Chains of our Own Making

Scotty Smith, one of my Facebook friends, posted a quote from Martin Luther the other day. It said: "How soon 'not now' becomes never." That struck a chord with me because I am a procrastinator of the highest order--though I like to tell myself it's because I work best under pressure. We can always find socially acceptable excuses for our sins and shortcomings.

Ron Blocki, one of Scotty's FB friends commented by posting this quote from C.S.Lewis' Screwtape Letters: " No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition, but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will ever be able to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel."

All of that reminded me of another thought that I came across somewhere a long time ago - We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions. So often we excuse our disobedience and failures by saying: "Well, I meant to..." Our intentions were good, so supposedly that makes everything okay. But it doesn't really, does it? Having the intention of getting up early in the morning to pray, read the Word, exercise, or simply have more time to get things done doesn't achieve anything at all unless we actually DO it and see the intention through to action. Having the intention of going to someone we have wronged to apologize and restore the relationship does absolutely nothing towards healing. Having the intention of going out and meeting neighbors, or helping someone in need, or reaching out to that lonely person accomplishes not a thing towards those goals. We simply must act and, to quote Nike, "Just DO it!"

The danger of being satisfied with good intentions is that, as C.S.Lewis warns, we feel without acting and eventually will be less able to even feel. At that point, we lose even the empty comfort of our good intentions.

And here's another great quote to add: "Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteounsess?" (Romans 6:16,ESV) Having good intentions without following through with the necessary action simply makes us prisoners of our own inactivity, bound with chains of our own making.

May God grant each of us the will to obey.

Cultural Relevance

I just read a great blog by Walt Mueller entitled Shaved Heads, Goatees, and Other Misdirected Attempts at Reaching the World... The title basically says it all. These two paragraphs are especially great:

Because I study youth culture for the sake of effective cross-cultural work with kids, many people are surprised to find out that I oftentimes try to squelch our (the church) growing love affair and obsession with relevance. I think we need to stand back and take a long, hard objective look at ourselves and our ministries to see just what this pursuit of relevance might not only be doing to us, but doing to actually hinder the advance of the Gospel message...the noble desire and calling that has made us pursue relevance so passionately in the first place. A misdirected passion for relevance has fostered the increased use of the word "reinvent" when it comes to ourselves and our ministries. We run the risk of unintentionally allowing an obsession with style to eclipse what should be a passionate obsession with substance. Sadly, when we fall into it, we don't even know that this is what's happened. Eventually, our lives and ministries become a series of extreme makeovers, with the short time between each filled not with more and more reflection on the substance of the message, but with trying to keep up with the styles so that we're ready to jump when the next change is needed...something which is happening with increased frequency as time marches on.

It's for this reason that I've been speaking more and more about the seemingly subtle yet significant differences between pursuing lives and ministries marked by being culturally relevant and lives and ministries marked by being culturally informed. Being culturally informed--regardless of my age, shape, size, or hairstyle--means that I have taken the time to listen to another and their context. It means that I know them. It means that when I open my mouth to speak--regardless of whether or not that mouth is framed by a goatee--the person I am speaking to will kinow that I have listened and cared for them. Then they will be more prone to listen to what I have to say. We call this "relationship."

Check out the entire article and his blog at learningmylines.blogspot.com