Category: Connect the Dots

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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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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.
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Connecting the Dots – Distractions

I was recently in a discussion about the topic of listening. Questions were asked and responses were given. I was a great conversation. As I listened my mind was wondering what I was hearing – I was trying to discern what was being said. My mind wandered to my current thoughts about what Henri Nouwen called “authentic presence” and how the art of listening plays into this. Now, when I fall asleep to certain thoughts or ideas and then come back to them in the morning – I begin to wonder what it is God is trying to teach me or show me.
As I reflected on the conversation the word “distraction” jumped out at me. The context being that at times we are distracted listeners or as Nouwen might say we are not being authentically present with the person we are in conversation with. It was pointed out that the main source of our distraction was the ever-present cell phone. As I thought about that, i don’t think the phone is the problem, rather it is a symptom or the diagnostic tool that God may be using to say it’s time to take a step back and take a deep breath. Am I really to busy to take an hour break from technology to spend time with someone else? Then I have to ask myself “am I to busy to spend an hour with God?”
Distractions! They come in all shapes and sizes. They come in a variety of colors and flavors. Some are welcome, others are unexpected. The question I ask myself is, how am I going to manage my distractions when I want to be authentically present for someone else? The key here is to have a management plan. Believe it or not, but the odds of disaster striking if you were to turn your cell phone off for an hour or two is nil. You might not think so but I think you will survive. Want to test this theory, go away on a silent retreat for a couple of days and see what happens. Not only will your family survive but you will grow in a deeper, richer relationship with God. Take an hour and grow in a deeper, richer relationship with another. This single act can boost ones spirits because you are saying to them that for this next hour is yours.
Turning off the phone can eliminate a lot of the external distractions, but how do we turn off the internal distractions that are bouncing around in your mind. Unlike our cell phones our mind doesn’t have an off button. This is where a little soul care can go a long way. If we practice the spiritual discipline of solitude we can begin to unload some of our distractions in a healthy way. Solitude is not about going out into the middle of nowhere to be alone, rather solitude is finding the moment of time (from a few minutes to a few hours) regularly where we can be alone with our thoughts, process what is going on in life and hopefully settle things down. We need to take the time to process life and learn deal with our own “stuff” so we can be present for others. This time of solitude is when we invite the Holy Spirit in to help us, transform us, and renew us. If we can lower the “static” of our own distractions we are better able to present for others.
Prayer is a natural fit with solitude. Solitude forces us to look inward while pray forces us to look upward. Prayer is actually great practice for listening to others. Prayer isn’t so much about us talking at God, rather prayer is about talking with and listening to God. I say this often when talking about prayer, but it is the toughest spiritual discipline for me.
I hope this wasn’t to random and rambling, it sounded a lot better as these ideas bounced around in my brain. I want to be a better listener, I want to be authentically present with other when I am in conversation with the, so this is my distraction management plan: 1) Be intentional about putting the other first – turn of the external distractors, 2) Spend time in solitude so that I can better react to my internal distractions, and 3) Spend time in prayer, conversing with God. If you want to be a better listener which piece do you need to work on? Or if you have additional tips or suggestions please leave a comment.