The sin of presumption

Today (Tuesday) I had the chance to read John Paul Jackson's book Breaking Free of Rejection (North Sutton, NH: Streams, 2004). We ordered it last year & it was sitting on the stack of books next to our bed. The book's premise is that everyone experiences rejection, but not everyone has to be damaged by its painful consequences. It's dedicated "to those who dare embrace rejection and now choose to walk courageously beyond."

Leaders in the Bible with the biggest tasks had first to overcome rejection in their lives. Some in "rejection's Hall of Fame" include Daniel, Jeremiah, Noah, Joseph, David, Elijah, Gideon, Ruth, Paul, and even Jesus. Rejection can be a training program that God uses, as Jackson writes (p. 35):

It's hard sometimes to understand how God could use such a powerfully negative force as rejection to form a person fit to serve His eternal purposes. In fact, we may think that our experience and training seems too tough. It seems the bigger the job ahead, the tougher God trains us. For us to stand strong in the face of ridicule and pressure so that God's power can move through us, our character must mirror that of Jesus' integrity, dependability, and humility. Only God knows how various trials and training experiences are pivotal to our effectiveness in serving Him. Without them perhaps His messenger and His message might fail.

What spoke to me the most in this book was a brief section titled "blinded by the sin of presumption" (pp. 55-58). He cites the story of the Israelites in the wilderness. They sent in 12 spies to Canaan. 10 gave bad reports, while only Joshua & Caleb saw the land with faith in God's power to deliver it. Moses then informed the people that only the younger generation, as well as Joshua & Caleb would enter the Promised Land. The Israelites, faced with perishing in the wilderness, panicked & did some things out of their own strength & wisdom. Jackson writes (pp. 56-57):

According to Strong's Concordance, the word that describes the Israelites' actions is aphal meaning "presume, swell, be lifted us." The Israelites were presumptuous. Holding unrealistic expectations, they acted presumptively against God's will and suffered the consequences. Disobedience, pride, and wrong attitudes can lead to presumptuous thinking and presumptuous actions, which can result in disastrous consequences for a whole community.

Many of us do what we think is "right," but we often act on our own initiative, without the Lord going before us. The book of Judges is full of examples of how the people did "whatever seemed right in their own eyes" and the confusion and destruction that mind-set brought. We are prone to try and make things happen by the sheer power of our own efforts. We consider a situation and act on our own understanding. This behavior is presumptuous. God views all presumption as sin, and He will act against it.

Instead, we should emulate Moses by focusing on God and His will, laying out our questions and concerns before Him, and waiting patiently for His answer. When we hear God's answer, the next step is to obey explicitly.

'All ministry comes out of relationship,' writes Graham Cooke in A Divine Confrontation. 'Power comes out of suffering, and anointing comes out of intimacy. It is in communion with God that we learn how to humble ourselves under His hand.'

Much like Moses, King David was a prophetic leader who carefully sought God's counsel and obeyed His directives. In Psalm 19:13 (NIV), David gave this advice: 'Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, And I shall be innocent of great transgression.'

Presumption is costly to our human relationships. The more we presume upon relationships, the deeper we dig ourselves into a hole...As insecure people thinking in a vacuum, we may be convinced that we have great ideas, or that we know the best way to do something. Thinking and acting presumptuously can hurt our relationships with our spouses, friends, supervisors, and church leaders.

I've heard some Christians give the decision making formula "Love God and do what you want." Certainly there is some truth to that. On the one hand, if we are truly loving God, then we'll know His heart and most likely hear His voice. However, it's easy to get this wrong in our weakness so that we do what we want without it necessarily coming from the heart of God. This is where prayerfully seeking God's will, as well as getting wise counsel, are important in not making presumptuous decisions, especially when the options to chose from are not against clear principles of Scripture.

Because my wife & I are facing some important decisions now, I found this section especially timely. More details to come.

The multiplication of the cupcakes

It's Monday morning and my wife, elder daughter, and I are sitting in our living room. It still looks like yesterday afternoon's party here, as we still have some rearranging to do to get it back to "normal." Our elder daughter was sick during the party and had no energy, so she laid in her bed for a good portion of the party. It's good hearing her talk this morning, as she wasn't saying too much yesterday.

I dropped off my son and younger daughter at their schools this morning. Had a chance to greet parents & kids at both schools. I find this daily ritual to be helpful to keep in the reality of Paris life.

We also saw Lauren off to the bus stop on her way to the airport and eventually Orlando, FL today. She will eventually get back home to Melbourne, Australia after some time in the U.S. One blessing of where we live is getting to rub shoulders with people from around the world. Again, we just met her 24 hours ago, but now feel a connection with her. That's one thing I enjoy greatly about being part of God's family.

I tend to be wired after events. Even after going to bed, my mind was rehashing the party. At about 3:00 a.m., I started thinking about the cupcakes from yesterday. My wife baked 28 of them. We had 22 kids and either 20 or 21 ate one. My 3 kids each had one and we gave away to 2 to our son's teacher, plus another to Maxime's family. That makes 26 cupcakes, plus 1 left over. That makes 27 of the 28 cupcakes accounted for.

The funny thing is that my wife & I know that we gave away more cupcakes to family members who came by to get their kids. It appears that God somehow multiplied the cupcakes to go around. It also seems like He did the same with the appetizers.

When we had the California night for mothers last month, a couple of the women helping said that it seemed like the level of the cooking oil didn't go down, even after they used quite a bit. The same thing for the level of dish soap after they did a lot of dishes.

This is one of those surprising things that we don't understand. Yesterday we had a lot of more kids than we were expecting or had prepared for. 3 guests brought a sibling around, which I guess is a way of parents making sure that their kids would be ok.

It's a reminder of the generosity & provision of God. I think He wants us to be generous in inviting people. Jesus used banquets a number of times in His parables. Sure it's tiring to have lots of people come. But for me, it's a good tired, a tired with a purpose. I would rather be tired after an event with a Kingdom purpose than to be tired after something that is relatively meaningless.

We praise God for His provision in normal & unusual ways.

22 guests at birthday party

This afternoon we had our son's 8th birthday party. I had 17 listed as confirmed on the guest list when the party started. 2 of them didn't show. However, 7 more showed up that we weren't expecting. So we had 22 kids under our roof at once, not including our 3 kids.

God provided 2 helpers today. One was the mother of one of the guests. The other was an Australian young woman who happened to be stranded an extra day in France because of the snowstorms on the East Coast canceling her scheduled morning flight today. She's staying in our apartment tonight before catching her flight tomorrow. Both these women were vital to the success of the event. God knew we really needed them.

The majority of the guests were from our son's class at French public school. Some the girls have strong personalities & could really be mean & pushy. This was interesting to see. Now I know a little more of what my son & his teacher (whose son also came to the party) have to deal with on a daily basis. It also provides a lot of prayer matter.

We got to know each child a little bit better, as well as meeting a bunch of the parents. We'll see where all this leads to in the future.

Thanks to everyone who prayed for this event. Due to the strong personalities, we especially needed the prayers.

Noticing yet not noticing

I've really appreciated reading Doug Pollock's God Space: Where Spiritual Conversations Naturally Happen (Loveland, CO: Group, 2009). Having been uncomfortable with the all-fits one formulas that I was raised with, I find this approach fits more of my personality.

Chapter 3 is titled "Noticing Your Way Into Spiritual Conversations." In Ephesians 1:18, Paul prays that the eyes of the heart would be enlightened. While we may observe a situation, we might not really see what is happening. Jesus didn't miss things that others might not have noticed. He noticed Zaccheus watching Him from a sycamore tree. He saw the widow giving everything she had in the offering, even though the total amount was not large. He felt the bleeding woman touch his garment.

Pollock shares a powerful story to illustrate our need to regain our spiritual vision, to have the eyes of Jesus. It's under the section "Noticing, yet not noticing" (pp 40-41).

Ironically, this story is about a man who had a huge passion for noticing--butterflies. He traveled the world to add rare and unusual species to his collection. As he moved toward retirement, there was only one butterfly left in the world that he needed to make his collection complete. This rare butterfly had only been spotted a few times in the deserts of Utah. So he made arrangements to stay with some friends who lived near the desert.

Day after day, he got up early and came home late, driven by his desire to net this elusive butterfly. Day after day, he returned home empty-handed. Near the end of the first month, he thought he saw the prized butterfly floating around in the dry desert breeze. His heart began to pound, as he knew this might be his only opportunity to net the rare butterfly. The sun was beginning to go down, so he had to move fast. As he raced to the area where he had spotted the butterfly, he heard what sounded like a man groaning in distress. He quickly tried to blot it out of his mind because he didn't want to miss his opportunity to capture the prize of a lifetime.

As he moved toward the butterfly, he made a quick decision to investigate the groaning noise after he had netted the butterfly. He pulled out his special gear, and within a couple of minutes, he had managed to net his dream. Euphoria swept over him. His quest to possess the world's greatest butterfly collection had been realized!

In his excitement, he forgot about the sounds he had heard just a few minutes earlier. He headed home to show his friends the butterfly that very few people in the world had ever seen. As he recounted his story, he suddenly was jarred by the reality that he had forgotten to investigate the sounds he had heard earlier.

He and his friends got up before dawn the next morning and made their way back to where he thought he had heard the sounds. After looking around for about an hour, they came across the body of an old prospector. Some time during the night, when the temperature in the desert had plummeted, the old man had passed away.

Chasing butterflies has consequences, doesn't it? We are what we cherish. What we cherish most, we notice most.

The Missional Church Simple

In reading an e-mail by KévinKuyà, I found the following link to a 2 minute video titled "The Missional Church Simple."

I've like the idea of "missional church" of a church equipping its people like missys to "go" out to the people in their world. This video mentions that many in their world of contacts would be suspicious if receiving something from a marketing campaign of x or y church. In our post-modern world, I think this is often the case.

Many churches today invest the majority of their resources into a nice building, quality programming & teaching & worship, and slick marketing. Evàngélism is seen as inviting people to come to church or to this event at church. The church tends to attract people who are already like those in attendance (the homogeneous unit principle).

One thing I've experienced in Paris churches over the years to a greater degree than in the U.S. churches I've grown up in is a greater diversity of people, at least ethnically. Often, it has been economically as well.

During the last couple of days, I've been thinking about Jesus' command to "go." This is often linked with "making disciples of the nations." Going to the nations today doesn't necessarily imply having to travel very far, as the nations are being scattered around the world.

However, the challenge for many of us Christ followers is to step out toward those who are not yet Christ followers. I know from experience that this is not necessarily easy. However, I'm challenged to live my life "missionally" so as to go toward those who aren't yet Christ followers. This involves having the eyes of Jesus. I'm reading another book that is stimulating my heart toward this type of lifestyle. I'll blog about it another time.

8 years of fatherhood

8 years ago I entered the world of fatherhood. After nearly 12 hours at the maternity ward, my wife gave birth to our first child, a son. I remember him squirming around with the slippery look and feel that newborns have. I had my digital camera present and took lots of photos of our little guy.

My life took a turn that could never be reversed. On the one hand, fatherhood is a physical state that happens when one's sperm fertilizes the egg. One is technically a father then.

On the other hand, fatherhood is a state of being which goes way beyond the physical act of paternity. Fatherhood implies caring for the complete well being of the child, as well as of the mother. This is what is missing in many homes today. In some homes, the physical absence of the father is apparent. In some cultures, this is expected and has been the norm for generations. This absence of a father explains some of the systemic difficulties in these cultures.

But there are also homes where the father is physically present and provides for the physical needs of his children. However, he is sometimes absent emotionally, spiritually, and/or psychologically. This is also a problem and causes repercussions & consequences in some cultures.

I'm so thankful for my kids and the opportunity to be their father. I've learned so much from all 3 living ones and even from my stillborn one. Certainly I've made mistakes with them over the past 8 years and will make some others. However, these haven't been intentionally done.

They have helped me understand how each person is different, as I've observed their differences.

They've helped me learn to relax a little more and have fun.

Today I'm especially grateful for my 8 year old son. It was nice to have a boy first, for the male bonding stuff. He has a strong body, an ear that catches & imitates tunes & lyrics, and a sheepdog's eye for the well being of his younger sisters. From a pudgy, rolly-polly baby, he has slimmed down and is strong. He catches & remembers people's names & faces. Like my father, he likes watching the credits at the end of movies and can remember a lot of trivia, particularly when it concerns people.

Many of my ministry activities & priorities are in development because of the involvement of my kids (and their friends & families) in my life these past 8 years. And there is no turning back from this.

Head cold, Sunday's birthday party

I'm currently fighting a head cold caught over the weekend. It's inconvenient & tiring, but not life threatening. With the changes in temperatures this past week, it's easy to get one's body thermostat knocked out of whack.

We had our younger daughter's 4 year old b-day party on Sunday. She's a social butterfly. 16 kids came to the party, as well as 4 moms and 2 babies. Afterwards, a number of parents and siblings came over to have hors d'oeuvres & bday cake while picking up their kids.

My wife did a terrific job of coordinating the whole event. She does really well as the master of ceremonies. I did more of the organizational aspect, as well as handing the doorbell and taking photos.

We sensed a lot of prayer behind the day, as it went smoothly, despite all the kids. Relationships were strengthened and trust built. We'll have a number of follow up get togethers based upon the party.

My wife shared something encouraging with me. One of the mothers of a classmate of our son has gotten to see us in the course of the Saturday morning English club that her daughter attends, as well as at the Taste of California event for mothers. She commented that "It appears that you pretty much welcome any one into your home." My wife smiled and said that this was pretty much true. There are a lot of things that people could observe about us, but this is one of the things that we want people to notice. We want our home to be a place of peace, joy, fun & celebration.

Now it's time to get to bed.