My Life

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Making a Dad’s Day

After lunch today, Ethan and I dropped off at the barber shop and then walked home after our haircuts. Here was the highlight of our conversation for me:

Daddio: So, Bud, what do you think you might want to do when you grow up?

Ethan: I don’t know. Hang out with you and watch football.

I watch 3 or 4 football games a year, but hey, I’ll plan on watching more right now!

I also had to chuckle when we were discussing how it’s polite for a man to walk closest to the road when he’s walking with a lady, but that conversation stopped abruptly when Ethan spied two dirt bikes on a trailer parked alongside the road.

Ethan: Daddio, I want one like that blue one.

Daddio: That would be pretty cool.

Ethan: Yeah, and I’ll get you one like that red one.

How can you argue with those plans? Sounds like I’m going to become a dirt bike rider.

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A Strange Question

I get some of the strangest questions, but I think they are often questions that many people think, even if only a few verbalize them.

Q: So, if keeping God’s law means as much as not keeping God’s law, why keep it?

A:  That is like asking, now that I’m married why do I attempt to please my wife? If I displease my wife does that mean that I am unmarried? No, the state of marriage is not made nor unmade by my keeping of the “honey-do list”. Similarly, our relationship with God is forged by our acceptance of His work on our behalf. It is not made by our keeping of His commandments, nor is it unmade by our failure to keep His commandments, and yet it is still true that “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

I think this is precisely the type of thinking St. Paul had in mind when he penned:

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
(Romans 6:1-2 ESV)

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Defeating Strongholds

I recently wrote to a dear friend:

I’m convinced that victory over besetting sin is secured by a pattern of small, seemingly unrelated, ostensibly insignificant decisions, which add up to a life-style of holiness. Make the right decision repeatedly, at any moment, on sundry topics…and it becomes a force of habit more powerful (and more nurtured) than the force of selfish lust.

So help us, God.

I’m sitting in the audience of my own sermon feeling the conviction too!

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Suddenly Comprehending Reality

There is no greater war than that we wage with our fleshly nature. Epic tales of heroic deeds pale in comparison to the battle each must wage with himself. Indeed, perhaps all legendary tales are but a metaphor of the grand struggle within each of us.

“I wrestle not against flesh and blood,” yet I wrestle with flesh and blood as my arsenal, and indeed, as the battlefield itself.

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Offering

I’ve been going to church my entire life. I’ve been to Baptist churches, Bible churches, Evangelical Free churches, Presbyterian churches, Plymouth Brethren churches, non-denominational churches, Charismatic churches, Missionary churches and the list goes on, but before this morning I have never seen what I witnessed today.

This morning our family visited St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Ft. Wayne. The rector, Fr. Dan Layden, was on vacation and they don’t have a deacon, so they celebrated Morning Prayer instead of Holy Eucharist, which was nice actually as I really enjoy the Morning Prayer service.

Anyway, what struck me was that after collecting the offering they actually took it up to the altar and elevated it before the Lord! I couldn’t believe it; every church in the world should do this. The consciousness of bringing the Lord an offering was the most palpable I have ever experienced.

Just one more reason I so appreciate the Anglican Way. No other tradition has so well maintained an awareness of our connectedness to the Temple service, while also balancing the values highlighted by the Reformation.

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Heard in the Long Home

Things that cracked me up at the Long home.

“Dad, why do I feel so wake-ish up-ish?” – Ethan at 12:05 am

This one came from Elisa while she changed yet another diaper (sung to the familiar tune):

“When the pee fills your pants/And you can’t seem to dance/It’s amore.”

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2007

Ethan asked me the other day my favorite kid’s question of the year. We were riding in the mini-van and I had the radio playing, when Ethan piped up:

Daddy-o, can God hear the music when it’s turned off?

Upon careful reflection I’ve decided that the God can hear the music even when it’s turned off, but at the time I had to say, “I don’t know, Ethan.”

If you’d like to see some of what we’ve been up to this year check out Elisa’s picture albums at http://picasaweb.google.com/elisalong22

Here’s a preview:

thekids_Dec07

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Discernment

Several months ago a friend asked me when the last time I’d read 1 Corinthians 14 was. We were having a conversation about spiritual gifts, especially tongues. When I was 19 a friend of mine and I did an in depth study of 1 Corinthians and concluded that there was no way tongues had “ceased.” However, neither of us had ever experienced it for ourselves. So my attitude from that time had been, “God, if you want to commune with me in this way, I am willing.” However, at my friend’s urging I re-opened 1 Corinthians 14 and was immediately convicted by the first verse.

Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. 1 Corinthians 14:1

“Earnestly desire” certainly did not describe my attitude towards the spiritual gifts. This began a change in our congregation’s expectations for corporate and personal worship.

On Pentecost of this year (I found the timing significant), a close friend of mine and I spoke in tongues for the first (and so far only) time. I cannot tell you what transpired exactly, although I have a guess, but I can tell you that it was without a doubt a move of the Holy Spirit upon me. My overwhelming impression was that what I experienced is described by Paul in his letter to the disciples in Rome:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Romans 8:26

It had never previously occurred to me that the Spirit might speak those groanings through my vocal cords, but there is no better way to describe what poured out of me. I would say “uncontrollably” because in a sense that is how it felt, but I was very aware that while a torrent of groanings or words in a different language were rushing out of my inner man, I could definitely have quenched that flow. It was if I was a fire hydrant on a hot summer day, and words were the water gushing out of me.

Paul said, “The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself,” and “if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful.” My conclusion has been that in my weakness, the Spirit prayed through my spirit for the building up of my inner man in ways that with my mind I am incapable of. I pray regularly with my mind; I have spent my life building up my mind, but my spirit had never before received intentional ministry.

In my experience this overwhelming, unmistakable action of the Holy Spirit has been rare. More often He seems to interact with me or with us in a way that is aptly described as a still, small voice. So still and so small that it is difficult to know whether it is the voice of your mind or the voice of His Spirit speaking. It is at these times that I desperately wish for a more powerful discernment.

The discerning person can tell, for example, when prayer is not genuine contact with God but a conversation with oneself, when apparent humility is actually a twisted form of pride; when a vision is really an hallucination and an ecstasy a psychosomatic disturbance; when inspirations are projections of suspect desires and when a vocation to celibacy is more a flight from intimacy than a call from God.[1]

I have begun to notice, however, that when this still, small voice speaks there is not a doubt but a knowing that God’s Spirit just communicated and about what He said.

[1] Sandra Schneiders, “Spiritual Discernment in the Dialogue of Saint Catherine of Siena”