4 Things You Can Never Recover

1. The Stone After the Throw

Oh, how much easier it is to see the faults in others than it is to see our own faults! How quick we are to attack someone else or to pass judgment on them. And yet these stones we hurl at others can never be retrieved. Jesus knew this. He says to us, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone.” (John 8:7).

2. The Word After It’s Said

“Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs“ -Pearl Strachan. The words we speak are powerful things. Words can tear down or they can build up. They can bring death or they can bring life. But once they have left our lips, they are like leaves scattered to the wind – they can never be taken back. So before you lash out with harsh words, take a moment to press pause and measure what you say with grace and mercy.

3. The Oppourtunity After It’s Missed

“I held a moment in my hand, brilliant as a star, fragile as a flower, a tiny sliver of one hour.  I dropped it carelessly, Ah!  I didn’t know, I held opportunity.” - Hazel Lee. Oppourtunities in life aren’t always easy to recognize. We usually expect them to come with beepers and billboards, but most often they are dressed in overalls and look like work.  Sometimes we call oppourtunities problems and we try to avoid them, but the truth is nothing is so often irretrievably missed as a daily oppourtunity.

4. The Time After It’s Gone

Life is short. I have never been more aware of this until now. Watching my ten-month old son grow up in front of my eyes so quickly has reminded me that life goes not backward nor waits for any man. And so make the most of the time you have been given, and “don’t be fooled by the calendar – there are only as many days in the year as you make use of” – Charles Richards.

3 Ways to Seize the Day!

I recently had the incredible privilege of conducting the wedding of one of my best friends. And as we stood there under a magnificent tree, I wanted to make sure the words I shared with the couple were both profound and personal. I’m not sure if I hit the mark, but here’s the verse I used, and three takeaways I got from it:

 

Seize life! Eat bread with gusto,

Drink wine with a robust heart.

Oh yes – God takes pleasure in your pleasure!

Dress festively every morning. 

Don’t skimp on colours and scarves.

Relish life with the spouse you love

Each and every day of your precarious life.

Each day is God’s gift. It’s all you get in exchange

For the hard work of staying alive. 

Make the most of each one!

Whatever turns up, grab it and do it. And heartily!

- Ecclesiastes 9:7-10 MSG

 

1. Learn to Relish the Small Things

Having recently become a dad, I am constantly amazed by how much pleasure I get from simply watching my son. When he laughs, I laugh – I can’t help myself. And it’s the same with God – not some distant angry god who is waiting for us to mess up – but a Father who takes pleasure in our pleasure. Learning to relish life means learning to seize oppourtunities that come your way. It means making the most of what you have been given. It means finding joy in the smallest of things.

2. Understand Life is Hard

This verse in Ecclesiastes is not naïve or rose-tinted. The writer is under no illusion that life is easy – in fact he says that just staying alive is hard work and that our lives are precarious things! He acknowledges that life has a way of knocking the joy out of us, and that it takes effort and work and planning to live life well. Understanding life isn’t easy prevents us from feeling like victims, and helps us to face our challenges head on.

3. Understand that Each Day is a Gift From God

In my opinion this is really the key to savouring life. Understanding that every day we get here on earth is a precious gift not to be taken for granted. Every breath we take, every moment we get to spend with family and friends, every oppourtunity for travel, every sunrise and sunset – these are free gifts of Grace from God.

And so, may you seize life with gusto, relishing the moments you have with the people you love. May you understand the fragility of life, and treat each day as a true gift from a loving Father.

Words Like Atom Bombs

Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs. – Pearl Strachan

The words we speak are powerful things. Words can tear down or they can build up. They can bring death or they can bring life.

This past week I did not use my words very well. In an argument with someone I love dearly I became defensive and emotional, and used my words to pierce and wound.

I’m sure you too have stories about the power of words – how the words someone spoke to you impacted your life. Perhaps they were words of encouragement that brought confidence and peace and joy. Or maybe they were words that brought pain and hurt and sadness. Perhaps those words are still lodged in your heart today…

Now, whether you consider yourself a Christ-follower or not, the Bible is full of reminders of how supremely useful, and how incomparably potent words can be. The scriptures call us to use our words wisely and well – to bring healing and forgiveness and wholeness and freedom. Here are just a few examples:

• Ecclesiastes 6:11 says that when used sparsely – succinctly – words carry great meaning.
• Psalm 119:130 says that words can actually give light. Words can give understanding to those who don’t yet understand.
• Proverbs 12:18 says that although reckless words pierce like a sword, words from the tongue of the wise can actually bring healing.
• Proverbs 17:27 says that when used with restraint, words prove you’re a person of knowledge.
• Proverbs 16:24 says that pleasant words are like a honeycomb - sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
• Ecclesiastes 10:12 says that although a fool is consumed by his own lips, the words from a wise man’s mouth are gracious.
• Deuteronomy 32:2 says words can actually descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.

These are the kinds of words the scriptures call us to speak.

Humble words. Healing words. Wise words. Gentle words. Grace-filled words.

Now I wonder, are these the types of words you’re known for speaking?

If your closest friends or the family members who actually live underneath the same roof as you were polled anonymously about this, would they say that in the course of normal, everyday life, you can be counted on to speak words of encouragement and grace?

Let’s take today for example. Think about the very last thing you said before you started reading this blog.

• Who you were talking to?
• Do you remember what you said?
• Were the words you spoke life-giving and inspiring and grace-filled?
• Or were they… well, the opposite?

I find it interesting that for some reason God has allowed such power to inhabit our words? Astounding power in fact.

Jesus said that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. And so, when the words I speak are divisive and mean, then I must look deep into my heart to see where those words have come from.

The Power of Pressing Pause

I am an impulsive person.

When I know I want something, I go after it. Sometimes foolishly. Just ask my wife.

So I’m trying to learn the power of pressing pause. Of taking a step back and reflecting in the midst of a world that continues to move in fast-forward.

So often we act on urges without really thinking, and without even realising it. And it gets us into trouble. We have the urge to eat junk food, and so we do it. We have the urge to skip a workout, and so we stay on the couch. We have an urge to smoke, to criticize, to check Facebook, to gossip, to open our inbox…  and we act on that urge. But, as Leo Babuta writes:

What if instead we learned to pause after each urge? What if we stopped, looked at that urge, paid close attention to what it feels like inside our bodies, but didn’t act? The urge would no longer control us. We would be able to make conscious choices that might be healthier for us...

And that’s why the pause is so critical.

Because when we pause, we create space. Space for life. Space to breathe, to think, and to respond proactively .

Such a small thing, and yet so powerful.

Of course, learning to press pause in our world and in our culture is no easy feat, but it can be learnt and practiced and improved.

In the Bible, the psalmists use a very interesting Hebrew word “selah“ which, while its definition is not entirely clear, means something like “pause and calmly think about that“. It’s like after every statement of praise or nugget of truth, the writer is trying to get us to stop and think and take it all in, instead of simply jumping to the next line or chorus…

or email,

or conversation,

or TV program…

Imagine if we could live our lives like that? Stopping and reflecting. Taking it all in. Acknowledging the urge, but not acting on it. Practicing the power of the pause.

The urges won’t go away, of course, but our ability to pause will get stronger. And when you have the pause, you have life!

Truth Without Love is Brutality

“Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.” 
― Warren Wiersbe

I think sometimes, as Christians, we forget this.

We think that as long as our ideas are philosophically and theologically true, we can share them in ways that are offensive and divisive. And so “being right” becomes more important than showing love or reaching people.

Now that’s not to say we should’t speak the truth, because we know “love without truth is empty” and not really love at all.

But let us not fall for the trap that truth comes at the expense of love, or vice versa.

As Donald Miller writes:

We commonly believe that the Evil One wants us to teach bad theology, and I suppose he does. But what he wants to do more is to have us teach right theology in a way that devalues human beings, insults and belittles them, and so sets them against the loving message of God.

So if we teach right theology in a way that is condescending, we are just as guilty as being heretics. That’s why the Bible spends as much or more time talking about love as it does about doctrine. My guess is we love doctrine because it makes us feel superior, but neglect love because it calls for personal sacrifice and vulnerability.

And so we become personality heretics, speaking the truth, but teaching heresy.

Tension is Required

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald.

When I was young I saw life in black and white. Right and wrong. Good and bad. But the older I get, the more I realise life isn’t that simple. It seems the answers to some of the toughest questions are not always “either/or”, but rather “both/and”… As Carolyn Arends articulates so well,

“Is it faith or works? I demand of the scriptures, and the answer seems to be: “Yes.” Is God a God of revelation or of mystery? Is he as close as a whisper or beyond all things? Yes. Yes. Is the kingdom of heaven now or not yet? Should I be wise as a serpent or innocent as a dove? Should I fall headlong into grace or work out my salvation with fear and trembling? Yes. Yes. Yes.

A lifetime of evangelical thinking has primed me for either/or questions,breeding a deep distrust of both/and propositions. After all, one of the distinguishing features of Christianity is its insistence that there is one way to God. A wariness of pluralistic worldviews is completely warranted. But if I’m not careful, that insistence can mutate into creating artificial schisms that fly in the face of a God who desires to make us whole in radical ways.

When we fall for false dualities, we end up arguing over whether the gospel is concerned with ministering to the poor or proclaiming the Word. We believe our theology must emphasize either a free gift of grace or a call to holy living. In a myriad of areas, we polarize, dichotomize, and greatly minimize the life God has for us.”

Unfortunately this truth is easier to write about than to live.

It takes less effort to settle for black and white. And so we congratulate ourselves for taking a stand, but lose half of what God has for us in the process.

I think most of us would like our faith to reduce tension, but according to the scriptures, it seems tension is required.

A Better Story

There is something wonderfully powerful about STORIES.

Stories are universal – crossing boundaries of language, culture and age. We can all relate to stories, and it is in the context of narrative that the human heart truly responds. In fact, people have been telling and responding to stories since the beginning of time. It’s how most cultures pass on information from generation to generation.

Interestingly, recent evidence from neurology and psychology is confirming that humans think in narrative structures. Concepts conveyed in story form – more than ideas explained with logic and analysis – imprint themselves naturally into human minds.

It’s why we can remember a book or a film from years back, but can’t remember the PowerPoint we saw 10 minutes ago.

There is something about story (especially a good story) that is able to capture our hearts, our minds, and our imagination.

Now, I believe inside each of us is a deep desire to not only connect to a great story, but to be part of a great story.

A thirst for meaning we can’t always explain. A desire to be part of something bigger than our own lives. Part of something that really matters.

But here’s the problem with living a great story… it’s hard!

People want an interesting life, but the truth is interesting is never easy. Telling a great story with your life requires sacrifice and pain and struggle. It is less like winning the lottery and more like training for a marathon. Happy endings are never just handed out. A great story takes risk and courage.

Robert McKee, considered worldwide to be the guru on storytelling, believes that every great plot has three basic elements:

• A person (or group of people)
• Who want something
• And are willing to overcome conflict to get it.

In fact, without ambition or conflict there simply is no story. It’s boring. And it’s the same in real life.

Unfortunately the story our culture is telling us is the story of comfort and security- “get comfortable so you can avoid pain”. Now, that’s not a terrible story, but it’s really not the greatest either. And of course there is nothing wrong with wanting security and comfort, but it cannot be the main theme of our story. There needs to be something more. Something worth fighting for.

I really believe there is such a yearning in our world, and especially in the younger generation, to be liberated from the mediocrity of safe bets – to be delivered from the prison of triviality that is so rife in our culture.

You were not designed to simply survive life. God didn’t come to make you safe, he came to make you brave.

And so, my prayer for you, as you seek to live out a better story, is that you would embrace risk and be willing to overcome conflict.

This prayer, written in 1886, captures my thoughts so beautifully:

“Lord, we do not pray for easy lives. We pray to be stronger men and women. We do not pray for tasks equal to our powers; but for powers equal to our tasks. Then the doing of our work shall be no miracle. But we shall be a miracle. And every day we will wonder at the richness of life, which has come to us through Your incredible grace.”

What Are You Practicing?

If only I still looked like that!

I was gymnast for many years growing up.

And in gymnastics, like many other sports, when you are training to learn a new skill, you can’t just simply get up and do it. First you must break down the skill into components – simpler, smaller movements we called “drills”.

Each day we would consciously practice those specific movements in a very deliberate way, and we would repeat those movements over and over again – sometimes thousands of times. But eventually, through sheer repetition, we would become good at those movements. And once you had mastered the various “drills”, you could link them together and be able to pull off the skill.

I think our entire lives are a bit like that…

Each day we repeat movements – thought patterns, ways of interacting with others. And in this repeated practice, we are becoming (or have already become) good at these things.

And so if you constantly swear or use bad language, that is a practice, and you are forming that habit. When you gossip, or speak rudely to others, or lose your temper, this is something you are practicing to be good at.

You may already be good at these things. I know I am.

And so of course the big question is, WHAT ARE YOU PRACTICING?

Because we might have all the good intentions to be or look a certain way, or to end up in a certain place, but the harsh reality is that we become good at what we repeatedly do.

In other words, we become the sum of our daily habits.

And so, what if, instead of practicing the bad stuff that holds us back, we consciously and intentionally started to practice the things we really want to be good at? Things like self-control, patience, kindness, peace, forgiveness…

Then, as we link those “movements” together, we will be able to pull off the greatest skill of all: To live well.

 

This post was inspired by an article I read at Zen Habits.

21 Steps to Awesomeness

As I was checking out my blog stats the other day I realised that many of my most popular posts all have something in common: NUMBERS. Check it out:

• 16 Tips to Simply Your Life (And Increase Your Productivity)
• 6 Things To Stop Caring About Today
• 4 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Do Kettlebells

And I totally get why this is. Most of us are busy people with busy lives, and so when we come across a post like “5 Ways to Fix Your Marriage”, or “12 Tips for Awesome Abs”, it grabs our attention and pulls us in. There is something attractive about a nice clean-cut formula – a simple set of principles to apply or steps we can take that will put things right.

But here’s the deal. There are no magic formulas or quick fixes in life.

I’m not saying these tips or steps aren’t helpful. I really believe in the steps I’ve written about. But the reality is that life is complex, and the idea that you can break it down or fix it all in a few steps is rather silly.

The truth is there are a million steps.

And a lot of the time we don’t even know what those steps look like. Or we may not be willing or able to take them at any given moment. And they’re probably different for you and me.

And this is not a bad thing. It’s actually a really good thing. Something that I believe can ultimately bring us closer to God.

As Donald Miller writes in his book Searching For God Knows What, “I have come to believe the sooner we find this truth (that there are a million steps) beautiful, the sooner we will fall in love with the God who keeps shaking things up, keeps changing the path, keeps rocking the boat to test our faith in Him, teaching us to not rely on easy answers, bullet points, magic mantras, or genies in lamps, but rather rely on His guidance, His existence, His mercy, and His love.”

Will I continue to write blogs with “tips” and “ways” to live better and more intentionally? Absolutely! But if you want “21 Steps to Awesomeness”, I’m afraid I can’t help you today. You’re just gonna have to go out there and be awesome all by yourself.

Tribes

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” - Jane Howard

I’ve recently finished reading Seth Godin’s book “Tribes”. In it Godin describes a tribe as any group of people, large or small, who are:

• connected to one another
• connected to a leader
• and connected to an idea

For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes – be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical. It’s our nature.

Now, with the rise of the Internet and the explosion of social media, tribes are no longer limited by the barriers of time, cost or geography. Now you can get groups of ten or ten thousand or ten million people from all over the world who are connected to each other, and who care about their iPhones, or living like Jesus, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming.

And all this is good and exciting and wonderful stuff. But the killer question Godin poses in his book is:

Who is going to lead us?

According to Godin, while the Web can do amazing things, it cannot provide leadership. That still has to come from individuals - people like you and I who have a passion for something and who want to make a difference.

And if you think leadership is for other people, think again.

In fact, never before has it been easier for regular people like you and I to lead. All the tools are at our fingertips. All we need is the desire to change things, the ability to connect a tribe, and the willingness to lead.

Throughout the book Godin pleads with his readers to step-up and lead. He says that if you ignore the opportunity, you risk turning into a “sheepwalker” – someone who fights to protect the status quo at all costs, never asking if obedience is doing you (or your organization or your church or the world) any good.

Ultimately this book has made a significant impact on me in how I view community and leadership, and made me think (really think) about the opportunities I have been given to lead. Whether it’s by writing another blog post, preaching a message, or meeting with a bunch of friends.

Stepping up to lead isn’t easy, but it’s easier than you think. What are you waiting for?

Becoming Human

This is a guest post by Kevin Light that really moved me.

I followed him as he walked away from the crowd to the bottom of the garden. He stood there with his face in his hands, sobbing. I put my arms around his shoulders and I held on through the waves of grief that wracked his body.

“There’s only so much superficial crap you can take,” he said.

“Why do they talk like that? They’re adults, with degrees and successful careers. They drive cars. They buy houses. Why, then, must they talk such meaningless junk? Especially at a time like this.”

As we stood in silence, his question hung between us.

Eventually I replied, “They may have degrees and successful careers, Joe. They may own cars and buy houses. They may look and act adult. But perhaps they talk in this meaningless, superficial way, especially at a time like this, because they are not as skilled at being human as they are at those other things.”

Joe’s very small child had died in his arms just a few days before as he desperately tried to resuscitate her.

Now family and friends had gathered for the funeral. Well-meaning people had come in love to bring comfort and consolation. Some brought flowers, others brought food, most brought cards. It was brave of them to come because it was a very tough place to be: so much brokenness and no way to fix it.

But that is where the clumsiness lay – some of the people tried to fix it, to make it less sore.

“You’re young and can have more children. God gave you this because you can cope with it. She was an old soul and was just here for a while until her job here was done etc. etc.”

These may be common responses, but Joe’s right, they are superficial and meaningless. Try them on for size the next time your life breaks, and let us all know how that works out for you!

The bottom line is that if we are going to become skillful at being human we need to develop more than degrees and careers, and acquire more than money, cars and houses.

If we are to become human we will need to learn how to sit with pain without trying to fix it, or go around it, or smooth it over. And that will be difficult, sometimes impossibly difficult, but it will refine us, and define us, and give us lives of courage and integrity. It will give us gravity and significance as human beings.

As Alan Paton said, “All who are mature, whether young or old, accept suffering as inseparable from life. I cannot even conceive that life could have any meaning without suffering. There would certainly be no music, no theatre, no literature, no art.”

If you want to give somebody a lighter spirit when they are in pain, you will need to have the courage to sit with them when there is nothing to say, and say nothing. To get that right you will need to first enter the place of your own brokenness and sit there too.

“When the heart
Is cracked or broken
Do not clutch it
Let the wound lie open
Let the wind
From the good old sea blow in
To bathe the wound with salt
And let it sting.
Let a stray dog lick it
Let a bird lean in the hole and sing
A simple song like a tiny bell
And let it ring.” - Michael Leunig

Keeping It Simple in 2012

“A simple life in the fear of God is better than a rich life with a ton of headaches” – Proverbs 15:6

I’ve shared a lot on this blog about simplifying your life, but here’s the problem when it comes to trying to keep things simple: It’s really hard!

It seems life tends to move towards complexity. It keeps handing us more and more stuff to worry about. More responsibility. More complications. More balls to juggle. And unfortunately our fast-paced, “always-on-always-connected” culture isn’t helping.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The good news is that we can change. That even though we live in a world that is growing ever more complex, it is still quite possible, and actually not as difficult as we might think, to keep things simple in 2012. Here’s how:

1) Filter

Learning to filter starts by giving up the fiction that you have to be on top of everything. Many “good” things may come your way in 2012, but filtering is about about choosing the best over the good. This means you have to learn to say “No”. It means learning to protect your time, and being intentional in how you choose to spend that precious time. It’s about setting your priorities, and putting first things first.

2) Forget

Forgetting is about giving yourself downtime to rest and recover. It’s about daring to slow down in a world that is speeding up. It’s about making a conscious choice to stop caring about certain things: Like everyone else’s opinion of you, or the things you have no control over. It’s also about giving yourself permission to let go of, or eliminate, those things in your life that ultimately are not helping you get where you’re going.

At this time of year people often talk about New Year’s Resolutions – those things you are going to do in 2012. But my question for you is rather, “What are you NOT going to do this year?” What are you going to forget?

3) Focus

Focusing is about knowing where you want to be, or rather who you want to be. It’s about having a plan and a vision for your life and setting your eyes to that plan. It’s about starting with the end in mind, and understanding that which matters most.

Now, in my opinion, the thing that matters most is Jesus.

In fact, I believe that if we truly want to simplify in 2012, then we must turn our focus to the person of Jesus. The man who modeled divine simplicity in everything He did and said. Who placed value not in temporary things, but in ultimate things. Things like people, and relationships, and family, and friendships, and kindness, and compassion, and justice, and peace. These were the things that mattered to Jesus, and He never lost sight of it.

And so, as you learn to FILTER, FORGET, and FOCUS in 2012, may you know God’s love and grace in your life, and may you be filled with a great sense of peace that comes from Him.