Devotionals - Are you devoted to "doing" or to being with God.

Last Sunday at Jesus Culture Sacramento, Cody Williams spoke about being less focused on doing  and more focused on Jesus who will do the "doing" through you. It was a great message about putting relationship with Jesus first. After all, everything good flows out of that!

I've recently had a revelation along similar lines about how I approach "devotionals."

I've been turned off by the "doing" and religious nature of devotionals for a while now. When I hear the word "devotional" I immediately connect it to religious obligation. The word is loaded with expectations and visions of reading the Bible, reading a snippet from "Our Daily Bread," glancing through Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (usually while, ummm, resting), or getting on my knees for a certain amount of time to petition God for a laundry list of request.

While I've known this approach wasn't working for me, I couldn't justify my experience with the need to spend time with God daily. If spending time with God each day didn't look like a devotional, what did it looked like? Did it mean spending more time praying? That sounded closer to the answer, but that still seemed to return me to a focus on some sort of "doing" again.

The encouraging conclusion I came to was that I just need to make space for my relationship with God. Once I starting making space for God, without specific expectations about the form, then I allowed myself to encounter God however he wanted to show up.

I had to learn, and am still learning, how to stop constantly talking or doing in order to just rest in God's presence. When I make space for God, one day I find myself resting in and meditating on his goodness. Another day, I'm praying for a friend. The next day, I'm journaling or writing a poem. The key I think is to

... just

...make

...the

...space.

The Beauty of His Created Ones

We long to escape and revel in the beauty of God’s glorious creation: to hike through the majesty of mountains, to soak in the restorative power of the ocean. How many poems have been written, how many photos taken or memories savored of the nature that surrounds us? Are we not also His creation?

Jesus said the crux of following him is to love God and love others.  If I am honest, I find the first commandment much easier than the second. In fact, I find loving the Earth much easier than loving the other people who inhabit it.  I can usually find kindness in my heart for another person, but true, genuine love? I can’t remember the last time I sat in wonderment at the beauty and miracle of another human. (Other than my adorable one-year-old boy. When he’s sleeping. Let’s be real.)

Instead of finding that place in my spirit where I can truly praise God for another person, especially one who is not friend or family, I find myself in comparison and judgment.  Let me tell you, comparison and judgment are the opposite of love. Living in that place is awful. As I know God’s commandment and desire to love His created ones, I have tried to stop those thoughts.  I’ve listened to sermons on contentment, confidence, and killing comparison, but do you know how difficult it is to stop doing something you’re focusing on not doing?  Don’t eat that cookie; don’t eat that cookie. Dang it, I ate the cookie.  Don’t compare yourself to her, don’t.  Therefore, I instead have to focus on what I do want more of: love.

When I realized that I have more praise in my heart for the redwoods than for the person standing in front of me in line at the supermarket, I grieved. Yes, God created the redwoods for His glory and for our joy, but how much more than the redwoods does He love His child, the one who is standing in front of me at the supermarket? A parent’s heart is so happy when someone else also loves and celebrates her child.  Can we love and celebrate God’s created ones?  Can we revel in the glorious wonder of another human? Of another human who doesn’t look like we do?  Of another human who disagrees with our perspective? 

So now, I practice. I practice imagining how God thinks of His child, the one who is standing in front of me at the supermarket.  I imagine how her Father loves her smile, and I smile back.  I worship God for her uniqueness.  I ask her a question and listen intently to what she says because her voice is important and what she has to say reflects her beautiful mind.  I practice hiking through the majesty of humanity.  I practice soaking in the restorative power of another individual soul.  Through practice, I have a new palate to savor the most beautiful nature that surrounds me.

The Meaning of Gathering Together, Part 1 | The Journey

In the last 16 years or so, wrestling with the meaning, importance, and "how to" of "being the church" has been one of the most significant journeys in my life. It's also an area I've recently experienced some of the greatest growth and freedom in, making it a natural topic to start my first post with.

I've gone from leading worship and youth group, to not wanting anything to do with institutional church, to reluctantly attending, and, most recently, to joyfully participating. I know I'm not the only one from my generation to experience frustrations and confusions with this mystery we call "church", so I hope some of my personal experiences and revelations will resonate and encourage you in your journey, wherever you are along the way!

As a close friend to several pastor's kids and as a pastor's kid myself (in addition to my own gluttony for punishment), I've had the opportunity(?) to be part of five different church plants in the last 16 years. During that time I've experienced the rewards of growth, the monotony of packing and unloading equipment and chairs every Sunday, the disappointment of seeing personal interests prevail over the influence of the Holy Spirit, the frustrations of low attendance, and the pressure of needing to appear "on" every Sunday, even when my heart wasn't in it.

I've experienced God in powerful ways on Sunday mornings, been encouraged by amazing words of truth, and enjoyed significant prayer and fellowship with friends (not to mention fantastic potlucks and church picnics). At the same time, I've been betrayed by imperfect pastors (go figure), disillusioned by church politics, and turned off by the rituals and religious nature of it all. At some point in my experiences with church, the later began to outweigh the former. I started to question the point of it all. I started asking if there was a better way. What did Jesus really want us to do? What did the author of Hebrews mean when he or she said not to "neglect our meeting together?" (Hebrews 10:25).

In order to find the answers to these questions, I regularly pestered God for direction and clarification, had discussions with friends that had similar questions, looked to the scriptures, and read books. I genuinely wanted to be true to what it meant to be the body of Christ but didn't know what that looked like anymore or how to get there. I knew I needed to gather with other believers, but I was confused and frustrated.  

There had to be a particular leadership hierarchy, organizational style, location, vision statement, and meeting schedule that was the "God ordained way" to do church, and I was determined to find it! Maybe it was just to throw all the old notions of church out the window and turn to something completely "organic." Maybe it was to go to the other extreme and join the Roman Catholic Church, the oldest Christian institution in existence. In the next post I'll share the greatest revelation I received about it all and how that revelation led to new freedom as a member of the Body of Christ, as well as a number of other exciting discoveries!

-Jared