Month: July 2015

step by step

There is only one way to climb even the tallest mountain: one step at a time. There is only one way to swim across even the English Channel or a Great Lake: one stroke at a time. It is a basic part of our nature that we do everything we do by repeating one action over and over. I think one thought at a time. I type one letter at a time. And then I string them together. And then I edit them for coherence by going over them again, one word, one sentence at a time.

Repetition becomes habit and habit becomes nature. It’s not just that these repeated actions add up to what we do, they become who we are. They are what forms our nature. It’s also true that these repeated actions don’t just happen to us. We decide to do them. We choose to write or climb or swim or paint or strum. I’m sure you get the idea. If you want to become a guitar player, you know what to do: get a guitar and play it every day. You’ll play badly at first but you’ll get better and better as you play daily and then you’ll be a guitar player.

This process is as obvious as it sounds and yet there is one area of life where we tend to forget that this is how everything works for us humans. When it comes to character development (or moral development if you like), we all have things about ourselves we would like to improve. Too angry, too fearful, too stingy, too sarcastic, too lazy, too workaholic, etc. And most of the time we cycle between ignoring, trying to change all at once (we call these ‘resolutions’), failing, and stressing out over our badness/failure to change.

But we can only climb these inner mountains the same way we would climb Kilimanjaro: one step at a time. What’s more, we don’t have to climb alone. The Holy Spirit is our guide up our mountains. Take a little quiet time today and reflect on what part of your character you would most like to change right now. Think of one small step you could take in that direction. I’m confident the Spirit will help you think through this. Then do that one thing. Take that small step. Then do it again. And again. Eventually that will become part of who you are. It takes time and there are no shortcuts. But you can do it. The Spirit will help you. And you’ll love the view.

every breath you take

My wife Amy shared this idea with me the other day: since God is always with us and always listening to us, everything we say is in some sense a prayer. That’s a scary thought for some of us. It rings true to me though, both in my own experience and with the overarching theme of this blog, that our whole lives are marked by conversation with God. It’s also the presupposition behind the heart/breath prayers I wrote two years ago, that repeating key truths to God speaks them clearly to our souls and helps us live into the truth of them. I also heard a bit of a Joel Osteen sermon yesterday and he was pointing out that many times when we pray all we do is rehearse our problems and complain about them. God already knows what we need, so that sort of prayer-as-gripe-session isn’t a good habit to get into if it is the only active form of prayer we engage in. If we take a general lesson from the Psalms, we would give 1/3 of our prayer time each to worship, lament, and giving thanks for provision/restoration/forgiveness. And if we take the Lord’s Prayer as an outline for our own prayers, we would pray something like this:

  • worship God for being God
  •  ask for/submit to what God wants
  • ask for provision/needs met
  • ask forgiveness/commit to give forgiveness
  • ask for help with moral development/maturity
  • worship God again

If Amy is right (and she usually is), then we should ask ourselves how everything we are going to say fits into one of these categories. The Lord’s Prayer doesn’t list lament specifically, but there is room for it in all the middle sections. Lament in the Lord’s Prayer would look like:

  • this can’t be what you want God, can it?
  • I have this need that is unmet, I need this to live
  • I have sinned, I am having a hard time forgiving
  • I am morally weak

I think this is closer to what lament actually is (as opposed to complaining masquerading as lament). This makes room for us to give full voice to the cry of our souls without that cry dragging us further down.

If we regard all of our speech as prayer and discipline what we say accordingly, how differently would we talk? What would our tweets and Facebook posts look like? God is always listening. Our souls are always listening. And what we say affects those around us more than we know. There is a lot of power in what we say. Let’s be careful with that. And then, once we’re careful, let’s be bold.