The family walked out of their current church and travelled into our front door.  The last situation, they explained, had been unsatisfactory.   In our group they seemed quite content; as if they’d found a home. They got involved.  We really enjoyed them – until they were no longer there to enjoy.  They left abruptly,   a few years later, for reasons largely undisclosed.  I heard that they loved their new pastor’s preaching.  Until they were no longer there to hear it.  They are now at yet another church.

  I called two of my people in one week, several years ago,  to see how they were doing.  I’m a pastor; a shepherd of the flock and I try to keep my finger on the pulse of as many folks as I can.  We had pleasant conversations, information was exchanged, and we hung up.  I never saw them again in church.

          It turns out that, without mentioning it to me, they had already movedon.

Many years ago, at my first church, when I hit a rough patch, I retreated one night onto the nearby shadowy, silent train tracks, walking till one in the morning, rehearsing the painful events of the day over and over, analyzing them into dust, giving defensive speech after speech to God and to the invisible audience of those who had wounded me.  Today, I try not to take that approach when life bites me. 

“Underwood, you think too much!”  I can’t tell you the first time heard this phrase from a dear friend of mine, but it’s one he occasionally pulls out.  When I recently wrote a series on Christians and judging he told me that I was making things “too complicated”.  Actually, I didn’t mind his analysis that I was over-analyzing.  It made me detach, take a step back from my tendencies, and, well, analyze them.

   Catlin Park lies a few miles from my home in Ottawa, Illinois.  It can’t compete with its sister park, Starved Rock, in size or grandiosity.  But I’ve often gone there precisely because almost no one else does.  I park my car, and stroll quiet paths lined with trees tinted by slanting rays of sunshine.  And in this place, I attempt that most difficult of tasks – to let my hyper-active mind relax and soak in the beauty around me.

 Are you bored with the Bible?  Do you think, when you read a passage, or hear it read, “I’ve heard this a million times.  I already know that – same old same old.”?  So, either you stop reading, or you read/listen dutifully, as a good Christian is supposed to do, but your mind and your heart aren’t much engaged.  It’s sort of like reviewing the multiplication tables.

The story is told of an elderly gentleman who’d never flown in a plane.  He didn’t trust them.  One day, however, someone convinced him to try.  So up he went, into the wild blue yonder.  Sometime later, he returned to earth and dismounted from the planeunharmed.  “Well, what was it like?” someone asked.  “Okay, I guess,” replied the man, “But I never did put my full weight on the seat.”

“The problem we have,” said the speaker, “is that we’re trying to do God’s work in the power of our own strength.”  Have you ever heard this spiritual maxim?  An older way of stating it is that we’re “trying to do God’s work in the power of the flesh.”  

Why bother with all this?  Does it fill me with an ethereal spiritual buzz?  Not often.  I wish it did, but I don’t usually feel that different after devotional exercises.  Nevertheless, I believe these regular times with God and His Word, over the long haul, have made an enormous impact on my spiritual development and consistency.

 Nearly every morning I take a long, solitary walk on a country highway.  Amidst the croaking of frogs, the chirping of crickets, and the occasional yelps of coyotes I talk with God.  I love this time, but I have to tell you that I pursue it with a bit of wariness.  Other beasts share my country lane; four-wheeled creatures which hurtle past me in the darkness.  They carry death in their bumpers.  So I wear a fluorescent vest, watch for them, and constantly shift out of their path. I am, I admit, afraid of the cars and trucks roaming my prayer lane – not terrified or worried, just mildly concerned.

 Last week we talked about wrestling with priorities in life – what comes first when two needs collide?  Sometimes it’s bedeviling, isn’t it? We can’t be two places at once or always please everyone.  Yet, for the believer in Jesus, our top priority, at least, is obvious.
            The Bible teaches that God is to come first. In Matthew 10:37 Jesus, the Son of God said:   “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;”

 In my first church, back in Indiana, my deacons made an interesting request of me.  They wanted me to track how many hours I worked for the church   Wanting to prove myself a good pastor I tried to bump up the hours as high as I could.  55 to 60 hours wasn’t uncommon. A few times I hit over 70 hours.   One day the topic of my hours came up with one of the deacons.  With an odd glint in his eyes he said to me, “You know, when brother so and so in our church has put in 55 hours his week is just beginning.”  Apparently this was supposed to shame me.  It didn’t.  Brother so and so, an older man, had a beautiful, sweet wife whom he mostly ignored.  He was always gone.

“I have to love you but I don’t have to like you.”  Have you ever heard this bit of Christian lore?  It’s been around for quite a while.  Like a lot of proverbial wisdom it contains significant truth and can be helpful.  But like many proverbs it only shares part of the truth and needs other truths to balance it out.

 Many years ago a friend  made an unexpected observation about me:  “You’re not as calm as I thought you were.”  He was right.   Although I usually project a calm exterior, on the inside I’m wound pretty tightly.  Some of this is just intensity and passion but there’s a goodly streak of anxiety marbled into the mix too.  My friend’s observation didn’t seem neutral to me, though.  I came away feeling diminished; taken down a peg, having disappointed yet one more person – after all, aren’t godly Christians are supposed to be filled with peace?  I’d been outed. 

  “Why did I do that?”  Ever ask yourself that question?  Ever have a hard time answering it?  Last week I began a discussion about motives.  Why do our motives matter?  They matter because why we do what we do has a profound impact on us, on others, and on our relationship with God.  The Bible often addresses our motives telling us, for example, “love must be sincere (Rom. 12:9)” or “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit (Phil. 2:3).” God wants us to do the right things for the right reasons.

 “Are we seeking God’s glory or our own? Is it about Him, or mainly about us?”  The minister’s words had been ringing in Frank’s ears all week. He’d felt pretty good about his spiritual life before, but now he wasn’t so sure. Was he really seeking God’s glory first, ahead of his own? He certainly enjoyed an occasional compliment or pat on the back. Was that wrong? How could he know whose glory he was seeking first?

My wife’s eyes twinkled when she told me of her great discovery.  There’s a place in a nearby town that makes and sells quality dinners about as cheaply as we can make them ourselves.  Since she now works full-time, cooking for the family is challenging.  So we took a drive and brought home a box heavy with a pasta dish.  I opened the box, dished out a bowl, and took a bite.  Hmmm.  Not bad.  But a bit on the boring side – bland. I’d guess that they make it that way on purpose for people with finicky stomachs.  Once we added our own spice, the food was great.

       The Christian life, without a positive emotional aspect, is the same – bland

 It was the 1960’, and the television program, was called “Dragnet,” a police show with a gritty, no-nonsense officer named “Sergeant Friday”.  When dealing with an anguished female victim, Sergeant Friday, looking slightly uncomfortable, would cut through the emotional haze, rapping out his terse catchphrase in a low, staccato voice:  “All we want are the facts, ma’am.”