The Habit of Service

We've been doing a series the last few weeks called 14 Habits of Highly Effective Disciples. This week we come to the habit, or perhaps discipline if you're so inclined, of service.

Now, most folks who have been associated with the Christian community for any length of time won't be surprised that serving others is something that Christians would encourage. I suspect the actual practice of serving others might be a bit spotty, and I'm sure there's lots to criticize, but the fact remains...serving others is near the core of living as a Christian.

So why do we serve more poorly than we might like? Perhaps it has to do with us taking an overly simple view of service. The easiest way for us to serve is to give away something we have in abundance; time, money, accumulated stuff, etc. We feel good about helping and maybe simplify our lives a bit in the process. Not a thing wrong with that, but I think there's more to service.

I think the answer might be in looking at the difficulty of being served ourselves. Most people are uncomfortable with accepting charity from others. Maybe it's our cultural upbringing, or maybe it's simple pride. We like to think we can do everything on our own. Given this predisposition, how would someone serve us best? Maybe if I can figure out the answer to that question I can serve others more effectively. After all, serving others is more about the needs of the other than it is about the service I give.

Profound Contentment

It's interesting that we are transitioning from a few weeks looking at how to achieve balance in our lives to a study of Paul's letter to the church at Philippi. What's interesting about this is that Philippians is a letter about living vigorously and joyfully.

Joy was described as "profound contentment, serenity, and peace." Surely this is the result of somehow achieving balance! I wonder. The ideas we're going to encounter are things like humility, unity, self-sacrifice, pressing toward the goal. lack of anxiety, and the ability to do all things.

Maybe we've got it backwards. Maybe balance comes from profound contentment. In Paul's words, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation." This is a secret worth knowing!

Read the whole book of Philippians in one sitting like you would read a letter from a friend. It's about 15 minutes long. Do it a couple of times this week and see what seeps in.

Balance

We talked today about how to achieve "balance" in life. This is clearly a big issue for many of us, so I think it's worth a few sentences on what that means. What is a balanced life, is it something worth striving for, and how do I know if I've got one?

One thing balance might mean is figuring out how to get everything done without getting stressed out over it. Our world puts a lot of demands on us. Phone, email, work, kids, TV, house, spouse, cars, career, the economy, world peace, the environment... the things on our to-do list seems endless. And on top of all this, I go to church and find out I'm supposed to study the Bible and pray without ceasing! So, there's lot competing for our time and lots of stress over not getting it all done.

Maybe balance means a literal balancing of time and activities. Equal time for the various slices of my life. It makes sense that the more important things ought to get more time that the less important, so some kind of a prioritizing scheme seems to be needed. For example, people talk about wanting to spend more time with their families and less time at work. Nobody seems to suggest spending ALL their time at anything.

Balance might simply mean figuring out exactly what to do from this great list of expectations. It might mean picking the "best" of all the things I might do. But isn't this just another thing to do? Now I need to find the best thing to do before I can do anything. No stress there! There's some truth to this in that I clearly don't want to neglect important responsibilities to do meaningless things (well, actually, I do that pretty regularly!).

When we talk about balance in our lives, I think we mean it in this prioritizing-of-activities way. Some things are more important, and we want to be doing the important things in life... but does this lead to a balanced life? I suspect it does not.

How about Paul, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther, Moses, Abraham, Job, or Jesus? Were any of their lives balanced? I've been trying to thing of people worthy of admiration, real role models, who lived balanced lives and I'm not coming up with anybody. Great people seem to be pretty focused, single-minded and unbalanced about life. They throw themselves into one big thing completely.

What is it God wants of us? Balance? That's not a word I would choose to sum up our calling as Christians. God doesn't want part of us, he wants all of us. He doesn't want to be our top priority. He wants to be our ONLY priority. That's about as far from balance as you can get! God doesn't want me to have a balanced life, far from it.

We all know this, so why do I still feel uncomfortable when I spend too much time at work, not enough time with the kids, and minimal time in Bible study? Why do I try to get my life in balance? Maybe it's because I'm still trying to have it all. I want what I want, and I also want a relationship with God. I want everything, so I strive to get it all in balance somehow. I wonder if that's even possible.

In John 17:13-18, Jesus says that we are "in the world" but not "of the world." He says that he doesn't want to take us out of the world even though the world hates us because he has sent us into the world. I'm here on a mission from God... The Blues Bothers had it right all along! I'm not here to live a balanced life where I get a nice family, a good job, an early retirement, and everything I deserve. Maybe I should be trying to figure out what my mission is, not the go-into-all-the-world-and-make-disciples mission, but MY mission. Read the first few paragraphs of The Purpose Driven Life:

"It's not about you. The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions."

Maybe my feeling of being out of balance comes from too much "of" and not enough "in." That's what's really out of balance.

A Thought I Can Call My Own?

Have you ever come up with an idea you thought was truly original? It seems to me that this has happened to me more frequently than normal in the past few months. The problem is, the Internet stands ready to show me how unoriginal and outdated my "original" thought actually is. Even this potentially-original blog topic has been endlessly discussed (for example, here, here, and here). There's even a seven-step process to have your own original thoughts.

Of course, this is not an Internet phenomenon. Have a look at Ecclesiastes 1, especially verses 9 and 10:

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

Wow, talk about a lack of originality! My "novel" topic was discussed thousands of years ago. It's almost enough to make a person surrender to the sound-bite mentality of our modern world. Almost.

We don't spend enough time on any one topic to really think deeply. Most of our understanding of things is superficial, even of the important issues of our day. How many people in this country spent more than 15 minutes thinking about how they were going to vote? How many Christians have thought much about abortion, euthanasia, war, salvation, predestination, the nature of God, or any of a dozen other thorny issues? Not enough of us discipline ourselves to make the time required for deep thoughts.

Paul warned Timothy about this tendency in us in 1 Timothy 4,

Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

So, I guess I'll continue to search for my original idea even though I know it is unlikely to exist. The purpose is the looking, not the finding.

Children and Perspective

We had the grandkids over for a couple of days this past weekend, and I'm reminded again of the difference between my normal view of the world and theirs. Somehow the things that worry me are invisible to them. I don't have a lot of profound wisdom to share on the topic, but here are a few random observations:

• Right now is really all that matters. Regret about past sins or worries about tomorrow's problems doesn't mean much.
• The world is a generally interesting and amazing place with lots of cool things to do.
• Some of the really great things to do are completely made up in your head. No "stuff" needed.
• Some things are funny every time you do them, over and over again.
• Surprises are often fun.
• Making people laugh is something worth working at.

I don't know if much of this has anything to do with Jesus' assertion that "...the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." (Matthew 19:13-15).

Just thinkin'.

Spending Money

Did you ever notice, that one of the fastest ways to end a conversation with someone you don't know well is to ask them:

1. How much money did you make last year?
2. How much money did you give to the church last year?
3. So, what did you pay for this house anyway?

We're very touch and private about money stuff. We're fine talking about it in general, but not the specifics. Most of the time when we're like that it's because we're hiding something. Most of the time because we're ashamed of our behavior. So what is it about money that we're ashamed of?

I think we all have a standard that we're not living up to...

"I know I should give 10% to the church, but I've got so many bills to pay I just can't manage it right now."

"I know I shouldn't be eating out 12 meals a week, but it's just so much easier than shopping and cooking and washing dishes."

"I know I should be helping those less fortunate than me in _______, but I'm a little short this month."

I think maybe you get the picture. Can you really tell what my priorities are by looking at my bank records?

Would you be comfortable if the church posted the giving records of its members?

Why or why not?

Priorities and Compulsion

An appropriate topic for the first post in 3+ months? I think so!

In the time since the last post here, I have often marveled at the people who seem to be able to keep up a regular schedule of updates to their blogs. In some cases it's almost a stream-of-consciousness thing, so perhaps there's not much effort, but for many of the blogs in this sidebar, there is substantive content every time. How do they do it? In 1 Corinthians 9:16-17 Paul says that he is "compelled to preach" and doesn't really do it voluntarily. Maybe that's the blogger's secret as well?

In any case, the central message from the last half of 1 Corinthians is that we need to get our priorities right and focus on what's important. I think this is probably the biggest challenge facing our generation. We live in a time when there is no quiet. Our world constantly SCREAMS at us for attention. We are constantly assailed by good, important, worthwhile things that really need our attention RIGHT NOW!

This is why churches face such difficulty in finding teachers, choir members, and other volunteers. This is why no one goes to Sunday evening worship anymore. This is why so few Christians spend any time in Bible study. We simply do not need another "activity" to fill our time. There are too many things we're ignoring already for us to add one more.

Why would I ever ignore the important and urgent things in my life in order to spend time in Bible study or prayer? There's only one reason I can think of - because I was compelled to do it. I need to understand that this faith I profess makes demands on my behavior.

God has a call on my life and on yours. We are compelled to obey, or admit that our faith is a sham.