This morning I hiked the beautiful Kapalua trail along the coast of West Maui. The trade winds were blowing with a pleasant cool breeze to tone down the hot Maui sun. The ocean water was so blue, the land is rich and fertile full of wildlife and so is so beautiful to behold. A perfect place to commune with God in nature, right? Wrong! Much of my walk was consumed with looking back on my past (which I wrote about last week. You see, I myself am trying to practice what I wrote to you :) ) and looking ahead to my highly uncertain future. Where will I live in three months? Will God open the door to plant a church? How will I pay my bills? Will my life be good and happy? And on and on and on :( Fortunately, I was able to practice what I am writing and had a wonderful time of communion with God that alleviated all my thoughts about the past and future.
I said last week that in the truest sense, right here and right now is all we really have. I asked the questions, "is it possible to be fully alive to the now? Is it possible to be fully present to His presence?"
I have struggled much with distraction in the "here and now" by the "there and then",the
past and the future. Last week I wrote about the "then", i.e. the past; now this week I want to speak about the "there", i.e. the future. The future is always ahead of us. It is as unknowable and uncontrollable as the past is unchangeable. There really is not a future except as a whole range of possibilities, none of which is sure to happen. No matter how much preparedness, no matter how much we plan, the future is full of surprises and disappointments. I cannot even begin to describe how different my life has turned out than what I planned. Who knew that my wife would leave me and that we would not grow old and spend out the rest of our days together? Who knew that I would no longer be pastoring my beloved Lighthouse Christian Fellowship? Who knew that I would almost die of Staph? Who would know that I would meet another girl, fall in love, and move to West Maui? Who knew? I sure did not!
I had so many plans, hopes, and dreams about my life. I never imagined what my life would become. Yet here I am. For all I thought my life would be, I have been consistently wrong! I am asking myself the question as I write-why, why do I try so hard to control the future when in fact I have absolutely no control over the future? Why do we try to impose a will on a non existent thing? We can try to prepare for the future, that is both wise and good stewardship, but we cannot control it.
Yet, we all feebly and unconsciously try to control our future. Let me show you how. First, by worrying about it. I worry about some negative outcome and then by worrying I think somehow my worry will keep what I worry about from really happening. I tend to worry allot, which is a sign of my powerlessness and helplessness. Every time I read Philippians 4:6-7 I get so convicted. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus".
I so desire to live this way. I ask myself, "what was Paul's secret?" He believed that He who he held onto in the present moment held the future. He was at ease about what he could not control because he trusted in the one who was in control. Augustine believed that the past and future did not really exist except as forces that influenced the present, the past being as memory and the future as expectation. in the present we allow the past to influence our memory, in the present we allow the future to influence our expectation, but the present of our present influences our attention.
This moment, this here and now, is truly all that we have. Because of that, we should be supremely attentive to this present moment. God wants us to be free in this present moment because He sovereignly uses our past and will use our future to work out His plans for us. This makes my regret concerning the past and worries about the future unnecessary.
Such attentiveness has to do with the ongoing moments of my daily life, work, family, leisure, relationships, and church, especially the things that we easily overlook because they seem so insignificant and trivial. How often am I here but really not here because at those moments I am there and then. The fact is that God is present in every most trivial moment and cares about each and every moment. Every moment has meaning and purpose if God is in it. Living in the here and now makes us open to God and what He wants to do with it and in us-especially in those seemingly dull and uneventful moments.
To find God in the smallest and most ordinary things is to posses a rare and sublime faith. To find contentment in the here and now is to cherish and adore the will of God. John piper calls it, submitting to the place where God has us and adopting to the pace by which He is moving.
C.S. Lewis was so alive and aware of life full of meaning and purpose all around him in the "here and now". John
Piper writes:
Lewis’s keen penetrating
sense of his own heart’s aching for Joy, combined with his utter amazement at
the sheer, objective realness of things other than himself, has over and over
awakened me from the slumbers of self-absorption to see and savor the world and
through the world, the Maker of the world. And this sense of wonder at what
is—really is—has carried over into doctrine, and the gospel in
particular...Lewis gave me, and continues to give me, an intense sense of the
astonishing “realness? of things. He had the ability to see and feel what most
of us see and do not see. He had what Alan Jacobs called “omnivorous
attentiveness.”
Don't you just love that phrase "omnivorous
attentiveness"? What this can do for you is amazing. What would my life be like
if I wake up in the morning and to be aware of the firmness of the mattress, the
warmth of the sun’s rays, the sight of my beautiful wife next to me, the sound
of the birds singing, the coldness of the wooden floor, the wetness of the water
in the sink, the sheer being of things (quiddity as C.S. Lewis called it). What if I
was not just to be aware but full of wonder and amazement that water is wet;
that the sky is blue, that the trees in my back yard are green, that the sound
of the birds is melodic. None of this had to be. If there were no such thing as
any of those and one day some one showed them to you, you would simply be
astonished.
Oh how we need to become alive to life! To look at the
sunrise and with say with an amazed smile, “God did it again!” I want to see
what is there in the world—things which if we did not have them, we would pay a million
dollars to have, but having them, ignore. I want to be convicted of my callous
inattention and inability to enjoy God’s daily gifts. I want God to awaken my
dazed soul so that the realities of life and of God and heaven and hell are seen
and felt. I want to God to effect my eyes in such a way that life and this
extraordinary world is a precious gift.
Living attentively in the here and now awakens
us to seeing people with new eyes. Sometimes, we get so "familiar" with those
we know or are close to, that we stop "seeing" them and having gratitude for
them. Often times this awakening happens after someone who we knew has died. But
I want to be alive now to people and especially my family, friends, and fellow
Christan's. I
want to rise above my petty complaints and see people—at least from time to
time—as the staggering wonders that they are in the image of God.
Listen
to what C.S. Lewis says about seeing people that has helped me so
much:
"It is a serious thing to live in
a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most
uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it
now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption
such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in
some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. . . .
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations,
cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the
life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub,
and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors."
We have no power to return to the past nor to reverse it, no power to control or predict our future. We only have the here and the now. I am confident that god is in the "here and now" working His beautiful plans. We are free to concentrate on what is at hand NOW: Work, nature, family, friends, whatever is in front of us right now, and most of all His presence in this NOW. "Blessed are the people who know the joyful sound! They walk, O Lord, in the light of Your PRESENCE" (Psalm 89:15)
May you be My prayer for you and me is that God will give us fresh, new eyes to see him,
others, and His world with childlike awe and wonder for what is right in front
of our eyes. May we live in the "here and now", living each moment fully and passionately and attentively, choosing to know, love, and obey God each and every present moment of each and every day. May we be free from the tyranny of the "there and then" and become alive to the "here and now".
Pastor Bill
Friday, May 24, 2013
Sunday, May 12, 2013
LIVING IN THE HERE AND NOW NOT THE THERE AND THEN Part 1
How attentive are you at this very moment while reading this blog? How are you using this very moment? Are aware? Are you present? Do you believe that God is present with you right now? Are you attentive to what God wants to do, say, and is doing right now? In the truest sense, right here and right now is all we really have. Is it possible to be fully alive to the now? Is it possible to be fully present to His presence?
I have struggled much with distraction in the "here and now" by the "there and then",the
past and the future. This week I want to talk about the "then", i.e. the past. Our past has considerable influence upon our present. For example, what if you had been born in a different place? Or raised in a different town? What would the outcome of your life be if you had made different decisions? I have often times asked myself "what if" questions. Unfortunately, my "what ifs" have not changed what my past really was. The fact is that I bear the imprints of my past as it is, not as it might have been.
It is in this sense that I feel so very powerless at times. I have often times spent my "present" moments reviewing, wishing, imagining, and scheming over my past and what might have been. The reality is that no matter how much time I have spent engaging and reflection on my past, I have had no ability to alter what has already happened in my life,good bad and ugly. My past is simply there, influencing all that I do. The best I can do, in fact, the only thing that I can do, is to remember the past, learn from it, be grateful for it, and respond to it.
Reflecting in the present on the past can be a great detriment from living in the present moment. This can happen in two ways. First, we can idealize the past so much that we want nothing more than to return to it. We remember the ideal marriage we had until something happened that changed it all. We remember the ideal family we had before the kids left or one of the kids became wayward. We remember the ideal job we had until we got laid off or fired. These memories we have may be entirely accurate and reasonable, still, what good is it if all my memories immobilize me rather than inspire me, if they awaken longing that leads to unfulfillment, or if they make us wish we could go backward rather than forward?
Memory can also distort the past in such a negative way that we spend our present living with deep regret and despair, wishing we could reverse it. Some pay daily homage to an event or a decision that had catastrophic consequences. Three years after my marriage ended I still at times torment myself over things I wished I would have done or not have done with my ex wife. I often rehash my decision to have given up the church I planted and pastored for 23 years. I think about friends who died and how I wished I would have spent more time with them and what a bad friend that I was. I will think about how I wish I had been closer with my children and paid more attention to them. Memory just keeps replaying the tape, rehashing the decision, and rehearsing the decision. I wish, oh how much I wish, that I had a chance to do it all over again.
But the past is completely, totally out of my reach. I can neither return to it nor reverse it. We let it hold power over us because it is unchangeable and its consequences roll over us like waves, one consequence following another. The past creates the conditions of the present, whether we like it or not. But...if we are going to live in the present and in His presence we have to learn how to engage the present moment in a way that rather than limits us, tyrannizes us, and imprisons us, instead, frees and enables us to engage the present moment. I want to live in a way that makes me aware and alive to His presence. In this way we can be free to,live, truly live, right here, right now.
It starts with a God centered memory, which enables us to remember the past differently, not as an ideal to which I would like to return or as a regret I would like to reverse, but as a chapter in a larger story that I continue to live in the present moment. God is the "I AM"(Exodus 3:14; John 8:58) and the beginning and the end (Revelation 1:8). He was in our past good, bad, and ugly; He was ruling in the past, and promises to use the past, as it was and is, to work out His plans. Romans 8:28 is not a platitude but a wonderful declaration of how God works and rules, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.".
The scriptures repeatedly tell us that History,including our history, is really HIS STORY. God uses the past, including our past, to fulfill and advance His sovereign plans and purposes. God made a promise to Abraham and Sarah which was impossible to fulfill and Isaac was born. Joseph suffered in every way for years and ended up saving a nation from starvation. He was able to look back at His past from a God centered view and say to His brothers, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today"(Genesis 50:20).
Even the consequences of sin can be used by God for His good purposes. David committed adultery and murder, suffering a lifetime of consequences that cost him dearly. But the second child born out of that adulterous union with Bathsheba, Solomon, became David's successor to the throne and the link to the bloodline of Jesus Christ! Nothing is beyond the reach of God's grace and power. We can therefore trust that God will use the past to work good things in our lives, which frees us in the present to trust Him and obey Him in the present circumstances of our lives.
I believe that when we die, the redeemed will see like Joseph, the whole of our life in terms of redemption. Misery will become blessing, confusion will become clear, desert will become living water, darkness will turn to glorious light. All will be well and whole and wonderful. Even what appeared bad at the time will be opposite.
I am learning more and more how to get my eyes on this God who was present with me in the past and to trust in His working presence in this very moment. I have no power to return to or reverse my past, I only have NOW. I am confident that God is in the NOW, working on His plan and purposes. This frees me to accept my present circumstances, surrender my past, and concentrate my energies on what is immediately at hand. I trust in what Jesus said in John 5:17, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”. I will neither glamorize my past to long to return to it instead of living in the present to it nor demonize my past and let it tyrannize me and cripple me in the present. I want to live in the "now" not the "then". I will live in the presence in the present.
To be contined next week...
Pastor Bill
I have struggled much with distraction in the "here and now" by the "there and then",the
past and the future. This week I want to talk about the "then", i.e. the past. Our past has considerable influence upon our present. For example, what if you had been born in a different place? Or raised in a different town? What would the outcome of your life be if you had made different decisions? I have often times asked myself "what if" questions. Unfortunately, my "what ifs" have not changed what my past really was. The fact is that I bear the imprints of my past as it is, not as it might have been.
It is in this sense that I feel so very powerless at times. I have often times spent my "present" moments reviewing, wishing, imagining, and scheming over my past and what might have been. The reality is that no matter how much time I have spent engaging and reflection on my past, I have had no ability to alter what has already happened in my life,good bad and ugly. My past is simply there, influencing all that I do. The best I can do, in fact, the only thing that I can do, is to remember the past, learn from it, be grateful for it, and respond to it.
Reflecting in the present on the past can be a great detriment from living in the present moment. This can happen in two ways. First, we can idealize the past so much that we want nothing more than to return to it. We remember the ideal marriage we had until something happened that changed it all. We remember the ideal family we had before the kids left or one of the kids became wayward. We remember the ideal job we had until we got laid off or fired. These memories we have may be entirely accurate and reasonable, still, what good is it if all my memories immobilize me rather than inspire me, if they awaken longing that leads to unfulfillment, or if they make us wish we could go backward rather than forward?
Memory can also distort the past in such a negative way that we spend our present living with deep regret and despair, wishing we could reverse it. Some pay daily homage to an event or a decision that had catastrophic consequences. Three years after my marriage ended I still at times torment myself over things I wished I would have done or not have done with my ex wife. I often rehash my decision to have given up the church I planted and pastored for 23 years. I think about friends who died and how I wished I would have spent more time with them and what a bad friend that I was. I will think about how I wish I had been closer with my children and paid more attention to them. Memory just keeps replaying the tape, rehashing the decision, and rehearsing the decision. I wish, oh how much I wish, that I had a chance to do it all over again.
But the past is completely, totally out of my reach. I can neither return to it nor reverse it. We let it hold power over us because it is unchangeable and its consequences roll over us like waves, one consequence following another. The past creates the conditions of the present, whether we like it or not. But...if we are going to live in the present and in His presence we have to learn how to engage the present moment in a way that rather than limits us, tyrannizes us, and imprisons us, instead, frees and enables us to engage the present moment. I want to live in a way that makes me aware and alive to His presence. In this way we can be free to,live, truly live, right here, right now.
It starts with a God centered memory, which enables us to remember the past differently, not as an ideal to which I would like to return or as a regret I would like to reverse, but as a chapter in a larger story that I continue to live in the present moment. God is the "I AM"(Exodus 3:14; John 8:58) and the beginning and the end (Revelation 1:8). He was in our past good, bad, and ugly; He was ruling in the past, and promises to use the past, as it was and is, to work out His plans. Romans 8:28 is not a platitude but a wonderful declaration of how God works and rules, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.".
The scriptures repeatedly tell us that History,including our history, is really HIS STORY. God uses the past, including our past, to fulfill and advance His sovereign plans and purposes. God made a promise to Abraham and Sarah which was impossible to fulfill and Isaac was born. Joseph suffered in every way for years and ended up saving a nation from starvation. He was able to look back at His past from a God centered view and say to His brothers, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today"(Genesis 50:20).
Even the consequences of sin can be used by God for His good purposes. David committed adultery and murder, suffering a lifetime of consequences that cost him dearly. But the second child born out of that adulterous union with Bathsheba, Solomon, became David's successor to the throne and the link to the bloodline of Jesus Christ! Nothing is beyond the reach of God's grace and power. We can therefore trust that God will use the past to work good things in our lives, which frees us in the present to trust Him and obey Him in the present circumstances of our lives.
I believe that when we die, the redeemed will see like Joseph, the whole of our life in terms of redemption. Misery will become blessing, confusion will become clear, desert will become living water, darkness will turn to glorious light. All will be well and whole and wonderful. Even what appeared bad at the time will be opposite.
I am learning more and more how to get my eyes on this God who was present with me in the past and to trust in His working presence in this very moment. I have no power to return to or reverse my past, I only have NOW. I am confident that God is in the NOW, working on His plan and purposes. This frees me to accept my present circumstances, surrender my past, and concentrate my energies on what is immediately at hand. I trust in what Jesus said in John 5:17, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”. I will neither glamorize my past to long to return to it instead of living in the present to it nor demonize my past and let it tyrannize me and cripple me in the present. I want to live in the "now" not the "then". I will live in the presence in the present.
To be contined next week...
Pastor Bill
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
HEAVEN: OUR TRUE AND DEEPEST LONGING
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” C.S. Lewis
"For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." Romans 8;22-25 ESV
"There has just got to be something more." Have you ever had that thought go through your mind? Have you unfulfilled longings that are unsatisfied? Deep inside I think we all feel there is something more, something bigger, better, and grander than what meets the eye.
We all long for many things: beauty, happiness, joy, love, good health, harmonious relationships, meaningful lives, and peace and prosperity. Sadly, most of us have found that we cannot even find fulfillment in these in a fallen world and when we do, we find that they in themselves do not satisfy us.
This is because deep inside we know that there is something more. We join all of creation with this insatiable longing for something more. The apostle Paul says that all of creation is groaning for this "something more" (Romans 8:22). We know what we see and experience is neither ultimate nor is it final. We know there is more.
I believe that all of our longings point to what is our true, deepest, and ultimate longing, which is for heaven. We long for heaven because it is there that Jesus lives, rules, and reigns. Heaven is a world of perfect, ineffable, infinite, and eternal love. Here on earth we see but black and white, but there there is color. Here we live in shadow, but we know that there it is substance and light. Heaven is our ultimate destination toward which we are all moving.
When we see and experience for ourselves ,heaven for what it truly is, we will become aware of how big, grand, and glorious it is in comparison to anything that this world has to offer us. Whatever there was in this old life will be swallowed up by the beauty and grandeur of the real thing. All this will happen because of who is there; we will see God in the face of Jesus Christ.
We only see glimpses of heaven here, as if looking through a portal; but they are only that, glimpses. Miracles and supernatural events provide such glimpses to be sure. We all long for miracles. I have seen several extraordinary ones in my life. The apostle John referred to miracles as "signs" (Ex. John 2:11,23). Signs are pointers that point beyond themselves to something else. The feeding of the 5000 was a "sign", for the people who ate that day became hungry again. It is Jesus who is the true bread, Jesus who is the true life. The true miracle of every miracle is Jesus. He is more than a sign, He is ultimate reality and the source of all light and all life.
Heaven is what we long for, and Jesus is the way to it (John 14:6) and Jesus is the destination. So the longing for miracles is really a longing for heaven. We want more than healing of our illnesses, more than bread that will satisfy our appetites, more than an exotic trip that will satisfy our craving for beauty and peace. We want more than marriage, family, and friendships which satisfy our deep need to love and be loved. Our longings run deeper than temporary satisfactions.Our deepest desires are not for miracles/signs but for what the miracles/signs point to. We want heaven, we want Jesus.
C.S. Lewis understood this and wrote, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
May we never make signs and this world substitutes for our deepest longings no matter what good or bad this life and this world bring us. Jonathan Edwards exhorts us to stay focused on the reality of heaven, God, and Jesus:
"For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." Romans 8;22-25 ESV
"There has just got to be something more." Have you ever had that thought go through your mind? Have you unfulfilled longings that are unsatisfied? Deep inside I think we all feel there is something more, something bigger, better, and grander than what meets the eye.
We all long for many things: beauty, happiness, joy, love, good health, harmonious relationships, meaningful lives, and peace and prosperity. Sadly, most of us have found that we cannot even find fulfillment in these in a fallen world and when we do, we find that they in themselves do not satisfy us.
This is because deep inside we know that there is something more. We join all of creation with this insatiable longing for something more. The apostle Paul says that all of creation is groaning for this "something more" (Romans 8:22). We know what we see and experience is neither ultimate nor is it final. We know there is more.
I believe that all of our longings point to what is our true, deepest, and ultimate longing, which is for heaven. We long for heaven because it is there that Jesus lives, rules, and reigns. Heaven is a world of perfect, ineffable, infinite, and eternal love. Here on earth we see but black and white, but there there is color. Here we live in shadow, but we know that there it is substance and light. Heaven is our ultimate destination toward which we are all moving.
When we see and experience for ourselves ,heaven for what it truly is, we will become aware of how big, grand, and glorious it is in comparison to anything that this world has to offer us. Whatever there was in this old life will be swallowed up by the beauty and grandeur of the real thing. All this will happen because of who is there; we will see God in the face of Jesus Christ.
We only see glimpses of heaven here, as if looking through a portal; but they are only that, glimpses. Miracles and supernatural events provide such glimpses to be sure. We all long for miracles. I have seen several extraordinary ones in my life. The apostle John referred to miracles as "signs" (Ex. John 2:11,23). Signs are pointers that point beyond themselves to something else. The feeding of the 5000 was a "sign", for the people who ate that day became hungry again. It is Jesus who is the true bread, Jesus who is the true life. The true miracle of every miracle is Jesus. He is more than a sign, He is ultimate reality and the source of all light and all life.
Heaven is what we long for, and Jesus is the way to it (John 14:6) and Jesus is the destination. So the longing for miracles is really a longing for heaven. We want more than healing of our illnesses, more than bread that will satisfy our appetites, more than an exotic trip that will satisfy our craving for beauty and peace. We want more than marriage, family, and friendships which satisfy our deep need to love and be loved. Our longings run deeper than temporary satisfactions.Our deepest desires are not for miracles/signs but for what the miracles/signs point to. We want heaven, we want Jesus.
C.S. Lewis understood this and wrote, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
May we never make signs and this world substitutes for our deepest longings no matter what good or bad this life and this world bring us. Jonathan Edwards exhorts us to stay focused on the reality of heaven, God, and Jesus:
"The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our
souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely
better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers,
husbands, wives. or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but
shadows; but God is the substance. They are but scattered beams, but God is the
sun. These are but streams, but God is the ocean. Therefore it becomes us to
spend this life only as a journey toward heaven, as it becomes us to
make the seeking of our highest end and proper good, the whole work of our
lives; to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we
labour for, or set our hearts on anything else, but that which is our proper
end, and true happiness?"
Pastor Bill
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