The Spirit, our drill sergeant?

Is this a familiar story? It feels like I'm remembering it from a classic war movie, but I'm not sure. Maybe from Sands of Iwo Jima.

Here's the story. A young man joins the army and arrives at basic training. It feels like months of hell, since the tough, demanding drill sergeant is on his case all day and all night; telling him to run faster, keep going, clean his rifle faster, try harder and never give up. He endures, telling himself that once basic training is over he hopes never to see this brutal taskmaster of a sergeant again. He finally makes it through training and goes into battle. In the reality of combat, he realizes the necessity of all the drill sergeant had insisted he learn. The sergeant wasn't overly demanding at all, he knew what skills soldiers really needed. Then finally the soldier meets his former drill sergeant and thanks him for being so tough on him in boot camp.

Is the Holy Spirit is like this drill sergeant? He knows we have far to grow in Christlikeness and that we won't be thoroughly happy anywhere short of Christlikeness. He doesn't shout at and insult us, like a stereotypical drill sergeant. But there is a lot we have to learn and he faithfully keeps at us to not stop learning. One day, we'll appreciate all we have learned. Maybe we already appreciate things we have learned, even though learning them was far from present at the time. Hebrews 12 reminds us that God disciplines those he loves, let us be properly appreciative of God's discipline.

Some spiritual lessons

Some spiritual lessons from recent years:

• When it looks like God hasn't kept a promise, go to him and ask for wisdom and help. Messy circumstances that suggest that the promise isn't really true may be the arena where God wants to demonstrate again how true the promise is. 
• Lay my raw emotions before God in prayer. There is no point in pretending I'm not feeling what I'm feeling. There isn't much point in thinking I can stop feeling something just by deciding that it is wrong or inappropriate to feel that way. A negative emotion laid before God in prayer loses much of its power to perturb God's peace in my heart.
•  Life may not have given me what I most wanted, but do I really have something to complain about? If I can't be content with what I have, can I be content with what I want? 
• Change is normal. Don't think of the current change I don't like as something I can get past and never be bothered with again. 
• Don't judge the wisdom, integrity or competence of others just by whether they make my life harder. Many times life needs to be complicated. 
•  The purpose of life isn't to make us happy but to make us holy. (Adapted from Gary Thomas' book about marriage).

God's wonderful plan

"God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life" Simplistic, or true? True, if we understand that the wonderful plan is not to get the things we want, or to be free from trouble, but to grow in character. Jeremiah 29:11 is a well known promise: "I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." The context is God telling the people not to listen to the false prophets predicting pleasant circumstances. God's plan to prosper his people at that point involve going to Babylon for 70 years of exile. This will be good, not evil, because God will be with them in exile, and they will learn to walk more closely with him. "Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you." So let us not assume God is not with us when life is difficult.

More than we can ask or think

This line comes from one of my wife's favorite verses.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, Ephesians 3:20

This verse has bugged me at times, because while God is able to do far more than I ask or think, I've felt like he frequently does much less than I ask for. I've come to understand that while his power can instantly resolve any problem, his wisdom usually opts for demonstrating I can trust him even as the problem persists.

An earlier post about wisdom and power.

What about my dream?

O Lord, you know my dream. You know how much it is a part of me. And yet I have no guarantee it will come true. What shall I do? I must admit I don't deserve to have this dream come true. I cannot be sure that having it come true will make me a better person or will bring your kingdom closer. But it is a part of me, and you do not condemn me for it, for you are gracious and merciful to the longings of my heart. You may well want to give me this dream that I know anew your goodness. Yet you may well want to show me your goodness and your ability to encourage me without fulfilling my dream. Do what you will. Lord, help me trust you with this dream. Help me to remember whether you choose to make it come true or not, you are ever with me. When your kingdom comes in all its fullness, that will be the best possible fulfillment of all our dreams, the ones that really matter.

Honesty of a worship leader

I just read a blog post by a worship leader that challenges my self-righteousness. I think of myself as a "mature ordinary Christian" who would never say any of those foolish things that worship leaders sometimes say. My least favorite thing, when the worship leader says "Good morning", then judges our response too feeble and says "Let's try that again." As if the problem of apathy of heart goes away as soon as we say "Good morning" or "Amen" adequately loud. His closing statement of what worship ought to be and how it just is not natural for any of us without God's grace is a good one:

At the end of the day, regardless of what side of the microphone we're on, we're all suffering from varying degrees of misdirection, and in desperate need of re-direction. We all come to church on Sunday faced with the dilemma of who we've been worshiping and whose kingdom we've been building all week. It's that humble truth that causes me to once again remember what I'm called to do this morning: magnify the name of Christ, confess our desperate need for him, and sing the truths of the gospel with people who are far too consumed with themselves. Like me.

All I've done is feed the fish

This morning, I stumbled across a blog in Portuguese, which Google translated for me, and I found it inspiring. The 21st century does have its good points. What Google and I think he's saying: Come fish with me in my lake. The lake isn't mine, God gave it to me. The fish aren't mine, God gave me them, too. All I've done is feed the fish. This reminds me of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians.

For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?

All we have, whether it is our "natural" gifts, talents and skills, things we've had to labor to attain or perfect, or things we just "lucked" into, are gifts from God. They aren't inalienably mine. All I've done is receive them. Like Senhor Campo says, all I've done is feed the fish. The original: http://arrazmaz.blogspot.com/2011/08/venha-pescar-comigo.html The translated version: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Farrazmaz.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F08%2Fvenha-pescar-comigo.html