Disturbed?

Are you disturbed?

I'm not talking about the kind of disturbed that occurs when your satellite reception has gone out and your kids have been without the cartoon network for two days. Or the kind of disturbed you get when you realize that the drive thru barista at Starbucks forgot to swap skim milk for soy in your latté. I'm talking about the kind of disturbed that keeps you up at night thinking and pushes you towards action instead of just talk.

My cousin, Michelle, is a thirty-three year old housewife. She's a mother to four kids, spanning the ages of two to ten, and a wife to the senior pastor of a small congregation in Pennsylvania. And she's also convinced that she can help end the sex trade of children in Cambodia. She's been to Cambodia twice in the last year to check on the freshwater village wells that she helped build, talked the band Ten Shekel Shirt into putting on a concert in her town to raise money for child slavery survivors via the group Love146, and has been diligently educating her church and friends on this dynamic social cause.

She's disturbed.

Really, she's no different than you or me except that when I take stock of the blessings in my life and respond with a simple "thank you, God", Michelle takes things one-step further. She asks why. As in Why was I born in America? Why have you blessed me with resources that ninety percent of the world will work for all their lives and never attain? Why are my kids able to go the school of my choice when children in Cambodia live with the risk of being forced into a life of slavery as a child prostitute?

And she doesn't stop there. She asks the second question that all of us hear whispered in the back of our minds but refuse to face. She asks, what can I do to help, God? And then she acts. With great power comes great responsibility. That's my favorite quote from the movie Spiderman, but before Michelle, I'd never realized that sentiment applied to ordinary people. You see, Michelle isn't a superhero, she doesn't have much money, and she didn't go to Berkley to learn how to become a social activist. But she's disturbed and disturbed people make things happen. Disturbed people refuse to acknowledge the resources God has given them with just a thank you.

Disturbed people act.

What if we had a bunch of people like Michelle? A gathering full of disturbed people who challenged the status quo and refused to believe that the problems confronting their community were unsolvable. What would we call this group of disturbed people?

How about a church?

- Don

· What disturbs you? We've all marveled at our good fortune to be born in this country, but have you ever asked God why? Better yet, are you brave enough to ask him "what do you want me to do?"

1 What would happen if the doors of Lifepoint Vineyard closed tomorrow for good? What would change for the worse in our community? In our world? If you can't answer to these questions, does it disturb you? It should.
2 Which of these two bullets reflect how you talk to God and what does that tell you about yourself?
· "God help me. God bless me. God protect me."
1 "God send me. God use me. God spend me."

Now and Then...

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 1 John 4:18

It has been said that there are really only 2 human emotions – fear and love. That means all other emotions have their roots in either fear or love. With that in mind, it’s not too difficult to figure out where worry comes from, is it? When I think about worry really being fear, I have a much harder time owning that emotion. Don’t misread me here, I am a full-fledged worrier in every sense of the word – just ask my husband. But when I am forced to admit that worry is in fact fear, I find ways to twist words in order to justify how I am feeling. “I’m not worrying about it, I am just concerned that…..” “I’m not worried, I am just feeling a little anxious about..…”

If I am being totally honest here, I’d have to tell you that I was worried sick about writing this blog. Would I know what to say? Would it sound remedial? Would anyone read it? But what is that really – fear. Fear of not being good enough. Fear that my writing couldn’t compare to Don Bentley’s. Fear that I don’t have what it takes. But deep in my heart, I know that my loving God is sufficient and has given me more than I could ever imagine and I had to trust that He would give me the words.

A few things really struck me this week listening to Andy’s message. The first happened when he was talking with Sue and she admitted that much of her tendency to worry was passed down to her through her family. Being a worrier myself, I immediately thought of my own children. Do I really want them to walk through life worrying about all the things I find my mind occupied with? Isn’t having no responsibility part of the beauty of being a child? My child’s biggest fear in a given day centers around whether or not I remembered to buy him more orange juice. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to take that away from him. So, how do we create an environment that still fosters safety but doesn’t bleed worry?

I don’t know the answer here, but I know it HAS to start with faith. To paraphrase what Sue said, “Faith and fear cannot exist simultaneously.” (That’s going on an index card taped to my mirror).

Another statement Andy made that really rings true is that worry is the pre-occupation with the uncertainty of today. The concept sounds profound, but is really simple when you think about it. (Sorry Andy, not to say you aren’t profound!). We worry because we don’t know what might happen tomorrow, but in our cynical minds, we automatically assume that whatever is going to happen will be bad. My spouse might lose their job, my child might be involved in an accident etc. etc. etc. But how come our thought process doesn’t go the other way? Why don’t we think that our spouse might get a raise today or that our children might get accepted into the college of their choice? It seems that so many of us lack the innate ability to see things in a positive light.

We all have countless stories we could share about great things that have happened to us and our families -- specific instances where God truly intervened. Sure, maybe you didn’t win the lottery, but you didn’t suffer any damage in the hurricane that tore through Cincinnati. Doesn’t this show that God is still looking out for you? It REALLY is the little things sometimes. How quickly we forget that just yesterday God did something amazing in our life. Like Andy said, worry is often a shout, but God is sometimes just a whisper. So maybe we all just need turn the volume down on the worry in our life just enough to hear the whisper in our ear…..

• What has God been whispering to you lately?
• What’s an amazing thing that God has done for you in the last week that you’ve already forgotten?
• What can you do to better remember the things God has done for you next time you’re tempted to worry?

Dee

Seek first His Kingdom...

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:33-34

“Don? There’s been an accident. Faith fell off the trampoline—I think she broke her arm. I’m on the way to the hospital. Call me when you get this.”

That’s the voicemail I found waiting for me one afternoon after returning to my desk from a routine meeting on a routine day. In the space of a single heartbeat, my concern shifted from the inventory sales numbers I’d gone over in my meeting to my little four-year-old on the way to the hospital with a broken arm.

Amazing how a ten second voicemail from your wife can reorder your priorities, isn’t it? My trip to the hospital was a blur of images, each more horrible than the last, as I conjured up all the terrible things Faith could be going through. My pulse raced as I alternated between heart wrenching concern for my daughter and fist clenching fury that I could do nothing to help her.

Some of our more mundane worries can also manifest this same surge of emotions, can’t they? Who hasn’t sat around wondering if this is the winter our car is going to give out, or whether the downsizing this year would affect our job? But these worries are often compounded by a sense of helplessness that causes our stomachs to churn while moving us no closer to the problem’s solution.

Because sometimes we just can’t solve the problem. Sometimes, we’ve done all that we can do and we have to rest in the knowledge that our heavenly father who loves us and understands our needs has the universe under his control.

But other times our sense of angst comes from focusing too much on this world and not devoting enough of our attention to our father’s business. When Jesus was talking to his disciples about worrying, he told them to seek their heavenly father’s kingdom and righteousness first. Only then did he promise to take care of everything else.

I want to be a writer—a novelist to be exact. After years of practicing by writing short stories, I completed my first novel and landed an agent. She wasn’t able to sell the manuscript to a publishing house, but I just knew that my hard work was about to pay off and I wrote a second novel. A second novel that no agent wanted to represent. I remember sitting in my car, the latest rejection letter in my hand, staring at the brown envelope containing my manuscript. My quest to find an agent was consuming me. I kept Ang up at night ranting about how I’d invested money into writing classes and time into writing with no discernable results.

I remember looking at the envelope and thinking, “God, what are you doing here? I’ve got the chops to make it as I writer—I’ve been told this by other writers I respect. I’ve done the hard work, but this is still going nowhere. What is going on?”

Wait. That’s the answer I got, wait. After spending six years working with little to show for my efforts, I thought I probably had the waiting thing pegged. But with nothing else to do, I wrapped up my manuscript, shoved it in a drawer, and took an honest look at how I was prioritizing my life. I continued to write, but I no longer allowed the worrying to consume me. Now when Ang and I stayed up late, we talked about our church, about our family, about what God was doing in our lives, and about how we could better invest ourselves in his kingdom.

About that time Andy asked me to lead a strategic planning team for Lifepoint. As part of an icebreaker for our first team meeting, I mentioned that I was a wannabe novelist. That off-the-cuff comment led to a conversation with another team member who told me about a writers conference that hosted agents and editors and offered a writing contest to cover tuition. A writing contest that I won, so that I could attend the conference and sit next to another author who wrote my kind of fiction. An author who introduced me to a fantastic agent who loved my manuscript and is now trying to sell it.

And all of these things happened courtesy of my worrying, right?

Of course not. These incredible things happened when I finally got to the point where I’d realized that I’d done everything that I could do. I decided to release my dreams back to the loving father who’d planted them within me in the first place and to spend more time pursuing his kingdom.

Cinderella story? Not quite. My agent still hasn’t sold my novel. Maybe he won’t, but I’m determined not to waste my life worrying about it. You see, at its core, worrying really comes down to a question of trust. Are you going to trust in yourself, confident that you can resolve life’s problems on your own, or are you going to trust that an all powerful God will meet your needs while you chase after his kingdom?

It’s your life and your decision.

Don

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” Matthew 6:26-27

Worry? Who, me? I’m not a worrier. At least not at this exact moment in time.

All right, I lied. I’m worrying as we speak. I’m pretty much a consummate worrier. Except that I don’t call it worrying. I call it being a thorough planner. I can probably do a better job than most at rationalizing my chronic worrying. I spent a year of my adult life as a Scout Platoon Leader in the Army. As Scout Platoon Leader, my job was to fly the lead aircraft for my Troop. In other words, on a two-hour flight, eight helicopters were depending on me to get them where they needed to go and to arrive at our destination within thirty seconds of our assigned time.

Can you see why I’m such a thorough planner? I’d study the map for hours before a mission, visualizing the route and picturing the terrain in my mind. I got good enough at my job, that I started flying lead for the entire Squadron. Now, instead of just eight helicopters relying on me, I had twenty-four.

Stressed yet?

I was. I remember sitting in the cockpit before each mission, a map balanced on one knee and a sheet of paper listing times and map coordinates Velcroed to the other, looking at two stopwatches while calculating distance, time and airspeed in my head. I used to pray that the mission would get canceled, or that the commander would pick someone else to fly lead. I worried constantly.

Sounds like fun, huh? So imagine how I felt when I listened to Andy this morning as he read the verse from Mathew where Jesus promises that if our heavenly father will take care of the birds of the air, the Ravens, that he’ll take care of us as well.

Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it?

Now some of you really aren’t worriers. In fact some of you point to this verse and say, “See, I don’t need to do anything with my life because God will take care of me.” But I don’t think that’s what Jesus was saying. Have you ever watched birds? They’re busy from sunup to sundown, looking for worms, building their nests, doing whatever it is that birds do. I’ve never seen a bird that just sat in its nest and waited for God to drop some seeds in its mouth. Birds give one hundred percent each day of their lives and then go to sleep at night content in the knowledge that they’ve done all that they could do.

I think that our Christian life should mimic this attitude. If we’re honestly trying to discover what God has in store for us, we have to get out of our nests each day, and hit the ground running. We have to exhaust every avenue open to us, and then and only then, can we rest in the knowledge that our heavenly father will provide for us.

In his book, The Barbarian Way, Erwin McManus makes the following observation about Rhinos:

You see, Rhinos can run at thirty miles an hour…but Rhinos can only see thirty feet in front of them. You would think that they would be far too timid to pick up full steam, that their inability to see far enough ahead would paralyze them to immobility. But with that horn pointing the way, Rhinos run full steam ahead without apprehension. (McManus, Erwin Raphael. The Barbarian Way. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc. 2005, p. 137-38)

Erwin goes on to say that Rhinos exemplify what our walk with Christ should look like. That while chasing after God’s will, we can rarely see more than thirty feet ahead of us even though we’re still running at thirty miles an hour. Think I’m making this up? Check out Acts 16:6-10. This scripture tells the story of Paul, the author of most of the New Testament, and how he’s struggling to find out where God wants him to preach the gospel. Paul passes in or around six different regions before he finally realizes that God wants him to teach in Macedonia. In one point during his journey, verse seven says, “When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.”

Wow. And you thought you had obstacles in your life. Do you think Paul worried at all during this process? You see, while Rhinos run at thirty miles an hour, sometimes they hit trees and fall to the ground. And while the Ravens, or birds of the air, work all day at finding food, sometimes they still go to their nests at night hungry.

I’ve been trying to apply this concept to my own life over past year. I’m coming to the end of my current job at GE and have started the process of looking for a new one. I’m diligently seeking God’s will, but I’m also following up every job lead that I think I’d be good at. In the process of writing this blog I got an email that the job I really wanted had just been given to someone else.

Talk about hitting a tree.

But you see it really didn’t hurt at much as I thought that it would. In fact, it’s almost exciting. Like the Rhino, I’m chasing after God’s will at thirty miles an hour even though I can only see thirty feet in front of me. Like the Raven, I’m out of my nest and working from sunup to sundown even if I don’t always get that worm. But at the end of the day, I can rest at night knowing that I’ve done all that I can and that the remainder is in the hands of my God. The same God who tells me not to worry because he promises to feed me just like he does the birds of the air.

Keep running friends—I’d love to hear your stories.

Don