The Sword Room

Over the years I have worked with many families where the children were abused, neglected, and/or removed from the custody of their parents. These kids routinely grow up angry and scared, unable to love others as they would like to. In families where the children are loved and nurtured by their parents the kids are more likely to learn to love others around them. It seems like being raised in an environment where genuine love is experienced and modeled gives them the best chance of learning to be loving themselves.

I have been reading through Ephesians lately, and just today I am looking at 5:2, where we are told to walk in love. It does not merely tell us to be loving or to love others, but to walk in love. This expression portrays love as an ongoing lifestyle. In the previous verse we are told to be imitators of God as beloved children. Kids imitate their parents–I have seen it so many times. Just this week, in fact. When I was a boy I saw how my dad loved my mom and treated her with care and dignity. When I became a husband myself I needed no instruction. Kids who are neglected and abused often become abusive and neglectful parents. Not always, but too often for it to be coincidence. We are like little children loved by God the Father, and we are to imitate that love. Paul spent the first three chapters of his epistle to the Ephesians explaining in detail all the benefits that ar ours as products of God’s unconditional love for us His people.

Then we are further exhorted by the example of Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us (v. 2). We do not love God and others because we merely convince ourselves that we are beloved children and that Christ lovingly gave Himself on our behalf. We love because this is in fact who we are. We must know this and rest assured of it, based not on our own feelings or performance, but on the bedrock of the many biblical statements to that effect.

We start with loving God. We love Him because He first loved us. His love was the basis for the gracious act of regeneration, whereby He made us alive and able to recognize and emulate his love. We do not, however, base our love for others on their love for us; rather, we are to love even those who hate us. Why? Because God loved us while we were unworthy sinners. If we truly are imitators of Him as dear children our love for others will not be based on their love for us. In fact if we refuse, for example, to love fellow Christians we are placing ourselves above God. He is able to love us and them in spite of our sins, so for us to refuse to do the same is the height of arrogance.

Such love is staggering. And to think God expects us to emulate this love is equally humbling. I will not pretend I know how this is done or that I am walking this way. What I do know is that it is based on my standing as a beloved child of God and that it is the bar I and all other children of the Father must be willing to attain to. Easier said than done. Love is hard sometimes; and sometimes it is not nice. It can be messy, but we must be willing to roll up our sleeves and get a little dirt under our fingernails.

I exhort you today to make it your ambition to walk in love.

My son Jordan started learning to play guitar when he was a freshman in high school. He soon was playing circles around me and was helping out at church as well as playing in a band with some of his buddies. By the time they were seniors they had won a local battle of the bands contest and were offered free time at a recording studio to do a demo. The guitar he used was my old Fender Telecaster, beat up finish but a great player. He had it modified with humbucking pickups.

After high school he still played but got busy with other things. The band broke up and the guys went in different directions. Lately he seems to have gotten the bug to play again, and he has been on me to get together out in the man cave and do some recording together. Really, he just wants to hang out with his dad, I think, and music is one thing we have in common. He is the only one of my four sons who did not continue in wrestling after middle school.

Ever since he started playing back in about 2004 he has dreamed of owning a guitar called a Parker Fly Mojo. A really cool state of the art axe with humbucking and split coil options, a peizo pickup to make it sound like an acoustic, lightweight back and neck in one piece made of composite material. Mahogany body, ebanol fretboard and stainless steel frets. A sweet axe that is called a fly because it weighs a mere five pounds. One of those toys one dreams about but can never afford until he is almost too old to enjoy it.

So last week on a whim I told his mom I was going to search for a deal on Ebay, and I found a used one that was in mint condition–I mean a flawless 10 out of 10. I got it for half the price of a new one and it came with the original case, strap, cords, and paperwork.

So we had him over for dinner last night and then his mom and I took him into another room. I told him his mom had gotten some old POS guitar into the antique and cosignment store she runs, and that he should have a look. If he liked it he could have it.

The look on his face when he opened the case was priceless. He simply could not believe it and said so over and over for an hour, thanking us repeatedly. We plugged it in and he played for at least an hour.

It was not his birthday. No special occasion. We just wanted to do something nice for the kid and see a dream come true for him. Our parents would never have been in a position to buy something like this for us, so I knew what it was like to play cheapie instruments while dreaming of the perfect guitar I could never get my hands on.

Well, Jordan, you said you wanted a Parker Fly Mojo, and last night was you lucky night because you got to go home with one of your very own.

Rock on.

When I was in high school I got hired as a dishwasher at the Hyatt House hotel and restaurant on the referral of a friend who worked there in building maintenance. There was a fry cook there who took it upon himself to bark orders at me and critique my work. Once during an unusually busy and hectic shift my friend overheard the fry cook giving me a hard time, and he came back into my work area and said, “Don’t listen to him–he’s nuthin’!” Over the years I have observed that in whatever field you land a job, you can always bet on some person like the fry cook taking it on himself with no authority to micro-manage you.

Our youngest son, after months of searching, finally landed a summer job with the City of Bellingham public works/facilities department doing routine maintenance and cleanup of city buildings and grounds. Excellent pay, and a job that will be there every summer between school years. Also a great foot in the door and stepping stone to a permanent position down the road. I told him two things as he prepared for his first day of work. The first was my dad’s show-up-and-shut-up principle. He always told men I was young that for the first several weeks of a job you are the dumbest S.O.B. in the place. You know nothing but you are willing to work hard and learn everything. Older guys hate young blowhards so show up and shut up. The second thing I told him was to be aware of guys who try to boss you around who are “nuthin’.” As divine providence would have it he was assigned to one of my staunchest fight club guys who works for the city. He is receiving great training/mentoring and an earful about the Lord to boot. This brother is his official boss. This is who he reports to daily and drives with to the jobs.

As Christians we are bombarded with voices on all sides claiming to tell us what God wills for us. Now there is a place for sound instruction and godly counsel. But at the end of the day–if we are really His sheep–the voice of our shepherd, Jesus Christ, is the only one that counts. His sheep know His voice, and they follow Him.

I was reading yesterday and today in John 21 where Jesus restores Peter after his three denials. He asks Peter three times, “Do you love Me?” and three times he follows Peter’s affirmative answer with, “Feed My sheep.” He then hints at the manner of death Peter would experience. When Peter inquires about John’s fate, Jesus tells him it’s none of his business and to “Follow Me.” For Peter following Jesus meant forgetting what was past and obeying the clear commands he had received.

Do not measure your love for the Lord by your past failings or you will be crushed under a load of condemnation. Do not use what God is doing in someone else’s life as a yardstick of your own progress in sanctification. And by all means do not listen to the opinions of those who are nuthin’ when they tell you what God’s will is for you. There are tons of so-called Bible experts out there who have their heads rammed so far up their butts that they can’t see the light of day. Find a trusted church and pastor who preaches the word. But above all, get into the word and listen to the voice of Jesus as he speaks to you. In this way you mill grow in obedience and develop real spiritual discernment.

Yesterday as I was driving I was listening to this guy on the radio, and he said Jews who sincerely trust Yahweh do not need to believe in Jesus to be saved. He holds to a dual covenant concept which says the Jews are saved without accepting Jesus as their Messiah. If anyone knows of any other videos like this please tell me where to find them. I know a few little old ladies who send him money, and they need to stop. He looks like he’s eating good enough already.

I am sitting in the North Satellite at Sea-Tac Airport with Connie waiting to catch a flight to Denver. We are supposedly on vacation, but this one will be a working holiday. Her sister and her husband have retired recently and sold their home. They will be re-locating in Whatcom County, Washington. When we get there we will be loading two 26-foot Ryder trucks and heading out Friday morning. The two guys will drive the trucks, and the gals will drive the car and pickup. 1,500 miles in three days will get us home Sunday. Those big trucks probably are governed to top out at 60 mph, so do the math and it adds up to three long days. Denver to Soda Springs, ID the first day; then up to Yakima on day-2 and then home the third day.

The bright side is that I have not driven this stretch of road through Cheyenne, WY, Lander, Rock Springs, Green River, etc., since I attended Denver Seminary in 1980-83. Should be nice this time of year with lots of antelope along the road. I hear the new trucks have automatic trannys, air conditioning, and comfortable seats. Those features should make for a nice time of reflection.

So my encouragement to all you swordroom friends is to keep fighting the good fight. Keep putting the deeds of the flesh to death by the Spirit of God, according to Romans 8:13. For the fact is that even though we go on vacation from time to time, the world, flesh, and devil work overtime 24/7/365. Thank God our faithful high priest, Jesus Christ, ever lives to make intercession for His people. Keep you eyes on Him, brothers. Take up the two-edged sword of the Spirit and start swinging, hacking the deeds of the flesh into oblivion daily–it’s a never ending struggle this side ot heaven.

One of my favorite times of fellowship is when I am able to meet up with my friend Doug at the gym and talk about the things of God as we work up a sweat on the treadmill or some other exercise contraption. Lately we have been talking about fear and how it effects our thoughts and behaviors. Many of our fears are irrational, like my fear of heights. I still feel a twinge of fear whenever I drive over the Tacoma Narrows Bridge if I take my eyes off the road and gaze over the guardrail down at the water two-hundred feet below. You might have heard about those cases where people are terrified of everything from clowns to mustard to snakes to peaches. Yes, peaches. Perhaps you experience some form of irrational fear. Chances are you do. Some of these fears have two-bit clinical labels–like agoraphobia, claustrophobia arachnophobia.

When we fear something that poses no real or objective threat to us that fear is said to be irrational. For example, it is perfectly safe to drive across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge–actually there are two of them now. But even though my fear is irrational it does have a basis in the fact that there is a potential danger of harm associated with high places. Falling from a high place can be hazardous to your health in certain situations. People have died when they have fallen from tall buildings, or when their planes crashed or their parachutes malfunctioned. My fear of the bridge began when as a kid I saw the footage of the original bridge whipping and swaying in the wind and finally collapsing and plunging into Puget Sound, along with a lone vehicle and the terrified dog inside it. After this I had nightmares about falling from the bridge. In one nightmare a man in a black hood came and kidnapped me in the dark of night and threw me bound and gagged over the railing. The sensation of falling woke me up, heart pounding with fear. Ever since I have felt that twinge in my gut when I am more than twenty-five feet off the ground. I have been to the top of the Space Needle once, and it was a quick ride up, one trot around the perimeter of the observation deck, and a hasty ride down with eyes closed. I really got teased on that one.

These kinds of fears are not significant as long as they do not impact our daily functioning and relationships. But if our fears result in extreme levels of retreat and avoidance to where we lose jobs, friends, and spouses, then it is time to get help. The two most common ways of helping people overcome these debilitating fears are cognitive and behavioral. The cognitive approach teaches people to identify and dispute the irrational interpretations, beliefs, and statements they attach to situations and events. It is not the thing itself that causes the fear, but what we tell ourselves about it that creates the emotional response. For example, a woman falls in love with a man and marries him. He abuses her and leaves her for another woman, depleting the bank account and leaving her destitute. After this she fears relationships with men. The way you address this fear is to target the beliefs about men she has developed as a result of her experience–e.g., all men are lying cheats who cannot be trusted. It is not men themselves that cause her fear, but rather her fear is generated by what she tells herself about men.

The most effective behavioral cure for irrational fear is called systematic desensitization, and it works as follows. Gradually expose a person to increasing levels of the fear-provoking stimulus, and they will learn that there is nothing to fear. The fear will then disappear. The person who fears spiders is first exposed to photos of spiders, and then to videos, and then to rubber spiders, and then to real spiders in a terrarium, and then finally to tarantulas crawling on the hands and arms.

Now, When Doug and I were talking at the gym this week about fear, the one fear he said was in his opinion the most common among men is the fear of a loss of power. When men fear they are losing power or control they start behaving in very irrational ways. They start trying to gain power in ways that are destructive to themselves and others. I have to end this post now, but I am wondering if you can think of any biblical examples of this. And how would we address such fear biblically? And how would we apply the cognitive and behavioral interventions in such cases? I plan to expand on this in the next post, but I would like your two cents worth either from personal experience, scripture, or both.

As in turkey Weiner. You must admit that Anthony Weiner deserves an A+ for stupidity, not only for sending out photos of his male appendage to numerous young women across the country via email–but for lying through his teeth to boot, even when they had him dead-to-rights. For the rest of his life whatever good he achieved in his political career will be eclipsed by his final act of mental retardation.

Just as Arnold’s accomplishments will pale in comparison to his escapades with the maid. Just as Nixon will be remembered for Watergate and Clinton for Monica-gate, so too Anthony Weiner will be remembered for Weiner-gate. People are unforgiving. They will forget every good thing a man might have done in a lifetime, and one scandalous moment will be come his defining moment, the enduring measure of the man.

Let’s face it, scandal sells. We love it and loath it at the same time. We can’t get enough of it. My wife and daughter were glued to some show the other night where this guy has five wives. They had to flee Utah because their polygamous lifestyle scandalized even the Mormon community, and they relocated in Nevada. I asked Connie and Jamie if they could somehow sympathize with the husband of the five sister-wives, and they said they could not. They deem him a sleaze bag who is in it just for the sex and power. And yet they are intrigued and mesmerized by the dynamics of this unusual family.

I love watching true crime shows and reading about scandalous crimes. Recently I read an Ann Rule book that tells the story of a Yakima  high school wrestling coach who had one of his best friends shot to death because he wanted his wife. We detest such individuals but we are tantalized by their stories. By the way, I knew this coach, and he was one of the best this state has ever seen. The shooter in the crime was one of his own wrestlers, a guy who I knew. Sadly, for all this choach’s success he will be forever remembered for his moral failure.

In our culture there is no redemption for such people. But imagine this: a man who stole another man’s wife and had him killed. And then tried to cover it up as if it never happened. Imagine this same man has multiple wives and numerous concubines. Imagine further that he was hot-tempered and impulsive. The experts would give their two cents worth on cable TV: such a man is unscrupulous and devoid of conscience. He is the embodiment of evil.

Either the word of God is wrong or our culture has it haywire. By today’s standards King David would be dismissed as a lying, murderous adulterer. But the New Testament does not remember him this way. Jesus  repeatedly speaks in a positive light about David and even refers to himself as the son of David; and in the book of Acts David is referred to as the man after God’s own heart.

Go figure.

I am sure glad the Bible, not pop culture, is the standard I measure myself by. There is hope for even me–and Anthony, and Arnold, and Mel, and every other man who has fallen to his flesh. Up with scripture and to hell with the warped mores of pop culture!

Have you ever sat down to write but had no idea where to start, so you just let it flow off the top of your head? That is what I am doing on this lazy sunny Sunday afternoon. It is not the way I usually write, but I have heard serious writers say it is a good exercise. Maybe so, but I doubt many great works of literature were ever spun out of whole cloth like this. Whether it be a blog, essay, speech, magazine article, or novel, most good written work is the product of definite planning.

Same with many other disciplines. Some songs are written very quickly and spontaneously, but most are carefully crafted around a theme, melody, hook line, or chord progression that produces a certain feel or mood. When a house is built a blueprint is required before you can get the necessary permit. Although you might deviate from the plan in certain details, generally the blueprint guides the work of construction. Athletes set long range goals, short term goals, and then formulate action steps for meeting the goals.

Our youngest son was able to fall back on natural athleticism as a wrestler for years, but his full-out brawling style got him into trouble once he reached high school and faced top level opponents. His coach worked with him to develop a style that suited his strengths and body type. The main problem his coach saw was no definite game plan in matches. Jeremy was going out right off the whistle and playing himself out early and then trying to get through the late going with no fuel in the tank. Once he refined his style and learned how to plan and manage his matches he was successful.

Fail to plan and you plan to fail. Why would we expect it to be any different in our daily spiritual experience? And yet you hear folks all the time using pious higher-life jargon like, letting the Spirit lead, letting go and letting God, waiting on God for the power, conviction, burden, etc., as a pretense for not taking care of spiritual business. This is just an excuse for spiritual sloth. Spirituality takes effort, and this effort is not to be dismissed as striving in the flesh or doing it in our own strength. The fact is no one does anything in his own strength. Let’s not kid ourselves–sitting back and “letting the Spirit lead” is often a case of letting the flesh lead.

You get out of it what you put into it. Read Paul’s description of his planning and effort in 1 Cor. 9:24-27 and tell me it ain’t so. Sure sometimes we have those spontaneous seat-of the pants moments in the Lord. But they are the exception, not the rule.