Month: July 2011

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Becoming Who God Wants Me To Be (pt 3)

These past 10 years have been marked by God ordained events, a willingness to say yes, slowing down and taking the time to listen, and struggles. Any one of these happening on their own would have been good, but the combination of all these together has led to an exponential impact on all areas of my life.

Two events that stand out to me involve the same man, Greg Bourgond and his Heart of a Warrior ministry. The first happened in the fall of 2003 when I was in his office on a work related matter and he said that he was getting a group of men together for a study and he thought I should be involved. The interesting thing is that I didn’t go to his office that often and the study happened to be starting that night. reflecting back I am reminded of the disciples reaction when Jesus said “follow me.” With little hesitation I said “why not.” Little did I know what would follow. Nine months later I would be done after talking about beliefs, values, worldview, motives, and behaviors. It was the ground work for what I later called my personal life platform. This lead to teaching the material to a number of groups of men and later in a way much life the first, being invited to join Greg as he brought this material to a group of men in Lino Lakes state prison – office, invitation, acceptance, new adventure.

There was a final exam, if you will, to my studies with Greg. This final exam was not part of the curriculum, rather is was given by God. You see shortly after I finished the study I ran in the Twin Cities marathon, 26.2 miles of questioning my sanity for doing such a thing at the age of 44. As tough as the race was the real test came a week or two after the race when I received in the mail a letter for the marathon saying congratulation, hope you enjoyed the race, yada, yada, yads. Behind the letter was a check for $3500 made out to Scott Strand. I thought for a moment that I found my new career, I would be come a professional marathoner. I reasoned that if I could make $3500 finishing in the mid-6000th place I could make a lot more moving up a couple of places. I only thought this for a moment though. You see I some times Google myself to see what the web has to say about me and so I knew that there was another Scott Strand who is a world class marathoner who also happened to run the race and finished in the top 10. I had a friend who asked me earlier if that was me. Leagly, I don’t think the marathon could have done anything to me if I had kept the money and cashed the check. It was made out to me, and there was no indication in the letter or the check on why I received it. I believe it was God testing my integrity, something that I had just spent the last 10 months learning about. I called the marathon, selected what I though was the right person from the phone tree, there were now choices for returning your prize money because it was sent to the wrong person. I told the person who answered who I was and explained what had happened. After a few seconds of silence the person respond with the statement “I’m glad you were an honest person.” Yes, I aced the final, at least for this day. In the end I got a variety of marathon merchandise including a sweatshirt that I joking say cost mey only $3500.

Much of the mid-2000’s was given over to reading, pondering, listening, and reflecting. It was a time when I put into practice a number of spiritual disciplines that help draw me closer to God.

This brings me to the fall of 2007 and a blog posting about a stupid sheep. This is what really got me going with regards to what God has been doing to me, through me, and for me. But the rest of the story will have to wait for part 4.

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Becoming Who God Wants Me To Be (pt 2)

A couple of days ago I wrote about what I feel God calling for me is – to come along side others in their sojourning through life. But the question to answer today is, “How did I arrive at this point?”

This journey for me has been a, borrowing from The Beatles, a long and winding road – educationally, spiritually, experientially, and personally. It began on a fall night in 1981, though the ground work was laid long before that, when I said yes to Christ. Adventures and challenges have been part of my life ever since – marriage, moving, living, growing, listening, and obeying. My internal wiring, living, learning, loving, and laboring has been part of the transformational process God has had me on for the past 30 years.

There have been some key people and events that I look at as markers that define this adventure. Jim Duncan, the man who first discipled me in what it meant to be a Christian. We were brought together from Ohio and Minnesota in Havre, MT for a 3 year crash course in Christianity. While in Havre, I preached my first sermon, it wasn’t that good, it wasn’t that long, but I know that it was the message God had for that congregation that day.

From Havre, there as a nomadic phase where we learned to trust more fully on God as we spent time in Minnesota, Missoula, MT, back to Bemidji, MN before finally settling in Grand Rapids, MN. It was in Grand Rapids where my leadership skills were developed, my preaching skills were honed a bit more, and I took on a variety of teaching opportunities with in the church and a private Christian school. The latter experience once again proved God’s faithfulness. It was during this time that we adopted both our kids, built our home and thought that we were there for the long haul. It was here that I also learned that my plans aren’t always God’s plans.

In 1997 I was in Washington DC for a Promise Keepers event, when I heard that still small voice of God saying it’s time to go to seminary. I didn’t know why, but in the fall of 1998 we packed our things and move back the the Twin Cities. Just before I was to begin seminary my dad died and while we were down for the funeral, my wife interviewed for a number of of jobs and by weeks end had a number of job offers. I know that God was in it.

Seminary was good, I got a lot of head knowledge, but by the end of my time God had become more of an academic pursuit rather and a relational pursuit. It was at seminary that I started doing something call instructional technology – the art of using technology to enhance the learning process. When I graduated in 2001, I was offered a job at Bethel doing what I have been doing for the last three years. I thought that this was what God had in plan for me for the rest of my working career. To be honest this is a question I am pondering right now. More on that later.

None of this would have been possible if it weren’t for the gift God gave me in my wife who has been with me through this whole adventure. God gave her a talent in the medical field that has allowed her to find work and in a large part finance the adventure called life that we have been on. She has put up with my educational endeavors, occupational changes, home relocations, and me, her rather eclectic husband and sojourner in life these past 29 years.

This is the background that I have needed to lay in order to answer the questions “How do I know what God wants for me and from me?” The third and hopefully finally part of this pondering will tie things together – spiritual disciplines, spiritual director, being open and willing to say “yes”, and believe it or not a blog posting about a stupid sheep.

In short these last 10 years have been the most transformation years of my spiritual life.

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Becoming Who God Wants Me To Be (pt 1)

I am who I am becoming. No this is not some philosophical, pie in the sky statement, it is an idea taken from the Apostle Paul in his writings to the church in Corinth:

Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it!
2 Corinthians 5:17 The Message

As a new creation I already am who I am, the goal now is to do the work of stripping away the old and letting the new shine forth.

I will admit that it is easy to strip away some of the old, those things that stare you in the face and you know are not honoring to our newly created life. I sometimes talk about this using an onion as my illustration. Take an onion and around the outside is the dried, papery layer that easily falls away. As you move in the layers of the onion become harder and harder to separate. As new creations we are able to put away some of our old habits that are not needed or wanted in our new life. These things are the outer layers of the onion. But then we get into the tough stuff. Those habits, actions, sins that we try to keep “hidden” in our new life. These aren’t as easily reomoved. Let me make a point here, God can and at times does remove these hard, hidden things, but I believe that going thought this transformation process is what gives us the Godly character and wisdom that the world needs to not only hear from us but see lived out in our life.

For me this has not been an overnight, a ha moment. I have been a Christ-follower for close to 30 years. I have completed 2 post graduate degrees, a certificate and I am currently working on my Doctor of Ministy degree. Though all these years, through all this education, though all my life experiences this is what I have learned – God wants me to be someone who walks along side others as they do life, listen to their stories, offer advise when asked and help them move one step closer in their relationship with other but more importantly in their relationship with God.

This is getting a little long so tomorrow I will share with you how it is I got to the point where I could make the above statement with confidence and clarity. The question I leave you with today is “Who does God want you to become?”