August 30, 2010 Killer Communication

In today's language, “killer” can mean really good (killer idea! Yay!) or really bad (well, that kills that great idea). Good communication, however, isn’t just a great idea…it’s necessary in order to maintain relationships. No wonder the Bible has so much to…communicate…about communication. Here is just a small sample:

“Just say a simple, 'Yes, I will,' or 'No, I won't.' Anything beyond this is from the evil one”
(Matthew 5:37).

“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone” (Colossians 4:6).

“Instead, by speaking the truth in love, we will grow up completely and become one with the head, that is, one with the Messiah” (Ephesians 4:15).

“But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery
hell” (Matthew 5:22 ).

“But now you also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth” (Colossians 3:8).

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen”(Ephesians 4:29).

Poor communication can cause a myriad of difficulties. When poor communication, whether expressed through misunderstandings, arguments, sarcasm, deceitfulness, etc., leads to a complete break-down in communication – one or both parties will no longer communicate at ALL – you’ve got a real mess. How can a relationship possibly be mended under such circumstances?

Recently I attempted to communicate with a fellow believer face to face. Some things are just better talked about in person; it's difficult to convey your heart via email –tone of voice, a certain look in the eyes, body language – all of these are vital to getting a complete “read” of a situation. Instead of an appointment, however, messages were sent back and forth…more communication about the lack of communication which ultimately communicated a decision to end communication!

Although there was disappointment involved, there was also a “freeing up.” I’d done what I could do, what the Lord had led me to do, in terms of waiting, reaching out, praying, trying to keep lines open. It isn’t the only relationship in which this has happened – people have free wills. If they don’t want to talk, they don’t have to. Sometimes, as my son says, you just have to say, “Forget it” (or words to that effect). Back off. Let the Lord work without your “help.” It’s not all about you – he may be trying to do something in the other person’s heart that, for the time being anyway, a relationship with you hinders.

My granddaughter has stopped me short on more than one occasion by asking if I meant something, or if I’m just being sarcastic. Sarcasm has its place – there are instances in the Bible when God himself is sarcastic – but it can also be hurtful, which is decidedly out of place.

Proverbs tells us that “life and death are in the power of the tongue” (18:21). Is what I’m saying bringing life to the hearer? Life to a conversation or relationship? Life to myself? If not, I need to remind myself that I am actually speaking death. How many children wouldn’t bear scars, how many marriages might be saved, how many friendships could be mended, how many political messes solved, if we would all speak life, rather than death. No more gossip or insults, no more put-downs or lies, no more ridicule or deception.

Philippians 4:8 is sort of the “end all” verse to godly thought, and since what comes out of our mouths starts in the brain, it certainly applies to our speech:

“Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence or if
anything worthy of praise, let you mind dwell on these things.”

We don’t have to be great orators or writers to learn to communicate clearly and positively. We do have to want to. We do have to make it a priority. Sometimes we might be tempted to excuse poor communication skills with “well, that’s just who I am” or excuse others because that’s “just their personality.” We can be certain, however, that the biblical mandates for godly communication apply to everyon who looks to the Bible for instruction and guidance.

Someone has said that you can get along with anyone on the face of the earth if you’re humble enough. A little humility is often key to good “killer” communication. Without it, negativity is all too ready to take over….and kill the relationship altogether.




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August 16 The Wow Factor

Years ago my mother told me about a tape she had heard describing the sharp intake of breath you experience when you see something extraordinary, specifically when you come into a room and see someone you love very much—whether spouse or child. The speaker said we all need that feeling in our lives.

And then there’s the sentiment you see on bumper stickers and t-shirts that showed up in the 2005 movie “Hitch” and on a George Strait album in 2009: It’s not the breaths you take that matter, it’s the moments that take your breath away.”

Let’s call it, for the sake of a catchy title (easier to express in print than a sharp intake of breath) the Wow Factor. You hear something along the same lines during American Idol or America’s Got Talent, although usually in the negative. “There just wasn’t any ‘wow factor,’” Simon might comment. Or maybe, “you did so well the last time, I was expecting you to bring ‘the wow factor’ tonight.”

The problem with people being the focus of our Wow Factors is that they, like competing singers or dancers or jugglers or magicians, eventually disappoint, eventually fail. We still love a handful of people, regardless—they are our family, our closest friends. There is an unconditional love that even the most hard-hearted among us may experience, at least in part.

Because the Bible tells us that “God is love” (1 John 4:7-8) I believe that our ability to love without selfishness or reward or even being loved in return, is a gift from God, a part of his nature passed on to us at Creation through Adam and Eve, who were made “in the image of God” (Genesis 5:1). That we find it so difficult to love results from the sin nature Adam passed down to us as well (Genesis 5:3).

God gave us the ability to love and commanded us to love him before anyone or anything else, with all our hearts, minds, souls, strength…but he disappoints us too. God’s purposes can not be thwarted (Job 42:1) but we don’t always like what those purposes entail. When we forget that he is God (not us) we begin to lose the Wow Factor we had initially.

Revelation 2:4 warns the church in Ephesus for abandoning their “first love” for God. Just as every human relationship requires vigilance, communication, protection, active participation, etc. our relationships with God do too. Without the pursuit of God, without seeking him and fellowship with him (not just his gifts and answers and miracles)…without taking steps in his direction, in other words…we find ourselves sliding further back from him, like one of those airport automatic sidewalks in reverse.

God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) expresses himself to us in different ways, but he promises to never leave us, which makes him a wonderful companion, worthy of our constant praise. Worthy of those sharp intakes of breath.

Wow. If you’ve lost it, pray about how to get back that “first love.”

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August 2, 2010 Spa-rituality

“Spa” and “spirituality” may seem disconnected concepts. Spas exist for the body, the senses. We visit them (those who do, in varying degrees of frequency; for me, it is a historically rare event) for the sensual pleasures they afford, the improvement of the body’s appearance or feel. From soft New Age music in the background to fountains of water cheerfully dancing over carefully arranged rocks, from the aromatherapy of incense, candles, or perfumed lotions to that glorious feeling of tired and tense muscles suddenly and blissfully “letting go”…what is remotely spiritual about such things?

A few years ago my son gave me a Christmas present- a gift certificate for a spa in a nearby town that was so generous that I made several trips for different services before it was used up. I had a facial, a massage….then decided to try something I’d never heard of, some kind of a mud mixture body wrap that hardened and had to be peeled off.

I felt just like the ornery boy Eustace Clarence Scrubb must have felt in C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when Aslan peeled away layers and layers of dragon skin (he had turned into a dragon after sleeping on a dragon’s pile of riches, dreaming covetously all night) to get to the penitent boy beneath. The sensation of having the mask stripped away felt wonderful, powerfully cleansing, like getting new skin.

Scripturally, we are to “put on the new self” (Colossians 3:10), “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14), “put on the full armor of God” (Ephesians 6:11). Before that, however, we must present ourselves as a living sacrifice and let the Holy Spirit take care of the old nature, the sin that clings and weighs us down (see Romans 12, Hebrews 12, and basically anything written by the apostle Paul).

Last week, I really splurged. Wednesday I had a Swedish massage with Samantha, the new masseuse at Bella East in Lillington (no charge for the promotion, ladies). Friday I took advantage of their July special on facials. As I lay back with the fountain burbling nearby, Kim expertly applying hot towels, creams, a mud mask, I thought about how unusual it was (for me) to pay so much attention to my head and face. Daily cleaning, sporadic damage control, and make-up is accomplished as quickly as possible…this was an entire hour devoted.

Which led me, head swathed in a hot towel, to think of Christ being the head of the Church, his Body. Our bodies do the work throughout our days, muscles straining, heart pumping, lungs exhaling and inhaling, feet walking, hands typing, but bodies can only function as they are connected to the head, to our brains which send out the appropriate signals and commands. Without the head, we are powerless and ineffectual.

Perhaps my mind went in that direction because of a funeral I’d attended a few days earlier, that of a woman about my age who had been in a vegetative state for eleven years. Although family visited, read to her, held her hands, there was never a response…a connection between brain and body had been forever lost.

Some people are uncomfortable with discussing the body, as if the fact that we can (and do, on a regular basis) use our bodies to sin makes the body itself a thing of shame and embarrassment. They forget that God pronounced its creation “very good” (Genesis 1:31) and chose to clothe himself within human flesh to restore our broken relationship to him, in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Bible, far from any agreement to that line of thought, is full of references to the physical nature of all that God created “good”. The Word tells us that our prayers rise to heaven as incense. The Revelation portrait of Jesus says his voice is like the “sound of many waters.” As the old song goes, the Lord “poured in the oil and the wine, the kind that restoreth my soul…he found me bleeding and dying on the Jericho road, and he poured in the oil and the wine.” Sensual pictures, all, appealing to the God-ordained abilities to touch, taste, smell, hear.

When God creates and blesses physicality and sensuality…it is spiritual. And he can use anything and everything around us…even a mud mask…to remind us of his love and truth.

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July 19, 2010 Getting to the Root of Things

Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
(from http://www.jewfaq.org/prayer/shema.htm,

which includes a musical presentation as well)

From time to time you may have heard someone speak on the need to have a “life verse,” a particular verse in the Bible that can be relied upon during times of need or stress or indecision. After a meeting where this was emphacized decades ago, I remember obediently praying later, using the “just close your eyes, turn to a page, and point” method of divine direction. Lo and behold, my finger rested on the very verse shown above. Deuteronomy 6:4-5:

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

I thought, “Wow. I guess if I’m going to have a life verse, that pretty much sums it up.” If I could love God like that, everything else would fall into place….the key word being “if,” of course. The longer I am a Christian, the less I appear to understand about what love is, much less understanding God. As C.S. Lewis wrote, we continually travel “further up and further in.”

But perhaps you think I should have restricted my life-verse search to the New Testament. The old has passed away and all things are new, right? What Jesus says, in red print, no less, is of much more value to Christians than anything Moses might have said. Right?

Wrong.

When asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus did quote this verse in Matthew 22:37, but believers of every denominational background would be wiser and richer in their Christian experience by embracing their Jewish roots. We were grafted in because of Jesus (see Romans 11), but we have not replaced the relationship God has with Israel.

Recently, our summer intern at Crossroads Church in Lillington, Charles Fiore, gave the message at Sunday services, using the Shema (or Shma or Sh’ma)…the first words of Deuteronomy 6 shown above, and the centerpiece of Jewish prayer. I had been part of a church that sang the verse regularly, and Charles’ message brought back many good memories.

Having been raised in the Methodist church, our family later joined a Presbyterian church. When a nondenominational home group arose from its congregation, our family was part of it. Throughout the group’s history (it eventually organized into a church), there was a strong emphasis on our ties to Israel and Judaism. I’m so grateful for that heritage.

Before we built our own building, we even met in the local synagogue, forging a relationship with the local Jewish community that went far beyond paying them rent for the use of their facility. We took part in their celebrations and festivals; a few of their members joined us for Sunday worship from time to time. Our church’s dance team included Jewish folk dance and the synagogue asked us to perform for them on several occasions. We also sent two young men to live on kibbutz (communal work facilities) in Israel. Church members who could afford to, made several trips to the Holy Land. We supported the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. One woman, now passed away, began Nursing Mothers for Israel, an outreach that shipped clothing to Israel, based on Isaiah 49:23 (“Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers.”).

We do not need to take on the Jewish rules in order to accept our Jewish Messiah Jesus. Thank God! I don’t know about you, but it’s a full-time challenge for me to try and walk in the one commandment mentioned earlier. If I had to keep a kosher kitchen, I’d be in serious trouble! We are not better Christians or more spiritual or mature if we learn to pray in Hebrew or celebrate Jewish feasts. But if we, as new branches, want to know our God and King in all his fullness, we will get to know what…and who… he cherishes:


15 "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget, I will not forget you!
16 See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me. ( Isaiah 49:15-16)


Shalom. Peace.




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July 5, 2010 Freedom!

He’s gotten into a lot of trouble lately with his big mouth, political views, and divorcing the mother of his five children, but Mel Gibson has made some excellent films over the years. The Passion, The Patriot—epic stories. How many of us would even recognize the names of William Wallace, Longshanks, or Robert the Bruce without Braveheart?

Wallace’s cry of “Freedom!” as he is being tortured and killed at the end (oops… if you’ve never seen it, don’t let that stop you!) never fails to stir me. The freedom of his country was worth everything for Wallace and those who fought alongside him, and everything is exactly what it cost. Wallace lost his wife and eventually, his life, but he motivated the peasant Scots to rise up against powerful England.

We just celebrated the 234th anniversary of our own country’s fight to free itself from England’s rule. In the eyes of Europe and much of the world, the United States is still relatively young, yet, we are a world leader. Our freedom from tyranny continues to inspire others. Our invitation to join us here (“Give us your tired, your poor…”) is still heard by “teeming masses yearning to breathe free.”

Freedom is a sacred gift. Not only freedom from oppression, but freedom from guilt. Not only freedom from slavery to land owners, but freedom from slavery to sin and selfishness. Galatians 5:1 tells us that “It is for freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Another translation says to “stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free, and be not entangled again by the yoke of bondage.” (When I was much younger, we sang those words…the best way to memorize!)

Paul was writing to Christians who, having found freedom in Christ, were being told they must also be subject to the Law and live as Jews. The fact that not even the Jews could obey the 613 laws found there, to say nothing of the rabbinical interpretations that added yet more legalism, and that Jesus’ death on the cross of Calvary was for the express purpose of fulfilling the Law once and for all…these were details conveniently overlooked in the zeal to be righteous.

Looking back from 2010 we may be tempted to wonder how those early Christians--living at such an exciting period of history, walking and talking with the apostles, learning from those who knew Jesus personally--could be deceived into thinking they had to get circumcised in order to follow Jesus. Surely we wouldn’t fall into such traps. (Certainly not the men, anyway!) If we’re honest, however, we would acknowledge that the kind of folks who get their jollies creating burdens for others didn’t die out with the early Church.

When I was a little girl, there were churches in which all the women and girls wore gloves and hats. All the men wore suits. And they looked down on churches that required daily attendance at Mass or going to confession. Burdens.

I attend a vibrant, loving Baptist church, but I have known Baptists who didn’t believe there would be anyone but Baptists in heaven. There are Presbyterians who find charismatics too emotional to be sincere and charismatics who believe liturgical churches to be too cerebral to be spiritual. Denominational vs. non-denominational. High church vs. low. Traditional vs. non-traditional. Catholics and Protestants waged war in William Wallace’s day and the battle continues in parts of the world.

We’re bad about saying we’re free from the Law only to come up with a whole new set. Can you be a Christian and drink? Jesus did. Can you be a Christian and “smoke or chew or go out with girls who do”? Absolutely. Dedicated, committed Christians even get divorced, have affairs, say the F word, drive over the speed limit, go a whole day without reading the Bible, lie, cheat on their income tax returns, and much, much worse. Some of them even wear white shoes after Labor Day.

We are not just set free from, but also set free to…to what? To follow man’s thinking? No, rather we are now free to follow the very spirit of God, who will always lead us to live and operate in love: “You…were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love” (Galatians 5:13).

We have complete freedom to wear whatever we want to, eat whatever we want to, drink whatever we want to, say whatever we want to…but in love, we should use wisdom and discretion so that others are not hurt by our freedom.

Liberty, it has been said, is the freedom to restrict one’s self for the sake of others. That’s something to celebrate, and live out, every day of the year.

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June 21, 2010 Loving the Law

“Blessed is the man…(whose) delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yield its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.”

From Psalm 1:1-3, NIV

I usually have a book lying around for entertainment purposes. There are favorites from C.S. Lewis or Ferrol Sams, for example, which I've read many times and will never stop returning to. Or I’ll get on one author and strip the local library shelves of two or three of his or her offerings at a time, primarily when I’m in the mood for a good crime story or humor.

I’ll read for research or study as well, gleaning from those more learned than myself or anticipating the lively discussion with a group of people reading the same book simultaneously.

As much as I love books –as often as I have fussed at a child for carelessly leaving a book’s binding in stress, or getting sticky fingers on its sacred pages—as often as I have scolded, “Books are our friends!” I myself am terribly hard on books. Paperbacks generally end up gaining width from hot afternoons, resting against my sweatiness as I sit by the pool…or being splashed in the tub as I read in my favorite spot of all. If the library saw me with their precious and generous volumes suffering the perilous conditions to which I frequently subject them, they would install a guard outside the door and prohibit my entry every two weeks.

Obviously (because it is The Guidebook to end all guidebooks, and I am just one more sojourner in a foreign land) I must continually turn to the Bible for instruction and illumination, no matter how often it has been read or how familiar its passages. The fact is, I don't fully follow its precepts on a day to day, minute to minute basis. There is a great deal I don’t understand, much less follow! therefore, I must continue my studies.

What a privilege this is, what a luxury, compared to the experience so many have had throughout history and in other parts of the world today. To own even complete copy of the Bible, to have it within reach at all times, to say nothing of the fact that most Christian homes own multiple copies, whether underlined and highlighted and much thumbed-through, or sitting on shelves in fancy leather bindings gathering dust.

My library book at the moment is People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. Based on a true story, it winds through history telling the story of one beautiful book, a haggadah used for Jewish Sabbath worship in the home. A modern-day analyst is asked to unlock the mysteries of various stains and bindings and parchment choices, but Brooks also takes readers back in time, letting us see the particular events and people that have made the book’s survival possible for hundreds of years.

Whereas people underwent great trials to protect the haggadah…and whereas throughout history people have suffered to protect their own holy books…we, I fear, are jaded to the importance of the Bible. We can easily purchase any size, color, weight, print, or translation we desire. Audio or illustrated, hardback or paper, large print for a massive pulpit or tiny print in a pocket version, Bibles for athletes and women and children and Messianic Jews and the military.

The old saying "familiarity breeds contempt" may apply. We have access to the Bible that costs us little or nothing, but do we love the Law?

When a person has a deep emotional need he or she is like a dry, thirsty plant surrounded by arid terrain, withering day after day beneath a merciless sun. Another person…perhaps with good motives, perhaps not…walks by with a watering can and empties it on the tree. Does the tree stop and ask if it should drink in the moisture? Does it ask whether or not death might be preferable to the assistance in that particular watering can? No, the tree responds. Any person passing by, any source of water, and the tree will respond. How can it not?

Rather than tell us how to resist strange water, the psalmist tells us how to avoid the very state of drought. Not only do we not have to respond to the wrong people, the wrong distractions, the wrong thoughts, the wrong supplying of needs, we can….through God’s word….maintain a life of continual "wateredness" so that our leaves never wither.

The person who loves the Law, Psalms 1 says, is like a tree planted by streams of water. Regardless of the outward circumstances, the needs that this person or that can not or will not meet, the stress, the trials... the person who LOVES THE LAW OF GOD is like a tree by a stream. The circumstances, the so-called reality of his life are not different, but HE is different. He is like a plant with a ready, constant source of water. His leaves never wither, regardless of the heat of the sun or the failed irrigation systems around him.

Some of us rarely look at the Law (the first five books of the Bible) outside of Sunday school lessons about Noah, Moses, Abraham and David. There are dry stretches. There is THE law that makes us uncomfortable with its apparent pickiness over things we might, as American Gentiles, find irrelevant. And besides, that was the Old Testament. Jesus brought a new covenant.

ACtually, he said he came to fulfill the Law, not "abolish it" (see Matthew 5:17-18). And it is those five books which, according to Psalms 1, hold the key to our spiritual protection and growth. Our love for tthe Law…or our neglect of it…makes the difference between watered and withered. Drenched or dry. Bearers of fruit or barren of fruit.

Makes you want to curl up with Leviticus, doesn’t it?

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June 7, 2010 The Mirror of God’s Word

“Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act--they will be blessed in their doing (James 1:22-25, NRSV)."

A two-sided mirror hangs mounted on the wall in our well-lit bathroom at home—one side provides a real-size image while the other is magnified. A light around its edges makes it even more user-friendly; even though the reflection is sometimes not what I might wish for…increasing lines, a stubborn red patch on my forehead that refuses to heal, the occasional (and gasp-producing) coarse chin hair…I use it frequently.

Contrast this with the mornings I run in town and try, still hot and sweaty, to muddle through the art of make-up application in the only adequately lit bathroom where I work. While grateful for any light, and any mirror, the result is far more likely to be…uneven.

Recently I was getting dressed at home and noticed that my face, reflected across the room in that mounted mirror, was upside down. I was at the exact distance at which the convex mirror, through mysterious laws of physics I will not attempt to explain (even Googling wasn’t much help) “flipped” the image. I wasn’t standing on the ceiling in reality, but the deceptive image made it seem so.

You’re probably way ahead of me. If James is telling us, in the passage cited above, that we have to look into the word of God and apply it, obviously the further away from the word (the “mirror”) we find ourselves, the more distorted will be our understanding and perception.

Last week I devoured The Shack by William Young, a book I had avoided since its publication in 2007. I’m not sure why I hadn’t read it—maybe the phenomenon that it became put me off. It seemed everywhere I turned someone would ask me if I’d read it yet, implying that (1) “you should” and (2) “what in the world is taking you so long?”

And…I loved it. One of the things I loved about it was that although it breaks out of the box of traditional thinking about God, it never broke out of biblical thinking. It also didn’t get bogged down trying to defend itself; it simply wove a story of love and relationship and pain and intimacy that made me wonder, more than a few times, if it really was fiction after all.

It’s important when we read, or watch television or movies, or listen to music, that we enjoy and or/critique the messages promoted with the mirror of God’s word in mind. Obviously we need a “working knowledge” of God’s word in order to function in the world as Christ-followers. And the further away we stray from it or the longer the dry spells in which we find ourselves neglecting its truth or the more frequently we find those dry spells occurring, you can be certain –as night follows day—that our ability to discern will lose its sharpness. If we get far enough away, perception can even turn upside down and become actual deception.


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ellenofgillette1@aol.com