Each week, I have a standing appointment with a 3rd grade boy.  He is my “little brother” and I am his “big sister”.   We’ve met nearly every week (except for summers) for three years now.

I was blessed to be matched with such a cool and awesome young man.  Talk about a pure heart.  Seriously.  He is God’s goodness in the flesh.  I love my time with Aristide each week as we talk, play Candyland, Battleship or Old Maid.  We play math games on my iPhone and we talk about his goal to be a spy one day.

Even with all that love, I fight the temptation each Monday to press on with my work load or to do list and to see the time with this young man as an interruption.  But I made a commitment and I love him, so I go.

And 45 minutes later I’m reminded that I need this as much as he does.  He helps me remember what is important and that everyone needs to make time in their life to play Candyland with friends and family they love.  He teaches me that there is a time for work and a time for play.  He shows me that being present with someone else is as worthwhile, if not more worthwhile, than checking a box on my task list.

I hope one day that I don’t have to fight that temptation – with him or with other people.  Until then,  I remind myself of Princess Lolly and Queen Frostine and the sweetest one of them all – Aristide.

How do you balance work and fun?  What helps you fight the temptation of too much work and not enough play?  Leave a comment below!

First Baptist Church, Jefferson City, Missouri
January 29, 2012
I Samuel 8:1-22
“Be Careful What You Wish for Cause You Just Might Get It”

"When I Grow Up" Just Dance 2

If you are a fan of the Wii game “Just Dance 2” than the title of this sermon may sound familiar.  I would play part of the song for you this morning but I’m afraid a third of you would stand up and start doing the dance moves from the game.  And while that might be incredibly entertaining for many of us and in some venues might be classified as charismatic worship, it probably isn’t entirely appropriate for this time or place.

The sermon title comes from the pop song “When I Grow Up”.  The chorus goes like this:

When I grow up I wanna be famous,
I wanna be a star, I wanna be in movies
When I grow up I wanna see the world,
drive nice cars, I wanna have groupies …

But be careful what you wish for cause
you just might get it

Have you ever wished for something, got it and then regretted it? Maybe not immediately but down the road.  January often finds many people suffering from buyer’s remorse.   In December you wanted it and had a justification for why you absolutely needed it.  Then, the bill arrives in January and you regret it.  Several years ago, I owned a dog.  I got a dog on a Thursday, regretted it by Friday, and had my dad return it on Monday.  Not one of my finer moments.  But had you told me on Thursday that this wasn’t a smart idea and that a few chew toys and kibbles later I would regret it, I wouldn’t have listened to you.  I was sure this was a great decision.  

Our text today is a tense and emotionally charged season finale of the drama of God and God’s people.  And like any good drama, there is love and pursuit and betrayal.  Then, repeat for seven seasons. There has been some family bickering between tribes, some fights with neighboring nations, and some infidelity on the part of Israel but God has provided leaders or judges for several years now to guide his beautiful bride, Israel, back to him.

Samuel was one of the Judges of Israel. In fact, he was the last Judge of Israel.  Part of Israel’s self definition was that they had these Judges instead of having a king. They were not a monarchy like so many other nations. They were a loose confederation of tribes who had a common history of liberation by their God, Yahweh from slavery in Egypt. They considered themselves distinct and different from all the other people all around them in the region. Their king was their God. Their God was their king.

But in our passage today something has changed. The elders of Israel are approach Samuel and demand a king. They want a king it says “in order to be like other nations.” They no longer want to be distinct. They want to be the same.  Scholars believe that Israel was facing a growing and increasingly urgent military threat from their neighbors to the west, the Philistines, and Samuel, the current judge, was old and his sons were corrupt and unfit to lead Israel so the Israelites started to panic.

 So, what to do? Trust God to continue to take care of them as God had done in the past or in this moment of uncertainty, take matters into their own hands and find a solution.

When life isn’t going exactly as we plan, when we sense a growing and increasingly urgent threat from our west, we too begin looking around for other options, for something to protect us.  The Israelites looked around and noticed something that their neighboring countries had that they didn’t – they had kings.  “in-the-flesh”, “see and touch” kings.  And through eyes of desperation and desire, they could only see the benefits. Kind of like the dog.  A king – this is the answer to all of their problems.

The elders go to Samuel and state their demand – appoint us a king to rule us, just like everyone else.  Samuel is upset about their demand and God comforts Samuel telling him, “It’s not you they are rejecting.  It’s Me.”  Israel had a King.  God was their King. They didn’t need anyone or anything else.  It wasn’t that they asked for something.  It wasn’t that a king is an evil concept. The problem was that they rejected God. The God who liberated them from slavery, provided for them in the wilderness, led them to the promised land is apparently not enough to protect them from the Philistines. So they demand someone else.

And not to God’s surprise.  Because they had danced this dance before. Many times. It wasn’t God’s first rodeo. And definitely not His last.

I had a significant ‘aha’ moment with this passage in my mid-twenties.  Most people grow up assuming they will get married, maybe after college, maybe later, but eventually, you marry.  Everyone marries – or so it seems.  And if you are a Christian, there is even more pressure to marry because some Christians believe and teach that it is God’s will for every person to marry.

I used to pray about getting married. That isn’t a bad thing at all. But somewhere in my mid-twenties I put two and two together with this passage.  And before long, I could never pray for a husband without ending the prayer with – “but if you don’t want me to have a king, I don’t want one.”  At first I didn’t mean it.  But as I was faithful to pray it, I eventually did and do mean it. Now, when I tell this story, I always make sure that people understand I’m not saying the husband is king. Let’s be clear on that.  It is a metaphor.  But God did allow me to see that I was dangerously close at that time to repeating the Israelites mistake – which was placing my entire faith and hope in something or someone other than God.  Not only would that be a guaranteed disappointment for me, it would be an impossible expectation for a spouse.  I hadn’t even stop to ask God what He wanted for me, what was best for me.  Was I even willing to consider the idea that God’s best for me might be being single?  Did I trust God to lead me or was I going to demand what everyone else had?

Some of you might hear that and think “She’s given up on marriage.”  First of all, you’d be wrong.  And second of all, you’d be missing the point.  Marriage isn’t the issue.  A monarchy isn’t the problem.  It is rejecting God that is at the very heart of sin.

Back to the rodeo – What should God do with His yet again wayward children? They willingly and emphatically said no to His plan. I think many of us would assume there would be one of two responses.

The first response: God uses God’s divine sovereignty to force them to do what He wants, to stick to the plan. Sometimes I think we live in this bubble thinking that God will always protect us from ourselves.  That God will intercede for us when we are stubbornly going after something that is not part of God’s plan. There is persistence in prayer and petition that is not an evidence of faith, but rather an evidence of lust and greed.  A lazy faith is more comfortable with the idea that God will exercise absolute control and force His plan upon us so that we don’t have to participate in the hard work of faithfulness to God.

The second most likely response is that God kicks them to the curb and finds a new nation, one that will be grateful that they have God.  God had every right to wipe His hands of the Israelites, to leave them to their king and all the bad that would come with it.  Israel was a repeat offender.  Surely, God’s grace has a limit.

In what should be the most shocking part of this text to some of us, God tells Samuel to let them have what they ask for.  God relented.  God changed the  plans because of Israel’s demands and they get what they wished for – not out of vengeance by God or so He could tell them “I told you so” in a few hundred years. The giving of the king was not the result of divine desire, but of God’s gift of grace to a stubborn people.  The God who grants human freedom is wise enough and patient enough to know that these same humans often will make inappropriate choices and is gracious enough not to give up on them.  On us.

God is not a Type A personality.  His first love isn’t the plan.  It is the people.  The Word of God backs this up because we see God change the plan on different occasions in response to the people (God doesn’t change the end goal but rather the plan on how to achieve that goal).

God goes with Plan B but not without warning the Israelites about what they can expect from choosing their way over God’s way. This is the “Be Careful What You Ask For Cause You Just Might Get It” part.  God instructs Samuel to warn them of what they’re in for.  Tell them the ways kings operate, just what they’re likely to get from a king.  In warning the people what to expect, Samuel uses the words “he will take” six times. Verses 10-18 are all about what a king will take:

• He will take your sons
• He will take your daughters
• He will take your land
• He will take your money and your property
• He will take your freedom

The difference between God and any other king whether it is a human king or a non-human power to which we give our allegiance, is that all other kings take, take and take, but God asks. With God we always have a choice. Other kings demand allegiance. God requests our faith.

It is possible that if we persist in asking for that which is not best, God may give it to us.  Can God use Plan B?  Of course and He does. We can read on in Scripture to see God at work through the monarchs – through the lives of King Saul, David and Solomon.  In our own lives, we can give testimony to how God has worked even though we went with Plan B.  But it is still Plan B.

Is it wrong to pray to God about things you long for or desire? For healing?  For a prodigal child to return home?  For a spouse?  Not at all.  I’m so grateful that we have a God who understands us and does not belittle us for our humanity. God is big enough to handle our honest longings, worries and desires and is not put off when we lay them at his feet.  We are in good company.  Abraham who cried out to God to provide another way of sacrifice other than his son, Isaac, yet Abraham stayed the course trusting that God knew best – whatever the outcome.  Even Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane before his arrest for God to remove this cup from him. To not have to go through the painful torture and crucifixion.  Yet …. not my will be done but yours.

Barbara Brown Taylor, an extraordinary preacher, shares the following thoughts as she reflects on the final moments of Jesus on the cross:

Jesus cries out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It was a quiet day for him –the quietest day of his whole life, when he asked for bread and got a stone. Whatever else it was, it was the death of hope–that God might intervene, might stop the suffering, might at least say a word that would make the suffering bearable. None of that happened. God was, for all practical purposes, gone–and yet Jesus died seeking God. He died talking to the Abba who would not talk back to him, giving us the stripped down vision of faith that remains at the heart of our tradition.

When all of our own hopes have died, we still have this faith that seeks nothing for itself–not wisdom, not spiritual power, not rescue from suffering. “Success” is not in its vocabulary. This faith seeks nothing but God, to whom it is willing to surrender everything–up to and including its own cherished beliefs about who God is and how God should act. This faith is willing to sell all that it owns and bet the farm on one chance for union with God. If God plays hard to get, then this faith will never stop its wooing.

Brown says that faith is a dangling modifier.  It needs an object to complete it.  Faith is always in something or somebody.

What or whom is your faith in?  Is it in a king or a spouse?  Is it in another person or yourself?  Is it in a religion or way of living?  Is it in our understanding of whom God is and how God should act or is it in God, even when God turns out to be beyond our understanding?

One of the miracles of prayer is how it changes our hearts.  You start by being honest with God about your desires, what you wish for, what your scared of, what your mad about.  He isn’t going to be surprised by them and we need to own them and not pretend we have our stuff all together.  But we don’t stop there.  We continue and in faith we pray with hopeful sincerity, “But not my will but yours.”  And God, through the miracle of prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit, will begin to help us believe it.

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing
and I know that if I do this, you will lead me
by the right road though I many know nothing about it.
Therefore, I will trust you always,
though I may seem to be lost and in the shadows of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
(Thomas Merton)

When your options are either
to revise your beliefs
or to reject a person,
look again.

Any formula for living
that is too cramped
for the human situation
cries for rethinking.

Hardcover catechisms
are a contradiction
to our loose-leaf lives.

“Loose-Leaf” by Gerhard Frost

I’m starting my twelfth year as a youth pastor at the same church.  That is a really long time in youth ministry and a really long time as a youth pastor in the same church.  I remember my current youth when they were mere babies and the first youth I had in my ministry are now having babies.

Over the twelve years, I’ve shared countless moments with hundreds of teenagers.  I honestly don’t have a number for you but I do have names. Names and faces;  joys and sorrows.

It is important to remember the joys from the years.  Those memories are life-giving and often help spur continued years of ministry.  I recently experienced reunions with a couple of youth that had taken the Prodigal Son route and when they were ready to return home, I’m so grateful that I could help demonstrate God’s grace and love to them.  I can’t capture in words how much joy that brought to my life to see them let go of baggage and grab hold of God again.  It is worth it all to see them come Home, to see them shed the guilt, pain and burdens.

But I still remember the time when they “left”.   When our relationship was broken or  distant.  And there lies some of the darkest moments for a youth pastor (and pastors and parents and pretty much any human that loves another human).

I’m not very good about reaching out to people sometimes.  I live in my head and my heart a lot and I don’t say what I should say.  Sometimes the emotions are so strong for me I don’t think I can say them without crying. (You all know my propensity for crying.)  Sometimes I’m too scared to put it out there because I’m afraid of being hurt or rejected.

But if a card was sent every time I thought of you or prayed for you, your mailbox would be constantly overflowing.

I love you.  Just want you to know that.

It doesn’t matter where you’ve been.  It only matters where you’re going and Who you’re going with.

I’m sorry that I’ve left you alone. I didn’t know what to say and if you wanted to even hear from me.

I miss you.

Despite what you might think or feel, I’ve never stopped loving you.

Nothing you’ve done would ever keep me from caring about you.

Nothing you think or belief – no matter how different you think it is from my beliefs – could ever cause me to love you less or dismiss you.

My silence isn’t judgement.  My silence is my fear – my fear of being rejected, my fear of bringing more harm to our relationship, my fear that you might be right in how you feel I’ve wronged you, my fear that I’ll push you even farther away.

For all my current youth and former youth

 I love you.

Sincerely. No BS. No churchy talk.

I’m here.  I simply want you to know that I’m still here and that I still love you.

And more than anything – God loves you and will never stop loving you.  To read about His love, click here.

Has there ever been a time where you’ve felt this way – either done the leaving or been left behind? What did you learn from this experience?  How do you deal with relationships that have become distant?  

“New Year’s eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights.” — Hamilton Wright Mabie

My mom posted this quote on her Facebook last year and although it didn’t resonate with me at first, I kept thinking about it. You see, I’m not one to make New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t get really sentimental about the ending of a old year and the beginning of a new one. I don’t have ambitious thoughts about how this upcoming year could be so much better than the last.

My personality typically has me living in the moment – not too much reflection or wishing for old days or regrets about past mistakes. Nor too much pining for a future dream or possibility. If I do tend to one, it would be dreaming. But I never really resolve to make those dreams happen. Perhaps I should do more of that but often I find living in the moment about all I can handle. 

Which maybe is the reason I don’t achieve a lot of dreams. Dreams like writing a book, starting a non-profit, getting back in shape, etc. You know what they say about “those without a vision …”.

There are moments where I realize how fast life is going and how if the last ten years went this quickly, the next ten will surely go quicker. It is in those moments that I also realize that if I don’t resolve to make some goals and take steps to meet them, I may find myself at the same place ten years from now. Not necessarily a bad life but definitely not the best.

So, I’m doing some reflecting on my dreams. Some thoughtful pondering about what I truly want out of life. And along with that, some clear goals that will enable me to realize those dreams.

One of these dreams is writing more. I use to blog every day. I use to engage my world in such a way that I had things to say, thoughts to share, questions to ask. But not in recent years. And I miss it.

So, goal one: to blog at least four times a week. Will you hold me to it?

What are some of your goals for 2012? What can I do to help hold you to your goals?