Category: Connect the Dots

Posted on

2014 Year End Reflections

2014 – A Year End Reflection

The best way I can describe 2014 is – I began with an intimacy with God I had not experienced in a very long time and is ending with the birthing of a new ministry – The Sojourner’s Garden. Did the first give rise to the second? I don’t know because much happened in the “…” (the space) between the beginning and the end. The “…” is a lot like the “-” on a grave stone. You have a birth year and a death year and the “-” represents the time one spent on earth. Most often there are a lot of years represented by the “-.”

So what happened in the “…’s” this year. How has my soul been? How have my relationships grown? How has ministry been? Have I loved God with all I have? Have I loved my neighbor the same way? Maybe I need to do a beliefs & values check…

Trusted God with all my heart –
Being strong and courageous –
Guarding my heart –
Loving God and loving others –
Serving Him by serving you –
Giving voice to those who have no voice –
Developing relationships –
Choosing my words wisely –
Being transformed, shape, molded by God –

What are the grades I would give myself for these traits this last year? Without measurable outcomes I really don’t have a way of grading myself. I believe I would make the B honor roll. I would come up with a couple of A’s, a couple of C’s, and the rest B’s – some +’s, some -‘s. I need to work better at guarding my heart and choosing my words. I am pretty good at serving others and giving voice to the voiceless (at least ministering to them/with them).

What I need to do now is look again at my personal life mandate and put into place how I am going to live out each of my belief/values in the coming year. Are all my operational beliefs still valid? Do I need to incorporate something new? This is a task for another day for now I want to reflect back over the last year and see what I have learned.

The year began on what I have had a very hard time describing. Coming back from the CQ COC retreat in Dec 2013 I was in a spiritual state of nirvana, a sense of a deep, personal, intimate relationship with God. My time alone with God was a time of true contentment but with a sense of change coming. Yes, I know that those two statements seem to oppose each other – how can one be content, yet be sensing a change? Maybe this is why it is a time that is so hard to explain.

As winter rolled into spring and then burst forth into summer the changes I was anticipating did not happen and I had to re-evaluate the signs I had been reading. As things unfolded differently than I had plan my relationship with God had also returned to a more “normal” state. My time with God no longer had the same intimate feeling it did a few months earlier. The question I ask now is who was it that changed, me or God? It’s wasn’t that I was now discontent or didn’t sense change, but it was in some way different.

As summer moved into fall I once again turned to what I was seeking and instead started asking “God, what do you have in store for me?” This simple act of turning from what I thought God should do to asking what it is I should do seemed to draw me back into that closer, more intimate relationship – it is different than what I experienced at the beginning of the year. Not better or worse, just different. At work, my job description changed again as did my office for a couple of days a week – can you say window. My time with God began to change as well. Consistent time with God, centering myself on Him who created me, prayer (which has always been my weakest spiritual discipline) came alive, and my dream reemerged – a dream reflecting back through the years actually has its genesis in the the mid-1990’s as Shoal Lake Ministry.

I have come to realize that I was alive after the retreat a year ago because God had stirred in me this new adventure – spiritual director, mentor, teacher, dreamer, writer – and I had embraced it. As different opportunities arose I assumed this is where I was suppose to move – not bothering to really seek God’s will in it. You see we were so close that I didn’t need to ask, I just knew this was it. The thing is these different opportunities would have put me into a “box” where I might not be able to do all that God has planned. But, you see, these “boxes” would have been the safe way to move forward. God isn’t about this kind of safety, rather I need to push forward just like the barbarian sheep I wrote about 5-6 years ago. I need to push my head through the fence and get some people together not to push my head back but rather to push my butt forward to the other side. Will this happen tomorrow, no I don’t think so. But I am putting together a five year (give or take a couple of years) plan to set me up, for what is now being called, my encore career. That ministry that I can do as my life begins to wind down and I settle into the last few decades of my life.

2014 you have been a good year. I don’t have a lot written about you through the year but God has been good. I have entered into new ministry opportunities at church, while scaling back others. I have drawn closer to God and what He has in store for me in the future. I have seen my kids grow and mature and I have realized they did listen to a lot of the things I told them. They don’t always do things the way I would but then again they aren’t me (thank goodness). I have had a lot of wonderful adventures this past year with my wife of 32+ years and look forward to loving her and getting to know her even a little better in this coming year. Ok, I admit it, this empty nest thing is really kinda fun.

I close this reflection with a prayer of gratitude to the creator of all thing, the transformer of my life, the source of who I am and who I am still becoming. Father God, thanks for using me to be your ambassador, your hands and feet, your minister while I go about doing this thing called life. Amen.

Posted on

Discovering My Path? (pt 2)

A day or two ago I began a conversation about the path that God has guided me down for 30+ years. I have decided to call that path I’m on the path of a listening servant. Today, I want to flesh out what I mean by “listening servant” and why I believe this is my God given path.

The path of a listening servant – what does this mean? For me, this path is one that contains two actions – listening and serving. In his book Uprising: a revolution of the soul author Erwin McManus concludes that the value of serving others is what we should all be exercising. After all if Jesus came to server other, shouldn’t we do the same? This part of my path has been easy for me to follow. One of my spiritual gifts is serving so this comes naturally to me. How and where I serve ebbs and flows with the rhythms of my life. To be honest I have had to learn to say “no” and establish some healthy boundaries but all in all I do have a passion about serving.

Some serving opportunities come along that don’t require a lot of thought: holding the door for someone, helping a friend or neighbor, or pitching in to clean up a mess. Other opportunities may not be so clear: things that push your boundaries or may over extend you, opportunities outside your comfort zone or abilities, or stepping in to help in a messy situation. Don’t get me wrong there are a number of valid reasons why “no” is the correct response, but what about those opportunities where you may be saying “no” but God want you to say “yes?” How do you discern how you will respond in this situation? This is where the listening part of my path comes into focus.

Serving comes naturally to me but I have only in the last few years really begun to hone my listening skills. It seems that in the last few months God has testing me in this area as well. I taught a seminary class called Scared Conversations that focused on the skill of listening and I have felt more promptings by the Spirit than I have in a long while. When I responded in the affirmative to these promptings God has opened a number of doors and when I responded in the negative, well I guess I won’t know what may have been. This path is not only about listening to God, it’s also about listening to the stories of others.

I have thought for a long time that we have lost the art of conversation. We are good at talking at each other, we may even hear what the other is saying but we don’t take the time to listen. As the other is speaking we are to busy forming our response that we don’t truly hear what they are saying. I’ll expand on this theme in another posting on another day.

As we take the time to listen to God or another, as we set aside our own agenda and respond to what God or the other is saying. As I respond to God in service to another or respond the the needs expressed by the other I am taking steps down the path of the listening servant, the path that God has chosen for me.

If you are interested in discerning the path God has placed you on contact me and we can talk.

Posted on

Discovering My Path? (pt 1)

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)

blog1-8This is a verse that I return to regularly as I seek to understand who I am and where God is guiding me. It’s such an easy verse – If I trust God, He will guide me. Simple to understand but so hard to live out. I want to know how I can do something or figure something out. I want to listen to my own words to find the solution to a problem. This verse says trust God, listen to God not to Scott, not to the world – they can’t or won’t guide you in the right direction. No, trust God and He will “keep me on track” or in other versions “ make straight your paths” (ESV). It’s this last word or idea I want to focus on today. The idea of keeping my on a straight path.

These last few months I have spent a great deal of time pondering paths. In the fall while up north I took a series of photographs of paths and produces a short book featuring them. I have written previously about my wandering paths (My Path). My conclusion from almost a year ago was this:

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.

I admit I live a rather eclectic life. My education, jobs, and life experiences have challenged both hemispheres of my brain. While my various jobs have given me a number of platforms on which to walk my path and my education and life experiences have given me the ability to contextualize the setting through which my path lead these things don’t define the path I walk. It is, if I follow the advice of Proverbs 3:5-6, God who is defining my path. I keep wondering if “path” should be singular or plural. Does God guide us down many paths or is it a single path with multiple spurs? At this time I am leaning towards the idea that God sends us down a single path that contains multiple spurs that we sometimes need to walk down.

The path God has guided me on is one that has become well worn. I have been walking on it for the last 30+ years. I haven’t always been able to name my path, but as I reflect back it is the one that I know I have been on. The landscape that my path passed through has change as I have taken on different jobs, my experiences have shaped what my path looked like, and my growth in knowledge and wisdom have opened up different spurs to explore. So what is this path that I am on? What name have I given it? After much pondering and prayer the name that seems to fit the path that I am on is “listening servant.” Diane Mills in her book Conversations – the sacred art, says this “Our true paths are those that don’t excite us, but rather they are those that enliven us.” There are a lot of things that I do that I am excited about, but there are only a couple of things that really enliven me: listening to others stories and coming along side other and walking with them for a while (listening and serving).

In part two I will go into greater detail about what I mean by the path of a listening servant.

I leave you with this today – Have you ever thought about the path that God has you traveling down? What does it look like? What landscape does it pass through? What spurs might you have to explore?