The Advent Calendar of Listening--Day 17

LISTENING TO YOUR FILTER OF BELIEF

'Tis the season when we're grappling with whether Jesus IS or ISN'T...who God and the Bible say He is.

As a young teen, I asked my father how he reconciled evolution and the Bible. He confidently expressed that he believed God set evolution in motion. Something just didn't ring right so I pondered...

My dad was a highly respected civil servant in a small Southern city. He said God first, then family, then work--and lived it. Twenty years after his death, people other than family and friends still remember his impact on their lives and the city he loved.

For me, however, the power of his life came into focus three weeks before his death, when he told my brother he always knew he needed to do "something" with Jesus but refused. He lived his whole life--a good life--without the filter of Jesus. How could he see John 1:3:  Everything was created through him [Jesus]; nothing--not one thing!--came into being without him (MSG)?  How could my father not be tempted to "add" evolution?

We all live life through a filter of belief. It is a great time of year to listen to our own filter and decide if it should be the filter of Jesus.

The Advent Calendar of Listening--Day 16

LISTENING TO SUDDEN

Yesterday SUDDEN struck a man in the prime of his God-serving life by way of a motorcycle crash. He leaves behind the sunniest, laugh-till-she-cries kind of person who loved being his wife.

SUDDEN always interrupts life and love. Everything is moving along somewhat predictably, some good, some not-so-good, and then SUDDEN rearranges everything.

SUDDEN bad: death, diagnosis, disease, derailment of finances, destruction, desertion.
SUDDEN good: miraculous healing, unexpected bounty, return of a prodigal child, unexpected expression of love missing before.

Yes, SUDDEN always interrupts life and love. But it interrupts something else: our relationship with God. SUDDEN rearranges our view of God, our feelings toward God, whether SUDDEN struggle or SUDDEN praise.

One hundred years from now, those of us reading this will be in our eternity life. Could SUDDEN be one of God's many ways to bring us to each other now so we can spend this life together searching for Him?

The Advent Calendar of Listening--Day 15

LISTENING TO DREAMS

In Matthew 2, it appears God chooses dreams as His means of sparing the young life of Jesus.

Matthew 2:12: He warns the wise men, or Magi, through a dream to return home without informing King Herod of the whereabouts of Jesus.

Matthew 2:13: He warns Joseph through a dream to immediately escape to Egypt with Mary and Jesus to avoid the impending slaughter by Herod of all children ages two and under. Herod's goal was to make sure Jesus was among those killed.

Matthew 2:19: He gives Joseph the all-clear through a dream to return to Israel upon Herod's death.

Matthew 2:22: He gives Joseph further instruction through a dream to settle specifically in the district of Galilee in the town of Nazareth.

Four times in one chapter, God directs through dreams critical, life-saving activity. Does He speak to us today through dreams?

If He needs to--YES

If He wants to--YES

If He chooses to--YES

But remember, those directed by dreams in Matthew 2 were saturated in worship of God, relationship with God, and submission of their will toward God.

Treat with care the gift of listening to dreams.

The Advent Calendar of Listening--Day 14

LISTENING TO THE QUOTIENT

Let's say you wake up at 6am. Imagine you go to bed at 10pm. If you sleep 8 hours, you are awake for 16--no heavy math there.

Now if we divide those 16 hours into 5-minute increments, we discover we have 192 (the quotient) 5-minute segments available to us every day.

Do you think God could have at least one of those 5-minute segments? Can we really say no to Him 192 times a day?

He's planning the biggest birthday party known to mankind--the one that reminds us that Jesus downgraded Himself to human stature to upgrade us to His spiritual stature.

If we give God one of those 192 segments, we give ourselves the gift of growth in God. Love yourself...love God.

The Advent Calendar of Listening--Day 13

RIGHT VS REAL: Jesus Listening

There is only one kind of listening that builds a bridge.

Angry parents enter my office (I am the principal). I have the details in advance and their child is genuinely in the wrong but the relationships between parents, teacher and student are clearly broken.

My choices? Cut off the parents early on in the conversation, stake out our rightness, impose consequences and let them be on their way.

Or...giving up my right position: allowing the parents complete freedom (minus profanity) to give me every detail of their view, receiving their very real anger, and listening carefully to how their thinking took them to their position. I do not interrupt, I do not fashion retorts in my head, I do my best to go completely to their "side" and view it from there.

The most amazing thing happens: when I join them on their side for those few precious minutes by listening in compassionate silence to their hurt and their thinking, they begin to trust me. In that new-formed trust, I have the privilege to pray for wisdom. Then, when their emotions are spent and they are waiting on my response, I honor them by truly understanding how they got "there" and offering ways to get to a solution that addresses the offense but makes the new "team" that of parents and teacher wanting what's right for the child.

Isn't this Jesus Listening? After all, He's always right but listens to our full range of emotions and arguments--in fact, encouraging that deep level of engagement with Him. When He fully listens, no matter how wrong we may be, we trust His love and best interest for us, and may even move toward His rightness.

The bridge is the solution, and it is only built one way...through trust earned by Jesus Listening.

The Advent Calendar of Listening--Day 12

THE OPTIONS ON THE TABLE

We are always, sometimes unknowingly, listening to the options on the table.

A young girl is struggling to stay alive. No, she's not terminal--she's hopeless, which is just as life-threatening. Every day her mind careens around curves that say, "Drive into that bridge" or "Take that bottle of pills." She hears other options, too, such as "Talk to that person you trust" or "Give yourself another day to find hope."

If we are not too far down the road of hopeless, and if we have the tiniest of moments in which to feed the strength of our mind, we may find we can actually take options off the table. Then, in a single moment of sturdy decision-making, we can say, "Taking my life is no longer an option."

Something significant seems to happen in the moment we are able to take an option off the table: it somehow loses its permission to be at work in our mind and even consume our thinking. It may come right back and we may have to repeat the action, over and over, but it can gradually lose its power to influence us.

Here is an everyday, less dramatic example: person 1 in the relationship has done everything he/she knows to do, even with counseling wisdom, to impact the relationship for the good. Person 2 simply refuses to engage. Person 1 finds himself/herself feeling as if he/she let person 2 down. We know this drill: beat oneself up for the failure in the relationship even though the other person is exercising emotional paralysis.

Can person 1 take "beating myself up and feeling like I let everyone down" off the table? I believe YES. Today, where you are hurting or hopeless, write down the options for action that are available to you. Are there any you can choose to remove?

Listen to the hope that can be found by taking options off the table.

The Advent Calendar of Listening--Day 11

OOPS--GOD LISTENS

Three-year-old Eden prays at bedtime, "Thank you, God, for making the ingredients to make toys." If that melts my heart, how much more does it melt God's heart?

How often do I offer words of thankfulness that profound, that simple to melt God's heart? How often do I complain about circumstances that are just plain hard to work through?

I love the Message translation of the Bible because for me it has the simplest yet most profound language. "Recover your dear early love," it says (Rev. 2:4). Isn't that what Eden hasn't lost (yet)?

"God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life" (Psalm 51:10). That is, shape my thinking into the fresh thankfulness that Eden still has.

So I say, Dear God, since You're listening no matter what I do, grow me up in responsibility but return me to an Eden heart in thankfulness and fresh eyes for You.