Author: Scott Strand

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My Path

Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track. (Proverbs 3:5-6 MSG)

Dirt path with rootsThis is one of the sections of Scripture that is foundational to the beliefs and values that I model my life after. In many translations verse six say “and he shall make your path straight.” As I have been on a personal retreat these past couple of days reflecting on this verse has caused me to ponder on a couple of things.

First, our part in this verse involves two dos and a don’t. We are to trust God with all our heart and to listen to or acknowledge him in all we do. We are not suppose to solely rely on our own understanding. Second, God’s part or God’s promise is a straight path or keeping us on track.

I am entering my 53 year of walking upon the earth. The last 33 or so have been as a follower of Christ. There were times when I followed closely and other times when I wandered away. If I thought about it long enough I am sure that I could trace my closeness or distance to God directly to how well I was living out my dos (trust & acknowledgement) and my don’t (my own understanding). The thing that makes me stop and wonder though is the path that I am on. If I look at it from one perspective (mine) it certainly doesn’t look to straight.

I often joke about the fact that I’ll just keep going to school until I figure out what I want to be when I grow up – talk about an eclectic educational resume…
AAS (water/waste-water technology) —> BS (environmental science) –> MS (environmental studies) –> MA (theological studies) –> Certificate (post-secondary teaching) –> DMin (spiritual formation). My work resume is just as eclectic – public works, TA, historic site guide, researcher, teacher/administrator, itinerant preacher, pastor, tech guru, instructional technologist. This educational and work pattern spells out the last 35 years of my life. Now I ask you would you call this a straight path?

From my perspective this has simply been an eclectic adventure through life. But from God’s perspective it has been about relationships, disciplining (both receiving and giving), equipping, learning to trust, seeing God provide, and stepping out in faith. Every step that has been part of this adventure I can point out examples of how God was there guiding my steps, making my path straight. But those stories will have to wait for another time.

What I want to leave you with today is the question “How has God been making your path straight or how has he been keeping you on track?”

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A Walk In The Woods

Yesterday I had to drop my son off at UMD for an honors band festival so I thought I would take the opportunity to do a little hiking on the North Shore (Minnesota’s “coast” on Lake Superior). I spent about 5 hours hiking in Tettegouche State Park. I had two goals, take some nice pictures and spend some time with God.

My pictures ended up being about birch bark and pine cones (it was a macro-photography day) and my conversation with God took any number to paths.

As happens often my mind wander from the beauty surrounding me, the noise of the river crashing over the numerous falls and ripples to the quiet of the woods once I left the river valley. As I thought about these three things – surroundings, noise and quiet I couldn’t help but compare it to my journey through life of late.

One thought that came to me was that I haven’t been doing a good job living out one of my key beliefs – loving God. As I pondered this I came to see that lately I have been consumed by my surroundings – work, family, life, etc and by the “noise” this has brought into my time with God. I have been spending time with God but I haven’t been able to listen well, to be fed by the time.

As I left the river behind and entered into the north woods I was able to hear a lot of the sounds that were masked by the river. I have come to see that I need to readjust my daily and weekly routine so that I can get away from the “noise” and in so doing be in a better position to hear God, to be refreshed by God, to love God.

I’ll be spending the next few day figuring out a new rhythm of life to once again center my life on God so that I am better able to serve others.

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Connecting the Dots – True-self

One of Henri Nouwen’s spir­i­tual polar­i­ties and a com­po­nent of authen­tic pres­ences is the inward reflec­tion and our strug­gle with self — true-self vs. false-self. That is is the per­son who we are one the inside accu­rately reflected by who we project our­self to be to oth­ers? As I speak of self I am look­ing at it at a very basic level. The ques­tions I ask when I speak of self are: 1) Are the things we say we believe and value reflected in the way we live our life?, 2) Do you lever­age the way you are wired, your nat­ural skills and your spir­i­tual gift­ing so as to ben­e­fit oth­ers around you?, or as described in James 2 3) Does your faith lead to action?
The prob­lem that many of us face when look­ing at these ques­tions is that we don’t always know what we fully believe and value, we don’t know the extent of our wiring and gift­ed­ness, we don’t know how to put our faith into action. It’s not that we don’t have any beliefs, val­ues, gifts or faith, it’s that we have never taken the time to eval­u­ate, orga­nize and act on them.
Foun­da­tional Beliefs
We all have a set of foun­da­tional belief, we may not be able to artic­u­late them but they are part of our life. The ques­tion to ask here is “What or who is it that is inform­ing my foun­da­tional beliefs?” Is it cul­ture and soci­ety? Is it God? Is it the peo­ple we asso­ciate with? Is it the things we watch and read? To be hon­est it is prob­a­bly a com­bi­na­tion of some or all of these. The trou­ble with hav­ing mul­ti­ple sources is that there will be times when two or more will con­tra­dict each other. The ques­tion then “Which one trumps?”
For me it is God who I have cho­sen as the “trump card.” My foun­da­tional beliefs are drawn from the sto­ries God has given us in the Bible. I actu­ally talk of my foun­da­tional beliefs in the from of three meta-narratives that I find as I read the Bible — the cre­ation nar­ra­tive, the restora­tion nar­ra­tive, and the eter­nal nar­ra­tive. I don’t have the space to dive deeply into each of these right now but my beliefs on cre­ation, rela­tion­ship, mean­ing, restora­tion, and pur­pose all fol­low out of these narratives.
Oper­a­tional Beliefs and Val­ues
Flow­ing out of my foun­da­tional beliefs are my oper­a­tional beliefs and val­ues. I am cur­rently work­ing on liv­ing out eight oper­a­tional beliefs. Each belief is grounded in scrip­ture, has an asso­ci­ated value, and an action plan for putting the belief into action.
The ques­tion I have been pon­der­ing for the last year or so is “Who am I and how best can I lever­age my answer?” The short answer that I have come up with is I am called to come along side other and help them to… How I fin­ish this ques­tion depends upon the con­text in which it is asked — at work, at home, at church, and doing min­istry will all have their own par­tic­u­lar responses.
I did not arrive at this point in my pon­der­ings overnight. I have been actively reflect­ing on dif­fer­ent aspects of these ques­tion for the last 10–12 years. I have put a lot of effort in to fig­ur­ing out who my true-self is and make sure that I am not pre­sent­ing a false self to oth­ers. I know that I suc­ceed more than I fail, but there is still work to be done. The dis­cov­ery of true-self is not a one and done things. Doc­u­ments that I cre­ate are organic in nature — I have three doc­u­ments that I pull out 3–4 times a year that allow me to assess where I am in the true-self vs false-self bat­tle. These doc­u­ments con­tinue to evolve as God con­tin­ues to trans­form me into the man he knows I am.
It is through this process of get­ting to know myself bet­ter that I am bet­ter able to be authen­ti­cally present with oth­ers as I inter­act with them in life.