Heart of a Friend

Highlights Live No Lies, by John Mark Comer Deceptive ideas play to disordered desires that are normalized in a sinful society. The Devil The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. Disinformation is at the root of almost every single problem we face in our society and our souls Soak your mind and imagination in Jesus' truths before you are assaulted with the devil's lies. The Flesh Every time you think or do something it becomes easier to think or do that same thing again, and the more you repeat this process the harder it is to break the self-perpetuating cycle. Cells that fire together, wire together. At first we make our own decisions, but then our decisions make us…The lies we believe, lead to behaviors we can't leave. What Scripture reading is to our fight with the Devil, fasting is to our fight with the flesh. For confession to yield…freedom, it must drag our sins into the light…Just the act The World The world - a system of ideas, values, morals, practices, and social norms that are integrated into the main stream and eventually institutionalized in a culture corrupted by sin…The distorted becomes normative…If you can make it trend, you can make it true. Every follower of Jesus in every culture has to constantly ask the question, in what ways have I been assimilated into the host culture? Where have I drifted from my identity as a Christ-follower? A growing number of people are more loyal to the ideology of their political party than they are to Jesus and his teachings. We can't follow Jesus alone. And by following Jesus together, we are able to discern Jesus' truth from the devil's lies, help one another override our flesh…, and form a robust community of deep relationships that functions as a counterculture to the world. In doing so, we're able to resist the gravitational pull of all three enemies of the soul. To say “yes” to Jesus invitation is to say no to 1000 other things. As the monks used to say, "every choice is a renunciation." It's 1000 tiny deaths that all lead up to one massive life. It's… the freedom of yielding to love. It's saying to Jesus, “whatever, wherever, whenever, I am yours. Other books by John Mark Comer: The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, (2019) Practicing the Way, (2024) Three Comer Interviews: https://careynieuwhof.com/mypodcast/ #'s 316, 440 and 626 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-carey-nieuwhof-leadership-podcast/ id912753163?i=1000507476227 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-carey-nieuwhof-leadership-podcast/ id912753163?i=1000534517644 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-carey-nieuwhof-leadership-podcast/ id912753163?i=1000642615384 Restoring the Foundations: https://restoringthefoundations.org/ 

Highlights: How NOT to Read the Bible (Episode 50) The road to atheism is littered with Bibles that have been read cover to cover. To most Christians, the Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click “I agree.” Never Read a Bible Verse By lifting verses out of context, they can easily be misunderstood. The story-line of the Bible must be understood so that we can see where the verse/passage/book fits into the larger over-arching story. We need to enter their world to hear the words as the original audience would have heard them and as the author would've meant them to be understood…If we don't the possibilities for confusion are endless. Stranger Things The surrounding people groups who worship other gods and goddesses practiced all kinds of evil things…God did not want Israel to become like them, so he had Moses write down loving guidelines…to keep them distinct from other nations. God didn't create the institution of slavery. Slavery was man-made and was everywhere in the ancient world. The Old Testament rules established unique protections for slaves. Slaves were treated much better in ancient Israel than in surrounding cultures. Boys' Club Christianity When we read what Jesus did with regard to women, it should be recognized as countercultural, highly shocking, and extremely challenging to the religious leaders of his day. We see Jesus striving to change the culture he lived in through the way he treated women – with respect, dignity, and equality. The Bible verses that at first sound misogynistic and chauvinistic have explanations. Misunderstandings are due to not looking at the specific situations and unique culture of that time period. Do We Have to Choose Between Science and the Bible? The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. (Galileo) So many of the debates within Christianity, as well as the mocking criticism of the Bible, end up being irrelevant when we accept that God wasn't providing details to satisfy questions from our modern scientific worldview. God used what the people were aware of at that time to communicate the truth about himself and his work in creating all things. Does Christianity Claim All Other Religions Are Wrong? Christianity is the one world faith in which people don't have to earn their way to heaven, but it is through the work of Jesus and us putting faith in him. The Horror of God's Old Testament Violence If you were carefully reading the entire Old Testament, you would not find a reactionary God who needs a class in anger management, someone who strikes out randomly, without cause. Instead, you find a God who is patient – again and again – with his people. Even in the parts where God is actively behind violence and death, it is not done without first pleading for change, giving warnings, waiting for change and showing great patience. Jesus Loved His Crazy Bible The Bible Project Podcast (12/06/2021) Interview with Dan Kimball The Lost World of Genesis One, John Walton ReGenerationProject.org 

What's On My Bookshelf? A Review: Plagues Upon the Earth, by Kyle Harper - The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse | Part 3 - Highlights Coronaviruses and influenza viruses are the ones that we are currently worried about. H5N1 (a bird flu)...if it ever gets airborne...it's got a 60% death rate. (Dr. Larry Brilliant, Harvard Magazine) It is the advance of scientific knowledge, actualized by public policy and private behavior, that has given humans the advantage over microbial threats. Science and state-craft are the keys to the Great Escape. Science As of 1870, only a small Avant-garde of researchers believed that familiar diseases were caused by invisible living agents. But by 1900, for a scientist or medical professional to believe anything else was becoming ignorant. The Hygiene Revolution - The principles of germ theory inspired renewed efforts to disinfect the personal and household environments. The war against bugs - Insects that had once seemed a mere nuisance were now seen as vehicles with deadly payloads. Chemical Control of Pathogens - Dysentery was still a major health problem in the developed world, and typhoid remained – until chlorination. The most important reason we can drink a glass of water today and not feel even a hint of dread is because it has been treated with chlorine. Antibiotics - Starting in the 1940's...Antibiotics delivered us from the long period of human history when the simplest wound was a mortal threat. Vaccines - Small pox was a success story. So was the measles vaccine. The vaccine was licensed in the U.S. in 1963, and measles infections fell instantaneously. A disease that once caused 1 million cases a year in the United States was reduced to an annual incidence of fewer than 100. Globally, In the early 1980s, 2.5 million children died annually from the measles. By 2018, mortality has been reduced to 140,000 deaths. Public Policy Improvements in life expectancy are generated not by ideas alone but by ideas that are put into action, especially by capable governments that care about the heath of their citizens...The control of infectious disease, by its very nature, requires collective and coordinate action. Investments in public water systems were among the largest, and might even have been the largest, public investments in American history and they had a larger impact on human mortality than any other public health initiative. The household toilet is a private portal into the sprawling subterranean circuitry quietly gathering our collective muck. Several times a day we sit astride a section of the largest and most expensive environmental infrastructure in the world – the vast underground systems of sewers and waste-water treatment plants that are a defining feature of the developed world. The federal government erected an infrastructure for agricultural and veterinary science early on, and precocious American agro-science is an underrated storyline in the global emergence of germ theory and the biochemical control of infectious disease. Paradoxically, we are in some ways more fragile than our ancestors, precisely because our societies depend on the level of security against infectious disease that may be unrealistic We have much to learn from the experience of those who lived and died before us. It is urgent that we do so. 

What's On My Bookshelf? A Review: Plagues Upon the Earth, by Kyle Harper The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse | Part 2 Highlights We still have much to learn from the experience of those who lived and died before us. It is urgent that we do so. The long history of disease counsels us to expect the unexpected. The worst threat may be the one we cannot see coming. Bubonic Plague (Black Death)Three stages in history - The Justinian Plague (500's A.D.), The Black Death (1300's A.D.) and Modern Era Plague (1890's A.D.) Almost anywhere the evidence in Europe is rich enough to form a quantitative impression, the Black Death carried off 50-60 percent of the population...the death toll is always staggeringly high. Although many a textbook still claims that the Black Death carried off a third of the continent, in reality, the best estimates are closer to half...In Europe alone, forty million or more might have been claimed by this bacterium. The plague is a killer in a class by itself Small Pox Endemic throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. Brought to the Americas by the conquistadors. Major outbreaks of small pox occurred on Hispaniola and other islands in the Caribbean from the earliest days of discovery but then jumped from the Caribbean to the shores of Mexico in 1520. By the time Cortez approached the capital city of the Aztecs a year later, it had been “hollowed out” by the deadly disease. The small pox devastation continued along the trade routes to the north and to central and south America, having the same impact. Measles came alongside and made its way to the mainland continuing its decimation of those small pox hadn't claimed. In the 1700's it accounted for 10-15% of all mortality in Europe. As the practice of vaccination extended world-wide, small pox was finally eliminated entirely in 1977. It was a global triumph. To date, small pox is the first and only human pathogen that has been driven to extinction. The Great Influenza (1918/1919) Killed approximately 50,000,000 people. One of the single most deadly events in global history. And it infected perhaps one in three persons alive, making it probably the single most coordinated rapid attack by a parasite in the history of the planet. And the threat of future novel influenza strains, replaying the events of 1918 to 1919 remains one of the most dangerous lurking threats to human health. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John Barry. 

What's On My Bookshelf?Part 1 | A Review: Plagues Upon the Earth, by Kyle HarperThe Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse Highlights Up to around 1700 life on earth was short and full of sorrow. Life expectancy was below 30 years. Most people died of infectious disease...around 1900 a great threshold was crossed for the the first time in the history of our species: non-infectious causes of death accounted for a greater portion of total mortality than did infectious diseases. By mid-century dying of infectious disease had become anomalous, virtually scandalous, in the developed world. The control of infectious disease is one of the unambiguously great accomplishments of our species We do not and cannot live in a state of permanent victory over our germs. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberation from infectious disease...In short, germs evolve, and human mastery is always, therefore, incomplete. Malaria: The deadliest of the human infectious diseases...no other affliction has exerted such influence on the species. It is “the mother of fevers,” “the king of diseases.” It continues to devastate human societies unfortunate enough to remain under its spell. Tuberculosis: The burden of this disease on human health, in the past and present, is staggering. Today, there may be 2 billion humans latently infected, so more than a quarter of humanity could be carrying the pathogen. There are more than 10 million new cases annually, and TB still takes 1.5 million lives each year. TB may be in aggregate, the most lethal enemy our species has ever encountered. As farming spread human numbers soared and the result has been a virtually unceasing acceleration of parasite evolution...There is universal agreement that farming was an unmitigated disaster for human health; humans sought more calories and came away with less nutritional variety, harder work, and more germs. Which of the following did NOT contribute to the eventual improvement of life expectancy in the city? The pandemic of 1918 to 1919 was the ultimate manifestation of a disease event in the age of steam ships and railroads. It was in absolute terms one of the single most deadly events in global history, claiming the lives of maybe 50 million victims Modern growth has only made the challenge of controlling infectious disease greater. Urbanization, demographic expansion, modern transportation and intensified pressure on natural resources have made the ecology of infectious disease progressively more dangerous for humans. We do not and cannot live in a state of permanent victory over our germs. Prophets have continually forewarned us that new diseases were one of the most fundamental risks we face as a species. And now, the COVID-19 pandemic makes it all too evident that their alarms were both prescient and unheeded. We were, in short, complacent...For scholars who study the past or present of infectious disease, the pandemic was a perfectly inevitable disaster...we can never entirely escape the risk of global pandemics 

What's On My Bookshelf |  Eight Ways to Make This Your Best Year Ever 4000 Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman We've been granted the mental capacities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans yet practically no time at all to put them into action...Stop trying so hard...It's ok to give up on what's impossible in the first place. One: Accept the limitations of a life-span that's way too short. The key to begin resolving this problem is to work with the facts of our finitude rather than against them. I am aware of no other time management technique that's half as effective as just facing the way things truly are. Two: Don't expect greater productivity/efficiency to make the problem better. Time feels like an unstoppable conveyor belt, bringing us new tasks as fast as we can dispatch the old ones; and becoming more productive just seems to cause the belt to speed up. Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed. Three: Stand firm in the face of FOMO. Missing out on something, indeed on almost everything, is basically guaranteed...our every decision to use a portion of time on anything represents the sacrifice of all the other ways in which you could've spent that time but didn't. Every choice is a renunciation. (Rolheiser)Four: Make up your mind that it's ok to “settle.” When people finally do choose, in a relatively irreversible way, they're usually much happier as a result.The undodgeable reality of a finite human life is that you are going to have to choose. Five: Practice gratitude; it's the antidote for discontentment. Wouldn't it make more sense to speak not of having to make such choices, but of getting to make them? Each moment of decision becomes an opportunity to select from an enticing menu of possibilities, when you might easily never have been presented with the menu to begin with. The wealthiest person is not the one who has the most. It's the one who is satisfied with the least. ( Chinese fortune cookie) Six: Wherever you are, be there. It turns out to be perilously easy to...focus exclusively on where you're headed at the expense of focusing on where you are – with the result that you find yourself living mentally in the future, locating the real value of your life at some point that you haven't yet reached and...never will. Page 1 of 2 Enjoy every sandwich. (Warren Zevon)Seven: Get to your highest priorities first. Eight: Practice leisure and rest for their own sake. In an age of instrumentalization, the hobbyist is a subversive...A good hobby probably should feel a little embarrassing. That's a sign you're doing it for its own sake rather than for some socially sanctioned outcome. It's fine and perhaps preferable to be mediocre at them. Freedom to pursue the futile. And the freedom to suck without caring.

Highlights Ears: The Soft Power of Listening - Part 8 (Episode 45) Six Reasons We Don't Listen and What to Do About It Six reasons most of us don't listen well: 1. We've never been taught how. We are encouraged to listen to our hearts, and listen to our gut, but rarely are we encouraged to listen carefully and with intent to other people. ( Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening) Listening well is not an ability we are born with. It doesn't get magically downloaded to us as we grow up. Unless we're intentional about learning and practicing this new skill set we're doomed, most likely, to relationships crippled by a shortage of understanding, empathy and love. 2. We're always in a hurry. Love takes time and time is the one thing that hurried people don't have. (John Ortberg) 3. We're too easily distracted. Practice the discipline of silence. Find appropriate settings for good conversation. Schedule times for private conversations. 4. We're uncomfortable with certain emotions. The path to more meaningful conversations may require us to step out of our own emotional comfort zone and accept some risk. 5. We have an agenda. As soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it's not a conversation anymore; it's a pitch. And you're not a human being; you're a marketing rep. ( The Big Kahuna, quoted by Doug Pollack, God Space) To the extent that we can, we should leave our agenda at the door of the conversation. 6. We're overly self-focused. Our first duty in any conversation is not to talk, but to listen. This is what Christ-like humility demands. Page 1 of 2 Don't imagine that if you ever meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him... He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity) To surrender the lime-light of the conversation to the other person is not only a profound act of service to them...but, paradoxically, we receive a profoundly important benefit for ourselves too. The world is full of talkers. We don't need more talkers, but we do need more listeners. 

HighlightsEars: The Soft Power of Listening - Part 7 (Episode 44) Miracle Grow for Relationships Marriage The decision to get married is weighted heavily toward what we see...is this person physically attractive to me? But the decision to stay married is weighted more toward what we hear...do I have satisfying communication with my spouse? Thirty-six Questions that Lead to Love, (NYT January 9, 2015) Communication Exercise - Ask: What's the biggest thing impacting you and how are you feeling about it? (Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, Pete Scazzero) Family Relationships Too often we're overly concerned with ourselves, too much so to take a moment to really understand what's going on with someone else, and make sure they know that we understand. I often say, ‘You don't understand people when you understand them. You understand them when they understand that you understand.' That's when you know you have trust...so just listen, listen, listen. (The Power of the Other, Henry Cloud) Friendships You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. (Dale Carnegie) Work-place Relationships Google found out that successful teams listened to one another. Members took turns, heard one another out, and paid attention to nonverbal cues to pick up on unspoken thoughts and feelings... It created an atmosphere of so-called psychological safety, where people were more likely to share information and ideas without fear of being talked over or dismissed. (You're Not Listening, Kate Murphy) (Doctors who don't get sued) were more likely to engage in active listening, saying such things as “Go on, tell me more about that,”...the difference was entirely in how they talked to their patients. ( Blink, Malcolm Gladwell) Leadership(Leadership in Turbulent Times, Doris Kearns Goodwin) Listen, learn and love. (Cynt Marshall CEO - Dallas Mavericks) There's a constant temptation in leadership to feel like you need to know all the answers.That's never true. In fact, the best leaders are usually not defined by the answers they give but Page 1 of 2 by the questions they ask. The longer you're in leadership, the more curious you should become. One tell-tale sign of a leader who has lost their edge is they ask almost no questions. Sometimes that's because you think you know all the answers. Other times, it's because you've lost interest. You're just not curious. Both are deadly to leadership. So...next time you're in a conversation or meeting, speak more sentences that end with a question mark than you do sentences that end with a period. (Carey Nieuwhoff) I will present to you parts of my self...slowly, if you are patient and tender. I will open drawers that mostly stay closed and bring out places and people and things...loves and frustrations, hopes and sadnesses...bits and pieces of decades of life...They are me. If you regard them lightly, deny that they are important, judge me or fail to listen well...I will quietly...slowly...begin to wrap them up, like worn jewelry, tuck them away in my small chest of drawers...and close.” 

HIghlights - Ears (Part 6, Episode 43) Persuasion Starts HerePeople don't care what we know until they know that we care.”To listen well is the first step in caring. Persuasion begins with listening well.Four scenarios:1. When someone is angry2. When you are trying to make a saleI discovered early on that people don't buy from me because they understand what I'm selling. They buy because they feel understood.' Jon benefits from his natural tendency to ask a lot of questions and to listen closely to the answers. (Susan Cain, Quiet)3. When someone has an opposing point of viewWhen we try to convince people to think again, our first instinct is usually to start talking. Yet the most effective way to help others open their minds is often to listen. (Adam Grant, Think Again)4. When you would like to share about your religious faithWe could do a far better job of patiently listening. And we should not talk until we canrepresent the skeptic's viewpoint with empathy so that a skeptic friend says, ‘Yes, that is my hang up; I couldn't have put it better myself.' Only then should we try to...recommend the Christian faith to them. (Tim Keller, “Why We Argue Best with our Mouths Shut,” Christianity Today. May 26, 2017)Evangelism is joining the Holy Spirit in a conversation he's already having with someone. (Kevin Palau)Tension drops when people feel heard. Ask questions and care about the answers. (Kevin Palau)I'm willing to bet the farm that in our postmodern society the most important evangelistic skill is listening. (Todd Hunter, the former CEO of Alpha USA)If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids, find out what his dreams are – just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it's not a conversation anymore; it's a pitch. And you're not a human being; you're a marketing rep. End Quote Listening well prepares the ground for persuasion. But persuasion should not be our primary reason for listening well. We listen well because we genuinely care about the other person. We listen well because people are important whether or not they buy from us, agree with our politics or theology or continue to be mad at us. People are important for their own sake, not as a means to an end. The primary reason for listening well is because we genuinely care about others.

Ears: The Soft Power of Listening - Part 5 (Episode 42) Help! I'm Hurting! Highlights Be kind to everyone you meet because everyone you meet is fighting a battle. When it comes to helping the hurting...this is almost always true of our words. Less is more. Job's comforters did everything right for the first seven days, and so do we when we do the same three things they did. First, show up. (90% of success is just showing up.) Second, empathize. To the extent we can, we express our own grief at their loss. Third, shut-up! We don't need to say anything! Our biggest mistakes happen when we open our mouths and begin to talk. Less is more. One key is to let the person suffering set the agenda for the conversation. Not you.In all my years of doing this work, I've never found words that are as helpful and as loving as attentive silence. Three things to do: First: Practice good listening skills When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. (Henri Nouwen) Second: Find a good setting to talk.Third: Encourage feelings to be expressed. Three things to avoid: First: Avoid giving advice preemptively Second: Avoid telling your own story Third: Avoid filling the silences with your own wordsThere is no music in a rest, but there's the making of music in it. True listening requires a setting aside of oneself Page 1 of 2 When the people come here it's like they are going to a field hospital," father Gomez said. "They so badly need to be heard, it's like a wound; they're in a critical state. I've begun to think there's a crisis of listening in our world. There are a lot of people who want to talk but very few who want to listen, and we are seeing people suffer from it. I just let the people talk. At the very end, they say how nice it was to talk, but I didn't talk. I think it's just making yourself available to listen to the people; that's what they are starved for. ( from You're Not Listening, Kate Murphy) 

Ears: The Soft Power of Listening - Part 4 (Episode 41) Seven Habits of Highly Effective Listeners (Continued) HIghlights Listening well means to pay careful attention to what's being said in a way that encourages people to continue to share even more of their story The fourth habit of highly effective listeners: Don't use your own stories to compete with others. Don't equate your experience with theirs. If they're talking about having lost a family member, don't start talking about the time you lost a family member. If they're talking about the trouble they're having at work, don't tell them about how much you hate your job. It's not the same. It is never the same. All experiences are individual. And, more importantly, it is not about you. You don't need to take that moment to prove how amazing you are or how much you've suffered. (Celeste Headley - TED talk) The fifth habit of highly effective listeners: Maintain good eye contact. The sixth habit of highly effective listeners: Pay attention to your own non- verbal messages. Almost all studies agree that 70-90% of all communication is non-verbal! We say more with our eyes, our facial expressions, our hands and our posture than we ever say with our words. The seventh habit of highly effective listeners: Value periods of silence. To be a good listener is to accept pauses and silences because filling them too soon prevents the speaker from communicating what they are perhaps struggling to say. It quashes elaboration and prevents real issues from coming to the surface. Just wait. Give the other person a chance to pick up where they left off. (Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening) To how many of these can you say, “Yes?” Let's review: I keep the focus of the conversation on the other person. I stay mentally engaged. I am cautious about giving advice. I don't use my own story to compete with others. I maintain good eye contact. I pay attention to my own non-verbal messages. I value periods of silence. 

Highlights: Ears | Seven Habits of Highly Effective Listeners (1-3) A checklist for listening well First, keep the focus on the other person A support response does this by asking questions and reflecting/paraphrasing what the other person is saying. While listening...One of the most helpful things we should be listening for is an open door to ask another question. The insight you are seeking is often not behind that first, second or third door but many layers deep into the conversation. The key to each door is another question. (Smart Leadership, Mark Miller) Second, stay mentally engaged.Because we can think a lot faster than someone else can talk, we have a lot of extra mental band-width/horse-power when we're listening to someone. Don't multitask. And I don't mean just set down your cell phone or your tablet or your car keys or whatever is in your hand. I mean, be present. Be in that moment. Don't think about the argument you had with your boss. Don't think about what you're going to have for dinner. If you want to get out of the conversation, get out of the conversation, but don't be half in it and half out of it. Look, I know, it takes effort and energy to actually pay attention to someone, but if you can't do that, you're not in a conversation. You're just two people shouting out barely related sentences in the same place. (Celeste Headley, TED Talk - “Ten Ways to Have a Better Conversation.) Use your extra mental bandwidth by: 1. Evaluating non-verbal communication 2. Looking for the next question to be asked 3. Listening with one ear to what God might be saying to you in the conversation. Third, be cautious about giving advice. Advice-giving is a “shift response.” The focus changes from what the other person is feeling and needs to say to what you think. This shuts down their ability to process their own emotions. In my own experience most people already know what they need to do. But what they need first is to process what they are going through. For most people in most situations a more fundamental need is simply to be understood. ( It's Not about the Nail - YouTube ) 

Highlights: Ep. 39 | Ears | Part 2 | The Secret SauceCuriosity...it's the single most important factor in listening well. It's the secret sauce. Great conversations are driven by curiosity. So follow your curiosity.The obvious tool of my trade is the tape recorder, but I suppose the real tool is curiosity. (Studs Terkel) Curiosity is not an involuntary impulse. It's a quality that we can choose, if we want to. It's a muscle that can be exercised and grow stronger. Curiosity is a habit that can be intentionally developed. Questions are an essential tool for fueling curiosity and generating great conversations. A good question asked at the right time is worth its conversational weight in gold. Like a pick- ax to a frontier miner, questions uncover buried treasure. Three types of questions: Practical Questions - Are necessary, but they will not take a relationship very far beyond the superficial. Open-ended Questions - Are questions that cannot be answered with one word. They are questions that don't limit the speaker. They invite people to tell more of their story. Follow-up Questions - If questions are pick-axes to uncover buried treasure, then follow- up questions will get you to the seams of conversational silver and gold faster than anything. Unfortunately, too many of us stop at the first question. But this keeps the conversation from going deeper. It keeps the person talking from peeling back the layers of their story. It prevents more personal feelings and thoughts from coming out in the open. It doesn't give curiosity the air to breath and the time to go deeper. When we ask, “Well, tell me more?” “What happened next?” “How did you feel?” “So, what changed for you after that experience?” These kinds of follow-up questions invite the person to get underneath their story, to peel back the layers, to dig deeper and share more. A shift response: Shifts the focus of the conversation from the other person to you. A support response: Keeps the other person talking about their own story. Follow-up questions are a good way to provide a support response. A good question responded to thoughtfully almost always opens the door to another question...While listening to a response, we re actually listening at several levels: content, emotional charge, tone, word choice, and more. One of the most helpful things we should be listening for is an open door to ask another question. The insight you are seeking is often not behind that first, second or third door but many layers deep into the conversation. The key to each door is another question. ( Smart Leadership: Four Simple Choices to Scale Your Impact, Mark Miller ) You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters, Kate Murphy 

Highlights: Ears…(Part 1)Five Reasons This May Be Our Most Important Life SkillDefinition: Listening well is more than just hearing with our ears. It's hearing with our hearts.One: Listening well creates a unique and almost sacred bond between people.Those who listen longer than most people ever listen will hear things that most people neverhear. (Carey Nieuwhoff)Two: Listening well brings real healing to others.We hurt in isolation; we heal in community.Be kind to everyone you meet, because everyone you meet is fighting a battle.Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almostindistinguishable.Three: Listening well is essential for effective leadership.Leaders who refuse to listen will soon be surrounded by those who have nothing to say. (AndyStanley)Four: Listening well is required for continuous self-improvementAssume the the person you are talking to might know something you don't. (Jordan Peterson)It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. (John Wooden)Five: Listening well is required for following Jesus.True listening requires a setting aside of oneself. (M. Scott Peck)The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just aslove to God begins with listening to his Word so the beginning of love for the brethren islearning to listen to them. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)To love is to listen well and to listen well is to love.You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters, Kate Murphy (2019)

Highlights - The Road Less TraveledI didn't go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity. (God in the Dock)Christ says, “Give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work. I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy…Every father is pleased at the baby's first attempt to walk, (but) no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son… the goal towards which he is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent him from taking you to that goal…No possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded..is beyond what he is determined to produce in every one of us in the end. The job will not be completed in this life, but he means to get us as far as possible before death. That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house…You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage, but he is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself.God loves us just the way we are, but he loves us too much to leave us the way we are.If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man's outward actions - if he continues to be just as snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before - then I think we must suspect that his “conversion” was largely imaginary…Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in “religion” mean nothing unless they make our behavior better.Life on the Road Less Traveled:1. A bias for difficulty2. A counter-cultural mindset3. Shaped by Scripture4. Spiritual life not compartmentalized from other areas of life5. The law of love is the standard for evaluating character and actions6. Spiritual companions7. Look deeper than outward behavior. It's what we do AND who we are on the inside.8. Wary of comparisons with others - If we compare ourselves with others, we'll always find areason to either gloat proudly in our superiority or wallow hopelessly in self-recrimination.9. See their own faults more clearly - When a man is getting better he understands more andmore clearly the evil that is still in him.10. Will not think often about themselves - He will not be thinking about humility. He will not be thinking about himself at allIn a battle, or in mountain climbing, there is often one thing which it takes a lot of pluck to do; but it is also, in the long run, the safest.…The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead…to remain ourselves and keep personal happiness our great aim in life…That is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. Your real, new self…will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for him…look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in. If we let him, he will…make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine…a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly his own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful but that is what we are in for - and nothing less.Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to DeepTransformation, Pete Scazzero

Highlights: Part 15 (Episode 36) Next Steps Toward a Greater DestinyThe secret to the abundant life is not our responsibility but our response to God's ability. (E.Stanley Jones)First: The Imitation of Christ - “Let's Pretend.”Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. That is why children's games are so important. They are always pretending to be grown-ups – playing soldiers, playing shop. But all the time they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits, so that the pretense of being grown-ups helps them to grow up in earnest. Now, the moment you realize, “Here I am dressing up as Christ” it is extremely likely that you will see at once some way in which, at that very moment, the pretense could be made less of a pretense and more of a reality. (Lewis) We tend to become the decisions we make. The more we choose something, we become that something. We are all in the process of solidifying our identities by the decisions we make. With each decision we make, we pick up momentum in the direction of that decision. (Boyd)Second: Spiritual Practices Prayer - primarily relational - not transactional. Prayer is not a button to be pushed, it's a relationship to be pursued.” (Nieuwhoff) Church - the Christian community. The one really adequate instrument for learning about God, is the whole Christian community, …the church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons , even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. (Lewis) The man who seeks God in isolation from his fellows is likely to find, not God, but the devil, who will bear an embarrassing resemblance to himself. (Ben Patterson)Third, God-sightings - God reveals himself through, “Nature, through our own bodies, through books and through life experiences.” When our mind “runs (from the patch of light) back up the sunbeam to the sun”…we get a “tiny theophany" - a vision of God. (Lewis, Letters to Malcolm) There is never a place in our lives where God isn't rich. There is never a time in our lives when God doesn't want to share his richness with us. And we don't have to retreat into a cave…He is always with us. What God wants from us is not a dramatic withdrawal from the lives around us, but instead a dramatic awareness of his presence within the lives around us. (Dresser)Fourth, God allows troubles. We may be content to remain what we call “ordinary people,” but he is determined to carry out a quite different plan…No possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded of the greatest saints is beyond what he has determined to produce in every one of us in the end. The job will not be completed in this life but he means to get us as far as possible before death. That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. Because God is forcing (us) on or up to a higher level, putting (us) into situations where (we) will have to be a very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than (we) ever dreamed of being before. (Lewis) Maybe we should stop asking God to get us out of difficult circumstances and start asking him what he wants us to get out of those difficult circumstances. (Mark Batterson)God loves us just the way we are but he loves us too much to leave us the way we are.Letters from a Skeptic, Gregory BoydThis Is How We Pray, Adam DresserIn a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, Mark Batterson 

“Everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God.” “If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years! A bit more makes no difference!” Christianity is about being a friend of God. It's relational. It's not about being “faced with an argument which demands your assent, but (being faced) with a Person who demands your confidence.” “There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made…if you want to get wet you must go into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get into the thing that has them…a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you. If you are not, you will remain dry.” The first step is to surrender ourselves to him. “The more we get what we now call ourselves out of the way and let him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become…Your real new self will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for him… look to Christ and you will find him, and with him, everything else thrown in.” Surrender means saying “yes” to God, but it also means saying “no” to 1,000 other things. “The almost impossible thing is to hand over your whole self to Christ…You wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job every morning consists simply in shoving them all back…in listening to that other voice…in letting that other point of view, that larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.” Questions: What evidence is there in my own life that I've surrendered to God? In what ways do I live to please him? What are the first things I think about in the morning? Are there things I've said “no” to in order pursue my relationship with God? How can I continue to “surrender” to him in more and deeper ways? It's a life-long process. Supplemental: The Trinity - One God exists eternally as three distinct Persons. “If Christianity was something we were making up, of course, we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete in simplicity with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with fact. Of course anyone can be simple, if he has no facts to bother about.” We can expect when we're talking about the transcendent God, unanswered questions will only increase exponentially! We should expect there to be aspects of God's nature that don't make sense to our time-bound, space-bound, tadpole brains. We should expect that our language and thought will be unable to capture the ineffable realities of the divine nature. The Father, the Son and the Spirit have set the table. The supremely glad and glorious society/ community they've enjoyed eternally was always meant to be shared! That's why we're here in the first place. We're all invited to the party! https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/god-video/? utm_source=web_social_share&medium=shared_video Bible Project podcast episode #114 (God Series Part 19 “The Trinity and God's Identity”) 

Highlights: More Than What We've BecomeWhen we draw our circle bigger we're enriched. When we don't we're impoverished and diminished. Streams of Living Water, (Richard Foster) If you've benefited from the writings of C.S. Lewis, it's because a few key people a generation ago decided to draw their circle bigger. They took a dip in another stream. We owe them a big debt and we'd be wise to follow in their steps. “Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have his way, come to share in the life of Christ. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God…He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life he has…Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.” “What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man. That is why men are not Sons of God in the sense that Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things of the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God. A statue has the shape of a man but it is not alive. In the same way, man has the “shape” or likeness of God, but he has not got the kind of life God has. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man. And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are…going to come to life.” “He said in the Bible that we were ‘gods” and he is going to make good his words. If we let him…he will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and life as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly his own boundless power and delight and goodness…that is what we are in for. Nothing less.” “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.” (The Weight of Glory) We are destined for more than what we've become. The glory for which we are destined is not just a transformation of our appearance but a re-instatement of our status as God's vassal kings and queens. We will not only regain our luster but we will regain our crown. “For too long, scholars and laymen alike have myopically viewed justification and salvation as ends in themselves…The goal of salvation is believers' conformity to the Son of God - their participation in his rule over creation…with the purpose of extending God's hand of mercy, love, and care…This was humanity's job in the beginning; it will be believers' responsibility and honor in the future.” (Conformed to the Image of His Son: Reconsidering Paul's Theology of Glory in Romans, Haley Goranson Jacob)A “son or daughter of God in training” practices being a servant. We are future vassal kings and queens over creation. God's servants who will one day be so dazzling, so radiant with God's love, God's wisdom, power and joy that if we were to see ourselves now as we will be then we would be tempted to worship. So remember… remember…who you are. 

Highlights: Failure - A Defining Moment “The main thing we learn from a serious attempt to practice the Christian virtues is that we fail… God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits.” It's a necessary and defining moment for anyone wanting to walk in new life with Christ. “So, If you were to die tonight and God were to ask you why he should let you into his heaven, what would your answer be?” (James Kennedy, Evangelism Explosion) We can never be saved by our doing…only by his dying. This is the starting point, the defining moment for anyone who wants to be in a right relationship with God. “We cannot be in right relation with God until we have discovered the fact of our own bankruptcy.” Whether we are being changed from a dragon to a boy…from a sinner to a son of God…we must “let him do it. “Handing everything over to Christ does not mean that you stop trying. To trust him means, of course, trying to do all that he says…but trying in a new way…not doing these things in order to be saved, but because he has begun to save you already.” “The Bible really seems to clinch the matter when it puts the two things together into one amazing sentence. ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling' - which looks as if everything depended on us and our good actions. But the second half goes on, ‘for it is God who works in you' - which looks as if God did everything and we nothing. I am afraid that is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am puzzled, but I am not surprised.” "Out of faith in him good actions must inevitably come…if what you call your faith in Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of what he says, then it is not faith at all.” It's not faith plus works. It's faith that works. We are saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. Once we've said, “I do” to Jesus Christ we become God's children. From then on our relationship doesn't rest on how we're feeling or on how we're behaving at the moment. It rests on the fact of the promise we made and the fact of the promises that God has made in response. Faith rests on those facts not our feelings. “Christianity seems at first to be all about morality…duties and rules…guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things…Everyone there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes. But this is near the stage where the road passes over the rim of our world. No one's eyes can see very far beyond that: lots of people's eyes can see further than mine.” 

To Go the Distance Highlights Faith as Lewis uses it here means “spiritual tenacity.”“Faith is…a necessary virtue. Unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be a sound Christian…but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.”“There will come a moment when there is bad news…or he's in trouble…or is living among a lot of other people who don't believe…or when he wants a woman…or wants to tell a lie…some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And…his desires will carry out a blitz on his belief…I know by experience. Now that I'm a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable…This rebellion of your moods…is going to come.” "I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true…I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so.”Faith does not rise or fall on the basis of reason alone. People don't come to faith strictly on the basis of logic and people almost never quit the faith strictly because of intellectual doubts. “What if, the true story is that people stop believing and then find they need arguments to justify their unbelief?…The intellectual arguments for atheism are, generally speaking, just rationalizations concocted after the fact. A lot of unbelief is rooted, not in reason, but in the emotions.” (Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, Alec Ryrie) What circumstances and emotions make us start thinking, “You know…it would be very convenient for me right now if Christianity were not true.” 1. Moral Compromise - Living with the sin and the faith at the same time creates an intolerable dissonance. 2. Suffering - Buried underneath the claim of atheism, there's often a deep emotional wound. 3. “Friendly Fire” - It's easy to blame God for the things that people do in his name. “Consequently one must train the habit of faith…make sure that some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That's why daily prayers and religious reading and church-going are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe.” Faith or spiritual tenacity must be fed by study, meditation, prayer, worship and engaging in the community of other believers. It's not game day, it's training day that's crucial. What we do in training, practice, preparation will determine the outcome. We will go the distance because we trained for it. To develop our faith/spiritual tenacity two things are required. First, become part of a faith community that provides inspiration and practical instruction for Christian living. And, second, slow down. Stop booking yourself with wall-to-wall commitments. Leave space for your pursuit of God. . Jesus didn't come all the way from heaven to earth…Jesus didn't die on the cross…he didn't call us to follow him, so that we could merely start the race. He calls us to finish it. Faith of the Fatherless, Dr. Paul Vitz Bullies and Saints: An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Church History, John Dickson. 

Highlights - Mere Christianity: The Gift of TomorrowWhat happens when we die? Only a fool ignores this question. “Think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth; waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener's good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But…cock-crow is coming.” Our present world is a shadow-land compared to the next…it's a faint echo…a pale, insipid, transitory life that only hints at the glory to come. “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The apostles themselves, who were set on the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It's since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.” Practical effects of hope: More joy…more motivation for service…more endurance in hardship…more courage…and more incentive to live in a way that pleases God. But there's a problem in all this. How can the expectation of heaven become vivid enough for us, so that we look forward to it? “Most of us find it very difficult to want “heaven” at all.” We love this life. We love this world. We love food, sex, nature, sports, pets, vacations, work, hobbies, etc. We are taught that heaven doesn't have many of the things we've grown to love in this world. Our concept of heaven is less than robust, to say the least. Our understanding of heaven needs rehabilitated. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want…acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. “Heaven” or more properly, the Age to Come will not be less than we now have but more! All that is golden in this life…All that is satisfying, valuable, beautiful, exhilarating, pleasurable, wonderful will not just be included in the Age to Come but it will be exceedingly surpassed! This world with all its pleasures, all its intensity, all its beauty, all its physical wonders…is merely a “shadowland” as Lewis called it. Quote: Never mistake them for something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death. End Quote The unicorn summed up what everyone was feeling. Quote: I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. “LIve for the line.” (Randy Alcorn, The Treasure Principle and Heaven) The Weight of Glory, Essay: “Transposition” (Lewis) The Narnia Chronicles (Vol. 7) The Last Battle 

Highlights - Mere Christianity | Part 9 | Just Do ItLove is the litmus test for authentic Christian living. It's the one signature quality above all others that defines us as Christ-followers. “Love in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will…It would be quite wrong to think that the way to become charitable is to sit trying to manufacture affectionate feelings.” The Greek language has four words for love:Storge - Affection primarily in a familyEros - Romantic/Sexual attraction Philia - FriendshipAgape - Not an emotion, but a decision of the will to actively care about all people, regardless of their relational standing with us. “The great reason why Christian thought fastened on agape is…that Christian love must not only extend to our nearest and our dearest, our friends and…to the Christian fellowship and to the neighbor, but…also to the enemy and to all the world.” (William Barclay) All other types of love are to some degree exclusive. But agape love embraces the whole world. “Love of fellow humans was not a familiar concept to Greco-Roman philosophers, or to the ordinary person in that culture…Neither philosophy nor religion taught philanthropy or charity… One of the things about the early believers that most astounded their pagan neighbors was the Christians' willingness to minister to the poor and needy for no ulterior purpose.” (Albert Bell, Exploring the New Testament World) "The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did…Feelings aren't what God principally cares about. Christian love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will.” Acting as if we love all people is a good kind of pretending. The pretense leads to the real thing.“When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him…if you do him a good turn you will find yourself disliking him less…Christian charity…(though it is quite distinct from affection)…leads to affection…The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he “likes” them: the Christian, trying to treat everyone kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on - including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.”“This same spiritual law works terribly in the opposite direction. The Germans, perhaps, at first ill-treated the Jews because they hated them: afterwards they hated them much more because they had ill-treated them The more cruel you are the more you will hate; and the more you hate, the more cruel you will become - and so on in a vicious circle for ever. Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance.”‘They are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, “If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?” When you have found the answer, go and do it…Christian love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will…He will give us feelings of love if he pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves.”So, once again, ask yourself this question. If I really did feel love for this other person what would I say? Then say it. If I really did feel love for this other person, what would I do? T

Highlights - The Great Sin According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice. Pride, in all its forms is essentially “self-conceit.”Vanity: People glory in the greenest lawn, the flattering cut of a new dress or suit, the cleanliness of the kitchen, a successful diet, the ability to namedrop impressively at social gatherings, the right car…the appearance of worldly success…it is disconcerting to think how much of our lives are spent keeping up appearances to impress other people. (Rebecca DeYoung, Glittering Vices) Probably the least bad and most pardonable…It's a fault, but a child-like and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows that you are not completely contented with your own admiration. You value other people enough to want them to look at you.Contempt: The real…black…diabolical Pride comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care…what they think of you. The Proud man…says, ‘Why should I care for the applause of that rabble as if their opinion were worth anything?…All I have done has been done to satisfy my own ideals…If the mob like it, let them. They're nothing to me.' Has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.Self-righteousness: Any of us may at any moment be in this death-trap. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that…we are better than someone else - we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil…It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life.False humility: A man is never so proud as when striking an attitude of humility…Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays. He will not be a sort of…smarmy person, who is always telling you that he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him…he will not be thinking about humility. He will not be thinking about himself at all.Diagnostic questions:1. Do I respond well to constructive criticism?2. Do I readily admit it when I'm wrong?3. Do I do most of the talking in conversations with others?4. Do I have problems submitting to legitimate authority in my life?5. Do I accept offers of help when I have needs? 6. Do other people consider me opinionated and/or argumentative?7. Do I have prejudices against any groups of people?8. Do I worry more than I should about what other people think of me?9. Do nurse a grudge or quickly let go of it when other people offend me?10. Do I get irritated easily by unexpected interruptions?The first step is to realize that one is proud…At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed. Cures for pride: Be a servant and be a worshipper. We are all starved for the glory of God, not self. No one goes to the Grand Canyon to increase self-esteem. Why do we go? Because there is greater healing for the soul in beholding splendor than there is in beholding self. Indeed, what could be more ludicrous in a vast and glorious universe like this than a human being, on the speck called earth, standing in front of a mirror trying to find significance in his own self-image? (John Piper

Highlights: A Terrible Duty - Episode 28I said in a previous chapter that chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. But I am not sure I was right. I believe the one I have to talk of today is even more unpopular: the Christian rule, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Because in Christian morals “thy neighbor” includes “thy enemy,” and so we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies….They say, “That sort of talk makes them sick.” And half of you already want to ask me, “I wonder how you'd feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?” ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin agains us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to do?When you start mathematics you do not begin with calculus; you begin with simple addition. In the same way, if we really want to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo! One might start with forgiving one's husband or wife, or parents or children…for something they have done or said in the last week. That will probably keep us busy for the moment Forgiveness is not an emotionForgiveness is not minimizing the offense.A good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are…Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery We ought to hate them. Forgiveness is not releasing the offender from the consequences of his actions. There are offenses where it may be best to allow the natural consequences of the offense to play out. What is forgiveness? Something inside us, the feeling of resentment, the feeling that wants to get one's own back, must be simply killed…we must feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves - to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may…be cured; in fact, to wish his good…wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not. Forgiveness is not always instantaneous. It may take a life-time to resolve all the residual issues related to forgiveness. It's a process.I do not mean that anyone can decide this moment that he will never feel it any more. That is not how things happen. I mean that every time it bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must hit it on the head. Perhaps it makes it easier if we remember that that is how He loves us. Not for any nice, attractive qualities we think we have, but just because we are…For really there is nothing else in us to love; creatures like us who actually find hatred such a pleasure that to give it up is like giving up beer or tobacco. No pit is so deep that God is not deeper still. (Corrie Ten Boom)The biggest problem with un-forgiveness is that we “burn the bridge across which we ourselves must travel.” But when we refuse to extend forgiveness to others, we undermine the ground upon which we need to stand before God. There can be no double standard in God's family when it comes to forgiveness.Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. (Jesus)So forgive one another as God in Christ forgave us. (Paul) 

Highlights: How to Make Marriage Work: Two important keys to making marriage work. First - The determination that marriage is for life. “Christianity teaches that marriage is for life…a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism…”one flesh.” They (various churches) all regard divorce as something like cutting up a living body…some think the operation so violent that it cannot be done at all; others admit it as a desperate remedy in extreme cases. They are all agreed!…What all disagree with is the modern view that it is a simple readjustment of partners, to be made whenever people feel they are no longer in love with one another.” “Whatever people say, the state called “being in love” usually does not last. If the old fairy-tale ending “They lived happily ever after is taken to mean “They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,” then it says what probably never was nor ever could be true…but, of course, ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense…is not merely a feeling. It's a deep unity maintained by the will…couples can have this love for each other even at those moments when they don't like each other. " We marry the person with whom we have fallen in love; they learn to fall in love with the person they marry. (Paul Tournier) “We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change…The primary problem is…learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married…Marriage changes us. Having children changes us. A career switch changes us. Age changes us.” (Tim Keller) “A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that…My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives.” Second - The determination that marriage is for service. In Ephesians 5 the wife and the husband are told to do the same thing! Surrender your pride, deny yourselves and serve the needs of your spouse before your own. Paul uses the language of patriarchy, but he fills the vocabulary with new meaning. He makes a concession to the semantics of his patriarchal culture, but he turns the words inside out. He defines “headship” as servanthood! The patriarchal model is left standing on its head. There are no more bosses…only servants. “He who would be great among you must become the servant of all.” (Jesus) So, “Who's the boss?” “Who's in charge?” These are the wrong questions. Husbands and wives, your home is not your castle it's your Mt. Calvary. It's the place we are called to lay down our lives. “Matrimony, like other holy orders, was never intended as a comfort station for lazy people. On the contrary, it is a systematic program of deliberate and thoroughgoing self-sacrifice. A man's Page of 2 2 home is not his castle so much as his monastery…It is a radical step and is not intended for anyone who is not prepared to surrender his own will and to be wholeheartedly submissive to the will of another.” (Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage) “Whether we are husband or wife, we are not to live for ourselves but for the other. And that is the hardest yet single most important function of being a husband or a wife in marriage…If two spouses each say, “I'm going to treat my self-centeredness as the main problem in the marriage,” you have the prospect of a truly great marriage.” (Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage) 

Mere Christianity  |  Part5  | Good Sex - Highlights“Some muddle-headed Christians have talked as if …sex, or the body, or pleasure, were bad in themselves. But they are wrong. Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body - which believes that matter is good, that God Himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty, and our energy. Christianity has glorified marriage more than any other religion…If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once.” (Lewis)Good sex is more than just biology.“The inventor of the human machine was telling us that its two halves, the male and the female, were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined. The monstrosity of intercourse out-side marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it.” (Lewis)“To be naked with another person is a sort of picture or symbolic demonstration of the perfect honesty, perfect trust, perfect giving and commitment and if the heart is not naked along with the body, then the whole action becomes a lie and a mockery…a tragic contradiction: the giving of the body but the withholding of the self.…It is, in effect, the very last step in human relations and therefore never one to be taken lightly. It is not a step that establishes deep intimacy, but one that presupposes it…It requires the security of the most perfect commitment into which two people can enter, which is no other than the loving contract of marriage.” (Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage)We are hard-wired for intimacy but our short-cuts to it are dead-ends! Teaching about chastity, is not intended to be bad news…the value of chastity is not intended to minimize our sex life. On the contrary, it creates the setting in which our enjoyment of sex can be maximized. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that has done everything it can to reinforce a truncated understanding of sex.Living inside the boundaries:1. Appeal to God for help in this struggle. “We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity - like perfect charity - will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God's help…But before we can be cured we must want to be cured.” (Lewis)2. Tell yourself the truth. “The seeds of danger are concealed…but…Eros unreservedly honored becomes a demon.” (Lewis, The Four Loves)3. Try getting to the root of the problem. Illicit sexual thoughts and behavior are usually a symptom of deeper issues.“For every thousand hacking at the branches of evil, only one is cutting at the roots.” (Henry David Thoreau) Page of 2 24. Seek the help of others.5. Work to improve your own relationship with God. To get rid of an old passion we must replace it with a new one. “I will, then, always love sin and the world until I truly sense that Christ is better.” (Thomas Chalmers, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection - sermon)6. Distance yourself from toxic influences.7. Never give up.God gave us a fire ring. Most of us who are married wear it on the third finger of our left hand. The flame of our sexual passions can be safely and most satisfactorilyenjoyed within the protected boundaries of marriage - inside the fire ring. 

About Politics: “Christianity has not and does not profess to have, a detailed political program. We are given the golden rule, ‘Do as you would be done by.' But how that should be applied…to a particular society at a particular time is not specified for us. “That is why people who are fighting for quite opposite things can both say they are fighting for Christianity.” “Most of us aren't really approaching the subject in order to find out what Christianity says: we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party.” “A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian…He who converts his neighbor has performed the most practical Christian political act of all.”The real Savior of America is not a political party or leader. It's Jesus Christ. And his work of transformation begins not with the enactment of laws, or the election of our preferred candidates. His work of transformation begins on the inside of the human heart. About Morality:1. The principles of right and wrong are for our benefit. “The moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine…Every moral failure is going to cause trouble, probably to others and certainly to yourself.” 2. No man is an island. Morality has three dimensions: Inward, outward and upward. Our choices can't be separated from our horizontal relationships with others and our vertical relationship with God.3. The individual must be the first to change. “A community that has lost its conscience will never be able to hire enough cops.” (Chuck Colson)4. The individual has more value than a civilization. “If Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or a civilization, compared with his, is only a moment.”5. Virtue is more than outward compliance with the Rules of Morality. Outward compliance with the rules is not the endgame. A true virtue is not simply an outward act. A true virtue is the quality of a person's character that becomes evident in what they do. 6. Each choice we make changes us a little bit on the inside. Virtue is more than outward compliance with the rules, but the habits of outward compliance can create change on the inside.7. The starting point for this character transformation is different for each of us. “Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends…We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it.”8. Awareness of evil increases in those becoming better and decreases in those becoming worse. “When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less.”9. This life counts forever. Our capacity to enjoy the future in the kingdom of God is to some extent dependent on how we use our opportunities now, in this life. The vector of our character and life choices now…will extended beyond this world into eternity. 

“Enemy occupied territory - that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed…landed in disguise…But why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely.” We live in an Age of Invitation. God didn't send a sword, he sent a Savior. The Star of Bethlehem was not a Death Star…it was a light in the window inviting us to come home. Now is the opportunity for all of us to freely make our own decision - to “choose sides.”Three Factors Influential in Lewis' Conversion:Good Dreams - “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”Tugs of Sympathy - Lewis was surrounded by close friends who were believers in Christ. His conversion was as muchA True Myth - “The story of Christ is simply a true myth; a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.”“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he's a poached egg - or else he'd be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let's not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He's not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” "And now what was the purpose of it all? What did He come to do? Well, to teach, of course; but as soon as you look into the New Testament or any other Christian writing you will find they are constantly talking about something different - about his death and his coming to life again. It is obvious that Christians think the chief point of the story lies here. They think the main thing He came to earth to do was to suffer and be killed…The central Christian belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start.” "In Christ a new kind of man appeared: and the new kind of life which began in Him is to be put into us…even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam - he is only nourishing or protecting life he could never have acquired by his own efforts…the Christ-life is inside him…actually operating through him. It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution - a biological or super-biological fact.”“One day we are destined to be creatures so radiant with God's glory, love, wisdom, joy and power, that if we were to see ourselves now as we will be then, we would be tempted to worship.” “A Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.” God loves us just the way we are, but He loves us too much to leave us the way we a

Highlights - Mere Christianity (Part 2) Episode 23Lewis is more than a pipe-smoking, ivory tower, arm-chair academic. He had literally/personally agonized and bled in the “trenches” over this question: If there is a God, then why is there so much evil and suffering? He knew first-hand, in a way that few of us have ever experienced, that “something is seriously wrong with our world.” “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust.” “If a good God made the world why has it gone wrong?” “God created things which had free will. That means creatures…which can go either wrong or right….If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having… The alternative is a world of robots…a toy world that only moves when He pulls the strings.” So, does the sole blame for all the suffering and evil in the world rest on us? Lewis claims we've had an “accomplice.” In addition to our own free-will, there's a malevolent and powerful supernatural being who is active on planet earth. This is “enemy occupied territory.” So these two factors account for a lot of the suffering and evil in the world: Human free-will and the malevolent dark powers. “What the Devil put into the head of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could “be like gods.” Invent some sort of happiness outside God, apart from God…And out of all that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history - money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery - the long terrible story of man trying to find some thing other than God which will make him happy. “God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gas and it won't run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn…There is no other…Happiness and peace apart from Him is not there. There is no such thing. That is the key to history… civilizations are built up…but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down. They are trying run it on the wrong juice. That is what Satan has done to us humans. My own response…three thoughts: 1. His answers are a good start. See The Problem of Pain for more. 2. I agree about the existence of the devil. See The Screwtape Letters for more insights. 3. Is the human experiment worth it? Apparently, God thought so. “I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage…that in the world's finale… something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.” (Dostoevsky) 

Lewis appeared on the September 8, 1947 cover of Time Magazine. This slightly stooped, round-shouldered, balding professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University was an international “rock star.”One irony…originally Mere Christianity was a series of radio talks! They were never written to be a book! Lewis gave these talks on the BBC during World War 2.His purpose: “Explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times…mere Christianity.”“When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall…That is one of the rules common to the whole house.” His aim (ch. 1-5): To show that our sense of right and wrong seems to be universal. Because of this, it's reasonable to believe in some kind of “higher power,” or “being” which is behind this universal sense of right and wrong. This is called the moral argument for the existence of God. Don't different cultures have different moralities? “There are differences…but…if anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own.” Aren't moral convictions just culturally conditioned? “If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to a more savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality.” Are people really persuaded by logical arguments to follow Christ? The moral argument is not a club but it is a clue. The evidence for the the Christian faith is strong and for someone who wants to believe - sufficient. But for someone who doesn't want to believe - no amount of evidence will ever be sufficient. They will always be able to find some reason to reject the evidence. That's why Lewis calls this first section of his book “A Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.” Two compelling reasons for knowing why you believe. First, there are many who have open hearts and honest intellectual questions about Christianity. We owe it to them to give them a reason to believe. “Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could never have doubted, I could never have believed.” Second, knowing why we believe can not only help someone else, but it strengthens our own faith. It gives us confidence and peace of mind. Lewis understood the limitations of intellectual argument. Just as important as winning the mind was winning the heart. He knew that the gospel must be presented in such a way that it appeals not just to our intellect, but also to our deepest yearnings. He skillfully uses both logic to convince our minds, but also imagination. In his writings, both non-fiction and fiction, he portrays a world and a future so good, so delicious, that our hearts cry out, “I want that to be true!” 

Highlights - Episode 21 - Teach Us…A Relationship to Be PursuedNine prayer practices that have helped me continue to make progress in my own relationship with God.First: Think more relationally…less transactionally. It’s not what we say, it’s who we’re with. “Prayer is not a button to be pushed; it’s a relationship to be pursued.” (Carey Nieuwhof) Second: Recognize the value of a prayer model and use it. The prayers of others help us exercise new spiritual muscles…”the law of requisite variety” (Batterson)…a good strategy for dealing with mental distractions. Third: Combine Scripture meditation with prayer. The transition between meditating on a portion of the Lord’s Prayer/other Scripture and prayer is seamless and natural. “Praying Scripture” Fourth: Include personal worship time when you pray. Every prayer needs a doxology. Helps us rise above the clouds of our own personal concerns. Fifth: Practice wordless prayer. “Bonding silence.” This type of prayer helps us move from prayer as “catalogue shopping” to prayer as communion with God. Sixth: Listen intently and expect God to speak to you. Unless both parties in a relationship communicate, that relationship will eventually die. Prayer is not just us talking with God. It’s God talking with us. Seventh: Be honest with God. What good does it do to try and hide something from God that he already knows? Rather than happy faces that mask our pain, he prefers authenticity. Eighth: Make prayer a priority with your time. There’s a reason people talk about walking with God, not “running.” Slow down! Ninth: Expect awesome encounters with God. Prayer is a conversation that leads to an encounter with God. Theology can become experience. (Keller)The Deeply Formed Life, Rich VillodasPrayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, Tim KellerYou Can Talk to God Like That: The Surprising Power of Lament to Save Your Faith, Abby Norman Space for God, Don Postema Prayer, Philip Yancey 

Summary Notes - Teach Us…This Means War! (Episode 20)We’re all in the middle of a cosmic conflict between good and evil - a world war. Life is not a playground it’s a battleground. “The whole of the cosmos is caught up in a fierce battle between two rival kingdoms.” (Gregory Boyd, God at War) If you know this is a battle-field and you know the enemy and his strategies, you can reduce your risk substantially! It’s no accident that the Lord’s Prayer is “book-ended” with the identities of the two major players in this conflict - the two protagonists. The very first words of the prayer are, “Our Father.” The very last words are, “the evil one.” Two notes: First, this is the last part of the prayer but not the least part. It deserves equal time and effort. Second, In the New Testament evil is personified in a sinister, malevolent and powerful supernatural being. “Keep us safe from the Devil.” (Peterson, The Message)Is the Devil real? I’ve seen and heard too much to consign such beliefs to the dustbin of medieval superstition or to the lunatic fringe of today’s Christian culture. Reasons: 1.) The Bible is a reliable source…2.)Through the rest of church history there is plentiful testimony to the power of Jesus’ name to deliver people from demonic oppression… 3.) Abundant testimony comes from other parts of the world today. 4.) My own participation in ministry times to those who have been victims of demonic oppression confirms all this.Who is the devil and where did he come from? The devil and demons are created, spirit-beings who rebelled against God. The are unalterably opposed to God, his purposes and his people. Is the devil the source of all the bad stuff that happens? There are multiple sources of trouble in the world. The devil can’t be blamed for everything, but he does take advantage of us when we are under duress.What are some common tactics of the devil? 1.) Disinformation and lies 2.) Feelings of self-rejection 3.) The impulse to reject others 4.) The lure of idolatry.Can a Christian have a demon? Possessed? No. Oppressed? Yes. When we are feeling oppressed, tempted, discouraged, confused, fearful, angry or depressed there could be something more at play than just our own emotions. Avoid the two extremes of paranoia and denial. “When a problem does not yield to medical attention, standard psychological counseling, biblical insight, or the usual prayer, it is not unwise to consider the possibility of a spiritual attack.” (Roger Barrier, Listening to the Voice of God)How does God provide deliverance for us? Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus our victory over the powers of evil has been won. But we must still appropriate it. There are residual effects…pockets of resistance…a lot of clean-up work to be done…. The victory must be enforced. We must take steps to exercise our new authority over the powers that have already been defeated. It’s why the Bible says things like “resist the devil,” “be strong,” “stand firm,” “be on the alert,” “put on the armor of God.” The battle was won by Jesus, but we still have work to do ourselves. Four strategies: 1. Stay in shape spiritually. 2. Use the sword of the Spirit (the Word of God) 3. Take steps to freedom - reaffirm your love and commitment to Jesus, confess your sins and repent, renounce the devil and all his works and by the authority of Jesus command evil spirits to leave, surrender once again to Jesus and ask for a fresh filling of his Holy Spirit. 4. Get help from others.Resources: Neil Anderson, The Bondage Breakers and Steps to Freedom in Christ (https:// freedominchrist.com) Restoring the Foundations (https://restoringthefoundations.org ) 

Highlights - Teach Us to Pray: Here There Be Tigers (Episode 19) “Lead us not into temptation…”A more accurate and helpful translation: “Spare us from difficult circumstances.” Two reasons - linguistic and theological. “It’s a confession of our weakness. It’s us essentially saying, ‘Lord, I’m weak. I can’t handle the pressure. I’m vulnerable. Don’t put me to the test.’” (Villodas) “It’s a vote of ‘no confidence’ in our own abilities…(it) confesses our feebleness as human beings. God expects us to pray that we will escape trials, and we should…we may not be able to stand up under them. They are dangerous!” (Willard) ”The disciple is conscious of his weakness, and does not expose himself unnecessarily…to test the strength of his faith. Christians ask God not to put their puny faith to the test.” (Bonhoeffer) So, God’s Plan A is to spare us from the hardships/the trials of life, which put us at risk. Once we’re at the beginning of the trial/temptation continuum it becomes a slippery slope. So it’s best to be spared the trials in the first place. That’s God’s Plan A. It’s unfortunate that we never know, in this life, how many times and in how many ways this prayer gets answered. If God prevents a trial from happening in our life, we’ll never know about it, because it never happened! This request in the Lord’s Prayer is a reminder to us that God loves to spare his children from hardship. It’s his preferred way of treating us. No parent wants their child to suffer. We can pray this prayer with confidence. God will honor and answer it. Our second line of defense (Plan B) is protection in the midst of trial. It’s what “deliver us from evil” is about. (Listen to the next episode.) What to do when Plan A becomes Plan B: 1. Be realistic. “In the world you will have tribulation.” (Jesus) “Imagine a set of people all living in the same building. Half of them think it is a hotel, the other half think it is a prison. Those who think it a hotel might regard it as quite intolerable, and those who thought it was a prison might decide that it was really surprisingly comfortable. So that what seems the ugly doctrine is one that comforts and strengthens you in the end. The people who try to hold an optimistic view of this world would become pessimists: the people who hold a pretty stern view of it become optimistic.” (C.S. Lewis)2. Be obedient to God. A lot of our troubles are self-inflicted. (I knew better but, stupidly, I went ahead anyway and now live to regret it.) This prayer, “Spare us from difficult circumstances,” does not give us a “Get out of jail free” card when we do something stupid - when we ignore the Manufacturer’s Handbook. 3. Be teachable. God’s greater concern for us is not our comfort but our character. Trials can become turning points… A good prayer in a trial is, “Father, what are you trying to teach me?” The sooner we learn what we’re meant to learn, the sooner the trial can end. 4. Don’t be alone. No one needs to travel alone. God has provided help and that help often comes from others. God’s witness protection program has a perfect record for those who follow the protocols. He’s never lost a single soul. God will either protect us from the trial - Plan A or he will protect us in the midst of the trial - Plan B. He keeps us out of it or takes us through it.….Either way, we can rest in the assurance that we are safe in Our Father's hands. 

Episode 18Notes Highlights: Set the Prisoner Free (Part 7 - Lord’s Prayer) If you are a Christ-follower, there can be only one response when other people wound us… forgiveness. The Lord’s Prayer expects it. On this issue we’re all called to be super-heroes.Anyone thinking seriously about the Lord’s Prayer has to ask, “Is our forgiveness by God conditional upon our forgiveness of others?”They are inseparably linked. If I am unwilling to extend forgiveness to others, then I cannot have an authentic experience of God’s forgiveness in my own life. The stakes are high. The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant - Matthew 18 There’s no question about what this means. To accept forgiveness for ourselves and deny it for others involves us in an unresolvable contradiction. “He who cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he himself must travel.” (George Herbert) We ignore the high cost of un-forgiveness at the peril of our souls…and our bodies too! Research in the field of clinical psychology….By harboring an unforgiving spirit, the one we damage most is, ironically, not the other person, it’s ourselves! “To forgive is to set the prisoner free and then discover the prisoner was you.” (Lewis Smedes) But what’s at stake is way more than our physical health…our eternal soul is also at risk. God gives us a “pass” on a lot of things. His grace is amazing! But there’s no grace where we are unwilling to extend grace. It’s intrinsic to God’s kingdom and a pre-requisite to participation in it. Misconceptions: Forgiveness is not an emotion. It’s a decision. Not warm fuzzy feelings but an act of the will. Forgiveness is not always instantaneous. Resolving all the residual issues is more of a process and may take a life-time. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Few people can forget what wounds them. Clara Barton was asked if she didn’t remember a particularly offense. She replied, “No, I distinctly remember forgetting it.” The Bible doesn’t say God forgets our sins, but it does say he remembers them no more. There’s a difference. Forgiveness is not minimizing the offense. Forgiveness is not dependent on an admission of guilt by the perpetrator. We can’t be held hostage to the reluctance of the guilty party to come forward. The only behavior we can control is our own. A single definition of forgiveness may not be realistic. One size does not fit all. There are two sides to forgiveness. One is passive - letting go. Choose to surrender your right to anger and retaliation. Choose not to rehearse it. This is the passive side. The other side is more active. These are steps toward normalizing the relationship. This is what God does for us…we escape his judgment and become recipients of his favor. The most powerful inspiration to forgive comes from our experience at the cross….to forgive cost Jesus everything. Is it too much for him to ask us to forgive others? What if I can’t bring myself to forgive? One question that helps if you’re stuck here: “If you are unwilling, at this point, to forgive, can you pray for the willingness to become willing? It’s a step in the right direction. Your relationship with God cannot be divorced from your relationships with other people. We can’t be in a right vertical relationship with our Father, if we are not in a right horizontal relationship with others. “Madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” (A. Lincoln)

Highlights: Recovery Begins Here (Part 6 - Lord’s Prayer) “The central defect of evil is not the sin, but the refusal to acknowledge it.” (Scott Peck, People of the Lie) The practice of denial only allows the evil to grow worse. Recovery can only begin when we acknowledge the sin: “Forgive us our sins. “Trespasses” and “Debts” are metaphors for the same thing - sin. (cf. Luke 11:4). Different approaches to the problem of sin: • Avoid it. In the short run it’s easier to smash the warning light on the dashboard of the car than the stop at the garage and figure out what’s wrong. • Deny responsibility. “It is now known as the “Twinkie defense.” (Chuck Colson) We’ve constructed a world where all too often it’s everybody else’s fault. Blame it on our diet, our family of origin…etc. • Resignation. We tell ourselves, “No one’s perfect. To err is human. Everybody’s doing it. Why beat ourselves up over something we can’t help?” These strategies keep us from taking the steps we need to get better. Why does God care? Because we have forgotten who we are and what he created us to do. We are all eagles, meant to soar, but we’re living the life of prairie chickens! We were destined for more than what we’ve become! ( Conformed to the Image of His Son, Haley Grandson Jacob) “We may be content to remain what we call “ordinary people”: but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan…He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine.” ( Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis) How then should sin be defined? Sin is any action or inaction, word, thought, feeling or motive that doesn’t accurately represent the character and will of God. Sin is anything in our lives that keeps us from fulfilling our created purpose. Is a generic prayer for forgiveness good enough? Do I need to name my sins? Well, the more specific we can be the better. I like the model of the 12 step program. “Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and admit to God, ourselves and one other human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” What if I forget to confess a particular sin? If we come to God in good faith with what we know, he will take care of what we don’t know. Two categories of sin we tend to overlook: Sins of omission and sins of the heart. What if I don’t want to give up my sin? One strategy: Tell God, “Please make me willing to be willing to give this up.” It’s a start. How many times will God forgive me if I commit the same sin repeatedly? We are works in progress. The Christian life is falling down, getting up, falling down, getting up. As long as we keep getting up…that’s the key. What about the unpardonable sin? If you are worried you may have committed it, it’s the best evidence that you haven’t. Bottom line: It means to permanently reject Jesus. How can I be sure God has forgiven me? Residual guilt may be subjective, but objectively, our guilt has been removed. “Problems with assurance usually stem from a lack of understanding about the key doctrine of justification by faith.” (Martin Lloyd Jones) We’re not forgiven because of our doing but Christ’s dying…not our works but his work. The legal principle of double jeopardy: Prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same charges following a valid acquittal or conviction. Our sentence has already been served by Jesus. If you are trusting Christ, your guilt is gone whether it feels like it or not. Case closed! Our recovery, the way back to our crown starts here, “Forgive us our sins.”

Highlights: Isn’t Kroger Enough? (Part 5) “Give us this day our daily bread…” Do we really need this part of the Lord’s Prayer? We regard our food as less of a necessity and more like a hobby. Yes, we eat to live but more and more we live to eat. Isn’t this prayer an artifact from a by-gone era of scarcity?John Stott cites Martin Luther, “Luther had the wisdom to see that “bread” was a symbol for “everything necessary for the preservation this life, like food, a healthy body, good weather, house, home, wife, children, good government and peace.” So, this prayer encompasses a much broader range of needs. We’re asking for more than just bread or food. Perhaps an accurate paraphrase might be: “Lord, provide for all our daily needs.”Isn’t it selfish to pray for ourselves? This isn’t the first thing we are told to pray for. The first things we are told to pray are kingdom related. The Lord’s Prayer does give priority to things outside ourselves…BUT, what Dad or Mom worthy of the name does not want their children to come to them with their needs? Furthermore, we are instructed to pray this way.Isn’t it unspiritual to pray for material things? Our physical needs are important to God. It’s why Jesus healed the sick. It’s why he fed the 5000. Yes, how we worship matters to God, but so does what we eat, how we rest and whether we exercise. God created us to be amphibious! Creatures that would inhabit two worlds - the spiritual and the physical, the invisible and the visible. [ They say the dust in the air comes from mainly two sources: it’s part earth and part disintegrated asteroids. So being made from dust - we are a combination of dirt and star-dust! ] We are dual-natured.Can’t this kind of prayer be abused? On the one hand, It can encourage irresponsibility and laziness. We have a responsibility to work. “God feeds the birds, but he doesn’t bring the food to their nests.” (Martin Luther) Don’t use this prayer as a pretext for sloth. On the other hand, it can encourage self-indulgent materialism. This is a modest request. There is no justification here or anywhere else in the Bible for thinking that it’s God’s plan for the followers of Jesus to be fabulously rich. The “prosperity gospel” is the unfortunate product of our greed, consumerism and a sloppy, self-serving and twisted theology. We don’t need gourmet cuisine - just bread.So, is this part of the Lord’s Prayer really necessary? This question is not a surprise to God. (Deuteronomy 8:6-18) We’re not the first to ask it. Don’t forget…behind Kroger, behind Columbia Gas, etc. is God! The ability to create and sustain all the systems that support our lives is a gift from God! Kroger is not enough!Three important things happen inside me when I pray this:1. I’m humbled - This prayer is a declaration of dependence. “My head is in the dirt.”2. I move closer to contentment - This prayer is a modest request. “The person who is poor is not the person who has too little but the one who always craves more.” (Chinese fortune cookie)3. I am motivated to help with the needs of others. This prayer uses the plural. It’s a prayer not just for me, but for others as well. We are “rich Christians in an age of hunger.” “Don’t refuse to do something just because you can’t do everything.” (Bob Pierce - World Vision co-founder)

“When we depend on man we get what man can do…when we depend on prayer we get what God can do.” Prayer changes things. May your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In this prayer we’re asking for heaven to come to earth…we’re asking for what’s happening in God’s neighborhood to happen in our own…we’re asking for the mission launched by Jesus to continue in the present and to be consummated at his return in the future. There are two time frames that need to be considered: One is the present and one is the future. The power of God’s kingdom has already…invaded the world…it began with Jesus but it’s obviously not here in its fullness…that has to wait for his return. In this part of the Prayer we have to consider both the present work and the future win. In this episode, we shift our gaze from the future win to the present work of the kingdom in our world. One of the great ironies of all this: Surprisingly, God seems to link his present work in the world to our prayers. Our prayers make a difference. Our prayers are not our only shot at changing the world, but they are our best shot. Two words that define the kingdom of God: Surrender: There can be no kingdom without a king. So the kingdom starts when our hearts surrender to the authority and leadership of King Jesus. Serve: Jesus is the Servant-King. Those posing as citizens who are not learning to serve like he did are imposters. Because he is a the Servant-King we are a kingdom of servants. The kingdom of God has often been mis-understood and mis-represented. Here are three ways:1st - The kingdom of God is not about a nation state, a political platform or a set of laws and rules. That’s because God’s kingdom begins from the inside out - it starts with a change in the human heart. So…pray not for laws to be passed but for hearts to be surrendered.2nd - The kingdom of God is not just about surrendering to Jesus. It’s not just a spiritual agenda. The pursuit of personal piety to the neglect of loving our neighbor… is a sham. The kingdom starts with surrender but ends in service. So pray that hearts surrendered to Jesus will find effective ways to serve others.3rd, The kingdom of God is not just a social agenda. There’s no kingdom in our lives without a king. There’s no kingdom of God without God. Service and surrender can’t be separated. To ask which is more important, surrender to Jesus or service to others is like asking which wing of an airplane is more important! Only a burning heart and a helping hand will change the world. To see the kingdom at work, don’t look to the stars look to the servants.Prayers: Local church, other local and regional ministries, missionaries and mission organizations, those under persecution, family and network of relationships. May they all experience more of what only God can do. Can’t pray for everything, every time. “Let my heart break with the things that break the heart of God.” (Bob Pierce) What’s breaking your heart? This may be an indicator of how God wants you to pray. Take time to listen: How does God want me to pray?…how does he want me to participate? Often times, God’s kingdom comes… through us! Sometimes we are the answer to our own prayer. So as part of this prayer, you may want to ask for your own assignment. “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.” (St. Francis)

Summary Notes: Teach Us to Pray - Episode 14 (Part 4A) No one is happy about the world the way it is. But turning back the clock is not the answer. The answer lies in looking ahead. And this is the focus of this part of the Lord’s Prayer: “May your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This part of the prayer expresses our longing for a better world.Is this one petition or two? The two parts of this petition are saying essentially the same thing. Support for this conclusion can be found from the Gospel of Luke. His version of this prayer found in chapter 11 just has “Your kingdom come.” It does not have “your will be done.” This second phrase is not essential to the meaning of the petition. This part of the prayer is one cry expressed in two ways. Two ways to state one prayer.It is difficult to over-state the importance of this “kingdom of God” theme in the Bible. If there is one phrase that could be used to summarize the plot line of the Bible it would be this one. It defines the very heart of Jesus message and mission. From Genesis 1 where “rule” over the world was given to Adam and Eve and then tragically lost to the last chapter of Revelation where that “rule” is restored, the Bible brings us full-circle. This part of the Prayer places us right in the center of this developing drama.God’s kingdom is both here and still to come. It’s already present, but not yet here in its fullness. So as we pray this we have to consider these two time frames. Today and the more distant horizon. The present work and the future win. This episode is about praying for the future win. (Praying for the present work will be covered in the next episode.)Can we, by our prayers for Jesus’ coming, make it happen any sooner? If God has already “fixed” a time for the kingdom to be consummated then what’s the point of praying for this to happen? This prayer probably doesn’t do anything to recalibrate God’s time-table, but it does recalibrate our hearts. It probably does’t cause God to reprogram His prophetic calendar, but it does reprogram our own world-view. The prayer is not so much for Him as it is for us. When we pray this, we are aligning our hearts with God’s heart and His declared destiny for the world. We’re lifting our eyes from our problems to His promises. Keeping this hope before our eyes gives us joy and keeps us planning and preparing for our ultimate future.This hope gives us a baseline of joy and confidence. This baseline serves as an emotional buffer against the inevitable disappointments we all experience. So, the New Testament teaching about our hope, far from being irrelevant, is one of the most practical teachings. Hope like this gave the early church courage (2Cor. 3:12). It gave them the perseverance needed to get through hardships (Heb. 12:2). It inspired obedience and motivation to serve God (1Cor. 15:58). And it gave them comfort and encouragement (1Thess. 4:13-18). It’s one of the most life-changing teachings of the New Testament! No wonder one of the earliest cries of the first church was, “Maranatha!” Or “Come, Lord Jesus!”In this episode, we looked at the future horizon, but in the next episode we will shift our gaze to the present. The invasion of our world which began with Jesus continues today through his “expeditionary force” - which is the church. “Thy kingdom come…” applies not just to the future win, but to the present work of the church.

Episode 13 Notes - Teach Us to Pray (Part 3)Top 5 prayers: family, guidance, health, forgiveness and thanksgivingThe trellis of the Lord’s Prayer helps our prayer life to grow up and in the right direction…it trains our hearts to pray differently…it breaks us free from the “treadmill list” of our top five concerns…it helps us to develop new spiritual muscle memory…it trains us to feel what is most important in the heart of Jesus…what should be our very first prayer.What does “holy” mean? To treat with the highest respect. The Common English Version translates it well: “Help us to honor your name.”What’s the fuss about a name? Names represent the whole person. So we are called to give supreme honor not just to God’s name but to him and to all he represents.We find self-centered, ego-centric behavior intolerable. We have lots of labels for this: egotistic, vain, self-centered, conceited, narcissistic…and none of them are flattering! How do we escape our negative gut-reaction that God is doing exactly what we despise when we observe other people doing the same? How do we escape the distasteful notion that God himself is a narcissist?Help from C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms - “A Word about Praising”Summary: Admiration and awe are the normal and correct responses of healthy people for things that are admirable and awesome….Worship is not for God but for us. In fact, we absorb something of the beauty and awesomeness of whatever we admire….We are constantly praising so many aspects of life in our world and urging others to do so. By what logic, then, do we deny validity to the writers of Scripture who urge us to worship that which is supremely valuable?…. Our delight is incomplete until it is expressed. To delight and express that joy in what is absolute beauty and goodness is to be supremely happy.So…in the end, all the commands to put God first, to give him supreme honor are not symptoms of a narcissist - a vain, self-serving God. Far from it! God is eternally self-giving. And he knows that our highest good, our most sublime joy our supreme happiness will only be found in His presence. When we give supreme honor to him, there is reciprocity, he gives himself back to us - it’s a sublime and eternal feed-back loop - elevating us to a quality of life unimaginable to us now.Two implications:First, this prayer summons us to worship God. Find time in your own life to worship - both privately and with others.Second, this prayer summons us to be an authentic representative of the goodness of God. Do something beautiful, be someone beautiful for God.Paraphrase: “Our Father in heaven, may you be supremely honored. I now join with the angels in heaven and worship you…I also commit to live this day in a way that will be a beautiful advertisement for you and your kingdom.”The brilliance of this first petition, however, is that it contains the seed of the answers to all our other prayers. In seeking his glory and honor…we find our own. Our God is no narcissist… far from it. But once he has his proper place in our lives, everything else, for us, will begin to fall into place - family, health, finances, decisions and so much more.

Episode 12 - The Lord’s Prayer - We’re Not in Kansas AnymoreIf God is in heaven and God is everywhere then heaven must be everywhere. In other words, heaven has no zip code.Heaven is the world we don’t see. This invisible world is what the Bible means here by “heaven.” To paraphrase: “Our Father, in the unseen but ever present reality that surrounds me.”Three implications:First, “In heaven” invites us to exercise faith. Faith is our way of “getting a handle on what we can’t see.” To say the opening words of this prayer and mean them is a declaration of faith.The veil that that keeps the realm of heaven invisible to us is thin, like gossamer fabric and very permeable. This allows for many comings and goings between our visible world and the invisible world of heaven.Heaven invades our zip code - reaches into our world with regularity. In this prayer we are reaching back.When these words are sincerely prayed we instantly transition from our zip code to the supra-dimensional reality that is all around us…from our room to God’s room…from our limitations to God’s unlimited potentiality. These two words can be a portal to another world and as Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”Second, “In heaven” invites us to humble ourselves. In the presence of God…there can be ONLY one initial reaction - to fall to our knees in humility. It’s not the posture of our body. It’s the posture of our heart. This is a time to bow low… very low..Our happiness before God as our Father and our sense of humility in his presence are not at odds. The opening “Our Father” invites us to be happy and comfortable in his presence and the next modifying phrase “in heaven” invites us to humble ourselves.Third, “In heaven” invites us to worship him. J.I. Packer wrote, “The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either see yourself as nothing or you lose all thought of yourself in worship and praise.” Our adoration does not add anything to the Grand Canyon. It does not add anything to the beauty of a Bird of Paradise or to a coral reef. And it certainly does not add anything to the goodness and glory of God. He does not need our praise so that he can feel better about himself. Our worship is not for him but for us. If we fail to admire the God of all creation, it’s not him who is diminished…It’s us! Every time we fail to acknowledge something of worth, we lose the opportunity to grow into something better - and we are incrementally diminished. But every time we admire something of worth, a little bit of that virtue becomes ours - and we become incrementally better. An extended version of this part of the prayer could go something like this:• Hello, Dad…I have faith that even though I can’t see you, I know you are very close to me. I now reach through the thinnest of veils and enter your unseen presence - the invisible dimension of Heaven.• Hello, Dad…I am humbled. I acknowledge that in every way you exceed the limits of my own understanding. Your ways are as high above mine as the heavens are above the earth. I bow low before you.• Hello, Dad…I worship you. You are the fountain-head of all life and all that is good - the source of all that is praiseworthy - perfect love, perfect joy, perfect peace, perfect wisdom. You don’t have to travel to outer space to find God. You don’t have to move an inch from where you are right now. Heaven is as close to you now as the air you are breathing.

Episode 11 Notes - Teach Us to Pray (Part 1)God values our prayers, more than we may think! Jesus’ disciples never asked him to teach them how to preach. But they did ask him, “Lord, teach us how to pray.”The Lord’s Prayer or The Disciples’ prayer is, in a sense, everybody’s chance to walk where Jesus walked - to put the feet of our souls where Jesus put the feet of his soul when he prayed. Each phrase of the prayer is intended as a focal point…or…a seed thought which can be expanded to a longer meditation/prayer around that point.Jesus is instructing us to address God as “Our Father.” This is profoundly important. These two words confer upon us a new identity… a new destiny and a new confidence. They tell us who we are and what we can expect from God.The Lord’s Prayer has been so familiar for so long that these words don’t startle us. But they would have in the time of Jesus! No individual and I mean nobody then, addressed God directly as their personal Father. To my knowledge, this invitation to address God as our Father in such an endearing way is utterly unique to the Christian faith.Author, Wesley Hill put it this way, “Any picture of God as “Father” that leads us to think in terms of domination and cruelty rather than of humble service and unending love is not a true understanding of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ‘Who loved us and gave himself for us.’ ” So when Jesus invites us to pray, “Our Father…Our Daddy” he invites us into a similar loving relationship that he himself has had with the Father from all eternity past. We are invited to stand in a place beside Jesus before his Father…younger brothers and sisters before a common Father. We are being offered a stunning privilege.So, as you meditate and expand on this part of the prayer it could go something like this: • Hello, Dad. Thank you for making me a part of your forever family - I’m humbled and profoundly grateful. • Hello, Dad. Thanks that you are never too busy to give your full attention to me. That no need is too small, no circumstance too trivial that you do not care. • Hello, Dad. I want to be a good son and make you proud of me. My deep desire is to bring a smile to your face and joy to your heart. • Hello, Dad. I want to grow up to be like you…to reflect your goodness and your wisdom to all those who know me. • Hello, Dad. I surrender to your loving and wise leadership over my life. • Hello, Dad. I am confident that nothing, absolutely nothing can separate me from your love. • Hello, Dad. Thank you for the future you have in store for me. I know your dreams for my life . will one day become a reality.One big misconception about prayer: so often people think prayer is talking. For me the most important part of prayer is just being still and listening. I/you have a FatherHe calls me/you His ownHe'll never leave me/youNo matter where I/you goHe knows my/your nameHe knows my/your every thoughtHe sees each tear that fallsAnd He hears me/you when I/you call(He Knows My Name)

Episode 10 - Book Review of Quiet, by Susan CainEpisode Notes:Quote: “If there is only one insight you take away from this book…I hope it’s newfound sense of entitlement to be yourself.”TED Talk: The Power of Introverts Website: quietrev.com The Rise of the Extrovert Ideal - We went from being a “culture of character in the 19th century to becoming a”culture of personality” in the 20th…In a big city full of strangers, making a good first impression was a necessity for success. A magnetic, out-going personality was how you got your foot in the door.Downsides of the Extrovert Ideal:1. We marginalize a large and valuable segment of our population.2. We devalue traditional virtues3. We equate extroversion with good leadership.4. We lose the benefit of large number of good ideas.5. We practice methodologies which blunt our ability to think creatively and problem-solve.6. We have neglected historic and rewarding practicers of the spiritual life.Free-trait Theory - “Fixed traits and free traits coexist…we can and do act out of character in the service of ‘core personal projects.’ In other words, introverts are capable of acting like extroverts for the sake of work they consider important, people they love or anything they value highly.”Our society is best served when we respect and give honor to both sides of this temperament spectrum.Some Take-aways:1. Operate outside your comfort zone but find ways to recharge in a “restorative niche.”2. Invest in quality friendships with those you like and respect. It’s not quantity but quality that counts.3. Find work where you can use your natural gifts and strengths - persistence, concentration, problem-solving and creativity.4. f you’re a manager, remember that 1/3-1/2 of your work-force is probably introverted. Think twice about how you design your office spaces…ask employees to solve problems alone before sharing their ideas.5. In conflict, tap into your empathy. Listening with understanding is the most natural place to start.6. If your children are quiet, help them make peace with new situations and new people, but otherwise, let them be themselves.7. Teachers, quiet kids do not need to be “cured.” Balance teaching methods.8. Spend your free time the way you like, not the way youth you’re supposed to.Note: In the back of the book there is Reader’s Discussion Guide and additional tips: Public Speaking for Introverts and Tips for Parents of an Introverted Child

Episode 9 - Book Review of Grit by Angela DuckworthEpisode Notes:The Grit Scale Test 1. New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones. 2. Setbacks don't discourage me. I don't give up easily. 3. I often set a goal but later choose to pursue a different one.4. I am a hard worker. 5. I have difficulty maintaining my focus on projects that take more than a few months to complete. 6. I finish whatever I begin. 7. My interests change from year-to-year. 8. I am diligent. I never give up. 9. I have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time but later lost interest. 10. I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge. Ten Take-aways:Talent needs grit to succeed…Behind every success story there is a grind…Enthusiasm is common; perseverance is rare…Find something you love…Grit can grow…Live for something bigger than yourself…It’s about how you practice…Learn to think optimistically…Do hard things that interest you…Grit is contagiousQuestions to Ponder: Is success the same as happiness? Are spouses and children of the grittiest people also happier? Can you have too much grit? What might excellence look like for the average person? What does grit look like for a Type B personality? How does the grit attribute align with the Christian life?Quotes: Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. Calvin CoolidgeAny successful person has to decide what to do in part by deciding what not to do. Duckworth Whether you think you can, or think you can’t - you’re right. Henry Ford Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. James Baldwin If forced to choose, I’d put goodness before greatness. Duckworth If you define genius as working toward excellence, ceaselessly, with every element of your being - then, in fact, my dad is a genius, and so am I, and, if you are willing, so are you. Duckworth Website: angeladuckworth.com TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/ angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance?language=en

Episode 8 - The Slower You Go, The Faster You’ll Get ThereAnalogy with cross-country…It is important to run the right course. Is there a “course” we are meant to run?An important clue is here: 1 John 4:12. God’s love is incompletely expressed only from the perspective of the visible world. The world we live in needs love “with skin on.” It is our job to be the visible expression of God’s love. This is the race/course we are meant to run.This has been our “job description” from the beginning. It’s what it means to “bear God’s image.” We were delegated to be His representatives in the visible cosmos. Adam failed and Israel failed, but Jesus showed us how. God wants us to be like Jesus. We are still destined to be God with skin on! This life is training camp for our future role.I seriously doubt that God cares as much as we do about what college we attend, who we marry, what we do for a living or where we live. But what God really does care about is what kind of student we are, what kind of husband or wife we are, what kind of employee we are and regardless of where we live are we good neighbors? Are we fulfilling the primary responsibility of our job description - to love one another?Ultimately…spiritual maturity is about looking like Jesus. He bore God’s image, so should we. To the extent we do…we have grown. To the extent we don’t…we haven’t. And the litmus test of whether or not we are bearing the image is whether or not we are loving one another. We make the invisible God visible only when we are loving one another. Only then do we become God with skin on!How do we get better?First, Let’s Pretend“When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.” LewisWhen we act as if we love other people something in our hearts begins to change. We get a little closer to loving them in reality…being like God…with skin on.Second, Let’s slow down.We are faced with a paradox: In the race that God has given us to run, our progress will be inversely proportional to our speed. The slower we go the faster we will get there. Conversely, the faster we go the slower we will get there.Love takes time and time is the one thing that hurried people don’t have. Ortberg “God walks slowly because he is love…Love has its speed…There is a reason people talk about walking with God, not ‘running.’” Comer/KoyamaWe’re not going to get our bucket list finished but we can do what is most important…The greatest thing in the world.When John lived in Ephesus to extreme old age, he could only with difficulty be carried to the church in the arms of his disciples. He was unable to give utterance to many words. He used to say no more at their meetings than this: ‘Little children, love one another.’ At length the disciples and fathers who were there, wearied with always hearing the same words, said: ‘Master, why do you always say this?’ His reply, ‘It is the Lord’s command, and if this alone is done, it is enough.Notes:John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of HurryC.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Episode 7 - Why Am I a Christian? Authentic faith is not something you inherit. Every person must make the choice for themselves.John gives the single most compelling reason that was the tipping point for my own decision to invite Christ into my own heart (1John 4:9-11)His act of self-sacrifice was undeniable. The love that motivated it, was unimaginable. His invitation to follow was irresistible. Why am I a Christian? Two words: The Cross.Four big concerns I had about life.The cross inspired my trust in GodWhat kind of a God runs the universe? The evidence from nature and history is ambiguous.The cross gives us the unambiguous evidence we need about God’s character. God has not watched the world from the sidelines as we suffer. The cross speaks most eloquently about God’s solidarity with the world in its suffering.The cross makes Jesus’ invitation to follow irresistibleHow to decide which religion, if any, to choose? Jesus is incomparable. First my head was convinced, then my heart surrendered. There are good reasons to believe.Jesus has unique credentials - Prophecies he fulfilled made 100’s of years before.Jesus claimed to have a unique nature - C.S. Lewis: Liar, Lunatic or Lord?Jesus exercised unique authority - In addition to his miracles, he overcame the power of death as demonstrated by his resurrection.Jesus’ unique mission - Jesus glory was, paradoxically, the glory of unimaginable, breath-taking humility. The throne of the Servant-King was the cross. This was the kind of King I wanted to serve.The cross answers my questions about my own destiny “The atoning sacrifice for our sins” - This tells me that somehow...at the cross, the damage I’ve done as a result of my sin has been fixed. This helps me with: What happens when I die?Story of the barge full of garbage - the Khian Sea. Nobody wants our garbage, but it has to go somewhere or we’re going to be forced to carry it ourselves forever. We will be held accountable. The cross tells me that I don’t need to worry. My garbage has been carried away. Isaiah 53:4-6 The “atoning sacrifice” takes care of the past. “Living through him” points us to the future. Too often we only get half the message. The cross is not just about being forgiven it’s about starting a new life here and now which will last forever.We’ve been restored to our original “career path” to “bear his image.” Our original job description: to look like God, act like God and rule the cosmos on his behalf - vassal kings and queens over planet earth. Jesus death on the cross leads us back to all this. We are now his apprentices. This helps me with: What is the purpose of my life?The cross simplifies the way I approach my life in the world God’s action in Christ sets the precedent for us.The cross simplifies a lot for me. In a world that offers us an overwhelming number of choices, the cross gives me a filter that works. Whatever I choose to do, I must do it out of love for others.The pecking order should not shape my behavior. “No man is worthless for whom Christ died.” (Story of Muretus)I am motivated by the need to pay it forward. “I owe it from a long time ago.” (Story of V.P. Menon)A confession: Like everyone of us...I have not arrived. “If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side!” (Tolstoy) I do stagger, but I am convinced that this is the way home.We can take no credit for ourselves. All we need to do is say “yes” Jesus.

Episode 6 - The Big Mistake People Make about the ChurchWe overweight the bad news and we underweight the good news. We may be a lot better than we think! Love is the litmus test of an authentic relationship with God.1st Question: Does this mean that it doesn’t matter what you believe or how you live as long as you are a loving person? No. John assumes that his readers are believers already.2nd Question: How do you explain: the world is filled with loving people who have no connection to God through Jesus Christ? Yes, but all of us were created “in his image.” Every human being still carries some vestige of that original image. The attributes of God are residual in all of us.3rd Question: How do you explain: there are professing Christians who are not loving people? Many are Christians in name only. They are posing as Christians so they are imposters who give the church a bad reputation. Many who are true Christians start out with serious character deficits. Various factors mean some people are not naturally loving. Everyone has a different starting point. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity Miss Bates example. So, the question is, “Am I a better person than I would have been had I never met Christ?” All true Christians are still imperfect. “Please be patient, God isn’t finished with me yet.” We are not finished products. The church was never meant to be a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners.4th Question: What does the report card of the church really look like? The big problem with the conclusions that are drawn from the often dismal public record of churches is that we don’t have the big picture. Will Durant: “Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people…doing the things historians…record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children…The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians…ignore the banks for the river.” To reject the church because of the history books and headlines is to ignore the banks for the river. There are countless acts of kindness which never make the headlines or history books. But I suspect…the cumulative value of such deeds completely dwarfs the darker side of more public church life. The banks, tell a different story than the river. Our big mistake about the church is that we overweight the bad news and underweight the good. Three examples: The Stephen Ministry…University of Pennsylvania study on the economic impact of churches…the impact of the Great Awakening. “there is almost no humanitarian institution in our society which doesn’t not have its roots in this movement and the message of Jesus.”5th Question: What does MY report card look like? Is my own life a part of the good news? Love is the litmus test. Are we better today than yesterday?Ten questions:1. I regularly look for opportunities to serve others.2. I am a generous and cheerful giver of my money, time and other resources.3. I am patient with others when interrupted or inconvenienced.4. I do not “keep score” when it comes to personal offenses, but I readily forgive others.5. I do not insist on my own way but defer to others whenever possible.6. I am a patient listener - I give other people the opportunity to talk.7. I use my words to encourage rather than to criticize.8. I honor all people regardless of different backgrounds, opinions or ethnicities.9. I do not gossip or find entertainment value in the failings of others.10. I genuinely rejoice when I hear about the success of others.God loves us just the way we are, but He loves us too much to leave us the way we are. We are each more than what we have become.

Episode 5 - Thoughts on the Problem of Evil and Suffering Why does God allow so much suffering? (Note: In times of trouble we don’t need explanations as much as we need the love of others.)12 Ideas:1: We’re not the first to ask this question. Earlier believers found a way through this problem in far more brutal times. We can too. Not fatal to faith.1: This question is problematic for everyone. Neither believers nor atheists can eliminate the problem by denying the existence of God.3: This question has no complete answer. “An inscrutable residue” of loose ends.4: God is not happy with the present condition of the world either. Yancey, “The Bible communicates no message with more certainty than God’s displeasure with the state of humanity.” No one wants evil to end, more than God Himself.5: God created us to have freedom of choice.6: The consequences of our choices have ripple effects. Our choices can trigger events that affect strangers arbitrarily.7: Many times God does not stop the negative consequences of our choices from affecting others. Life would be chaotic.8t: The natural world is synced to the human condition in a way we don’t fully understand. Instead of creation being subject to us, we are often subject to it.Number Nine: God uses suffering to get our attention. Lewis, The Problem of Pain “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world...it plants the flag of truth in the rebel soul.”10: God can use our suffering in other ways as well. God often uses bad things for a good purpose. Examples…It can make us bitter or better.11: The end of the story will make it all worthwhile. The cross-bearers will be the crown-wearers. Dostoevsky, “I believe...in the world’s finale...something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts…for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”12: God has not exempted Himself from human suffering. This makes the Christian faith unique among all other approaches to the problem of evil and suffering. Story by Elie Wiesel. Yancey: “God too hung on a gallows, at Calvary, and that alone is what keeps me believing in a God of love.”Dorothy Sayers, “God had the honesty...to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair.” The cross shows God’s solidarity with the world in its suffering.Challenges:1. Trust God - Can we find it in our hearts to trust Him even when we don’t fully understand? Illustration: A radio broadcast - a football game and static. The static of suffering is all around us, but there is also a strong signal that comes from the cross of Christ. Listen to it.2. Become part of the solution - A reporter asked Mother Teresa, “Where’s God when a baby dies in a Calcutta alley? Her reply, “The real question is where are you?” Where are we? Example of wounded warrior Mike Day.Too many times we stay parked by the questions...time to move on...time to make it our mission to care for the wounded.The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Steven Pinker - PenguinWhere Is God When It Hurts? Phillip Yancey - ZondervanThe Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis - MacMillan

Episode 4: The Big Mistake People Make about God (1John 4:7b-8) - Why the way we think about God is wrong - the breakthrough everyone needs.Many think that God is some cosmic ogre - always out to spoil our fun?John makes two claims. First, God is love. Second, those who claim to know him should be characterized by love. This passage is like a literary sandwich. The two pieces of bread - “for love is from God”...and “God is love,” surround the middle - “he who loves is born of God and knows God…”This episode explores the first claim that God’s defining attribute is love. The big mistake we make about God is this...We are not convinced that He loves us. There’s a gap between our heads and our hearts. We say we believe God is love, but few of us live as if this were true. If we did...our lives would be a lot different. Examples: struggle with fears, continuing guilt over past failures and overcoming temptations. Why is this a problem?We affirm the words of the Bible - “God is love,” but we’ve been subject to years of conditioning by parental role models and many other experiences. Over time these have embedded in us distorted images of God that resist change. Analogy: Anybody who has ever gone fishing knows that fishing line has memory. Off the spool the filament will curl up! It has memory. No fault of the line. It’s just been on the spool for so long it naturally reverts to the way it was stored. Like the fishing line we all have memory... there are twisted images of God that have been stored in all of us. This sabotages our efforts to think straight about God.How can we get what we know in our heads to be a reality in our hearts?First, Make the cross your primary point of reference when it comes to understanding God’s character. When we cannot see His love anywhere else, we can always find it there. “The moment when Jesus reaches the deepest point of his humiliation, at the cross, is the moment when he is glorified and most clearly seen for who he is...the deepest revelation of the very heart of God...Here is a glory no other God would want...On the cross Christ puts to death all false ideas of God; and as he cries out to his Father and offers himself up…breathing out his last, he reveals a God beyond our dreams.” Reeves Second, Identify and label your distorted notions about God. In what ways is your God a twisted caricature of the real one? We must banish all our false notions of God. Third, tell yourself the truth about God. God revealed Himself to Moses, “I am gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in loving-kindness.” This verse repeated more times than any other in the O.T. See also, Jeremiah 29:11; John 3:16; Rom. 8:38:39. Find some Scriptures that speak to your heart and commit them to memory. The truth will set you free! Fourth, Pray for the love of God to break-through to your own heart. “The greatest distance in the world is the eighteen inches from your head to your heart.” There is a reason that Paul prayed: “... may you have the power to understand...how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is... (Eph. 3:14-19) This kind of heart-experience can only come as a gift from God.It doesn’t matter how badly you have messed up your life. You have a Father who has not given up on you and will always be there to love you when you turn back to him.Delighting in the Trinity, Michael Reeves - InterVarsity Press The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament, Norman H. Snaith - Schoken Books

Episode 3 - Two practical steps toward implementing a transformational life-plan. Why hurry is kryptonite for your soul. Making the decision to love others changes US and it changes THEM. How Can We Get Better at Doing This? Practical steps: First...Slow down! John Ortberg: “Love takes time and time is the one thing that hurried people don’t have.” Most of us want to be more loving...but we are always in a hurry. Our hearts are in the right place. But we are too often irritable, impatient and unkind, because we are always in a hurry...committed to a 120% life-style. I only struggle with road rage when I’m late and haven’t left in time. I only get annoyed at the clerk in the check-out line when I’m in a hurry. I only snap at my wife or my kids when they interrupt me because I’ve made no allowance in my schedule for interruptions. When I’m overbooked...I have no margin - no physical and emotional reserve to respond meaningfully to the needs of others. For those attempting to grow in love, hurry is deadly... it’s toxic...it’s kryptonite. Love and hurry are two mutually exclusive life-styles. How do we slow down? First, Give priority to your major goals. Start saying “no” to other commitments that don’t contribute to the achievement of your own top priorities. “If you want to play the sax, you have to put down the rubber ducky.” (Big Bird) Second, Limit your screen-time. This should be obvious. Third, Build margin into your weekly schedule. Build a physical, emotional and time reserve out of which we can invest more in other people. And, in our particular generation, the single most important thing we can do to make it easier to love one another more consistently is first...slow down. Second...Look for opportunities to serve other people. When we are not consumed by the pressure of checking all the boxes on our own agenda, we can give more attention to the needs of others. There is a short prayer that I often make at the beginning of the day: “Lord, help me be sensitive to the needs of one person today with whom I can share your love in word or deed.” “Be kind to everyone you meet, because everyone you meet is fighting a battle.” “One person can’t change the world; but you can change the world for one person.” “I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it., as I shall not pass this way again.” (William Penn) There is a tradition about John, the disciple of Jesus, handed down to us from Jerome, a fourth century scholar, who is best known for translating the Bible into Latin - Quote: When John lived in Ephesus to extreme old age, he could only with difficulty be carried to the church in the arms of his disciples. He was unable to give utterance to many words. He used to say no more at their meetings than this: ‘Little children, love one another.’ At length the disciples and fathers who were there, wearied with always hearing the same words, said: ‘Master, why do you always say this?’ His reply, ‘It is the Lord’s command, and if this alone is done, it is enough.’ End Quote ... If this alone is done...it is enough. To create greater happiness and satisfaction in your life...to make a more significant impact on our world...”love one another.” If this alone is done...it is enough. It’s a simple approach to a better life. The story from Jerome told in The Master’s Men, by William Barclay, p.39

Episode 2 - The secret of influence and making the world a better place - the magical power of reciprocity.How does this kind of love change things?First, something changes inside of me.Second, something slowly begins to change in other people Confucius was once asked by a student: “Master, what is the one word that stands as a rule for all of life?” His answer: “ That one word…would be reciprocity.” The Apostle Paul said something similar: “A person reaps what they sow.” Reciprocity. A more contemporary statement of the principle of reciprocity comes from Zig Ziglar - an author and motivational speaker. He put it this way: “If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they are very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.” I’m not claiming that this works every time. We all know there are exceptions. But nine times out of ten reciprocity does work...so, if we demonstrate love to another person, we’re going to get love in return.The principle of reciprocity works universally - not just in churches.One of my favorite podcasts on leadership is produced by Carey Nieuwhoff. Not long ago he interviewed Dee Ann Turner, from Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A does make a good chicken sandwich but the real secret of their success formula (that has grown the company to $10s of billions of dollars in annual revenue) is not about the chicken. It’s about the amazing culture of customer service they have created. They CARE... intensely about their customers...the entire organization is built around having a heart for service. Loving the customer. Doing what’s best for the customer, whatever it takes. Chick-Fil-A loves its customers and, no surprise, its customers love Chick-Fil-A. That’s reciprocity at work! Nine times out of ten, If we demonstrate love to another person, we’re going to get love in return. Doing what is best for another person, whatever it takes is the key to transforming all our relationships. And having good relationships is really, in the end, the key to a fulfilling life.Robert Waldinger - director of a longitudinal study that began at Harvard University back in 1938...80yrs.. They followed over 700 young adults from Harvard and from other parts of the Boston area. One goal was to research what factors contribute the most to happiness and satisfaction in life. The results were conclusive and profoundly important. Perhaps it is not a surprise that satisfaction in life does not come from the usual suspects: wealth and possessions, achievements, position or fame. Dr. Waldinger presented their conclusions in a TED talk I heard a year or so ago. They were as follows: 1.) Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Loneliness is a killer. 2.) The quality of your close relationships is most important. 3.) Good relationships protect our brains and our mental health.The good life is built with good relationships. That is the summary conclusion. And of course, those good relationships are built with love. He closes with these words of Mark Twain - Quote: There isn’t time, so brief is life, for bickering, apologies, heart-burnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving and but an instant, so to speak, for that. End QuoteNotes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/carey-nieuwhof-leadership-podcastlead-like-never- before/id912753163?i=1000452120214 https://www.ted.com/talks robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life_lessons_from_the_longest_ study_on_happiness? language=en

Episode 1 - The single most important thing you can do to improve the quality of your life…Love might not be what you think. Highlights and Notes: Here’s a couple of questions to start with: What do you think is the one thing that you could do to create greater happiness/satisfaction in your life? What is the one thing you could do to make a more significant impact for good in the world? … My own answer to these questions wouldn’t be complicated or hard to understand…it wouldn’t require attendance at a seminar or reading the latest array of self-help books and it wouldn’t require a prescription from your doctor. My answer is simple…it was stated most succinctly by a man named John who was a first century follower of Jesus. In his first letter, found in the New Testament, he writes these words (chapter 4:7). “Dear friends, let us love one another.” So if I had one thing to say to you about improving the quality of life for yourself and for this world. If this is the only message you were ever to get from me. If this were to be my last words to my family and friends, this is what I would want you to hear, “Dear friends, let us love one another.” This is nothing novel or innovative. We’ve heard it a million times. Could it be that, all along, this simple approach to a better life has been hiding in plain sight? I think so. The breakdown here isn’t the concept - it’s the implementation. We don’t really understand what love is and…we don’t do it!What Is Love? “Love is doing what’s best for someone else, whatever it takes.” (Pastor Tyler McKenzie - Northeast Christian Church in Louisville, KT) Love is NOT about how we feel. It’s not an emotion it’s a commitment to act in the best interests of others.How Does This Kind of Love Change Things? There are two ways. First, something changes inside of me. A decision to love can lead to a feeling of love. We can act our way into the right feelings. In fact, many times it is much easier to act our way into the right feelings than it is to feel our way into the right actions. So, ask yourself this question. If I really did feel love for this other person what would I say? Then say it. If I really did feel love for this other person, what would I do? Then do it! The cumulative effect of making this kind of choice over time in your family, neighborhood, church, place of work…will lead to a transformation of your own heart. This is part of the magic of doing what is best for another person, whatever it takes. Something does begin to change inside of us. It’s a simple approach to a better life.