Bucket List Practice #4 - Sacred reading

Throughout the month of January I am creating a Bucket List in which I will suggest one New Year’s Practice each day that will give you a taste of living an integrated life for 2011.  (By integrated, I mean one in which your faith, your character, your relationships, your responsibilities--all elements of your life--are in agreement.)  Each one is meant to be exercised in one day. Please feel free to share about your experience in the comments section below.  We will move through four different themes of living an integrated life.  The first week January we'll explore practices related to our relationship with God.

Today's practice is sacred reading. By sacred reading, I mean the divine writings that are the foundation of your beliefs. For Christians, that is the Bible.  But it may well be the Sunday morning comics for you. Who knows?  I have included sacred reading as an integrated practice because the authors of the Bible refer to scripture as the bread of life--the spiritual nourishment that strengthens a person's character.  A lot of New Year's resolutions focus on eating healthier, but does that ever include soul food? (I don't mean fried chicken and greens.) 

When it comes to spiritual dieting, it is true that you are what you eat.  As Jesus said to his followers, who you are flows from what is in your heart.  So if your life has been feeling like an upset stomach lately (i.e., making poor decisions, mistreating people, feeling depressed, cynical, or envious), evaluate what you have been feeding your soul. A steady diet of sacred reading offsets the junk food that we consume from TV, tabloids, the internet, and even from conversations. It gives us a bigger picture of life. It helps us know what God wants from us.

So today, I suggest a reading of the hearty poem in Psalm 119.  And you might need to lean back and loosen your belt when you're done.

Bucket List Practice # 3 - Praying

Throughout the month of January I am creating a Bucket List in which I will suggest one New Year’s Practice each day that will give you a taste of living an integrated life for 2011.  (By integrated, I mean one in which your faith, your character, your relationships, your responsibilities--all elements of your life--are in agreement.)  Each one is meant to be exercised in one day. Please feel free to share about your experience in the comments section below.  We will move through four different themes of living an integrated life.  The first week January we'll explore practices related to our relationship with God.


Today's practice is prayer. Prayer is just having conversation with God. It really is that simple; there are no magic words or special occassions. But once we let that thought of "talking with God" sink in, the profound weight of it can be intimidating. It's kind of like the double-take feeling I had when I found out I was going to be a dad. "We're having a baby!  Wait...we're having a baby!!" So, yes, the immensity of prayer can leave us speechless. Yet, I like how N.T. Wright describes prayer in his Simply Christian,
 



Pulling the Rope of Life
Andrius Kovelinas



We are called to live at the overlap both of heaven and earth--the earth that has yet to be fully redeemed as one day it will be--and of God's future and this world's present. We are caught on a small island near the point where these tectonic plates--heaven and earth, future and present--are scrunching themselves together. . . . Christian prayer is about standing at the fault line . . . holding heaven and earth together like someone trying to tie two pieces of rope with people tugging at the other ends to pull them apart.

Prayer gives us the opportunity to cause earthquakes of positive change in the world around us just by having a simple conversation with God.

So today, pray the the Lord's prayer. It's a basic prayer that many of us grew up reciting. I have provided a different translation in order to help you walk through each line with fresh attentiveness.

   Our Father in heaven,
      may your name be kept holy.
   May your Kingdom come soon.
   May your will be done on earth,
      as it is in heaven.
   Give us today the food we need,
   and forgive us our sins,
      as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
   And don’t let us yield to temptation,
      but rescue us from the evil one.

   For yours is the kingdom, and the power,
      and the glory forever.
   Amen.

Bucket List Practice # 2 - Celebrating

Throughout the month of January I am creating a Bucket List in which I will suggest one New Year’s Practice each day that will give you a taste of living an integrated life for 2011.  (By integrated, I mean one in which your faith, your character, your relationships, your responsibilities--all elements of your life--are in agreement.)  Each one is meant to be exercised in one day. Please feel free to share about your experience in the comments section below.  We will move through four different themes of living an integrated life.  The first week January we'll explore practices related to our relationship with God.


Front: celebrating a victory and popsicles after the game.
Rear: only popsicles. But even that's not so bad.

 Today's practice is celebration. Yes, we are bombarded in our society by negativity and trouble. Jesus even affirmed that to his followers, but he also told them, "Take heart, for I have overcome the world."  Celebration is based on victory. And the big picture of life, as Jesus says, is that there are winners on his team. But celebrating in life is easier said than done. As I have written elsewhere, a life of joy and celebration will not come to you. You must come to it. Richard Foster, in his Celebration of Discipline says,

The decision to set the mind on the higher things of life is an act of the will. That is why celebration is a discipline. It is not something that falls on our heads. It is the result of a consciously chosen way of thinking and living. When we choose this way, the healing and redemption in Christ will break into the inner  recesses of our lives and relationships, and the inevitable result will be joy.

So take a moment to reflect on the victories in your life and celebrate them (everybody has at least one victory if you're reading this today because you woke up and you're alive). But actually celebrate them. I mean, act as if your football team just scored a 50 yard touchdown to win the Super Bowl. Do something. Sing a song. Do a little dance. Share some good news with a friend. Let out a yelp for joy or clap your hands. It may feel silly, but let loose and do something tangible to practice celebration. It will be like a ray of sunshine bursting through the clouds of cynicism and depression around you.

Bucket List Practice # 1 - Listening

Throughout the month of January I am creating a Bucket List in which I will suggest one New Year’s Practice each day that will give you a taste of living an integrated life for 2011.  (By integrated, I mean one in which your faith, your character, your relationships, your responsibilities--all elements of your life--are in agreement.)  Each one is meant to be exercised in one day. Please feel free to share about your experience in the comments section below.  We will move through four different themes of living an integrated life.  The first week January we'll explore practices related to our relationship with God.

I'll start us off this year with a bit of a paradox for a New Year's resolution Bucket List.  The most powerful line (and perhaps most well-known) in Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life is this: "It's not about you."  It seems a little counter-intuitive to put that out there in a conversation related to New Year's resolutions for ourselves. We live in a task-oriented, "doing" culture where we are always on the go asking, "What do I have to do?" That's usually the pick-up line that sparks our courtships with New Year's resolutions. But to live an integrated life means that we have to "be" a certain kind of person in order to "do" those resolutions. And it's usually our own shortcomings that cause us to resolve to live better. So I think the best place to begin this year is humbly acknowledging that this life is bigger than us. And could it be that God actually has something in mind for us this year, even something better than what we want for ourselves? 

The only way to find out is to zip the lip and listen. That is today's practice. Unplug everything and do what the Psalmist writes:  "Be still, and know that I am God."  Let there be no other voice today, not even yours, but the voice of God telling you what to be about this year. And let that set the course for your life in 2011.

Stay tuned for the January Bucket List

With New Year’s around the corner, I’m sure many of you have resolutions in mind. Whether or not you have had success achieving resolutions in the past, it never hurts to set out to improve your life. So throughout the month of January I'll create a bucket list in which I will suggest one New Year’s Practice each day that will give you a taste of living an integrated life for 2011.  Each one is meant to be done in one day. So don’t worry about making them full fledged habits for the year, as we know that a lot of resolutions fade quickly (some studies show that only 12% of people who set resolutions achieve them).  For now, just find a way to work on them the day you read them. My hope is that you’ll start the year well, and maybe pick up a couple of good habits along the way.  Pass them on and even challenge others to do them with you.  And then share about your experience in the comments section if you feel led. Also, I’m not exempt from a little life tune-up, so I’ll be practicing them each day as well.

Stay tuned, I'll begin posting them January 1.

The meaning of Christmas

Santa Claus is not the real reason for the season, but parents, please try to take it easy tonight when you share the true meaning of Christmas with your kids.

How humility can help the church

Apparently Francis Chan has decided to step down from his pastoral role at his church and move his family to Asia.  You can read about it here: "Christian famous” pastor quits his church, moves to Asia.

I like this move. I don't know if it's necessarily for every pastor to model specifically--pastors shouldn't just bail on their churches and move to the middle of nowhere just because Francis Chan did. That would probably not be an intended outcome that Chan desires for people to understand about his choice. But if this is a legit decision, then I like the fact that Chan has reached a humility threshold, recognizing that the ministry isn't about him.  That's what people should get from this.

There is a fine line between being influential and being famous. Influence means that you use your God-given gifts to your greatest potential. Fame means that you've been glorified for it.  When fame enters the picture, it's very hard for pastors to resist the temptation to gloat over "their ministry" in Jesus' name.  Once they cross that line, it's not ministry anymore. And famous pastors might be one of those hypocritical pet peeves that the world has against church.

I don't think Chan will lose his influence after embracing a more obscure ministry. (In fact, he's probably even more "famous" now for doing this.) He will still greatly influence people while keeping his ego in check. He has stepped down so that other capable leaders can fill in, and he has left a place of comfort. That kind of humility can only help the church.  It wouldn't surprise me if Francis Chan habitually prays to God the final lines of the Lord's prayer..."Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."

Amen!