Confessions of a Shiftless Mind

I’ve been trying to figure out whether, or how, or how much to write about where God is leading me in my life.  Because I have this blog linked up to my facebook account, I know that family and friends that I have made over the years could read this at any time.  I still have lingering fears about acceptance that stem from my high school years.  They carry over into all kinds of aspects of my life, much as I hate to admit it.  This is an attempt to trace the origins of what I believe is a calling on my life, by God, to plant a church.

I am not ashamed of Jesus and what he has done in my life.  I can’t be.  Even though those scars in my past seem to keep me feeling like I am.  And now, this Easter 2008, I am looking forward to the next 10 years as being the most challenging, most rewarding, most bizarre, most scary, most peaceful, most amazing chapter of my life.  Why?  Because God is directing my life, and preparing me to work for him.  He really is.

Somehow, some way, waaay back when I was in Grade 11 and 12, I remember sitting in Jiro’s basement bedroom with him, playing Crib until who knows when, and talking then with him about how we both felt that we were born for something cool.  That something amazing was going to happen in our lifetimes and we were going to be a part of it.

I didn’t know how that was going to happen, but I did follow where my heart was leading - back to BC, where I was born.  That call led me down to the coast where I met my wife and for the first time took upon myself the task of learning more about this Jesus who I gave my life to back at Fort Saskatchewan Fellowship Baptist when I was 16.  I was being fed before, but in stepping into paying for myself to go to Bible College, I was taking ownership, for the first time.

In doing so, though, I was opening myself up to something bigger than I had ever thought.  I visited my grandparents on my Dad’s side the following year, and told them about the school, and how I had transferred to the Seminary.  My grandmother said, “Oh, you’re going to be a pastor?”  I said, “NO!”  Of course I wasn’t!  I am a history buff, I like the outdoors, I don’t feel like I make friends easily, how could I be a pastor?  I didn’t believe in myself enough to be one.  I thought, maybe a teacher, but not a pastor.

Flash forward 5 or so years.  No longer in Seminary, couldn’t afford to finish with a baby on the way.  God had some plans for me to start overcoming my own stupidity, and grow me up.  My next transformation was in terms of responsibility, and priority.  I put it all on my wife and kids - they were number one (actually number two, just behind God).  I started seeking more wholeness with respect to my relationship with my wife.  I just began to hate the selfish crap I had wrapped myself in for so long.  The progressive realization that seeking after Jesus and following in his footsteps over my own selfish ideas just makes me happier and everyone around me happier.  Every step I take away from that hurts me or others around me.

Then there was the trip to Mexico.  God had blessed us financially, and enabled us to take a trip to Manzanillo for a week.  It was a lovely time of rest and exploration (I love visiting new places), but we both came back feeling like something was amiss, vacationing at a resort surrounded and staffed by very very poor people.  This led us to considering, the next year, when we were thinking of another break, how we could enjoy a trip like that while giving back to the community we visited.  This led us to look at short term missionary opportunities, and ultimately, to Rwanda where we helped construct a school and visited with a number of people who were full-time missionaries.  We came back with opened eyes, for how we could participate in God’s plans.

I don’t want to downplay this mind-change.  It is a different as night and day.  Before, we looked for what we would like to do, what pleased us.  We both thought a sign of God’s will for our lives was a certain amount of satisfaction in what we were doing.  When we came back, we began to look for ways to please God with our service.  This is a major shift.  We began to look for where God could use us next.

That fall, we met a church planting couple.  They were missionaries - to our town!  Canadians don’t think of their own towns as mission fields, but that is what they are.    This is something that has bugged me, nagged me at the back of my mind, ever since my early days at Fort Sask Fellowship Baptist.  I remember looking at the “missionaries” corkboard, with pictures of nice people deployed all over the world, I was thinking, why are we paying people to travel all around the world when there are people right here who need to know Jesus?  The statistics that say 60% of Canadians believe in “God” - they are meaningless.   God wants people who love him and follow his teachings.  There are many many people who are living a lie, believing that because their parents had them baptized as infants, or perhaps in their youth they prayed a prayer, that they are “in”.  But they don’t know God.  They don’t know how much Jesus loves them, and they fool themselves into thinking that their own choices will earn them a place in heaven.  Most Canadians are like that.  Even in churches.  They need to understand the truth.

We stepped into involvement with this church plant, and it has been amazing!  Never before have we seen God work so up close.  I love watching the people who have joined us, those that came broken, needy and having those needs met by God in our presence.  It is great.  At the same time, about a year ago too, Cheryl and I both recognized in our hearts that there is something coming, that we will be going somewhere, in the service of God, soon.  We began to feel like we need to prepare ourselves for it.  It is becoming more and more clear that we will be involved in planting another church.  For the first time in my life, I have people around me who see this too.  Their vision feeds mine.  I am getting to the place where I am really starting to believe that even though I fear judgment and inadequacy, it’s God’s project, not mine.  If he wants me to preach, then he will see me prepared to do it.  If he wants me to lead, all I have to do is worry about following him, he will provide the followers.  If he wants me to build a church, he will give me the skills, or provide me with the help I need.  I just have to wait on him.

It kind of takes the pressure off.  But most of all, and I think this is what everyone is looking for, he’s given me something to live for, work for.  I am not dropping everything.  God’s got me in a great job that pays well.   I am thinking this job is here right now to help get us prepared financially.  Plus, I have a lot to learn before I am ready to do anything on my own or as part of a team.  Probably a couple of years out still.  But it’s going to be a ride!

I be so geeky. According to the quiz, I would be this if I were a D&D character.

I Am A: Lawful Good Human Ranger/Cleric (2nd/2nd Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-11

Dexterity-13

Constitution-15

Intelligence-13

Wisdom-12

Charisma-14

Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment because it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Primary Class:
Rangers are skilled stalkers and hunters who make their home in the woods. Their martial skill is nearly the equal of the fighter, but they lack the latter’s dedication to the craft of fighting. Instead, the ranger focuses his skills and training on a specific enemy a type of creature he bears a vengeful grudge against and hunts above all others. Rangers often accept the role of protector, aiding those who live in or travel through the woods. His skills allow him to move quietly and stick to the shadows, especially in natural settings, and he also has special knowledge of certain types of creatures. Finally, an experienced ranger has such a tie to nature that he can actually draw on natural power to cast divine spells, much as a druid does, and like a druid he is often accompanied by animal companions. A ranger’s Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.

Secondary Class:
Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron’s vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity’s domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric’s Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

No it doesn’t get better than this…

But it did,
It did,
Oh it did.

Just when i start thinkin its as good as it can get,
This crazy life does somethin just to let me know
I haven’t seen anything yet…

- Brad Paisley, “It Did” - 5th Gear 

I have every reason to be completely stressed out.  I have every reason to be falling apart physically and emotionally.  I have to say, in my life to date, the place I am at right now may be the toughest I have ever been in.

But yet, I can’t help thinking, life just keeps getting better.

People occasionally make fun of me for liking country music.  They joke about how it is so depressing.

“What do you get when you play Country Music backwards?”

“What?”

“You get your house back, your wife back, your truck back, your dog back…”

There are some melancholy songs out there, but there are fun ones too.  Best of all are the uplifting songs.  In all my years of listening to rock, pop, metal, etc., I can’t recall but one or two truly uplifting, soul satisfying songs that made you feel better about yourself and your life and that maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be fine.

Nearly every Country record I listen to has them.  The lyrics at the top are a case in point.

People say financial pressures are one of the leading causes of divorce.  I am simply amazed by the fact that when we face them, my wife and I become even more united.  It is a challenge we face together, tighter than ever.   I don’t think I underestimate the effect it had on me, when I began to doubt that we could get out of this mess, that my wife told me that she thought we could.  We didn’t need to make drastic changes, uproot from work, family, church.  Her faith in me became my faith in myself.

Where’s the money going?  Bills.  Where’s the money coming from?  Well, sales is an up-and-down thing.  It’s a down time right now.  But my treasures keep piling up.  We just got a dog a little while ago, and despite her bad habit of peeing on the floor outside our bedroom every once in a while, she is a blessing.  We just had another baby a month and a half ago… and aside from his annoying habit of needing to be walked to sleep by Daddy well after Daddy should already be asleep, he is a blessing.  The treasure of people and dogs that love you - that love can’t be bought.

So, what I am saying is, it is those things that so many others would say bring you down, that are building me up right now.  I am excited.  The pressure, the trouble, the clouds on the horizon are a challenge to me.  I am excited by it.  I want to take it on, head on.  Because it’s going to get better than even I can imagine.

I keep looking over at my sidebar on my blog, at that “League of Reformed Bloggers” blogroll.

I joined it because I thought I knew what Reformed meant.  I thought it was kind of related to a high view of Scripture, and kind of related to Calvinism.  Ever since I began to encounter the whole Calvinism/Arminianism debate (free will vs. predestination), I have identified more with the Calvinist side, though I recognized that there were problems with a view of total depravity, and hence tried to reconcile that by characterizing my viewpoint as “perspectivist” - that God can hold us responsible for our actions because from our perspective we are free, even though ultimately God’s sovereignty means he has willed all that we do, including sin. (More details in an older post of mine, here.)

I have been reading a book by Dave Hunt, called “What Love Is This?“.  It is a book that deals withe the history of Calvinism and the doctrines that make up that body of thought.  It also deals with the problems with Calvinism, and how it has treated (in general) its opponents, characterizing itself as the orthodox protestant position, and framing all dissent very negatively.   I am about one hundred pages in (it is 500 pages), but I am already recognizing that for myself, the reason I considered myself “reformed” was because I didn’t really understand what that meant.   Now that I am recognizing more about what the real positions are, I am realizing that even amongst people who consider themselves “Reformed”, I think there are a lot of people who don’t even know what that means.  There are a lot of people who call themselves “Calvinist” who may say they hold to the 5 points of TULIP but in their practical life, they do not act in accordance with what they believe.

There is lots to say on this, but I’ll leave it there for now.

You know those business card draws that a lot of restaurants have?  They WORK!

I dropped off ye olde business card at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Langley, it must have been at Christmas, because that was the last time I was there.

Lo and behold I get a letter at my office today - 2 x $10 off coupons, good at any location!

Me and my baby (and our baby - one is still breastfeeding) are having a nice dinner out… yessir.

I hope they aren’t offended if I bring my own cheese though.  I don’t think they carry pecorino romano - my way around my new-found milk allergy.

I need a break. Maybe it is the stress of last week, with the trying to squeeze some end-of-the-month sales out and going to school (4 hours of classes plus about 100 pages of reading per day) piling up on me, maybe it is the large number of changes I have had to deal with at home the last month or so. I don’t know. Maybe it is just that time of year - the February-March doldrums where spring can’t come fast enough and you feel cooped up in your home.

It doesn’t help either that we’re nowhere near the place financially where we can afford for me to take time off work, or anything else. That’s perhaps the hardest thing. But then again, for most people in the world, they are so poor that they can never afford vacations at all. And with the amount of time I waste in a day, I shouldn’t feel the need for physical escape as strongly as I do.

But there it is. I have had a couple of things pointed out to me. One - we will be travelling in April. We plan to be involved in the trip to Yakima again. That will be nice, but it will still have the pressure of a schedule and long distance driving, as well as wrangling the kids. Another - it was suggested I take my older boys for a short camping trip. Again, nice idea, but not exactly the retreat that I would like to take to give myself some space.

I say all this here because it is kind of off-limits to say at home. How can I talk about needing distance when my wife is caring for our kids all day, and she has a newborn to feed 24/7? She probably needs way more space than I do.