A Time to Hold On and a Time to Let Go.

Bill - where have you been?  Good question. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, "Great is the art of the beginning, but greater is the art of ending."  Endings are a part of living.  If we are going to move into the future, if we are going to grow, something always has to end.  If we are going to become who we are meant to be, we must move on.  Henry Cloud in his book Necessary Endings writes, "There are relationships that should go away, practices and phases that must be relinquished, and life stages that should come to an end to open up the space for the next one...some things need to die and some things need to be killed...Endings are not only a part of life, they are a requirement for living and thriving...we stay stuck in what should now be our past...endings bring hope."

The author of Ecclesiastes writes this, "A right time for birth and another for death, A right time to plant and another to reap...a right time to destroy and another to construct...A right time to hold on and another to let go."

When I stopped blogging it was a season for ending and letting go.  I was within ten months of being able to step down from a 13 year stint as a VP of The Navigators.  I had requested to be released from the role two years previously, but God made it clear that I needed to continue to serve in that role.  I had the direction right, but the timing wrong.

I was becoming increasingly aware of a dichotomy between what I had learned to do and how I was now being shaped by God's grace...between who I used to be and who I was becoming. The work load was high and increasingly no longer meshing with my motivations.  I was and am incredibly thankful for how I had the privilege to serve - and for the privilege of serving with such godly leaders. Teammates who are friends.  I had no regrets, but also knew it was time to enter a new phase of life.

Formally I stepped out of my role in August 2011...informally about eight months later.  There were projects to finish, an awesome replacement to orient, commitments  to keep, etc.  In  May of 2012 The Navigators gave us the gift of a six month sabbatical...the first one in forty years with the Navs.  It was a tremendous gift.  It gave us time to deeply rest physically and to deeply restore our souls.  We ended with our souls full and journals bursting at the seams...ready for a new future.

Now it is a season for new beginnings.  Our role in The Navs will be to continue to lead - but in a very different way.  Instead of leading from a "role," we have the incredible privilege of leading by teaching and mentoring leaders in discovering how the gospel changes everything in their lives and ministry. A key focus will be to help the next generation of leaders to become deeply anchored in the Scriptures...especially the New Testament...not just as a text to be studied, but as the doorway to an  unconditional love and unconditional relationship.  We will have opportunity to do this both with Nav leaders and leaders in the Body of Christ.  And with you.  We are living a dream...living out our life's message and using our core giftings.

Part of new beginnings is beginning to blog again!  There is a time for everything.  Stay tuned.

Live Like It! (5 seconds)

"You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity."

Matthew 5:48 The Message

John 14:21 - prescription or description? (55 seconds)

"Whoever has my commandments and obeys them, he is the one who love me..." - John 14:21

For years I read this verse wrong. And when we read it wrong it becomes a heavy load. It was for me.

I think most of us learned to read it first as a prescription on how to become one who loves God... "if I obey his commands I will become one who loves God." In other words, my obedience transforms me. I also learned to read it as the prescription of how to show God I love him. I will prove to Him that I really do love Him by working hard at keeping His commands...and the harder I work at keeping His commands, the more He will see that I love Him and the more pleased He will be with me.

But what if this is not a prescriptive statement but an identity statement? What if because I am one who loves God (my identity), the result is I now have an ability to obey, and I do obey.

If we learn to read John 14:21 this way, it becomes an affirmation of the truth that our obedience is the evidence of what God has already done in us...rather than it being what we do so that He will do something in us.

Why Pleasing God Exhausts Me! (55 seconds)

If I make my primary motive to please God (versus trusting God - which pleases Him), I quickly find myself on a treadmill that I cannot get off. I find myself thinking, "what must I do to keep God pleased with me...How do I know when I have done enough...am I giving God my best?...better try harder - after all God's standard is holiness." Whenever I make the underlying motive of my life to please God, I am trapped in a life of self-effort. Not only can I not get off the treadmill, I am chained to it. Day and night I try to be good enough so God is pleased. I am trapped and I am living without the good news of the Gospel.

Hebrews 11:6 tells us that "without faith it is impossible to please God." If the underlying motive of my life is to trust God, He is pleased with me!

God has already done a miraculous work in us. We have a new nature. I don't have to, by my relentless hard work and effort, try to become somebody different than who I am so that God will be pleased. But now, by a spirit-empowered effort, I can live out of what He has already done in me and who He has made me to be. The foundation of that effort is trusting that what He has said He has done in me is true. That trust pleases Him.

Doing vs. Trusting (62 seconds)

When I was in college, I was taught that one of the questions that I should ask of the Scriptures in my morning quiet time was "Is there something here I need to obey?" This is not all that bad a question unless our motivation is so that we can become righteous through our obedience. We do not obey so that we can become righteous, we obey because we are already righteous (Ephesians 4:24). Paul describes this effort to become righteous by our behavior and effort in Philippians 3:6 as "legalistic righteousness." This is diametrically opposed to the gospel and Paul goes on to say he has left it behind..."not having a righteousness of my own...but that which is through faith in Christ." (Philippians 3:9)

Recently I have been pondering a different question in my quiet time - I think a more fundamental question..."What would it look like to trust You today?" As I mentioned last time, it is my trust that pleases God. Somehow this question seems to penetrate a lot deeper into my soul, into my desires and motivations. I think why it penetrates so much more deeply is that it is a relational question.

Rather than just focusing on "is the something I should do today," - now the focus shifts to "what is my relationship of trust?" Doing what somebody wants is a lot different that trusting that person.

Obedience is the Evidence of My Trust. (55 seconds)

1If God has given me a new nature and a new heart that is already righteous (Ephesians 4:24) - then my new nature is already pleasing to God. Now my flesh is not, but I am stuck with it until the day I die - and it is not going to be transformed. God is not in the business of transforming it, and neither should I. Romans 8:7 tells how the flesh cannot submit to God and it will not. The more I focus on living out of my new nature, the less the desires of the flesh will characterize my behavior.

So I have a new nature that is righteous and pleasing to God...so doing obedient things does not increase God's love or His pleasure. What pleases God is when I trust that what He says about me is true...and I then live accordingly. It is my trust that pleases God! This is Hebrews 11:6, "And without faith (I like to insert "trust" here - it is the verb form of "faith")...without trust it is impossible to please God."

So why do I obey? What causes it to be a reality in my life? It is because I trust...it is the result of my trust. Here is the principle: Obedience is always the evidence of my trust. It is not my effort to please Him.

Next post: How does this change my time with God in the Scriptures? Saturday, October 23.

Is it my behavior that pleases God? (55 sec)

Okay - time to get back with it. If I not only relate to God on the basis of the life and death of Christ (and not on the basis of my behavior)...and God also relates to me on the basis of the life and death of Christ (and not my behavior) - this means that I am set free from attempting to please Him by my obedience. He looks at me through the life and death of Jesus and is already pleased. There is nothing I can do to make Him love me more than he already loves me in Christ Jesus. And there is nothing I can do to make Him love me less. Might this mean that the motive or the purpose behind my obedience is not pleasing God? This could prove revolutionary to me.

Let me say all this another way. God does not love me more when I resist sin, He does not love me less when I give in. If He loves me less, I am under law and not grace. Does this give me permission to sin? Absolutely not. Grace will never inflame the heart of the saint to sin. Our new redeemed heart does not want to sin, and so being out from under the law and in the freedom of grace does not create a desire in our heart to run wild and sin.

So then - what about obedience? What is it's place? What is its role? How should I think about it? Check the next blog, Wednesday, October 20.