Beauty Surrounding Duty

The latest book I am reading, "Counsel from the Cross", has me pausing and pondering and I thought I would process out loud; listen in if you'd like.

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. ~Eph. 5:1

When you read that verse what words really stuck out to you. Be honest. Your initial thought; place it in your mind. If you're like me be imitators got there first (which quickly translated to just imitate, and then must imitate).

I am afraid that we are designed to process in such a way as to filter out the familiar. All too often we hasten through life. Yes, in our haste we waste. Our senses are dulled: we myopically look without really seeing, experience busily bifurcated hearing without listening, rush to eat without tasting, necessarily breathe without smelling, and customarily touch without feeling. We load shed the familiar in our frenzy and it all fades while we focus on our litany of functions.

Our faith, our very relationship with the living God, the lover of our souls, is no different. If we spend anytime in the Word or prayer (and that is a big IF), we will likely leave each block-checking session with a tidy little take-away list of do's and don'ts. And so the Gospel goes. It just fades; relegated to the white noise of the "already known" and "fully understood". After all we have important things to do.

But, back to our verse. Take another look: what do you see? what do you hear? Ah, did you catch those words - "as beloved children"? Our identity! The very thing that informs every other thing. Look again. There is that easily forgotten, but immensely important "Therefore" (when you see the word therefore always ask what is it there for ;-). In the context of the first few chapters of the book of Ephesians it is a reminder informing us that in light of our justification, having been fully forgiven . . . Amazing, huh? The "therefore" guides the kind of imitating we are to be about. Not just some generic Godly-character-building evolution, but forgiving others as we have been forgiven in Christ. Do you see how easy it is to miss such important things as "therefore" in our filtering frenzy? Metaphorically, we ate our daily bread, but failed to taste. We distilled the Gospel in our desire to create a to-do. When the Gospel goes, what is left is the bitter (like that "poor man's espresso" left in the wardroom coffee pot that was simmering all night) self-awareness of us, our short-comings and the things that must be done to compensate. And so the challenge: take an operational pause; listen, see, taste, smell and feel the Gospel beauty surrounding duty.

Destroyed By Duplicity

The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity. ~Proverbs 11: 3



Duplicity: the contradictory doubleness of thought, speech, or action. Integrity (the antonym of duplicity): the quality or state of being complete, whole or undivided.

Duplicity/Destruction: these two words have been ringing in my ears for days. I am a duplicitous creature; I know this. And if you are honest with yourself you do too. We all do. In those quiet moments in the dark, as you lie awake, you know that your are not truly what you pretend to be all day in front of others. My life, all of me, lacks complete wholeness; an integrity without divide. So does yours. Are you afraid? I am. Of being found out. Of being caught in the lie. I do not desire duplicity, but I am incapable of . . . integrity . . . completely. Is there hope for wholeness?

And this wisdom word from Proverbs proves true as evidenced by the leadership failures of some of our Navy's Commanding Officers. But, I don't want to go there, at least not for too long. Because duplicity is my problem as well. So I wonder, will it destroy me (or you)?

Integrity or Duplicity: choose today. Will you be guided uprightly or digress a bit closer toward destruction?

Any Want

"Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God."

That TV show.
That amount of drink.
That website.
That music.
That view of the work culture.
That ambition.
That position.
That "to do" list.
That mirror.
That people-praise.
That reputation.

My heart . . . an idol factory!

"Son, whatever weakens your reasoning, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes away your relish for spiritual things; in short, if anything increases the authority and power of the flesh over the Spirit, then that to you becomes sin, however good it is in itself." ~Susanna Wesley (Mother of Charles and John)

"My identity as a sinner daily confronts me with how deep and pervasive my need actually is. My identity as a child of grace confronts me with how expansive my potential actually is." ~ P. D. Tripp

Junk In The Trunk

Matthew 6: 19-34 contains some very revealing and convicting words from Jesus. The Word is a mirror. Jesus talks about treasure. We all have a metaphorical treasure box that we daily place things in. Jesus ask me what treasure is in my trunk? I'm in a bad place lately where I've been pursuing the wrong treasure for the wrong person and the wrong kingdom.

Paul Tripp's comments on the passage:

"Christ's words alert us to the fact that either we are living for the physical treasures of the created world, which have a very short shelf-life, or we are living for the eternal satisfaction that can only be found in the treasures of God's Kingdom. This is why we cannot afford to live mindlessly, oblivious to the war of desire that rages in our hearts. God's accepting grace and transforming love are eternal treasures that will never pass away. They really are the only things in life worth living for. (Do I believe that?) When you live for the Kingdom of God, when God's purposes on earth become more precious and important to you than your purposes, you live for something that will never end. . . You see life always involves worship. Our lives revolve around the thing that has captured our attention and desire. We make continual offerings to it, sacrifices of time and energy and focus and resources, celebrating and holding up this thing to which we have ascribed such life-dominating value. This is true no matter what it is we worship: career (check) or wealth or comfort (check) or entertainment or reputation (check) or relationships or self-protection . . . or Christ (downcheck) . Whatever it is,we celebrate it."

The Great Tragedy

“One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against ourselves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practice the very antithesis of these principles. How often are our lives characterized by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds! We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practice the very opposite of the democratic creed. We talk passionately about peace, and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then we tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

The Path to Glory

Still borrowing from JT, who borrowed from Powlison, who borrowed from Warfield.

Read the below with your leadership lenses on. Imagine if more leaders fit the description. What would happen if you (or I) did?

. . . . . on to GLORY . . . . .

David Powlison says that the last page or so of B. B. Warfield’s sermon “Imitating the Incarnation” “offers the most riveting description of the goal of Christian living that I’ve ever read.”

Here is an excerpt:
It is not to this that Christ’s example calls us.
He did not cultivate self, even His divine self: He took no account of self.
He was not led by His divine impulse out of the world, driven back into the recesses of His own soul to brood morbidly over His own needs, until to gain His own seemed worth all sacrifice to Him.
He was led by His love for others into the world, to forget Himself in the needs of others, to sacrifice self once for all upon the altar of sympathy.
Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world. And self-sacrifice will lead us, His followers, not away from but into the midst of men.
Wherever men suffer, there will we be to comfort.
Wherever men strive, there will we be to help.
Wherever men fail, there will be we to uplift.
Wherever men succeed, there will we be to rejoice.
Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows: it means absorption in them.
It means forgetfulness of self in others.
It means entering into every man’s hopes and fears, longings and despairs: it means manysidedness of spirit, multiform activity, multiplicity of sympathies.
It means richness of development.
It means not that we should live one life, but a thousand lives,—binding ourselves to a thousand souls by the filaments of so loving a sympathy that their lives become ours.
It means that all the experiences of men shall smite our souls and shall beat and batter these stubborn hearts of ours into fitness for their heavenly home.
It is, after all, then, the path to the highest possible development, by which alone we can be made truly men. Not that we shall undertake it with this end in view. This were to dry up its springs at their source. We cannot be self-consciously self-forgetful, selfishly unselfish.
Only, when we humbly walk this path, seeking truly in it not our own things but those of others, we shall find the promise true, that he who loses his life shall find it.
Only, when, like Christ, and in loving obedience to His call and example, we take no account of ourselves, but freely give ourselves to others, we shall find, each in his measure, the saying true of himself also: “Wherefore also God hath highly exalted him.”
The path of self-sacrifice is the path to glory.

Gone Before . . .

This weekend as the ship entered port after nearly a month at sea I prepared to stand duty only to be relieved this morning and proceed to enjoy one of the best breakfasts in recent memory (you do not know good food until you’ve been at sea for a time without it!). It gave me time to think and be thankful. I have been consuming an amazing book during this last underway, having desired to read it for far too long, entitled "Last Stand of a Tin Can Sailor." In the midst of the types of operations we were conducting it was a surreal experience to think on this narrative. The story is about the Battle of Samar during World War II and the men who fought in it. Reflecting on the amazing heroism of the Sailors and Officers on those ships and in those aircraft on that day have stirred awe in my belly and tears in my eyes. So, I think of them and I pray today for those on land and sea that are doing the Nation's work as instruments of restoration and relief in the broken places of world. Consider for a moment if those men and women of another generation and of this one did not do what they did. Would you, would all of us, be able to enjoy our breakfast this morning in the same way? They did, and they continue to do, what they did so that we can continue to do what we do all the while too often taking it all for granted. For those who have stood the watch I rise up, stand at attention and salute in humble gratefulness.