A Thrill of Hope

Think about it – when Jesus was born, the Jews had not heard from God in about 400 years and they were occupied by the Roman Empire. Songs like “Joy to the World” and “O Holy Night” are exuberant and worshipful because they reflect that sense that Christ has come to bring hope into hopeless places. I think we are losing some of our Christmas hymns, because Christmas here is packaged as a happy time from start to finish. Part of that is because we already know that the Lord has come. But part of it is because happy people buy more stuff, and it’s not fun or good business to look at the bleak parts of life and the world around us (and it doesn’t make for happy blog posts all the time, either).

For me, songs of hope are so, well, hopeful, this season because life around us in Glenwood isn’t always cheery. The Friday before Christmas was a really hard day, and would have been even if we had not put Joe to sleep. First, we had a visit in the morning from one of our friends in the neighborhood who has been struggling for years to get her life on track, to get off of crack and off the streets. She had spent over 6 months in a stable environment, but she has recently lost her father, which send her and her family into a bad place and she has wound up back walking our streets. I believe that Jesus lives in her, and she is closer to freedom than she was a couple of years ago. When she saw me, she said, “I just need a hug and for you to pray for me,” and so we prayed arm in arm on the street, and then she spent an hour or so pouring out hear heart to Diane. She never asked us for anything, and eventually, she left, back into the cold, trying to figure things out.

From there I delivered presents from our church to a family who lives in one of the harshest projects in Greensboro. Though I had agreed to be there at 1:00 and had called their cell phone several times as I drove over, the mother and her sister were not home when I arrived, and I suspect that it was because it’s not easy to receive help for Christmas. Instead a young guy let me in, yelling upstairs that the “adoption guy” was there. There was no furniture in the living room, no lights on, and lots of yelling upstairs.

When I got home, Diane told me that another family had called our friend Melissa, desperate for help. The mom had saved money for Christmas, but their car had to be repaired and the Christmas money had to go to that. Thankfully our church had grocery store and gas station gift cards to help out, and we were also able to find a Wal-mart card for them as well. And in the midst of this, I was also forced to look at selfishness in my own heart as I was reluctant to pass on some of the money that God had freely and graciously given our family, above and beyond what we needed, my unthankfulness showing up dark against the generous Christ who lives within me.

This Friday before Christmas is an example of why it is both a blessing and a heartache to live in Glenwood. The heartache is clear (and there are more stories that I could tell), but the blessing is that the hope of Christ is joy and it is a thrill of hope. Without Jesus coming, we are all lost. If my friends and I don’t prepare Him room in our hearts, we will be forever desperate and wanting.

But the Lord has come, He has come to beat back sin, to bring life and light to all, risen with healing in His wings. God is with us, Emanuel. That is joy to the world.

Beautiful Joe

Today we had to put our boxer, Joe, to sleep, as his hind legs were giving out, crippled by arthritis. He had stopped eating and would not come to me when I called, and I think he was just ready to go. I really appreciate the kindness of the vet and the vet tech who put him to sleep - the process could not have been smoother or sweeter, and I had the chance to say goodbye and have a good cry as Joe went to sleep.

Thinking back on our six years with Joe has been very sweet. We bought him two days after moving to Glenwood (two days after 9-11), and we were actually looking at another boxer at the rescue when Joe came bounding down the steps. He always was a funny looking dog, and he won us over immediately. For a young couple who were scared to death of their neighborhood, having a big, mean-looking dog was such a comfort. People would move to the other side of the street when they saw Joe coming, though they had nothing to fear from him. Joe was a source of courage for me, helping me feel OK about walking through Glenwood, and owning him also forced me to get out in the neighborhood before we had a fence. I would also give Joe a lot of credit for getting our tutoring program off the ground. As we took our early morning walks, he became a favorite of the kids who were waiting for the bus, and while they didn't know my name, they would be screaming "Joe! Joe!" when we were still way down the block. He was my best way of getting to know them, and I can still see Kendall, one of our first tutoring participants, hugging Joe on the corner in front of his house.

Joe was a great dog for our work here because he was very gentle and patient with kids, yet he was all the alarm system we ever needed. Eliza has been a little sad today as she has realized Joe is not coming back, and she cried pretty hard a couple of times, which surprised me because I wasn't sure how much she could understand. We will certainly miss Joe and are thankful that God provided such a good companion for us here.

Gospel Diagram

Here is a video of me drawing the diagram based on the gospel explanation I recently posted. Please give any thoughts or critiques or questions. I know that there is no perfect representation of the amazing work of Christ, but I want to know if this would be helpful/useful in moving people towards Him. (The video is 5:12 long) Thanks to Diane for her camera work, standing on the couch looking over my shoulder!

A New Way to Present a Timeless Truth

I’ve been training students in evangelism for several years now, and one of the things that we teach them is a simple illustration that helps explain the basics of the Gospel to a non-Christian. The bridge diagram is a classic evangelism tool, and very useful because it visually shows the need of all people to have the gap between us and God “bridged” by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. But last month I was having lunch with some pastors in Charlotte, and we began to talk about what people really need to believe or understand in terms of salvation. And what it boiled down to is that Christians usually explain the Gospel in terms of people’s need for forgiveness of sin. The main problem that we present is that sin has separated us from God, and that Jesus died on the cross to fix that sin problem. We also present the Gospel as a one-time transaction, a decision that we make to accept God’s forgiveness and “cross the bridge.”

However, I do not believe that sin is the main problem that God came to address in Jesus Christ. Rather, the main problem with all people is that because of the Fall (Genesis 1-3), we are born dead in our spirits, and we need life. Therefore, we sin because we are grabbing life from any place we can get it, except for depending on God. I do not believe that people become sinners because they sin. I believe that people who are not in Christ sin because they are sinners – they are spirit-dead and lifeless in their core. (Incidentally, Christians sin for much the same reason - we are grabbing life from sources other than God. The main difference is that Christians have free and instant access to God's Life at all times, giving us the choice to depend on Him as our hope and life rather than try and produce it on our own.) Jesus said, "I have come that you may have life, and life abundant," and He told Nicodemus in John chapter 3 that the way to see the kingdom of God is to be born again, i.e. to be born with new life in our spirit.

If this is a more faithful statement of the main problem, the bridge diagram is not the most faithful illustration of God’s solution or even His end-goal for all people, because it’s main focus is on the sin of the unbeliever and posits the purpose of the cross as simply forgiving our sins and that God's goal is for us to accept His forgiveness. We have a Life problem, and Jesus’ death on the cross cleared the barrier of sin so that God might give us what we really need- His life.

And I while I do believe that there is one specific moment of salvation (rebirth) at which the Believer becomes a permanent member of God’s family, believing and experiencing the Gospel is an ongoing process in our lives. Believing the Gospel is not simply a one-time assent to the truth of the work of Christ, but it is a daily, moment-by-moment belief in our need for the Life of God to fill us, lead us, and move through us as we depend on Him for our acceptance, worth, and purpose – really, depend on Him for all things. Again, the bridge diagram would lead us to believe that belief in the Gospel is something we do one time.

While the bridge diagram is simply that, a diagram, it points to some fundamental flaws in traditional methods and beliefs about evangelism, and I think that those hampered Christians’ ability to articulate the Gospel to others. These flaws have also severely limited the depth and scope of our own understanding of our need for Christ and the ongoing work of His Spirit in our lives. Thus we try to give away in evangelism what we ourselves are not receiving. So, I have endeavored to come up with a simple illustration that Christians might use to show the Gospel to someone who does not know Christ, being faithful to the main problem of spiritual death and how the cross and resurrection of Christ give us what we really need, forgiveness which paves the way to life. In the next day or so, I hope to draw this out and post a video here of what that might look like.

Breaking the Urban Trance

In October, Diane and I had the chance to attend a consultation of urban IV staff from around the country. One of the things that we talked about there was how often times people in the Church go into an urban trance where we look right through, look right past, the problems in our streets and in our cities. It just seems too overwhelming to pay attention and to care, and so we keep the poor and marginalized faceless and nameless. As we talked, I realized that I had been doing that in Glenwood. My heart had grown numb, and I basically went from my car to the house to my car to work and on and on. I lived in the midst of some hard things and broken people, but I didn’t see them anymore. I had become accustomed to prostitutes walking my streets, to kids with messed up families, to the same middle-aged men with no jobs who walk around day after day, and my heart no longer broke.

And so I decided that one way to break the trance was to get out of the house, back out into the neighborhood, to prayer-walk my block and ask God for His leading and His heart. On my first time doing that, I heard the Lord speak one word to me – Relationship. And as I thought about that, I realized that I had not been building relationships with my neighbors. I was too tired, too busy, too scared, too numbed by the urban trance. Just after He spoke that to me, a woman and a man were walking down the street, and so I asked them if I could pray for them. She was in need of a more stable housing situation and he needed work, and so we held hands in the middle of street and prayed. When I finished, she said, “Believe it or not, I feel a little better.” I told her that I definitely did believe it – when we connect with God, things change and we sense the light of His presence.

I haven’t been the same since then, because my heart has been reconnected to my neighborhood. The faces I see aren’t just faces – they are people, precious to God whether they know it or now. And I've also been feeling sad. In many ways the urban trance is easier because it doesn’t hurt. It’s easier because I don’t have to get in touch with my helplessness.

But seeing a prostitute on my block that I have known for years and feeling my heart break for her, rather than ignoring her, makes me aware of my need for Jesus. Stopping my car in the night, getting out and telling her that Christ loves her and has so much life available to her, and then watching her receive that with cool indifference makes me feel helpless. "Jesus loves you" is the most powerful concept in the world, but in the face of a hard heart it seems so weak.

But relationship leads us to pray, to love, to care, and to need. And in those places, we find Jesus, and in those places, He begins to live His life through us. Maybe the words seem simple and the acts of kindness seem pointless. But our job is not to produce results, but simply to be faithful and live with His heart beating in us. Relationship with neighbors and relationship with Jesus breaks the urban trance.

The Kingdom is advancing, one "fist pound" at a time

A few weeks ago, Will Dungee (a friend and a pastor at my church) and I went prayer walking in a part of Glenwood that had been hopping with drugs and recent violence (someone had been robbed and then shot and killed at a convenience store in that area). Our hope was to pray over the neighborhood and also to talk with folks there and ask them how we could pray for them and see where the Lord might take it from there. Eventually we happened upon “Rick”, who was hanging out with a couple of other guys and appeared to be concluding some sort of deal involving either bootleg CD’s, drugs, or both. I suggested we go talk to him, and Will agreed, and so I practically ran up to "Rick" (I didn’t know him at that point) while Will walked much more coolly behind me. We struck up a conversation, during which we learned that his mom was an evangelist, that he wouldn’t consider himself a Christian because of how he was living, that he had been shot at least once, and that he figured that each of us is supposed to be the best we can be at what we are doing – if you are a Christian, be the best one you can be; if you are a dealer, be the best one that you can be (seriously). We asked him how we might pray for him, and he said just to ask God to let him live another day (which honestly seemed pretty generic), and so we did that and went on our way. I wasn’t sure I would see him again, especially since my prayer walks in Soflo (South Florida Street) were not a regular part of my week.

About a week or two later I was walking my dog Joe around the block and was passing by a different convenience store that is notorious for shady folks hanging around outside. As I passed by a car parked on the street, I look in and who do I see but "Rick" ! So I stopped and we did the whole “fist pound” thing (if you’re not from the ‘hood like me, you might not be as hip as me on that {sarcasm}). The first time we met, "Rick" had guessed that I didn’t live in Glenwood, and so on this meeting, I asked him what he was doing in my part of the ‘hood (neither of us took me seriously as I said that). Then I told him that it looked like God did answer prayers. He looked confused for a moment, and I reminded him that we had prayed that God would let him see another day, and well, here he was. He smiled and said, “Yeah, that’s right,” and I could tell that something flickered inside, the part of him that was created to know God and connect to Him.

That was the extent of our conversation, and as I walked away, I couldn’t help but think that I had just taken part in a Kingdom moment. Will and I meeting "Rick" had transformed him in my eyes. I normally would have ignored him, not even noticed him on my walk with Joe, or just dismissed him as a punk dealer. But because I had a relationship with "Rick", I saw him that day, and so we talked again. I think it also transformed me in his eyes. He normally would have ignored me, once he saw I wasn’t interested in buying, not even noticing me on my walk, dismissing me as a rich white guy. But because he knew me on some level, he saw me, and so we talked again.

The kingdom is advancing, one "fist pound" at a time.

Let's talk Christmas music!

So I have held off as long as I could and have inaugurated my Christmas music listening tonight with Andrew Peterson's album Behold the Lamb of God. So to celebrate, I thought I might list my top five Christmas albums (#1 being most favorite, but #2's a favorite, too, just not as much favorite), and then invite my legions of loyal readers to share your lists or comment on mine. I'm always looking for new music, so show me the way!

5) Harry Connick, Jr When My Heart Finds Christmas - This album takes me back to some good ol' days when I was at Carolina, and I just continue to enjoy it year after year.

4) Martha's Trouble Christmas Lights - I love how mellow and soothing Jen Slocumb's voice is. I actually listen to their rendition of O Come All Ye Faithful year-round on my "Relax" playlist in iTunes.

3) Ed Cash, Bebo Norman, Allen Levi Joy! - These three guys are really talented musicians and singers, and they really do have joy on this album as they perform many classic Christmas hymns. Plus, their original songs are super, and it's just a cool blend of three unique voices.

2) Elf: Original Motion Picture Sound Track - Elf is definitely my favorite Christmas movie, and this soundtrack has some awesome version of Christmas classics, including Brian Setzer's "Nutcracker Suite", and Leon Redbone and Zooey Deschanel singing "Baby It's Cold Outside."

1) Andrew Peterson Behold the Lamb of God - This is an amazing original CD which tells the story of Christmas beginning in Exodus and moving through the Gospels. The songs stand alone, but are meant to be listened to as a whole body of work. All of the songs are originals, and in true Andrew Peterson form, the lyrics are profound. One of the highlights is "Matthew's Begats" which is simply the geneology of Jesus sung to an upbeat tune. If you have the chance to see this concert in person, I would take it.

All I needed to know about margin I learned from my four-year-old (eleventh in a series)

From my wife's blog:

The other day as I was having a quiet time, Eliza asked me to do something with her. Used to being interrupted, I said, "Not right now, I'm spending time with Jesus. When I'm finished talking with Jesus then we can play." Her response was, "I pray sometimes too, Mommy." I said, "Really, when do you do that?" Thinking she was talking about prayer time before bed or at the dinner table. But she answered, "Well, I just close my eyes and bow my head and pray to God alone in my room." I said, "What do you pray about?" "I just sit quiet and pray, Mommy." "I know, but what do you talk to God about when you pray?" "Nothing, Mommy, I just sit quiet and listen to God."

A Psalm of Margin (tenth in a series)

You know, it seems like the only time I ever hear Psalm 23 is at funerals. But is that all it’s good for, to remind us of God in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death? It has become such a somber Psalm to me, repeated by rote.

But as I have grown in margin, I am finding great comfort and margin from this short oldie-but-goodie.

The Lord as our shepherd gives us hope that it’s not all up to us. There is someone greater than ourselves looking out for interests, pastoring us. There is a roominess in knowing that with God as our shepherd, we shall not want. Even in the midst trouble, of things not looking all right, of financial questions, God says that He is there for us with protection and presence and provision. God not only wants us to eat and to move, but also to rest, and as our shepherd, He loves us enough to make us lie down because He knows our need for rest more than we do. He leads us to green pastures and quiet waters, simple evidence of His goodness and love.

And what has stood out to me over anything else in this psalm has been, “He restores my soul.” Our souls are our mind, will, and emotions, and this verse reminds us that God doesn’t just desire for us to have physical provision and rest, but He cares about our inner life as well. He wants to redeem our ways of thinking about Him, restoring our mind. He wants to heal the ways we feel about ourselves and our circumstances, restoring our emotions. He wants to transform our choices to reflect a trusting, love relationship with Him, restoring our wills.

Backing all of this up is the Lord’s goodness and mercy, following us, urging us on towards our good home with the Lord. In the midst of our messes, in the midst of our forgetting, there is a quiet assurance that goodness and love will follow. And we are reminded of our future home with the Lord forever. Knowing that our future is secure gives us freedom and margin in the present to stop striving so hard.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down. He leads me. Surely goodness and love will follow me. This is not a somber psalm. It is a psalm of confidence that allows us to take a step back from our hurry and our efforts at self-provision and self-protection, allowing us to make room for margin.

Simple steps toward financial margin (ninth in a series)

1) Make a budget 2) Establish an emergency fund 3) Pay off debt

Make a Budget: One of the best defenses against marginless finances and one of the best ways to ensure that we can give generously to God’s work is simply to have a budget. In fact, I don't know how people manage their money and have funds to give without having a budget. Having a plan for where your money is going before you even get it and knowing where you are spending your income allows you to establish margin from the get go. If giving/tithing is a priority for us, then rather than waiting to see if there is anything left at the end to give, we ought to make “Giving” a line item in our budget (perhaps THE line item) and adjust our "want-to" spending around it. Diane and I have determined a percentage that we want to give, and so we adjust our giving percentage-wise to the amount of income that comes in.

We use two tools to help us budget. One is a simple excel sheet on which we list every conceivable area of spending. There are line items for personal spending money for me and Diane, money set aside each month towards Christmas presents, vacation, and car repairs, money for clothes for our kids and more. We do a "zero-balance budget", which means that we have a place to put every dollar that is coming in, even if that place is "extra funds."

The other is an online program called mVelopes (www.mvelopes.com). The way that mVelopes works is that it allows you to put money from your bank account into virtual “envelopes” so that you know where every dollar is going. So when you use your debit card at Food Lion, for example, mVelopes downloads that transaction from your bank account. Then you drag and drop that into your envelope for “grocery store” and it subtracts that amount from what you budgeted for the month.

This system enables you to budget for many different areas of life, it tracks every dollar that you spend, and it helps you know when to say when. For example, when you have used up all of your “eating out money”, your envelope is at $0 and you know that it’s time to pack your lunch for the rest of the month. For us, mVelopes has been nothing short of amazing, and I would highly recommend the free, 30-day trial you can get online.

An emergency fund helps with margin because if you know that you have $1,000 set aside for nothing but Murphy’s Law, it makes things like a busted radiator ($600 for my 1995 Honda Civic, I found out last month) be nothing more than a blip on the radar. It’s covered. Financial advisor Dave Ramsey http://www.daveramsey.com/ suggests that after paying all of your “have-to” bills (including minimum balances on credit cards), putting all extra money towards building a $1,000 emergency fund that you DO NOT TOUCH is a necessity for margin. Having that margin allows for a measure of peace in times that could easily feel like crisis.

The Debt Snowball: Once that emergency fund is established, if you have non-house debt your extra money should go towards the principle of your lowest amount owed. Then when that debt is paid off, take its minimum payment and apply that, with any extra each month, to the principle of your next lowest debt, and so on. This is what Ramsey calls the “debt snowball.” Eliminating debt removes some of the “have-to” payments and allows us to give more and save more. It’s also wise to not incur further debt, so for example, don’t buy a more expensive car than you can afford to pay off immediately (or within a few months).

Now, let’s say you have your $1,000, you are putting all your extra money into your debt, and then an emergency happens and you dip into your fund. Focus next on replenishing your emergency fund, then back to debt.

Diane and I have been following this 3-step plan for a few years, and we have reduced our non-house debt by over $12,000, and have experienced a great deal of financial peace and have seen our ability and desire to give increase. While we don’t have tons of room for all the “extras” that we desire, we have found our way to having joy in the financial margins.

Margin in Finances (eighth in a series)

Having margin is not just relegated to having time to relax and room for relationship. Financial margin is having some space between our income and our outflow, which allows room in our finances for giving, for saving, and for emergencies that inevitably come. This is another area where margin is key for us to have peace, and it’s an area where so many in our culture and in the Church are way out of whack.

It’s hard to have financial margin here in America. Advertisers are after us from the time we are pre-schoolers, telling us about one more toy or cereal that we can’t live without, and they don’t ease off as we get older. In fact the “toys” and “cereals” get more expensive, and the benefits that they promise seem more and more alluring, because they promise us beauty, status, happiness, sex, and fulfillment.

And so we are encouraged to live right up to our financial limits, spending every dollar as soon as we get it, and even to go beyond our limits, charging things on credit. We make choices to have payments and bills for things that we may or may not need, and spend a lot of time worrying about how to pay those bills or spend more time working in order to afford what we bought.

One of the costs of living this way is that our ability to participate financially in building God’s Kingdom is severely limited. Many times, in our heart of hearts we want to give more than we do, but there is just not room left when we add up what needs to go out plus the things that we want.

Another cost is that our time and attention is taken up by a focus on money, giving us less and less of those things to give to resting with God, being in relationship with others, and more. Financial stress is one of the leading causes of stress in America and is one of the leading causes of divorce. Such a premium has been placed on money, and it has been elevated to such a place of delivering hope and happiness that when we don’t have as much as we think we should, it can consume us.

But the Lord doesn’t want us consumed with money and worrying about that. Jesus said, “Why do you worry about clothes and food? Your Father knows you need those things. Seek God and His kingdom first, and everything else will fall into place.”

Financial margin gives us room for that seeking. Next we will look at three simple ways to move towards financial margin.

Shameless Self Promotion

We interrupt this series on Margin to let me plug a short piece that I wrote and was published on InterVarsity's national web site: Open Air Evangelism Still Draws a Crowd

Back to our regularly-scheduled series soon!

Margin gives space for vision (seventh in a series)

A couple of weeks ago, one of my church’s pastors met with some of us who live in Glenwood. One thing he asked was, “What is your vision for ministry here?” And I had nothing to say. I was weary, overwhelmed, and honestly, it had been months since I had thought about having any vision for my neighborhood. Ironic, since in that span of time I had led a summer missions project here in Glenwood.

As we continued to talk, I realized that a major reason I had no answer for the vision question was that I had no time or space to think vision thoughts. For the most part, I was in survival mode, making it week to week and day to day. Remembering what “had to be done” was enough for my brain to handle.

Without margin, busyness and a full life can act like a fog, allowing us to see only a few steps ahead. The problem with living like this for long periods of time is that we spend our lives living reactively to whatever comes up, not thinking proactively in the long term. Instead of charting a new course, we just dodge ruts and potholes.

I believe that vision is important for everyone's life; it’s not just for business people who want to increase their bottom line or vocational ministers who are trying to hear from God. I think that God wants us to make time and space to hear from Him about our relationships and our purpose in life. Maybe He has more in mind for us than simply paying the bills and making life work. Maybe He has a special call for us in loving people in our neighborhood or work place. Maybe He has a call and a purpose for your family and your role in their lives. Vision helps us see beyond what is good to what is best.

Having vision gives us clarity about why we are here, where we are headed, and moves us to new places of partnership with God and dependence on Him, transforming a life of simply surviving into a life aiming at the building of God’s Kingdom in small and large ways, and margin gives space for us to hear God's voice in the vision-seeking process.

Margin is necessary for relationship with God (sixth in a series)

For years now Isaiah 30:15-30 has been one of those “anchor passages” in my busy, often margin-less life (it might help to skim it right quick). This passage is so counter cultural, because it tells us that in repentance and rest is our salvation, in quiet and trust is our strength. That seems like crazy talk to me. Resting, being quiet, trusting – those things don’t get anything done! They’re so passive, just sitting there.

Waiting….... quietly…... trusting.

What I’d rather do is handle life myself, get busy fixing the problem and helping God get things sorted out. Isaiah says, “God offers you all this, but you would have none of it.” He calls this “jumping on my horse”, riding swiftly away from my problems (or to solve them). But at the end of the ride, the problems are still there, waiting, always one step ahead.

What God often does through this passage is calling me to margin, to make space for relationship with God. See, I can talk God’s ear off while I ride off on my busy horse. I can ask Him to bless my efforts, tell him all about the things I am doing. But relationship requires listening, reciprocity, and time. It requires me being quiet, listening for God’s voice. It means repenting of thinking I can get it done, and asking God what, if anything, He wants me to do. It means resting, hanging out with God. Relationship.

When I don’t have margin, relationship with God becomes very one-sided, a monologue rather than a dialogue. I read the Bible quickly, looking for nuggets of insight about me, rather than looking for deeper relationship with God (here's a great post about how to avoid this). Without margin, the things that are urgent (or seem urgent) overwhelm and drown out the thing that is best and most necessary. Margin gives me opportunity to commune with God, the God that Isaiah says “longs to be gracious to you, who rises to show you compassion.”

And what is the key to receive this gracious compassion? Time and space. “Blessed are those who wait for Him.” Waiting…quietly…trusting.

Margin is necessary for relationship (fifth in a series)

In response to some things God showed me at a recent Urban Ministry conference, I took a prayer walk on Monday in my neighborhood. One of the things that I heard God say to me in that time was, “Relationship.” See, my life had gotten so full with kids, elder board, regular job stuff, fantasy football, exercising, taking kids to preschool and more, that I had lost touch with my neighbors. Time felt so scarce that I would go from the house to the car before work, and car to the house when I got home. No time to walk around the block with my dog. No time to talk with people on the street as I pulled up. I worked right up to my margins – I need to be home by “x” time, and so I pull up right at “x” time (or a few minutes after) and know that I need to run in the house and help with the kids. There was no time for relationship – what if people wanted to talk or pray or complain or laugh? That would take time and I was already late.

But today as I walked and prayed, I knew that I had time and space set aside. So when I saw a man and a woman walking down the street, I asked them if I could pray with them, and we prayed (in the middle of the street). On my way to an appointment later that morning, I was 15 minutes early. I was dropping something off at a friend’s house, and felt the Lord telling me to go and pray with their next-door neighbors. Because I had margin in my schedule, I did, and it was a special time.

Diane got to go to the aforementioned conference with me and it was just me and her for the first time in a long time. Being there with no kids for 4 days gave margin for our relationship, and we talked and laughed and spent time together in ways that we just don’t do when there are kids to care for. Margin gave room for relationship to grow, even in the midst of a packed conference schedule.

Margin is essential for relationship. When I am careening from one meeting to the next, I have no choice but to pass you by if I am going to be on time. Without margin, people are "one more thing" instead of precious ones created in God’s image. When my heart is crowded with worry and details, I cannot give you my full attention, and friendships feel draining. But when there is margin, I have space to care, plenty of green grass for Jesus to have us sit down in, space for Him to work.

Why don't we have margin? (fourth in a series)

Diane and the kids and I were recently invited to go the beach for a weekend with two families that we have not hung out with in a long time, and everything in me wanted to go. I didn’t want to miss out on what is sure to be an awesome time; I feared not being included. But looking at the calendar, that weekend would be the fourth straight weekend for my family where one or all of us had at least one major event (more than four hours long), and the weekend after that I am scheduled to go on a retreat with our church youth group. And so we reluctantly said no. This was a big moment for us, choosing wisdom and what was best for us over fear, urgency, and what seemed very good.

Margin requires choice – this means turning off the TV or the computer and going to bed at a decent hour. It means stopping work even when there are things undone, trusting that they can be done tomorrow. It means saying no to perfectly good events and opportunities so that you can just be at home, reading or talking with a friend. It means doing without a "want" item so that there is room to bless others.

Margin can also be costly – working less means getting paid less which means having less stuff. Saying "no" means risking disappointing people or possibly missing out on something. Being quiet and still means we might have to actually deal with things that have long been stuffed down inside.

Margin is counter-cultural - when we have it, we feel like we are falling behind, as though we are less-significant. Everyone else is running at breakneck speed and seems to be finding life and joy in the things that fill their lives, and so we want to keep up.

Plus, for the Christian, having no margin seems so spiritual – who wouldn’t want to be busy for Jesus? Who isn’t impressed by the ministry leader who gives countless hours to the church? Shouldn’t we work hard for Jesus to show Him how thankful we are for all He has done for us (so the logic goes)?

But, returning to John 6, Jesus does not call us to feed all 5,000. He calls us to give Him what we have, and in His hands, our less is more than our striving could ever provide.

And I am finding that the benefits of margin far outweigh the costs, as margin gives space for relationship, vision, financial peace, and rest, all of which empower and impact the world for Christ in great ways. And talking about these benefits are where we are headed next.

Why all the fuss about margin? (third in a series)

So why all the fuss about margin? Why is our housemate Dayna about to strangle me if I say the word “margin” one more time? It’s because for too long my life has felt overloaded and overfull. It seems as though I am just awakening to the reality that my family now has three children in it, not just two, and that significant amounts of time and energy have been necessarily taken by this change, but I have continued to accept responsibility at the same pace as before. I often feel like my mind can’t hold another thought, that my heart can’t take another disappointment, and yet I still feel compelled to say “yes” to things that add to those loads. Sound familiar to anyone?

I know that I’m not alone – I read a blog by a former GUPY and found that she was drowning in a sea of schoolwork and ministry. I listen to my neighbors down the street talk about the toll of a workday that begins at 6:30 am and ends after 9:00 pm. I realize that in a recent sharing time at my elder meeting, 7 out of 8 of us on the elder board feel overloaded by work, life, and family. And while there will certianly be busy seasons of life, I just don’t believe that this is how Jesus would have us live week after week after week.

It’s so tempting to live a marginless life. The things that we add seem so good, necessary even. Isn’t it good to teach a Sunday School class, to give someone a ride to church each week, to go to the beach for a weekend with friends, to visit family who live out of town? Isn’t it nice to have a late-model car, even if it means more debt? Aren’t the things that we spend our hard-earned money on the things that we feel are important and valuable? Sure they are. But one more thing plus one more thing plus one more thing equals three more things, which are added to what is already there. And at some point, we have to admit that there are limits to our time, our emotional reserves, and our finances. But you’d never know it by looking at typical American culture. We live as though there is plenty of room for more, that our days are 27 hours long and that we earn several hundred more dollars per month than what actually shows up in our bank accounts.

I’m making a fuss because I agree with the author of the book Margin when he says that marginless living is a disease that is robbing our nation and the Church of spiritual, emotional, physical, and family health. I think that while most people know that life ought to not be so overfull, few of us have diagnosed the problem correctly, instead thinking that there must be something more that we need to do or buy in order to fix it. And of those who have diagnosed the problem correctly, taking the step of making the change proves to be very hard, almost impossible.

But as an elder, I don’t want to shepherd my church into busyness and overload. As an IV staff, I don’t want to develop leaders for the Church who accept burnout as just part of what it means to be a Christian. And as a father and husband, I want to have more to offer my wife and children than the scraps of my life at the end of the days and weeks. There truly is joy in the margins, but right now myself and many of my friends are missing it.

Margin is a key to joy (second in a series)

Continuing with the John 6 passage from my last post, another thing that my friend pointed out was the small detail of “there was plenty of grass in that place.” John's gospel is the only one to note this about the grass, and this small detail has a big impact in thinking about margin. Jesus had plenty of space to work, plenty of space for a miracle to happen. I so often go through life running from event to event, meeting to meeting, task to task, and rarely is there space or time for me to allow Jesus to speak or really work. There is not “plenty of grass” where He could lead me to a random person, where He could have me sit down for a time of listening to Him. There is no room for a miracle, and really, there is functionally no need for a miracle because my life is so controlled, filled right up to the limit or the breaking point.

But watching Jesus in this story reveals no hurry, no pressure, no crowding. There is room to love, room to provide. And in this place of roominess and margin, there is enough. Actually, there is more than enough. We see phrases like “as much as they wanted” (not needed), and “they all had enough to eat”, and “they filled 12 baskets with the pieces left over.”

Think of it – we see five loaves and two fish (“two small fish", Andrew says), which represent our lives with limited time and resources and we say, “It’s not enough, Lord, in the face of such a fantastic need, so let me try harder and do more.” But Jesus only asks that we give Him what we have and allow Him to make it enough.

Andy Stanley has recently preached a series on margin called “Take It to the Limit” (you can download the podcast for free by searching Northpoint Ministries on iTunes), and one thing he posits is that our lack of margin is primarily driven by fear – fear that we will miss out on something good. Whether it is a good material thing (so we spend all that we have), or it’s a good social thing (so we overload relationally), or it’s a good ministry thing (so we say yes to every opportunity that comes our way as long as Jesus is involved), we are afraid to miss out on the “good life.” The irony is that life with margin and space is not the good life, it’s actually the best life. It might not be full of “stuff”; it might not be full of people; it might not be full of "ministry" for the church resumé. But there is room for real relationship with God and with people. And there is plenty of grass for Jesus to work miracles, both in our hearts and through our meager offering of our lives.

Here is a great article on margin from the IV student site, Studentsoul.org

Margin is a key to joy (first in a series)

The other week my wife and I were invited over to watch a TV show with some friends, and when she called to remind me that we were going that night, I crumpled inside. It had nothing to do with our friends, whom we love. It was just that I felt so overloaded with my life that even doing something fun like that felt like a burden; I wasn’t sure that I could even enjoy it. If ever there was a sign that something was wrong inside me, that was it.

Perhaps you can relate on some level to this experience – my bet would be that most people in the Western World could, as I hear more and more stories of overloaded people being crushed by their schedules and their finances and continuing to feel the need to add more and more to their lives. Those who have spent time with me know that for about a month I’ve been beating a drum called MARGIN, and now it’s time to put that beat onto “paper” in the blogosphere.

To start this series, I want to share a place in Scripture that God has used to encourage me to make room for more in my life. Jesus feeding the 5,000 is the only miracle (besides the resurrection) recorded in all four Gospels, and John’s account of this event comes in chapter 6. I recently spent a day looking at this passage with some other InterVarsity staff in a guided retreat, and as we came together and shared at the end of the day, a fellow overloaded staff had some great insight into the passage.

She first noticed that Jesus asks, “Where can we find bread to feed all these people?” and Phillip replies with a “how” answer – “Six months wages couldn’t buy enough.” Andrew answers the “where” question correctly (“Here is a boy with 5 loaves and a few fish), but doubts that what is “here” is enough (“but how far will they go among so many?”). If I were a disciple, I may have answered like Andrew (on a good day) and then I would have made every effort to add to what was “here.” Maybe try and bake some bread, or run to town and get some bread to add, whatever I could do. But ultimately, it would never have been enough to feed 5,000.

Attempting to do more or create more than what we have “here” erases margin. Cramming more in an attempt to help Jesus accomplish His work erases margin. Well-intentioned efforts to fix the brokenness of the world can erase margin.

Simply giving Jesus what we have, recognizing and accepting the limitations, and trusting Him to make it “enough” is the beginning of having space and rest in our lives.

Glorious Ones

Last week during a time of prayer with another staff, we were praying through John 17:18-23, where Jesus prays for all Believers. The part that stood out to me the most as we read and re-read it was verse 22. Jesus says, “I have given them the glory that You have given me, that they may be one as You and I are one: I am in them and You in me.”

As I prayed through that verse, it seems that Jesus was saying that somehow giving us glory was connected to our unity with one another, but why? Then God began to speak to me about my own heart and about certain relationships where I have been unwilling or unable to forgive those who have hurt me. He showed me that most of those wounds were a result of my feeling rejected or unimportant, or in other words, those people had not given me the “glory” I thought I was due. The result of this was that there was disunity between us because my heart was hard and guarded around them.

If I lived my life as one who had already been given glory, then perhaps the opinions and acceptance of others wouldn’t hold such a place of power. Perhaps I would love simply to love and not to gain something in return. If I lived my life as one surrounded by Brothers and Sisters who had already been given glory, perhaps I would treat them with more honor and love. Imagine, living as glorious ones could bring the thing that Jesus was asking for, unity and one-ness.

And why was Jesus asking for unity among Believers? “So that the world may believe that You sent me.” And, “ to let the world know that You sent me.” Our love for one another, our treating each other as glorious ones, reveals Jesus to the world.

Jesus, who had all glory, gave it away. He didn’t need to hold onto it, because He knew who He was and Whose He was. I’m not sure yet what it means that I have been given glory. I certainly don’t often feel glorious. But I think that there is freedom here, freedom from seeking my own life and glory from others or from my own abilities, and as that freedom flows, so will forgiveness, unity, and the power of Christ in our world.