“30 for 30″ #7: To Offer Correction is Love, To Receive It is Humility

We don’t like to hear correction, let alone heed it.

But this is the height of folly.

A wise man will listen to the voice of correction, even when he disagrees with it.

A wise woman will listen to the voice of correction, even from her worst enemy.

A wise man will listen to the voice of correction from voices of the past that seem irrelevant and outdated in today’s society.

A wise woman will listen to the voice of correction even from a little child.

We do not always have to agree with the voice of correction in our life. We do not always have to agree with those who rebuke us.

But we DO always need to patiently listen to those voices, for every once in a while (indeed, more often than not) there is a nugget or a boulder of golden truth present.

Think of it this way: Even if the person who rebukes you IS WRONG, you should respect the fact that they love you enough to confront you with what they believe to be the truth. Do not cast aside this act of love.

The most profound, most love, most challenging voice in your life is NOT the person who always agrees with you (your ‘yes’ man), but is the person who is willing to tell you the hard truths about yourself, even when it makes them uncomfortable.

Surround yourself with such people. Be such a person.

To offer correction is an act of love. To receive correction is an act of humility.

Events of Thanksgiving Day for which I’m Thankful

1. Teaching my crazy family to play Mafia (they were terrible and hilarious – instead of trying to figure out who the Mafia ACTUALLY was, the towns people kept accusing one another, citing personal vendetta reasons that were not at all game-related. Ridiculous!).
2. My daughter, who seems to be learning her social skills from Curious George. Lots of grunting. Lots of risk taking.
3. Noticing that my son’s face lights up with a great big smile when I’m in the room. His eyes follow me around the room wherever I go.
4. Chili Dip
5. Knowing that I’m living the dream because I’ve got the best job in the world: working at a church that loves me and prays for me. Not many people like their jobs; I feel very blessed to get to do what I love most in life.
6. A mother and father-in-law that love blessing other people. Every holiday season, they have people in and out of their house for weeks. I am grateful for their example of hospitality and celebration of life and family.
7. Good books. I’m reading 3 right now: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Against All Things Ending by Stephen Donaldson, Surprised by Hope by NT Wright, and Accompanying Them With Singing by Tom Long.
8. A wife who puts up with my constant insanity, instability, and infatuation with her. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
9. Talking archeology, theology, biblical studies, and American History with Michael Fosha.
10. Football

 

Things I could have done without:

1. student loans
2. mustaches
3. male pattern baldness
4. cholesterol
5. green beans
6. calvinism
7. baby poo
8. the cowboys and the lions
9. snuggies
10. making the bed

 

“30 for 30″ #6: To Redeem Christmas We Must Redeem Advent*

I’ve never liked Christmas. Maybe I just have too many bad memories. Maybe I just don’t like what the holiday has become. Maybe I’m just a Scrooge (my wife’s theory). But for whatever reason, Christmas has never been a big deal to me.

Until the last few years.

A few years ago I was introduced to the season of Advent. Coming from a Baptist background, Advent was really never an option – or if it was, it was just some silly candle service where we sat around violating fire code.

But a few years ago I was introduced to Advent through Asbury Seminary. There, a whole community of people took Advent seriously – pleading with Paul in I Corinthians, “Come Lord Jesus!”

Preachers and others are often fond of lamenting how the season of Christmas has been robbed of its value by a culture of consumerism and materialism. But we’ve done little or nothing to combat it. We’ve forgotten that we have proven tools to fight such a co-opting of one of our Holy-days: Advent.

The season of Advent can redeem Christmas. It is the antithesis of everything Christmas has become in our culture. Advent is about waiting, mourning, repenting, longing for God to break through to us in a world that says there is no god but the individual self. Advent is about desiring to see, to escape the darkness, to look for our Messiah in a world that says, “I am your savior; just spend more money and you’ll be happy.”

Advent is the season where the church all of the world waits expectantly for the return of Jesus Christ, her true king and savior. Just as Israel waited 2,000 years ago for the first coming of her king and savior at Christmas, so now we wait, too, in Advent.

If we want to redeem Christmas, we must redeem Advent. And it cannot be one or two of us, it must be a community that together decides that waiting, repenting, expecting, mourning, and longing for more is better than all the promises of Black Friday and Christmas morning.

Come, Lord Jesus! Come!

—-My friend Drew is doing a series of blog posts on Advent. I think you will greatly benefit from them, and I think you’ll find them much more informative and formative than this merely introductory post.

http://exchangedliving.com/

*For those of you who are unfamiliar with Advent, it begins this Sunday and lasts for the next 4 weeks. A simple google search can get you a good start, but I recommend doing it as a community, not just by yourself. You’ll see how much more powerful it can be.

Sayings of a Daddy Sage: Bubba’s Bar-Mitzvah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phoebe: Mommasajewmommasajewmommasajew.

Daddy: Phoebe, what in the world are you jabbering about, dear? I can’t understand what you’re saying.

Phoebe: Momma’s a Jew.

Daddy:  Um. No, honey, Momma’s not a Jew.

Phoebe: I’m a Jew.

Daddy: No, Phoebe, you’re not a Jew either.

G-pa: Phoebe, your little brother’s a Jew. We are going to have a bar-mitzva for him today. He’s 12 weeks old.

Momma: I think we’re supposed to wait until he’s 12 years old.

Daddy: Hmmm. Cassie’s got a point about the bar-mitzva, but G-pa does bring up a good point about Tommy being a Jew.

Momma and G-ma and Gpa: ?????????????????

Daddy: He was circumcised, after all.

Momma: True. Poor guy. It’s just now getting all healed up.

G-pa: All the more reason to throw him a bar-mitva!

My Sermon: How You Know You’ve Forgiven Someone

Here is my latest homiletic adventure on the signs of having forgiven someone.

My thesis: You know you’re on the journey to forgiveness when you are able to acknowledge the wrong committed against you, but also see the person who hurt you in light of who God wants them to be.

http://www.mylhumc.net/502652.ihtml

“30 for 30″ #5: The Little Guy Always Wins

My brother Travis and I are always in the mood for a good dog-pile. We’ve been known to dog-pile my dog Jet, sometimes toddlers, and quite often my wife.

The funny thing about my wife is that when she gets dog-piled, she keeps on mouthing…in her own Cassie sort of way. Even when she’s on the bottom of a Fuerst Brother’s Dog-Pile, you can hear her screaming, “THE LITTLE GUY ALWAYS WINS!!!!”

It always makes me laugh because clearly the little guy is losing.

Yet over time I have realized there’s a bit of truth to what she’s saying: the gospels teach us that the little guy does always wins. From the beginning of the New Testament, the message has been that God will overthrow the mighty and uplift the broken, the arrogant cannot stand and the poor in spirit are blessed.

The Little Guy Always Wins slogan was best embodied by Jesus, who taking on the form of a human being, died on a cross under the weight of Roman power, only to resurrect 3 days later and proclaim, “Death has no hold on us! We need not be afraid of the bigger, more powerful guys! The little guys always win!”

It is the Apostle Paul (whose name literally means “the little guy”) who tells us of Jesus’s humility in Philippians 2. I won’t bore you with the Greek grammar, but the point he’s making is that central to God’s character, before the foundations of creation, was the fact that God is humble. The incarnation of Jesus is just the logical and natural manifestation of God’s humility.

“THEREFORE,” says Paul, “HAVE THIS MIND IN YOU!”

It may not look like the little guy is winning when he’s hanging on a Roman cross. But 3 days later, when death could not hold him, the truth became earth shatteringly clear:

THE LITTLE GUY ALWAYS WINS!!!

QoD: The Ecclesial Bordello

Your quote of the day:

“I hate it when I leave church and smell like a bordello.” Pam Nevins

(the context is hugging too many people wearing too much perfume and cologne)

“30 for 30″ #4: The Pain Doesn’t Go Away, You Just Learn to Live with It

I stood by my dad’s casket at the visitation preceding his funeral nearly 3 years ago. People were coming by expressing their condolences in their own, often uncomfortable and frustrating, ways.

At some point an elderly man came up to me and hugged me. He had lost his wife a few years before and, obviously, still mourned her passing even though life had gone on for him. He knew something of the pain of death and its lingering effects.

As he hugged me, he whispered something in my ear that has never left me, “The pain doesn’t go away, you just learn to live with it.”

I know on the surface it might sound a bit morbid or even an ill chosen group of words. But that was EXACTLY the thing I needed to hear. I didn’t want people solving my pain ‘problem.’ I didn’t want cheap cliché’s and easy answers. I wanted someone to feel my pain with me, which means they needed to be HONEST with me.

What he whispered in my ear has rung true. To this day I cannot remember a single, cheap cliché someone said as they shook my hand. But I will never forget the elderly man who embraced me with honesty, vulnerability, and love.

In some ways, I think his words are almost the thesis sentence of my life. In some ways, I think they were the theme of Jesus’s life. They said to me, ‘I know the pain doesn’t just disappear when the funeral is over; I’m with you through the journey.’

The pain doesn’t go away. You just learn to live with it.

“30 for 30″ #3: In 20 Years I Won’t Remember I Went to Bed

My college dormitory’s name was Crouch Hall. And it was as dirty as the name might suggest. The showers smelled like foot. A special funk emanated from some unknown origin. J.R. Top, I remember, once commented in an assembly, “I’m from Crouch; it smells like pee.” And I won’t even tell you about the dudes on my wing that used to shave each other’s backs… just know it happened and that it added to the already established persona.

As funky a place as Crouch Hall was, I will never forget how much I grew in the Lord in those halls. We would stay up late debating theology, holding each other accountable, encouraging each other to wage war on sin, and, of course, doing stupid college-guy things like try to crush unopened soda cans on our heads.

One night I remember my friend Brandon Fredman being incredibly tired as we sat in the Crouch foyer late at night. He was yawning and looked like he was about to pass out as we were having our usual theological arguments.

So I said to him, “Hey bro, why don’t you just go to bed?”

Yes, I have braces. If you make fun of me, I'll pick you up and body slam you....and I'll remember it fondly in 20 years.

His reply was something that stuck with me even till this day, “Because in 20 years I won’t remember that I went to bed, but I will remember that I stayed up late hanging out with guys who love talking about God.”

Here, 7 years after college, I know he was exactly right. I cannot think of a single time I went to bed and was responsible. But I think fondly on 4 years of learning from a fantastic group of guys, most of whom are still serving God today (and I attribute part of it at least to those late nights).

There’s no doubt we were probably an arrogant bunch of jerks. There’s no doubt that we thought we knew everything about life and love and predestination. But there’s also no doubt that we loved God and loved each other.

In 20 years you will not remember getting your to-do list done. But you will remember the lives who touched yours and the lives that were touched by you. Take advantage of the time you have to spend with good friends. In 20 years, it will be these times that you remember with much fondness. Good friends really are a sacrament. (Just don’t say that around HLG. They’re Baptist!)

Christian Abernatha, Brandon Fredman, Caleb Chapman, Jesse Hill, Jesse Baedke, and Luke Bray – I love you guys. We may not see each other much anymore, but you are still with me. I am eternally indebted to your friendship. Thanks for being men of God.

Oh, and Brandon….T.F.

QoD: Sometimes There’s Just No One to Blame

Sometimes people die when they are very, very tiny — and sometimes no one is to blame. If you can’t handle that, it’s because you weren’t supposed to. Human beings were created to live eternally; our minds and our hearts were never designed to handle the unspeakable loss that is death. It goes against the very fabric of who we are, and who we were created to be.

Reeling from this pain that we were never intended to know, we look for a source of blame — as if having a cause, a culprit, could somehow make it better. And when a baby dies, the person who carries the brunt of that blame, deservedly or not, is the mother.

Somewhere, right now, a woman is mourning the loss of her child. Several women, actually, facing the pain of cancer or SIDS or a tragic accident. I pray for each and every one of these women, that our God of mercy would be their comfort and source of hope. And I pray that they will be surrounded by people who will hold them, love them, and grieve with them, people whose first thoughts will be to help the mothers, before assuming they are to blame.

E. Evans of Christianity Today’s ‘Her.Meneutics’ blog.