Recently I've had to make some important changes to my schedule. I've felt like I've been the dog at the end of the leash, rather than the guy holding the leash for quite some time - and let me tell you, my neck was starting to hurt!
We are being blessed with increase in our church family. That is a great thing. I am now at a point that I've heard other pastors talk about - If God is going to continue to bless our church, it needs a different pastor. I believe God is calling me to change so that I can become the pastor our church family needs.
So, some of the changes were changes in my schedule. Weeding out unnecessary, time-consuming duties that others can do just as well. Set more people free to do ministry. Become more trusting of the God-given staff that I am surrounded with. I've needed to spend more time reading and feeding myself so that I'm not empty every time I give out. I've needed to spend more time with my precious wife and allow that time to be more enjoyable for her - which means I've got to be less stressed when I'm with her! She deserves a better husband.
So, I've finally been doing some reading. This may sound strange to some, but I'm still working on doing that which I'm supposed to do and not feeling guilty about it. We get the idea that if it is a "job" we're not supposed to enjoy it, right? So, I have to work hard - like so many others in my church family - and if I'm working hard, then I shouldn't be having fun, right? If I'm working hard, like everyone is supposed to do, then I should be filled with stress, right?
I don't think so. God help us to change.
So, I finished Tim Tebow's book (Go Tebow!). I've finished "Radical" by David Platt - a lot of the younger adults in our church family have been reading it. Very challenging. Everyone read it to the end and don't miss the balance that Platt puts on the entire concept.
This afternoon, starting John Piper's book, "Desiring God". I know, a lot of you read this years ago. What can I say? I'm way behind schedule. I thought I'd post some of what I highlighted just from the Introduction. I'm posting this because these concepts are speaking strongly to me - isn't that what blogging is all about?
He makes a one-word change to the summary of the Westminster Catechism, changing "and" to "by": "The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever."
Piper says, "When I was in college, I had a vague, pervasive notion that if I did something good because it would make me happy, I would ruin its goodness. I figured that the goodness of my moral action was lessened to the degree that I was motivated by a desire for my own pleasure." Wow! What a revelation! I thought only A/G (All the Guilt) church people were constantly motivated by guilt! At least just the old-time Pentecostals! Who knew that others in the Church Body were right with God, yet constantly riddled with guilt also! Should I be happy about this? I'm actually happier about what I continued to read:
"...it is unbiblical and arrogant to try to worship God for any other reason than the pleasure to be had in Him. (Don't miss those last two words: in Him. Not His gifts, but Him, Not ourselves, but Him.)"
He quotes C.S. Lewis: "If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
Piper continues: "It is not a bad thing to desire our own good. In fact, the great problem of human beings is that they are far too easily pleased. They don't seek pleasure with nearly the resolve and passion that they should. And so they settle for mud pies of appetite instead of infinite delight...
"...this persistent and undeniable yearning for happiness [is] not to be suppressed, but to be glutted - on God! The growing conviction that praise should be motivated solely be the happiness we find in God seemed less and less strange.
"My old effort to achieve worship with no self-interest in it proved to be a contradiction in terms.
"The quest for pleasure was not even optional, but commanded: 'Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart' (Psalm 37:4)...
"...the goodness of God, the very foundation of worship, is not a thing you pay your respects to out of some kind of disinterested reverence. No, it is something to be enjoyed: 'Oh, taste and see the the LORD is good!' (Psalm 34:8). 'How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!' (Psalm 119:103)...
"'In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore' (Psalm 16:11)...
"Christian Hedonism... does not mean God becomes a means to help us get worldly pleasures. The pleasure Christian Hedonism seeks is the pleasure that is in God Himself. He is the end of our search, not the means to some further end. Our exceeding joy is He, the Lord - not the streets of gold or the reunion with relatives or any blessing of heaven. Christian Hedonism does not reduce God to a key that unlocks a treasure chest of gold and silver. Rather, it seeks to transform the heart so that 'the Almighty will be your gold and your precious silver' (Job 22:25).
"...Christian Hedonism does not make a god out of pleasure. It says that one has already made a god out of whatever he finds most pleasure in. The goal of Christian Hedonism is to find most pleasure in the one and only God and thus avoid the sin of covetousness, that is, idolatry (Colossians 3:5).
"...Christian Hedonism does not put us above God when we seek Him out of self-interest. A patient is not greater than his physician...
"...I find in the Bible a divine command to be a pleasure-seeker - that is, to forsake the two-bit, low-yield, short-term, never-satisfying, person-destroying, God-belittling pleasures of the world and to sell everything 'with joy' (Matthew 13:44) in order to have the kingdom of heaven and thus 'enter into the joy of your master' (Matthew 25:21,23)."
He nears the end of his Introduction by saying that Christian Hedonism is a philosophy of life built on the following five convictions:
1. The longing to be happy is a universal human experience, and it is good, not sinful.
2. We should never try to deny or resist our longing to be happy, as though it were a bad impulse. Instead, we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction.
3. The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. Not from god, but in God.
4. The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it is shared with others in the manifold ways of love.
5. To the extent that we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail to honor God and love people. Or, to put it positively: The pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue.
You'll have to excuse me now ... I've got some more reading to do ...
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