Gifts From Dad That Money Can’t Buy

It’s Christmas time again.

Gift-giving is in the air and we all breathe it in most deeply this time of year.

When it comes to Christmas gifts for my daughters, it’s really quite simple for me: Debbie handles it–they’re girls and their mother is much more in tune than I with what to purchase.

And I love watching our girls open their gifts; Debbie is a master of giving them the kinds of gifts which unleash the purest kind of joy out of them.

Every year I marvel at Debbie’s gift-giving precision, which I had nothing to do with, and every year I remind myself of my contribution, which is the monetary investment for Debbie to work her “magic.”

Nonetheless, I’ve been thinking a lot about the gifts I give our daughters as a father. And not just the ones that cost money and are given on Christmas or some other special day, but rather more about the gifts I’m giving them with my life every day.

Fatherhood Is A Gift.

Fatherhood in general is one of the most understudied of all human relationships. Yet, research has clearly indicated that fathers have strong influences on their children’s overall emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual development.

This just might be the best time of the year for us fathers to be reminded…

“The gifts we give our children every day, that might cost very little if anything at all financially, are the most valuable gifts we can give them overall.”

What gifts are you giving your children that money can’t buy?

Here’s a gifts list I’ve created for myself. It’s not exhaustive or in any order of importance, but I hope it will inspire other fathers to think about their own list.

Gifts From Dad That Money Can’t Buy.

• Love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.
• Love others as myself
• Love their mother
• Have a sense of humor
• Be a teacher more than a judge
• Be a guide more than a boss
• Be fully present when they need me
• Listen at least as much as I talk
• Don’t jump to conclusions
• Following Christ as the absolute best possible way to live
• Tell them the truth no matter what
• Be flexible
• Control anger
• Invest in them—by spending time with them
• Don’t be overly critical
• A warm embrace
• Be their biggest fan
• Create memorable moments
• Be quick to apologize when wrong
• Frequently tell them “I love YOU!”
• Seek the balance of justice and mercy
• When they need discipline, carefully instruct and correct without humiliating, defeating, or being relationally invasive.

Reading Prayers To ‘Prime The Pump’

Reading the prayers of others is not something I experienced much in the tradition in which I grew up. In the Pentecostal church it was the new extraordinary experience of God’s Spirit in prayer that was emphasized.

To read someone else’s prayer seemed void of Spirit and even dead, ritualistic and meaningless; if a prayer really had value and significance the Spirit of God would give us our own words to pray and not someone else’s.

But sometimes we have the words to pray and at other times we do not. And sometimes we don’t even feel like praying at all.

I’ve learned that the words of a written prayer can very often help “prime the pump,” as Eugene Peterson puts it.

Written Prayers – Can They Actually Help Us To Pray?

I do believe so. Written prayers can be just what we need to get going and give us words to pray when we don’t seem to have any of our own.

When I discover a written prayer and it absolutely says, what I really want to say in that very moment, and it says it so beautifully, the very act of reading it can become an act of prayer itself.

And then I’ll think, “that’s a written prayer am I to be doing that?” The answer is yes. If the Holy Spirit helped that person to pray like that, why shouldn’t I also pray it too?

Do I have to be such an excessive individualist that I can’t bear the humility of learning from someone else?

There are all sorts of books of prayers and everyone should own at least one for those times when your “pump needs primed!” Here’s a prayer from one of my favorite prayer books by Richard Foster, Prayers From The Heart.

A Simple Prayer

I am, O God, a jumbled mass of motives.
 One moment I am adoring you, and the next I am shaking my fist at you. 
I vacillate between mounting hope, and deepening despair. 
I am full of faith, and full of doubt.
 I want the best for others, and am jealous when they get it. 
Even so, God, I will not run from your presence. Nor will I pretend to be what I am not. Thank you for accepting me with all my contradictions.
 Amen.

Healthy Ambition Vs. Selfish Ambition

Ambition. Is it a good thing to have or not?

I believe ambition is given to us by God and has roots deep in our very souls.

However, it does have the potential to be good or bad.

We’ve all seen ambitious people in both a positive and negative light, haven’t we?

The measurement of ambition in my own life simply looks like this:

Healthy Ambition: wanting to do my best.

Selfish Ambition: the need to be noticed.

Finding Holiness In Life’s Struggle

Everyone has experienced some measure of struggle in life.

Many of us have matured enough to understand that growing in a struggle always involves a larger perspective of it–and rarely does anyone have that in the “heat” of the struggle.

Larger perspective comes only by humbling ourselves and allowing time to broaden our perspective.

Okay, so what do we do in-the-mean-time with time?

Pursue Holiness. It always brings about the larger, broader and more complete perspective. Holiness draws us nearer to God and opens our hearts and lives to a much BIGGER perspective.

Harold Kushner, in the Handbook For The Soul, gives us something to think about :

“Everything that God has created is potentially holy, and our task as humans is to find that holiness in seemingly unholy situations. It’s easy to see God’s beauty in a glorious sunset or in ocean waves crashing on a beach. But can we find holiness in a struggle for life?”

He goes on to say, ” The idea is to find some bit of holiness in everything…As long as we can find even a kernel of holiness in a situation, our soul will grow and feel cared for…”

It seems obvious to me: holiness not only leads us in the right direction through our struggle toward growth, but it also lifts us up high enough to clearly see God’s beauty and greater purpose in spite of it!

Forgiveness Is Difficult – Part 2

Forgiveness Is Difficult – Part 1

It’s very hard to forgive people who hurt us, isn’t it?

Forgiveness is one of the most awkward and difficult counter-cultural impulses Jesus invites us to, but it must be taken seriously by those who sincerely claim to follow him.

Think about this: haven’t we been forgiven for so much more than we will ever be called on to forgive?

Jesus thinks so!

Read the parable Jesus told of a person who’d been forgiven much but fails to forgive even a little [Matthew 18:23-34].

What Jesus is essentially saying in this parable is: “All right, if it’s justice you desire for others, then it’s justice you shall get for yourself too…just like you’d like it executed on those who’ve wronged you!”

Jesus is simply trying to show us the absurdity of accepting God’s forgiveness for our countless sins and yet refusing to forgive the sins done against us.

New Testament scholar, Joachim Jeremias states it this way:

“Woe unto you if you try to stand on your rights; God will then stand on his and see that his sentence is executed rigorously.”

James Bryan Smith says it this way:

“We think, it is unfair, unjust, to forgive the person who hurt us. Why? They have not earned our forgiveness. True. So then, is that how we want to treated by God?”

“For if you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” - Matthew 6:14-15

So, the issue of forgiveness in this part 1 comes down to these questions:

Which way DO YOU want to be treated?

By mercy or by justice?

Can People Really Change The World?

I’m growing every day to understand that the pure joy of being human is about seeing the world from the perspective of goodness and believing in that goodness to make a difference.

As I’ve been watching former president, George W. Bush, and his recent interviews with Matt Lauer this week, it has reminded me just how much the world has changed since 911.

It doesn’t seem right that al-Qaeda–an organization that is run out of caves in Pakistan–instilled a value system to such an evil degree that people would fly planes into US buildings killing thousands of innocent people, drastically changing the world forever.

People did influence change in this instance.

Would you agree that the actions of these few changed the way the entire world functions? A new era of human history opened up on September 11, 2001. Evil, fueled by hatred, was strong enough on this particular day to literally change the world.

This makes me think: What could we do with resources fueled not by hate but rather love?

Can people really change the world? And, if so, then how? Perhaps it starts with the simple understanding that love and hate are already changing the world by the good or evil which flows out of the hearts of ALL people every day.

People CAN’T change the world; that’s God’s work–although we do have a huge part in joining him on this project. But people DO choose to take part in changing the world by choosing…

love or hate

goodness or evil

life or death

hope or despair

and so on…

The world is more malleable than we can ever imagine and we all play a part in shaping it for good or evil. So, perhaps the simplest of wisdom here might just be to START by believing this is true!

Need examples?

• al-Qaeda, Stalin & Hitler changed the world through hatred and unspeakable evil.
• Mother Teresa, MLK Jr. & Jesus changed the world through selfless & sacrificial love.

May we never stop believing in a better world, because LOVE HAS made it possible!

Singers of the Human Spirit

Debbie and I just got tickets for the U2 360 tour in Nashville next July. It made me think of a post I did several years back of the impact U2′s music & vision for the world has had on me.

Singers of the Human Spirit: Repost from 2008…

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that U2 is my favorite band. Their music has always had a way of inspiring me at a deeper place; it’s more then just great music or entertainment. Bono, U2′s lead singer, translates lyrically for me how I desire to see the world. With U2 there is always hope, transcendence, depth, and redemption.

Sometimes Christianity has been often more inclined to see the darkness in humanity rather than seeking out the good. The belief that humanity has fallen so far from God’s original intent, often causes us to forget that humanity is made in the image of God.

Bono inspires me because he doesn’t seem to be distracted in this. He carefully and passionately looks for the good; I love that! Bono, had these words to say about Billy Graham [another on my list of most inspiring people], Bono says…

“At a time when religion seems so often to get in the way of God’s work–with its shopping mall sales pitch and its bumper-sticker reductionism–I give thanks just for the sanity of Billy Graham, for that clear, empathetic voice…part poet, part preacher–a singer of the human spirit.”

Bono & Billy G… “singers of the human spirit!”

Make anyone else wanna’ sing? Me too!

Love’s Astonishing Portrait

The words of 1-Corinthians 13 creates the most astonishing portrait of what love actually looks like.

Love Is…

• great-hearted, patient and kind
• doesn’t want what it doesn’t have [envious]
• knows no jealousy
• does not boast
• not puffed up
• not self-seeking
• not easily angered
• keeps no record of wrongs
• doesn’t celebrate when others are degraded or humbled
• doesn’t always demand it’s own way
• doesn’t delight in evil but rejoices in truth
• always looking for the best
• It always protects, trusts, hopes, & perseveres.

And, in the end, LOVE Never Fails!

May we all experience this astonishing portrait of love in more than just words as we Trust steadily in God, Hope unswervingly, and Love extravagantly.

Spirituality Is About Living

Spirituality. What is it?

Too often, Christianity has made it mostly about some other “future world” than it is about the present world we live in every day. Yet, Jesus and the scriptures, seem to offer us a spirituality of living that is for the present as much as it is for the future.

Simply put: spirituality is about living…

However, the spiritual part of living life is not to look just like Jesus as some Christians might suppose [that's rather the example of being human as God intended].

It is however, living life with an openness; gratitude; humility; & awareness; that life is given to us as a gift, and by no means of our own!

I love what Eugene Peterson says: “All the “vital signs” of botany, biology, and physiology combined hardly begin to account for life; there is no accounting for life, any life, except by the means of God’s Spirit!”

“We somewhere along the way, seem to have picked up the bad habit of trying to get life on OUR terms, without all the bother of God, the Spirit of Life!“

Isn’t life/living far more than blood pressure & pulse rate?

What about things like:

• joy & love
• faith & hope
• truth & beauty
• meaning & value

When we are living spiritually, we experience these as gifts and are made most fully alive in our growing awareness of them. Spirituality, then, is to hunger and thirst for life because we desire the Spirit of Life, which can only be given to us by God!