse to participate in denial. Wise people refuse to participate in denial. Mature people refuse to participate in denial. And sometimes, sadly, it is the children without any guile who refuse to participate in denial. “The emperor is naked!”

Here we are one month into 2010. Does the pace of life seem slower to you?

Ever have the dream where you are working on an assembly line and identical parts of some machine are coming past you on a conveyor belt and your job is to put a bolt in each part as it passes you and you are not keeping up so you grab off the parts you cannot get the bolt in and set them beside you and keep fighting and keep having to grab off more parts and keep getting further behind and it seems like the parts are coming faster and faster and your supervisor is mad and you cannot begin to keep up and the pile of un-bolted parts next to you has grown to be a small mountain and the noise levels of the factory is driving you mad and the conveyor belt goes even faster and you are falling further behind and now the pile of un-bolted parts has started to interfere with even getting bolts in a very few of the passing parts and the entire production of the factory is hampered by your failure to keep up and you do not know what to do but to struggle on…and then you wake up in a cold sweat with your heart pounding out of your chest?

This is a nightmare, not a dream. And, it is the nightmare that results from living in a world of faster and more and bigger and noise.

I have a good friend who has recently experienced a severe, emotional version of this nightmare. His wife left him and he got divorced and he had to move and get a different job and find an apartment and start all over on finding furniture and connecting with friends and paying off debt and registering his car and filing paperwork and doing his taxes and explaining his situation to people and answering questions and the parts on the conveyor belt just keep coming faster and faster and faster. He is struggling on and certainly would love to wake up in a cold sweat with his heart pounding out of his chest and realize it was only a nightmare.

Without being a factory worker and without being freshly divorced you may feel like the overwhelmed factory worker or like my overwhelmed friend. American culture and lifestyle has that effect on most of us. We are big on faster and more and bigger and noise.

These realities of a calendar in overdrive and “Must-do List” on steroids can be both frightening and immobilizing. Our heart pounds hard and we either do the same things or we do nothing.

In a world like this we have a number of resources but perhaps the biggest resource, as someone has said, is that “We have the ability to think about our thinking.” We can take our own thoughts, and the actions we take as a result of those thoughts, and put them all on the table in front of ourselves and dissect them. We can take them apart to see if they are good or bad, healthy or sick, grounded or baseless.

I believe that we do not use this ability to think about our thinking as often as we should.

For example, we can take the thought, “I will always work in a factory” and put that thought on the table and dissect it and see if it is a good and useful thought.

Or, we can take the thought, “I need a bigger house” and put it on the table and make that thought prove itself.

We can take the thought, “My children must be in sports” and lay it out on the table and cut it apart and see what the inside of that thought looks like.

We can take the thought, “My children must have the things that I never had” and put it on the table and cut it apart.

We can take the thought, “I must make life secure for me and my children” and put it on the table and scalpel it open and examine the insides of it.

In the face of the ever-racing conveyor belt of American life we can do a lot of things. We can pray and we can ask for input and we can do the next thing and we can cut down on commitments and we can be more efficient. All good things.

Could it be the best thing we could do in the face of the lifestyle that can become a nightmare is to simply be deliberate to think about our thinking?

Homework—you may work in pairs on this assignment and you may use your Book: First, write down your ten most prevalent thoughts about your current life and your future life. Second, dissect each thought, one at a time, with the help of the Word and a trusted friend or family member. Be merciless. Really cut deep to open it up—split it down the sternum like an open heart patient—and take a good look inside. Third, decide if the thought is founded or baseless, true or false, intentional or default. Fourth, adjust your behavior based on the biopsy of each thought.

In the kindness of God “We have the ability to think about our thinking.”

You have probably heard someone say, or maybe even scream, this question: “Why did you do that?” When someone asks this question in a calm voice they are generally seeking to unearth a motive that is not obvious. When someone screams this question they are usually seeking to both uncover and understand a motive that they are sure must be insane.

Someone has said that, “Every action is motivated.” In other words, we do every little thing and every big thing because we perceive that in some way that action will bring benefit to us. The thinking behind the actions and the motivations may well be twisted, wrong, foolish, or insane. Indeed the action may not benefit us at all. The action may harm us greatly. But we wrongly believe that the action will help us. We can also truthfully and wisely believe that an action will help us—and it does.

So, whenever we act we act out of motivations—believing that the action will help us.

Pastor Rob Curry talks about some broad categories of motivation which catalyze our actions in personal life and in corporate planning—I added a couple of categories for good measure.

Panic. This is the motive that stems from severe threat combined with a deep desire for survival. In this category of motives we are afraid that something we love is going away or that something we counted on is failing. In organizational leadership the classic example of a panic motive is falling revenues—caused by any number of factors. Falling revenues foreshadow lost jobs and lost income and lost homes and lost status and lost security and years of brutal digging toward recovery. These fears of loss lead to panic and then to panic-driven actions by frightened executives or pastors or workers or stock-holders.

Panic motivates. Unfortunately panic driven motivation can often lead to ill-conceived actions and ungodly methods of influencing.

Preference. Sometimes our motivations arise from a deep love of personal preference. In our organizations or families or personal lives we simply have ways that we like things to be and we are motivated to keep them the way we like them. If our preferences are in jeopardy we are spurred to action in an attempt to preserve our own preferences. This accounts for many actions in families and organizations where some person or coalition of people works to keep things as they personally prefer them.

Preference motivates. Unfortunately preference driven motivation can often involve a very self absorbed focus and can often ignore larger, more noble, causes in life.

Peace. Sometimes our motive is simply to keep the peace. If I hate conflict and hate relational uncertainty I will do about whatever it takes to keep things quiet and peaceful. Peace feels more important than truth and more important than impact. Someone said that we sin deeply when “people are big and God is small in our lives.” One of the outcomes of “people being big and God being small in our lives” is that we would rather be at peace with people than courageously attempt to make plans, relationships, or strategies better.

Peace motivates. Unfortunately peace driven motivation generally prevents any of us from asking the hard questions and saying the hard things and taking the needed risks, thus preventing us from great impact.

Passion. Passion is used here as “a great zeal for something that is important and that must be created.” It must be created or achieved in the sense that there is a moral mandate to accomplish the thing. The end that is in question is not only good but it is also morally and spiritually necessary. Examples of passion-driven motivations would include a zeal to shelter the homeless or to reach the lost with the Good News of rescue in Jesus or to fight the sin and insanity of abortion or to teach relationship skills to engaged couples or to mentor young people toward maturity. People who are passionate about any of these things are motivated to act with energy and with perseverance.

Passion motivates. The beauty of “passion-motivated actions” is that they are generally driven by noble causes and clear visions and self-less desires. Further they are generally much more sustainable (we keep at them longer) and transferable (we can enlist others in the pursuit) than other categories of motivation.

One of our many desires as a leadership team at Cypress Bible is to act out of Biblical passion rather than out of panic, personal preference, or a fearful avoidance of conflict. The life of Jesus and the Books of the Bible are flooded with passion motivated actions. Jesus was passionate about discipling the twelve, about doing the will of the Father, about speaking truth, about advancing the Kingdom, about preaching the Gospel to the poor, and about getting to the cross to atone for our sins. All these passion driven actions, and many others in His life, resulted in eternal impact and eternal good for us.

The list of people who acted out of godly passion in the Bible includes Nehemiah, Moses, Deborah, Paul, Isaiah, Ezra, Esther, David, Mary, Barnabas, and on and on and on. Passion motivated people have been used by God for great good for about four millennia.

One of our many desires as a leadership team at Cypress Bible is to act out of passion. To this end we are cultivating passion in ourselves for Celebrating God, for Building Bridges, and for Connecting with other Christ-followers. To this end we are dedicated to the Word and to serious dependence on God. To this end we are dedicated to striving.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a passion driven man. He had a dream of racial equality. Dr. King’s cause was noble, clear, and self-less. He pursued it with passion. His passion for racial equality carried him to levels of sustained sacrifice, courageous action, vision-casting, and striving that are very rare. Dr. King was clearly gifted in many ways—intelligence and leadership and communication to name a few—but it was his passion that foundationally propelled the noble cause.

It is the passion motivated people who propel the noble causes and get used by God.

A question for you please: What are you passionate about?

One of my most persistent personal sins is anxiety. Anxiety is a merciless woman who robs me of joy and spins me up into states of emotional pain and fear that are very tiring. She is persistent beyond description. She is merciless. She is powerful.

When I am under her grip I am continually aware of the low-level pain she causes. Like a wheel bearing that is slowly going out on a car every moment of life is clouded by the presence and the bitterness and the life draining effects of this sin. She clouds all my thinking and she will not go away.

Worse yet, Anxiety has sisters. She was a “multiple birth” in my life—there were octuplets to be exact. Here is a brief description of Anxiety’s seven sisters.

Mental worst case scenarios: This is the sinful art of imagining the worst. It involves a mental process of starting where I am today and imagining bad things happening steadily and relentlessly until Kathi and I, either in one year or ten years, live in a cardboard box under a bridge in downtown Pittsburg.

Anger: This is the emotional and demanding spirit inside of me that flares up when I lose something or even fear that I might lose something. It is the inner rage that demands that life work for me.

Loss of emotional energy: This is the constant drain of emotional resources and continual fight of living with low emotional reserves. In this state every problem feels like a crisis. It is like driving a car when the “low fuel” light is always on.

Failure to focus on what is important: This sister means that I am so focused on my anxiety that I cannot do justice to the really important things in my life like enhancing the reputation of God and building up other people. “Sorry I can’t help you but I am too busy pouring my emotional energy out on the sidewalk.”

Interpersonal irritation: This is the sister who causes me to be a little angry, or a lot angry, over every little relational pothole. Whenever someone does something I don’t like or fails to do something I expected I boil up inside—and that may spill over to the outside.

Fear: This sister means that I am not living in perfect love because I am in the grip of the terror of loss and pain.

Failure to trust my Father: This is the ugliest sister of them all. She is the sister that means I believe false things about the God Who loved me enough to send His Son to pay for my sin. She means that I believe false things about the God Who brought me to this moment and Who is sustaining me today. She means that I believe false things about the God Who has promised never to leave me and Who is preparing a place of eternal joy for me in His presence.

The solution to dealing with Anxiety and her seven sisters is multifaceted and I cannot cover everything. However, one core piece of escaping this sin involves recalibrating my heart about the character of God. If God is Who He declares Himself to be then anxiety is not only sinful and foolishness—it is also heresy.

Anxiety is heresy because she and her sisters can only survive if I continue to believe false things about God. If I believe that God does not know about my needs, the sisters thrive. If I believe that God does not understand the proper time to help me, the sisters thrive. If I believe that God does not have the power to help me, the sisters thrive. If I believe that God does not care about me, the sisters thrive.

The truth is this: God knows all my needs and issues. God’s timing is perfect. God is able to help with my needs and issues. God cares about me and the things that matter to me.

I am not sure about your specific causes of anxiety—money, job, relationships, school challenges, looming decisions, health issues, uncertainty, or mental illness. These are all disconcerting things. However,
Anxiety does not have a chance when I recalibrate my heart about the character of God.