How to Get Ready for What’s Next
What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give yourself the least trouble about. Everything He gives you to do, you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for what He may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next.
-George MacDonald
Orphans vs. Children Checklist
If you’re a Christian, you’ve been adopted. God is your Father. You have all the benefits of sonship. You are now a son or daughter of God. Yet, do you still live like an orphan?
I’ve been helped recently by working through World Harvest Mission’s checklist, Orphans vs. Children. One of my favorite authors, Jack Miller, created this checklist along with his wife Rose Marie:
Jack and Rose Marie Miller saw their own fierce independence and survival instinct reflected in the orphan children they met on their travels in Africa. This checklist grew out of their reflections on the difference between living as children of God and living as practical orphans.
Go here to download the full list (3rd from the top). This could be a good list to work through this next week.
Reboot Your Thought Patterns
Today I re-read 2 excellent paragraphs from Matthew Elliot’s great book, Feel. Emphasis added:
Our emotional response to anything is a collage of our personality, upbringing, self-image, worldview, experiences, and beliefs. What we concentrate on, what we dwell on, what we run over and over again in our heads is what we get emotional about. So we need to stop and think about what we are always telling ourselves. If it does not line up with what is true, we must cancel the download. Then we need to reboot our thought patterns with godly values and beliefs. Only then can our emotions reflect a godly perspective.
Whatever podcast you play in your head is what you will eventually believe about God, others, and yourself. If will determine your emotional starting point and the place out of which you respond. You can spend most of your life at a single spot emotionally because you pitched your tent on the one thing that you relive and rehash every day. Sometimes, you have to make yourself pack it up and move on to something new.
God Gives Us Grace for Wednesday, Not our Imagination of Thursday
We imagine many scenarios. We worry about many things that will never happen. I like the definition of worry I recently came across:
Worry is interest paid on a debt we may never owe.
That’s a definition worth remembering because it exposes the stupidity of worry.
Today is Wednesday, not Thursday.
How much of Wednesday have you spend imagining? I don’t mean the good use of imagination: wondering, dreaming, thinking up new possibilities. I mean the negative use of your imagination: mentally rehearsing difficult or stressful circumstances from your make-believe future. Have you been wasting Wednesday by mentally “trying on” what it might be like to get through your forecast for Thursday?
We become fearful, burdened, not a lot of fun to be around, and terribly ineffective in the present when we try to live life through our imaginations. What is this dynamic about?
A few weeks ago I went for a walk with my friend Toby. I told Toby about some future fears I had for my family and my work. I laid out my scenarios and forecasts. The more I talked through my imagined forecasts, the more troubled I became. Toby noticed this and spoke a powerful sentence to me:
God doesn’t give us grace for our imaginations
Toby reminded me of one of those fundamentals we seem to always forget.
God gives us grace for today, grace for what’s right in front of us. Today is Wednesday. And today God has given us the supply of grace we need for navigating Wednesday, December 16th, 2009. But today, Wednesday, God hasn’t given us the grace to handle Thursday or our imaginations of Thursday.
Stop for a second. Where has your imagination been all day? What have you been imagining about tomorrow, next week, next year? Those imaginations have made you heavy because God doesn’t give you grace for your imagination. He doesn’t work that way. He works this way:
Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day (Exodus 16:4)
God’s grace is like manna. God gives us “a day’s portion every day.” This is why Jesus taught us to pray for our “daily” bread, not “next week’s” bread.
We need to quit being chipmunks. We don’t need to try and stuff our cheeks with today’s manna, anxiously storing up fuel for the nasty winter we imagine around the corner. God doesn’t give us grace for our imaginations, he doesn’t give us grace for our chipmunk approach to life.
But, hear the good news: today God has given you today’s portion of grace. You can quit wasting Wednesday with all your imagining and cheek stuffing. If you’ve trusted Christ, you have a Sovereign Father who sits on a big throne in heaven, exercising detailed oversight over both your Wednesday and your Thursday so that you can devote your full attention to what he has called you to do today: Wednesday, December 16th, 2009.
Ditch you imagining. Quit paying interest on a debt you may never owe. Quit stuffing your cheeks, it looks ridiculous.
My friend Todd tells me the same truth as my friend Toby. Recently my friend Todd sent me this paragraph from Iain Duguid’s commentary on Daniel, commenting on Daniel 3 and Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego’s predicament in the fiery furnace:
As a child and a young person, I sometimes used to wonder and worry about what it would be like to be in their position. What would I do, if I were faced with a similar choice between denying Christ and a painful death? I doubted whether I would be so bold in service of the Lord as these young men were; I feared rather that I would cave under the pressure. As I have grown older, however, I have come to realize two things. First, God has not promised to give us the grace to face all of the desperate situations that we might imagine finding ourselves in. He has promised to sustain us only in the ones that he actually brings us into. He therefore doesn’t promise that we will imagine how we could go through the fire for his sake, but he does promise that if he leads us through the fire, he will give us sufficient grace at that time. Like Manna, grace is not something that can be stored up for later use; each day receives its own supply.
Amen?
We lose power if we do not concentrate on the right thing
What are you concentrating on right now?
Where has your mind been all morning?
What has your thought life been orbiting around today? What has your automatic self-talk focused your attention upon?
What are you concentrating on? A problem? A regret? Yourself? How much work you have to do? Your old dusty doubts? Future fears?
Take note. How is today’s concentration affecting you and those around you?
In a sense, concentration is everything. What you choose to concentrate on today will significantly shape your day–your emotions, your relationships, how you do your work. As I read my Bible this theme seems to jump off every page. In his Word, God is constantly telling us how to think, how not to think, where to put our focus. A wise pastor named Paul once said:
Think about these things…
Recently I read this quote from Oswald Chambers:
We lose power if we do not concentrate on the right thing.
I think Chambers is right. We lose power (and joy, and a hundred other glories) when we do not concentrate on the right thing. Haven’t you experienced this? You let yourself get caught in the tractor beam of yesterday’s regrets, today’s burdens, and tomorrow’s fears, and quickly, faith and joy become strangers.
Concentration is a choice. If we want power, we must choose to concentrate on the right thing.
What is the “right thing”? What should be the gravitational center of our concentration? Chambers answers the question:
…Jesus Christ and Him crucified…We have to concentrate on the great point of spiritual energy – the Cross, to keep in contact with that centre where all the power lies, and the energy will be let loose.
The feebleness of the churches is being criticized today, and the criticism is justified. One reason for the feebleness is that there has not been this concentration of spiritual energy; we have not brooded enough on the tragedy of Calvary or on the meaning of Redemption.
Whether you’re a software engineer, a stay-at-home mom, a preacher, or someone who’s been looking for work for six months and counting–you lose power when you do not concentrate on the right thing. What will you choose to concentrate on today?
Change your concentration. Concentrate on Christ.
If you’re in Christ, you have an unshakable identity and an unshakable future. If Jesus went to the cross for you, he can surely handle those problems you seem to always concentrate on. You have a Sovereign Father who is governing your life and is worthy of your total allegiance. You possess this entirely unique message of good news that people around you need to see you believe, concentrate upon, and share.
Concentrate on the right thing. Concentrate on Christ, his cross, and it’s application to your specific problems. Then, the power will come.
Phil Wickham
A few weeks ago Phil Wickham held a concert here at CPC and led worship for us on Sunday morning. Phil Wickham’s music and leadership pointed us to Christ. Phil Wickham has a great voice. The past few weeks I’ve been listening to Wickham’s latest CD, Heaven & Earth, and it’s quite good. Check it out.
J.I. Packer’s Advice to New Pastors
From World Magazine, J.I. Packer’s advice to new pastors:
You have three priorities: teach, teach, and teach. Evangelical churches are weaker than we realize because we don’t teach the confessions and doctrine. Set new standards in teaching. Understand the word catechesis, and practice that art.
