Category: Devo180

Right, but Really Hard (October 25, 2012)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free. (Paul Tillich, Theologian)

…Listening In…

You are definitely my rock and my fortress. Guide me and lead me for the sake of your good name. (Psalm 31:3; context)

…Filling Up…

Practicing God’s presence at all times helps us make the best decisions, whether small or big. So many small choices happen every day and deciding them in the light of God’s yearnings for us is the best way to live. This is the overarching theme I hope you get out of this week. But today I want to focus on something a little different. It still has to do with decision-making, though, so stick with me.

Sometimes you are faced with a choice. You pray about it, you think about it, maybe you write down lists of pros and cons. Each of the choices makes you feel discouraged or just so small in the face of the long, long path the decision could take you down. For one reason of another, in the end, neither choice feels right. They both (or they all) just feel somehow wrong. So what do you do?

The first thing to do is start over to make sure you didn’t miss an option. So you do that and then you end up back where you were before. None of the options feels right, but perhaps something inside you stirs you towards one of the choices, even though it feels wrong. You’ve now come to a tricky situation. How do you choose between the wrong option and the right (but really really hard to do) option. The right (but really really hard to do) option feels wrong at first because you just can’t wrap your head around what it would mean to take it on. It’s just too big, too daunting.

For example, perhaps you start smoking and despite your best efforts, you become addicted. You know smoking is wrong because of the harm it can do to you and people around you. But you look at the right choice – quitting – and it feels wrong, too. The right choice feels wrong because it is just so darn hard to do.

Here’s where we return to the daily-ness of decisions. By recognizing God’s presence each day in our lives, we can make the right choices more often than not. When faced with the right (but really really hard to do) choice, we have to make it every single day. We don’t make it just once. We make it over and over again. In our example, the choice not to smoke happens every day, maybe every hour. We can’t make the right (but really really hard to do) decisions just once. They’re too big. So thank God that we can make them over and over again with God’s help.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you are the rock in whom I trust. Help me to turn to you for strength when I in the midst of making right, but really really hard decisions. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, rejoicing that you are with me in all the decisions I make.

No More Wavy Lays (October 24, 2012)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free. (Paul Tillich, Theologian)

…Listening In…

Rejoice always. Pray continually. Give thanks in every situation because this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18; context)

…Filling Up…

The little decisions flit through our lives so quickly and so often that we barely register them. Each one lasts a moment, and since they are small, there’s a better than average chance that they are taking very little of our attention and focus. Now, I must admit that when I said yesterday that I thought we should pray every time we make a small decision, I was being slightly misleading.

While I do think we should pray, I have a feeling that my understanding of prayer in this particular situation might be different than the one in your minds. At its broadest, prayer is our response to God. It’s that simple. Whenever we do or say something because of God’s presence in our lives, we are praying. This includes the normal conception of prayer – the prayers before going to bed type of praying – but it also includes so much more. It includes the urge to help someone in trouble, for example. The urge is of God. Helping is prayer.

This expansive understanding of prayer allows us to see our entire lives happening in the midst the presence of God. We are swimming and the water is God. Such an outlook is, I think, the absolute best way to live a life, and it also helps us make the best decisions possible – both small and big.

We can cultivate a way of life that sees everything we do as a response to God’s presence (and therefore as a prayer). Since everything includes everything, it includes the hundreds of small decisions we make each day. By practicing our response to God’s presence, we can become more attuned to God’s yearning for us, which, in turn, helps us make the right decisions. Of course, we won’t get them right every time, but the act of staying in tune with God will help us choose the right paths more often than not.

The more decisions we make that end up being life-affirming and full of joy and abundance, the more apt we will be to make them again. I used to love potato chips. I mean, I could eat a whole bag of wavy Lays in one sitting. But a few years ago, they started to make me very sick. Even a single chip makes me violently ill. So I stopped eating them. Now when I see a bowl of chips at a lunch meeting or party, I have to decide every time not to have one. But you know what? Over time, that decision has gotten easier and easier. Now, I hardly ever miss them.

…Praying For…

Dear God, thank you for giving me the strength of will to make good decisions. Help me when I fail to come back to your life-giving way. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, rejoicing that you are with me in all the decisions I make.

Another Coke (October 23, 2012)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free. (Paul Tillich, Theologian)

…Listening In…

Better to be patient than a warrior, and better to have self-control than to capture a city. The dice are cast into the lap; all decisions are from the LORD. (Proverbs 16:32-33; context)

…Filling Up…

I’d hazard to guess that most people give quite a bit of thought to the “big” decisions: where to go to college, whom to marry, how much debt you think you can handle when you’re thinking about buying that first car, who gets your vote for president. You get the idea. A “big” decision doesn’t crop up every day, though we may spend many days wrestling with such a decision.

We notice these big decisions. They keep us up at night. They send us to friends and family for input. But the small decisions – the hundreds we make every day like the ones I listed yesterday – tend to slip under the radar. And these decisions can have just as big an impact on your life as one big decision. Here’s an example.

Every day, you walk by the soda machine at school or work. You’ve got correct change jangling in your pocket, so you slot the necessary coins into the machine and, deciding on a beverage, press the button. The 20-ounce Coca-Cola clatters to the base of the machine; you stoop down, pick it up, unscrew the top, and enjoy. You do this every day. A couple times a week, you also decide to stop by McDonald’s on the way home for an afternoon snack: a large fry and another Coke. This becomes a routine, and pretty soon you don’t realize that the aggregated small decisions to put stuff into your body will, over the long term, damage it. When you’re diagnosed with Diabetes, you are faced with another set of decisions. They are the same ones you were making before – the soda machine, the drive-thru, among others – but they are no longer small decisions. Every one of them is big.

This is a negative example, but it works positively, too. You’re stuck in the checkout line behind a person taking an impossibly long time. You can decide to be angry or to be gracious. You choose grace. Now, multiply that decision a thousand times – every time you get annoyed – and see how much better your life is when you choose to be gracious.

These little decisions flit through our lives so quickly that we rarely register as having made them at all. So what are we followers of Jesus to do? Pray every time we make a decision? YES. Doesn’t that seem extraneous, exhausting, and, quite possibly overkill? NO. But more on that tomorrow.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you are with me in all the decisions I make. Help me to have the foresight to see down the path that my decisions are taking me. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, rejoicing that you are with me in all the decisions I make.

Pop Tarts or Eggs and Bacon? (October 22, 2012)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free. (Paul Tillich, Theologian)

…Listening In…

“What do you think? A man had two sons. Now he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ “‘No, I don’t want to,’ he replied. But later he changed his mind and went. “The father said the same thing to the other son, who replied, ‘Yes, sir.’ But he didn’t go. “Which one of these two did his father’s will?” (Matthew 21:28-31; context)

…Filling Up…

Each of us makes hundreds of decisions every day. From the decision to hit snooze or get up to the decision to play five more minutes of that video game or go to bed, our days are just chock full of decisions. Most of them are so small that we don’t even notice that we’ve made them. We put very little conscious thought into these little decisions, but the trouble is that they add up over time and before we know it they can change the courses of our lives.

Then there are the big decisions that get all the press. This week, we are going to talk about decision-making, both small and great. We are going to talk about how we can invite God into the process of making decisions through daily prayer, through reading the Bible, and through various other methods.

But first, I’m going to ask you to read the following list of potential small and large decisions. Mentally check off which ones you’ve made – say, in the last week. Also note which you consider small and which you consider large. I’m going to write this list for someone who is in high school, so if you’re not, perhaps you’ll consider making your own list of decisions (which I’m going to have you do later in the week anyway). Okay, here we go:

Snooze for ten more minutes or get up (repeat as needed); eat breakfast or not; pop tarts or eggs and bacon; wear the light jacket or stick with just the sweater; take the bus or drive with a friend; go to your locker before home room or wait until after; stand up to the kid getting picked on or not; goof off in class or pay attention; eat the mystery meat at lunch or not; sneak a glance at your neighbor’s quiz or struggle through without cheating; say hi to your crush or keep on walking down the hall; wear your shin guards at soccer practice or not; do your homework now or wait until after dinner; eat your broccoli or fight with your mom; text your friend back or ignore her; download the new Taylor Swift single or wait for the album; play five more minutes of the video game or go to bed.

And that’s only a small sample. So where is God in the process of making all of these decisions? That’s what we’re going to talk about this week.

…Praying For…

Dear God, thank you for giving me the freedom to make my own choices. Help me to choose only those things that align with your yearnings for me. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, rejoicing that you are with me in all the decisions I make.

The Perfect Home (October 19, 2012)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

You know what the first rule of flyin’ is? …Love. You can learn all the math in the ‘Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells ya she’s hurtin’ ‘fore she keens. Makes her a home. (Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity)

…Listening In…

Yes, the sparrow too has found a home there; the swallow has found herself a nest where she can lay her young beside your altars, LORD of heavenly forces, my king, my God! Those who live in your house are truly happy; they praise you constantly. (Psalm 84:3-4; context)

…Filling Up…

Far from being some obscure, antiquated doctrine, the Trinity permeates existence today as it always has even before anything else existed. The Trinity loves itself into eternally perfect relationship, which makes forming loving relationships in our own lives the best way to glorify God. When we come together in our faith communities or our groups of friends, we participate in the life of the Trinity. When we share the body and blood of Christ, we participate in the life of the Trinity. When we go out into the world in the power of the Holy Spirit to love and serve and find God in those we meet, we participate in the life of the Trinity. Our families, our groups of friends, our faith communities are home – not a perfect home like the Trinity is unto itself – but a good home made by fallible humans doing our best to love one another.

At the end of the film Serenity, the captain of the small spacecraft finds River sitting in the copilot’s chair, while rain lashes the cockpit’s windows. “But [flyin’] ain’t all buttons and charts,” Malcom Reynolds tells River. “You know what the first rule of flyin’ is? …Love. You can learn all the math in the ‘Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells ya she’s hurtin’ ‘fore she keens. Makes her a home.”

The majesty of the Trinity is that God is a perfect home unto God. And God invites us and everyone and all Creation into that home. What makes God a home for us? It’s love, in point of fact.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a Trinity of persons in a Unity of being: grant me the grace to live my life as the recipient of the kind of love that you have for yourself, that I may be sustained by it and bring it to all I meet. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, thankful that in you I find perfect love and a perfect home.

Bringing Us Back Home (October 18, 2012)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

You know what the first rule of flyin’ is? …Love. You can learn all the math in the ‘Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells ya she’s hurtin’ ‘fore she keens. Makes her a home. (Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity)

…Listening In…

I passed on to you as most important what I also received: Christ died for our sins in line with the scriptures, he was buried, and he rose on the third day in line with the scriptures. (Acts 15:3-4; context)

…Filling Up…

Much of the time people worship the creation rather than the creator. This causes us to sin, to separate ourselves from God. But God did something about that. But let me back up just for a second: everything that God creates exists in Space and Time, which are simply two more things that God created. But because God created Space and Time, God exists outside of these constraints. However, since God loves this little universe of God’s making, God continues to move around and throughout and within it. Truly, God loved this little universe so much, that God the loving parent gave to Creation God’s beloved child.

This beloved child, this Word made flesh came to our little planet as a baby who grew up to be a man who said and did such wonderful things and who taught us about God’s love for all Creation and who expanded our hearts and minds so they could contain such wonderful thoughts and who was killed because of his vision of acceptance and love and who rose miraculously from the dead and who ascended once again to exist in the eternally perfect relationship with God and who showed us the way home to this relationship.

After Jesus Christ ascended, he sent the Holy Spirit to us, the same wind of God that swept across the face of the deep at the moment of Creation. Through the Holy Spirit, God continues to pour God’s love into our hearts so that they can expand to hold the Truth of Jesus’ message of hospitality, generosity, and service. Each member of the Trinity moves in our lives, a family perfectly unified as One, as One who yearns to bring us back home.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you loved us so much that you sent you beloved child to be one of us and to show us the way back home to you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, thankful that in you I find perfect love and a perfect home.

The Ultimate Reality (October 17, 2012)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

You know what the first rule of flyin’ is? …Love. You can learn all the math in the ‘Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells ya she’s hurtin’ ‘fore she keens. Makes her a home. (Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity)

…Listening In…

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being.  (John 1:1-3; context)

…Filling Up…

So this loving relationship between parent and child existed before anything else, including the concept of “before.” Nothing existed that could substitute for or diminish the relationship. The love was pure, perfect, unsullied by deficiencies such as lust or anger or apathy or dominance. In fact, the perfection of the relationship meant that, while there was a Trinity of persons, a Unity of being was the ultimate reality. This Unity of being was the home in which the three persons dwelt: the Parent, the Child, and the Love between them.

Now, I’ve been speaking in the past tense for the last few Devos. Of course, because all this happened before there was a “before,” there was no such thing as the “past” or the “future.” There was only the eternal present in which the perfect Love between Parent and Child manifested in the perfect Unity of being. Before the beginning was this ultimate reality of God, of love, of home.

Then came “In the beginning,” and suddenly there was a time known as “before.” God breathed the wind of God’s Holy Spirit over the face of the deep. God spoke the Word of God, through which all creation came into being. The Trinity, still loving itself into eternally perfect relationship, created the heavens and the earth, thus generating an “other” to bring into that loving relationship, that home that is God. This Creation is not God because God made it, just as God made Wisdom in the verse we read yesterday.

The number one sin of all time has been people worshiping and loving the creation instead of the creator. God lets us to do this because God loves us enough to allow us to make our own choices, but whenever we choose not to participate in the perfect relationship of the Trinity, I think God’s heart breaks just a little bit.

…Praying For…

Dear God, your love was complete in itself, and yet out of that love, you created all that is. Help me to have love be the driving force behind everything I do and everything I create. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, thankful that in you I find perfect love and a perfect home.

Parent and Child (October 16, 2012)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

You know what the first rule of flyin’ is? …Love. You can learn all the math in the ‘Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells ya she’s hurtin’ ‘fore she keens. Makes her a home. (Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity)

…Listening In…

The LORD created me at the beginning of his way, before his deeds long in the past. I was formed in ancient times, at the beginning, before the earth was. (Proverbs 8:22-23; context)

…Filling Up…

We’ll start our discussion of the Holy Trinity before the beginning. You see, if we start at the beginning, we’ve already arrived on the scene too late, as our verse in the “Listening In” section reminds us. Proverbs’ personification of Wisdom says, “The LORD created me at the beginning of his way, before his deeds long in the past. I was formed in ancient times, at the beginning, before the earth was.” Wisdom may have been created before the earth, but Wisdom tells us that the Lord still created her. This is far too late to begin our discussion of the Trinity. Too even grasp the edge of the expanse of the majesty of the Trinity, we must cast our imaginations back to before there was even a concept known as “before.” You with me so far? Good.

In the First Letter of John, the writer makes the sweeping statement: “God is love.” If nothing besides God existed before the beginning, how did this love manifest? If there was no Creation to fill the role of the Beloved – the object of love – then how could God be “love?” At first the answer seems rather narcissistic: if there was nothing else to love, then God loved God. But we can’t stop there because true love always manifests as a relationship. In our futile attempt to find the right word to name God, we latch on to relational language and call God “Father.” This sets up one side of a loving relationship, that of parent to child.

But the relationship is incomplete without that second person. And so we also call God “Son” to acknowledge the complete relationship between loving parent and beloved child. In the Gospel according to John, Jesus says that God “loved me before the foundation of the world.” This love between parent and child is so palpable that the love itself is the third member of the Trinity, which we experience as the Holy Spirit. Indeed, Paul tells the church in Rome that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

…Praying For…

Dear God, you are love and you exist as a perfect loving relationships. Thank you for loving me with the same love that existed before time began. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, thankful that in you I find perfect love and a perfect home.

It’s Love, in Point of Fact (October 15, 2012)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

You know what the first rule of flyin’ is? …Love. You can learn all the math in the ‘Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells ya she’s hurtin’ ‘fore she keens. Makes her a home. (Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity)

…Listening In…

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Corinthians 13:13; context)

…Filling Up…

At the beginning of my favorite movie, the science-fiction film Serenity, the Operative scans through security footage of Simon Tam breaking his sister, River, out of a government-run facility that has been conducting torturous experiments on River’s brain. The doctor who runs the facility tells the Operative that it was “madness” for Simon Tam to give up his own brilliant future in medicine in order to save his sister. “Madness?” the Operative replies. “Have you looked at this scan carefully, Doctor? At [Simon Tam’s] face? It’s love, in point of fact. Something a good deal more dangerous.” It’s love, in point of fact.

It’s love, in point of fact, that forms our faith communities, which care for those both within and without our little bands of pilgrims. Some would say this is madness rather than love, asserting that maintaining a purely self-interested motivation for action is the only safe and sane way to live.

It’s love, in point of fact, that brings our faith communities together to worship a God we’ve never seen with our eyes nor heard with our ears nor touched with our fingers. Some would say this is madness rather than love, asserting that only what we can prove and quantify and predict are real.

And it’s love, in point of fact, that forms our faith communities to worship an unseen God who reveals God’s personhood as threefold, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Some would say this is madness rather than love, asserting that the Trinity is a needless complication of the already tenuous and rather dodgy business about God.

Some would say all this is madness, but it’s love, in point of fact. This week we are going to look at the love of God as revealed in the Holy Trinity. I know that using the word “Trinity” can be a little daunting, but I hope you’ll stick with me, because it doesn’t have to be.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You are love. Help me to bring your love to all I meet. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, thankful that in you I find perfect love and a perfect home.

Hope (October 12, 2012)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

…Opening To…

We are as sure to be in trouble as the sparks fly upward, but we will also be “in Christ,” as [Paul] puts it. Ultimately, not even sorrow, loss, death can get at us there. (Frederick Buechner)

…Listening In…

Why, I ask myself, are you so depressed? Why are you so upset inside? Hope in God! Because I will again give him thanks, my saving presence and my God.  (Psalm 42:5; context)

…Filling Up…

So what keeps us trusting God? What motivates us to surrender every day ourselves and our fear-filled anxiety to God? The answer to these questions is hope. (You see, I promised on Monday that we’d get to hope, and here we are!)

So what is hope? Well, for starters, hope is a much bigger concept than we can do justice to in three minutes, so we’ll only hit the summary of the summary here. Hope is the act of trust taken out of the present and projected into the future.

On Wednesday we talked about the unknown future being fearful because God is not there. Well, the act of hoping transforms the unknown future into a known one. True, we don’t know what will happen. In that, the future stays mostly unknown. But we do know one thing, and it’s the most important thing. We know who will be with us.

Trusting that God is with us and we are with God now helps us to have faith that God will be with us and we with God in the murky “then” of the days ahead. Practicing this trust daily strengthens our ability to hope, which is really just another way to talk about our future trust in God.

Hope transforms fearful anxiety using the raw material of trust. Surrendering to God is our part in the process of this transformation. No matter how good or bad we are at surrendering, God always and for ever invites us to do it – again and again. This invitation is always valid because God knows that we need the practice.

As someone who is still practicing and always will be, I’ll tell you that trusting in God today and hoping for God tomorrow is truly the best way to live. I hope that you will give it a try.

…Praying For…

Dear God, fulfiller of your holy promises, grant me the grace to be in your presence today and everyday in the future, so that I may continue to draw on your strength as I strive to achieve your call in my life. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

…Sending Out…

I leave this moment with you, God, thankful that you are always and forever inviting me to walk the paths of trust and hope.