Sunday, February 16, 2003

Preparing for the Darkness Google Search It "Never doubt in the darkness what God has shown you in the light." In order to do this fully one needs to keep a record of how God has been faithful.  Today Pastor John shared in Sunday School how a pastor in Portland had kept a record of the ways God had been faithful to him and he had all the handwritten notes bound before giving them to his son for a wedding present.            ... Priceless! 11:18:32 PM   []    comment []

God Reveals More of Himself Through A Caring Church Google Search It We had a rather different church service this morning... different for me that is: Levi is a fourteen year old boy that attends my church with three siblings and his parents.  On Wednesday he was not well so his mom took him to the emergency clinic.  They said it was just a cold and sent him home.  By Thursday, however, the situation had deteriorated seriously so his mom took him to the hospital.  It turns out that his heart was enlarged two to three times.  After moving him to Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane they decided he needed a VAD.  After surgery the situation deteriorated even more and the kidneys and liver gave up.  Anyway, in short it is a bad situation that is looking worse. While processing this I realized more of what I need to work on when it comes to my family (see Finding Accountability for My Family). If a serious crisis occurred, would I know how to care for Elisabeth? I have often wondered about this and my conclusion is that this would present a serious risk to our marriage. Not knowing what to do, however, I have essentially decided that since I can't control Elisabeth's response, it would be mostly up to her as to whether we could make it through. Today, however, I realized (well, it is too obvious to just realize, more like I decided to own the fact) that my response could be a key factor in determining what kind of healing could take place after tragic occurrence. I, therefore, need to learn how to care for her better. But how? Hmmm.... This doesn't seem like something I could just read a book about. What was cool was the response of my church.  This morning the entire service (both since there are two) was dedicated to prayer for Levi.  It really was amazing to see how the church came together as a family to care and pray.  As a philosophy major I have wrestled many times with the problem of evil.  The most satisfying answer I have come across was in a book called Waiting: Finding Hope When God Seems Silent by Ben Patterson.  He talks about the evil that Job experiences and shows how Job cries out to God and asks why?  God responds by overwhelming Job with the magnitude of his God is and reminding Job of who he is.  Ben Patterson presents this powerfully.  He notes, however, that "God has not attempted to answer any of Job's questions.  He barely even acknowledges them.  He offers no explanations of his suffering, no theories as to how God's justice and power can coexist in a world filled with evil and injustice.  All he does is confront Job with his ignorance, and that is sufficient for Job.  He receives it as an answer." Clearly, this is not the response sought by the average philosophy major and yet I find it compelling.  Each time I am confronted with the problem of evil, not from an intellectual standpoint but really confronted with real life examples, I find that God doesn't answer the questions of why, instead he reveals more of who he is and who I am and this somehow causes the question to dissipate.  Essentially what happens is that I realize how insignificant my question is in light of how great my God is.  Doubt gives way to faith as I am confronted with the greatness of my Lord and Savior. The case of Levi is no different.  True enough, I don't know Levi personally (although by the end of the service I sure felt and wept like I did) yet the reality of his situation raised the problem of bad things happening in a world controlled by a good God.  This time, God used the church to reveal more of himself.  I saw the family of God crowd around the family of Levi and weep with them.  It was truly amazing.  How do people live without families like that? (During the service one person shared about how David dealt with the death of his son in the old testament.  David was distraught to the extreme when he heard that his son was going to die.  However, once it happened David got up and began living life normally.  Essentially, David did everything he could to try and keep his son with him down on earth.  Once that didn't happen, however, David realized that it was now just a matter of time before he went to join his son in heaven.  To deal with things like this we need to have an eternal perspective.  Not a very helpful response when we are in the throws of crisis but still comforting after a time.) 7:05:46 PM   []    comment []

Living on the Edge Google Search It "If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space." ... Accept the Challenge!!!! 6:56:49 PM   []    comment []

Finding Accountability in Spokane Google Search It Perhaps one of the most serious hindrances to my spiritual growth since moving out to Spokane has be the lack of an accountability group.  I have been keenly aware of this for some time now and after reading a chapter from The Man In The Mirror by Patrick Morley entitled Accountability: The Missing Link I have been reminded not only of the value that an accountability group or partner but the necessity of one.  There are essentially three parts of my life that I need to be living a more examined life.  Firstly, there is my spiritual life.  For a while I was doing great with at least having daily quite times.  The problem, however, was that although I was reading good Christian literature, I was not spending time directly in God's word.  Given my life these past 3 months, just having a daily quite time would be far better than the once a month occurrences that I currently experience.  I need the accountability to get back to regular quite times and spend to spend more time in the Word. Secondly, there is the area of my family.  I am truly very grateful that my marriage is so much better than a year ago.  A lot of this can be attributed to changes in Elisabeth as she settles down in Spokane.  However, our marriage can be a lot better in ways that I control.  I need a lot of improvement in the area of expressing my love for her.  What does it mean to love her tenderly?  How 'bout loving her in a crisis?  Also, Elisabeth has clearly identified that I fail miserably in the "supporting her" area.  I don't know how to be supportive of her when it comes to dealing with my family especially.  Supporting her is clearly something I need to learn as I am not even sure what it means.  What makes it especially confusing is how to be supportive of her when I don't necessarily agree with her position.  Another problem is the degree to which my work is spilling over into my home life at unacceptable levels.  (Having work overflow into home life is acceptable for short, infrequent bursts but absolutely unacceptable when it begins to become the norm.)  My work is also impacting my patience with Benjamin.  He is 2.5 years and needs lots of attention.  Although his acting up is probably typical I think it can be reduced significantly if he got more attention.  Often he misbehaves because he is board.   I have set myself the goal of devoting Saturday morning to time with him but that time is often neglected. This brings me to the last critical area of my life, work.  As you can probably gather from the paragraph above, my work is consuming too much of my time.  I am undoubtedly working to much and not maintaining a reasonable balance between how much I work.  One of the key problems is a lack of direction.  Rather than managing my time proactively and selecting how I should spend it based on an examination of my priorities (See Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey), I am being interrupt driven by whatever people ask.  As a result I am doing nothing well and instead I am running around like wildly.  I need to identify what are the priorities at work and then accept or reject requests of my time and energy based on these priorities.  This has been very difficult for me as I am not entirely sure what my priorities are.  Aim at nothing, however, and you are sure to achieve it.  The first step to gaining control of my work is to seek wise counsel about what my priorities are.  Once this has been determined I need someone to ask me the hard questions as to whether I am working according to those priorities.  Lastly, I would sincerely like to find someone that is willing to speak frankly, honestly and lovingly with me in pointing out the areas of concern at work that I don't know about.  Ideally this should be a Christian who I don't work for and who doesn't work for me.  I am really intrigued by InterVarsity reagional director Jim Lundgren's idea of an advisory council that meets once a quarter to discuss both personal and work related items. 7:19:12 AM   []    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Mark Michaelis.