Basic Training, Part I Small Group Video

Here is Session One of the small group DVD series that goes along with our current series, Basic Training.

Uploaded with Skitch!

The Fallacy of Education as the Answer

Education is viewed as the panacea, the cure-all, for our societal problems. Whether it is drugs, violent crime, sexual abuse, racism, poverty, or virtually any other social ill, it seems that the universal answer is education. It is said, these problems are evidence for the failure of our education system and if the people participating/causing these problems in our society would have received sufficient education, they would never have gone down that path.

While I am a fan of education, having invested more then my share of both time and money in formal education, I don't believe that knowledge necessarily equals change. Knowledge by itself does not change behavior. I think it is fair to say that it is belief that changes behavior, not knowledge.

Take the financial state of our country as an example. People "know" that it is not good for their financial future to rack up credit card debt and live beyond their means to such a degree that they have no hope of retirement savings (or even savings at all). They know this intellectually, but they don't believe it. Or perhaps more properly, while they believe it they have other beliefs (in this case, the belief that living beyond their means is more important then saving for the future) that outrank it.

Without getting into a deeper discussion of worldview, belief structures, and so on, suffice it to say that knowledge alone doesn't yield much. And this is why education via our school systems is not the answer. People don't need more knowledge - more information. I can't help but remember the complete failure of the Enlightenment trust in rationality as evidenced by the death camps of WWII.

Rationalism and rationality will not save our society. Throwing more money at education will not save our society. Blaming schools for churning out kids that can't read will not save our society. An essential element is missing from the puzzle. More on that later.

The Work of Rest

Bear not a single care thyself,
One is too much for thee;
The work is Mine, and Mine alone;
Thy work—to rest in Me.
—Anonymous


Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. —Matthew 11:28 NKJV

Give all your worries to him, because he cares about you. —1 Peter 5:7 NCV


One of the greatest challenges for me is to actually rest in God. I understand the concept, I know the verses, and I believe God is not only able but willing to shoulder the load. But I find myself time and again operating in my own strength. I think part of the difficulty is that the kind of rest that comes from the Father does in fact require something of us. In the words of the verse at the top of this post it is work.

This is one of the great paradoxes of the kingdom, I think. The tension that exists between human work and God's work. Because we don't like paradoxes and tension, I think we tend to live either on one end or the other. Either we rely on our own strength to get things done, or else we sit back and tell ourselves that we are relying on God's strength. Both are too easy for us — not good for us, mind you, but easy. We fall into these patterns without even thinking about it.

But the tension is were we must live. There is something that is required of us and then there is something that God will do. What is required of us is the work of entering into His rest. This is actually a difficult thing to do because it requires us to quiet ourselves (this may be the most difficult work of all because it requires self-mastery) and to press into Him. This pressing in happens through prayer and meditation among other things. And the last time I checked, real prayer and meditation are not the easiest things in the world. There is a reason they are called spiritual disciplines.

At the end of the day, God's promise is that if we turn our minds to work on the right things, that everything else will follow. If we seek first His kingdom, then everything else will be taken care of. This single focus can change our lives if we can just do the work that it requires! God help us in this endeavor, because it is something we cannot do by sheer will power alone.

Meditation and Worry

This last weekend I spoke on the subject of meditating on God's Word. It was part two of our Basic Training series at KCF during which we are looking at the essentials of spiritual survival. I think of everything else I said, what will stick the most was a phrase that I stole from someone else (I actually read it in several places as I was preparing for the message) — If you know how to worry, you know how to meditate.

Meditation is simply the process of turning your mind repeatedly towards something. Worry is simply turning our mind towards something that we are concerned about. Because we do it in a sustained way, that thing we are worrying about often seems to grow and become larger then it really is. We do this with a lot of other things as well - the stuff that our minds keep returning to and obsessing over: money, sex, material goods, an individual in our life, an activity that we have done or want to do.

The key is for us to turn our minds in the right direction. It's easy to turn it in the wrong direction - as a matter of fact, it takes no effort whatsoever. But turning our minds towards something of value, that takes effort and concentrated focus. It takes discipline. It involves not only a desire to want to think about the right things, but then a constant redirection of the mind when we discover that we are thinking about other things.

But when we do this with the Word of God, we discover that it does something to our minds. It begins to transform us on the inside. The great thing is that if you focus on the Word of God, all the other things that we spend our time worrying about (and that we can't really do anything about to begin with), are taken care of.

Matthew 6:33 NKJV
But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

God's Plan is Different Then Ours

Right now I'm re-reading The Making of a Leader by Clinton. The book is all about the process that God uses to develop leaders. Clinton has studied thousands of Christian leaders, both living and dead, and discovered that there is a framework that it appears that God uses to mold all of them, and thus, all of us.

I think one of the most striking things about this process is that a major phase, Clinton calls it Ministry Maturing is all about God using things in a leaders life (circumstances, other people, challenges, etc.) to grow the leader's internal character. Often times the leader believes that God wants them to focus on learning things, when in actuality God is most interested in building one thing into the leaders life - Christ in them.

I think we all fall into this trap. We think that God wants us to do something — and it's not that God doesn't want us to do something — it's just that He is more interested in doing something inside of us rather then us doing something for Him. I've heard this referred to as the process rather then the goal. God is process oriented, not goal oriented. His time horizon and perspective is so much larger then ours that He is much more aware of where things are headed then what is happening right now. All we can see is the next "goal", but He has so much more in view that the "goal" is much less important to Him as an individual piece.

So in all of this, the thing to remember is that God wants to use all the things that are going on in our life, to form us on the inside. The conflict we are experiencing, the person in our life that rubs us the wrong way, the challenge at work, the struggle with the car — all are tools in God's hand to make us in the image of Christ. But we must allow Him to work inside of us, we must seek to learn the lesson, or we will repeat it over and over again until we finally figure out - it's not about the thing, it's about what He's doing through the thing.

Basic Training: Week 1

Last night my wife and I attended our first small group for the series <i>Basic Training</i>.  At our house, because we have a multitude of small children, we generally either host a group or cannot attend together.  For this small group series, we were not able to host a group due to some previous engagements during the six weeks, but we were able to find a host gracious enough to provide one of their older children to watch our much younger children during our meeting times (bless them!).

What a joy it was to meet with about six other people and discuss the subject of how to hear God's voice!  To be encouraged that other people also want to hear Him and are also plagued with the same tendencies that I have.  I'm always reminded how important it is to get together with other people who are also seeking God!

God's Grandeur

I have recently been struck again by Gerald Manley Hopkins' poem God's Grandeur. Eugene Peterson uses it as a launching point for his excellent work, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. The imagery is staggering. I post it here for your enjoyment.


God's Grandeur
Gerald Manley Hopkins 1918

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.


While reading Psalm 19 the other day, I could hear Hopkins in the background. I wonder if he received inspiration from this Psalm while writing?

Psalm 19:1
The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.

Moving Blog

I'm in the process of moving the blog so that I can post utilizing Blogger's interface because the interface provided by the web company we use for our church's website is not at all convenient for actually posting entries. Let's see if it works.

Relativa Informecial

It's been a while since we did our Relationship Rx small group DVD series, so I just wanted to post the infomercial that we did to advertise it. It is the long version - but is one of the better examples of our video work here at the church. I can't say much for the acting, but pay attention to the "doctor" in the background - our very own Pastor Jeff Acton - he makes the video.