Reflection: Easter

Recently, my pastor challenged us all to make a list of our blessings, and use that list to guide our prayers.  Here's my list.

Family

- My wife Jen is the most patient, loving, loyal, and understanding person I know.  I'm blessed by her character in my life.

- My son, Corbin Joseph, will be born in the next few months

- My family is just a phone call away, and visiting them is only a short drive

Friendship

  - Stacy is an insightful and wise friend full of integrity

- Nate is a friend and discerning leader full of integrity and purpose

Health

- I can walk freely 

- Healthcare for my wife and child through work

- My family has a dental and vision plan

Faith

- A growing journey of prayer and study

- I am living in a country where I can express my faith freely

Career

- I have a good paying, consistent job

- My job is one that stretches me to grow in skills I will need for ministry

Finances

- We make more than we need, and can give and save

Skills

- I know how to love people, particularly young people, well

- I can sing

- I am a problem solver

What's your list?

Happy Easter

John 20:1 "Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance."

Reflection: The military and me

Recently I have spent a lot of time looking at these coins.  We found them while cleaning up and moving things around in preparation for the baby.  They were given to me for doing a good job.  The top one is the coin of the school I attended, and was given to me by the Major in charge of the program along with an invitation to consider coming back next year as an instructor.  The bottom coins are from the Command Sergeant Major and commanding Major General of the 38th Infantry Division and were presented during my commissioning ceremony.  I only had to sign my contract as a Second Lieutenant.  I had started as an enlisted soldier, been in for less than a year, and was being promoted to the officer ranks. I felt pretty good, like I was making a mark on the world for the better and was doing it by being a servant leader.

Then, a very short time later, I received my injury while doing our morning exercise routine at drill weekend.  That changed everything.  I hadn't signed my new contract yet, and now couldn't.  Because of the injury, I was non-promotable until medically cleared.  Therefore my rank was reverted to my rank when I was enlisted: E-4, Specialist.  About a step up from toad.  I expected to be cleared quickly, and to be able to accept my commission during the 2 year window.  I could wait 2 years to accept my commission, but my ankle needed surgery, and ultimately it never healed fully.  I haven't been able to run since, and after 3 years of red tape and headaches, I was honorably discharged from the army.  The military has no use for a soldier that can't run.

I'm not proud of the fact that during those first two years I became bitter.  And not just with the National Guard, but at home, at church, and at my civilian job (which due to the injury was also NOT what I wanted to be doing, but that's another story).  I even became bitter towards God, and carried it with me.  I made some bad choices and nearly wrecked my life and marriage.  To make a long story short, it wasn't until I finally put God back in charge and actually accepted His guidance, wherever He would lead, instead of trying to direct the situation where I wanted (back towards a commission and a healthy Army career) that I was able to start to follow him with peace.  Since I did that in December of 2009, I have been on a journey towards spiritual health, and God is constantly teaching me things from that difficult time.  For example, it took yesterdays post from Tim Stevens to help me see that neither my bad choices nor unfortunate accidents are what define me.  I had been looking at these coins for a week and bemoaning my bad luck.  I have been moping, and my poor wife has watched with concern unable to bring me out of it.

I needed a bit of perspective, and God had used the fact that some of the heroes of the Christian faith made mistakes as a mirror on the most trying period of my life.  Those heroes (Abraham, David, Isaac, Gideon, and Samson) all had women they were not married to living in their houses for sexual purposes, and the writer of Hebrews praises them as men of faith without making any comment on their sexual sins.  The writer even tells his readers "keep the marriage bed pure" (13:4).  To me, it was a reminder that I should define myself by what God's purpose is for me.  He doesn't define me by my mistakes, and neither should I.

Hebrews 13:5 "...God has said, never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."

Reflections: What's in a name?

Since Jen and I are expecting in July, we have been working on a lot of little projects around the house to try to get ready.  Tonight we worked on a bookshelf of my notes.  I had all my notes from college.  All of them.  Every class.  Every internship.  Every syllabus.  All the professors handouts, and all of my personal notes.  Thinking about it, I'm amazed myself that I was so organized.  That just doesn't usually fit me at all, but there it was: the entire bookshelf.  And 95% of it was useless.  I didn't even remember the names of most of  those classes, more or less the specific content.  And there were lots of names.  so we threw a lot out.  Turns out the only things I really wanted to keep were from an internship right before college called Master's Commission, and stuff having to do with music.  None of the other names meant much to me.  They were so far removed from the actual doing of ministry or so outdated that what application they once had was as vague as the names on the outsides of the binders.  It made me think about names.  Is my name all there is to who I am?  Of course not.  There are millions of guys named Dave out there.  But what about the name God has for me?  Does he have a different name for me that makes me unique?  Like Simon who was renamed Peter, or Saul was renamed Paul, is there a defining moment yet to come in my life where a specific characteristic within me becomes the center of my being?  What power is there in a name?

At this point I started to get bogged down in philosophy, which always bothers me.  I crave practical application.  It's just part of how a do life.  So I stopped to pray.  As I was praying and thinking about this whole matter, I realized that the name I use to post this blog touches on the defining characteristic I want to be the center of my identity. Then I realized: that was a reference that most people don't get.  Probably because I never explained it, and it's shorthand in order to get the name.  Phil2158 is short for Philippians Chapter 2, verses 1-8, with an emphasis on verse 5.  (I know, clear as mud.  I'm working on it.)  Those verses specifically sum up the attitude of Jesus, and how we are expected to respond to his example.  Here they are.

¹ Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ² then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. ³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴ not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

 ⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

 ⁶ Who, being in very nature God,
   did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
   by taking the very nature of a servant,
   being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
   he humbled himself
   by becoming obedient to death—
      even death on a cross!

The realization that my intent wasn't communicated by "Phil2158" meant it was time for a name change.  This blog is by me, so the address is davejaquay.blogspot.com now.  And the title of the blog is now, as you can see, Living Philippians 2.  I think it's closer to the heart of the journey of personal growth that God is leading me down right now.  A big part of that journey is the pursuit of humble obedience to God's purpose for my life.  

Lord, please teach me humility.  And may your teaching lead me to the ministry you want me to be in.

Reflection: What I am hoping for

My last post revealed a couple things to me.  First of all, from the comments I have received, I have a lot of near and dear friends who care about me.  Thank you all for your concern.  The second thing revealed to me was that I needed to clarify a little bit regarding a few of the things  I said.  Let me tick off a few:

First of all I should have used "...yet." a lot more.  Self reflection is not a project I intended to complete in a few days.  In fact I only intend to be beginning the process during these first few weeks.  Reflection is the next season of my personal spiritual growth journey, and it is a process. Several key sentences from my last post really should have ended with a hint of how reflection is intended to impact the subject I was talking about.  This would have made my post a much more accurate description of how I am struggling to grow. Please understand I don't say "struggling to grow" as if I feel I can't grow.  I say it with the thought in mind that growing is work.  It can be hard, even exhausting, work and it always takes time to complete.  I firmly believe that God has a plan for me which he is preparing me for, and by adding the "...yet" to those key sentences the tone of the whole post changes. For example if I had been more accurate I would have said it differently:

• "I'm not very good at (reflection)...yet" 
• "I can't seem to gather enough focus to get anywhere ...yet"
• "I honestly wish I could say I made grand leaps of comprehension about how my life has gone in the last few years and where I want it to go in the next few, but I haven't ...yet.

The second thing I would like to point out is about hard times.  Right now I am wrestling with myself over who I want to become and what I want to do.  This is a hard task for me, but I do believe deep down that God will get me through.  It's just difficult for me to see his provision sometimes, which is why I am trying to use this reflection as an opportunity to step back and look at the big picture.  I want to reevaluate my purpose and plan to better align it with Gods.  This is the whole point of a period of reflection.  A point which is not communicated well when I make the mistake of writing a blog during a VERY frustrating week at work.  I have talked to some of you about it so I won't rehash it here, but suffice it to say that there are some issues and problems that keep recurring at work which force me to do a LOT more than is normal, and do it in a much harder way than would be ideal.  It has been so frustrating that I have, more than once,sent a text to my wife from work simply seeking encouragement.

What is this encouragement? That there is more to me than as I said in my last post when I said I'm ugly on the inside.  Do I mean ugly as in "I hate myself?"  No.  More as in the closer I look at God, the more I see how I fall short of perfection.  Under God's brightly lit inspection, every tiny flaw and imperfection is glaringly obvious.  And when those imperfections are compared to the truly perfect example of His son... well it's not pretty but it's necessary.  If I am going to honestly compare myself to Jesus (which is the standard God sets) it's bound to be an ugly comparison.  It doesn't take much guessing to figure out which of the two of us is going to look bad.  It also doesn't take much guessing to figure out where I have room for improvement.  Some people call the feelings that this comparison will stir up as being "convicted" of sin.  Right now, I'm feeling that, and so I want to press in to work on the parts of me that need to improve.

Lastly I am on a journey.  This process is going to take a while, and I see the need to clarify as proof that I need this reflection all the more.  If I had waited another day or two perhaps I would have been better able to communicate my journey the first time.  Perhaps I wouldn't.  It's possible that I would never have seen it at all without input from all of you.  Thanks for that input, and please, keep it coming.  It helped me to get text messages, phone calls, emails, video links, and Facebook posts.  All of it together showed me what I needed to see to take the next step in reflection.  So I am continuing to press on and seek out what I can do better to become like Christ in all I do.  I will keep being brutally honest.  I will keep listening.  I will keep reflecting.

-Dave


Philippians 3:14 "I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

Reflection: Not what I hoped for

So here's the short version of what I know about reflection after the last week or so.

I'm not very good at it.

The longer version is I'd like to be all high and mighty and pretend that this realization is a good thing.  You know, "Knowing is half the battle" and all.  But honestly it's just a bit disappointing.  I'm tired, I don't like my job, and I let being busy get in the way of getting a Godly perspective, more or less keeping one. I know that these are just excuses, and yet I can't seem to gather enough focus to get anywhere.  When I sit down to just remember, my mind bounces ideas around inside my A.D.D. skull like a hummingbird bounces from one flower to the next.

I honestly wish I could say I made grand leaps of comprehension about how my life has gone in the last few years and where I want it to go in the next few, but I haven't.  I know I wish I was in ministry somewhere able to direct my energy towards helping people instead of constantly focusing on how to produce more product.  I know that Life has not gone as I hoped it would in the last 4 years.  And I know that somewhere a long the way I have either lost or severely injured my desire to put others before myself.  In addition to being tired, I'm more skeptical now than ever.  I'm sarcastic, bitter, grumpy, and lack the confidence I once had that anything was possible.

To be flat out honest: I'm looking inside myself and finding that I'm an ugly guy on the inside and the task of reflection seems overwhelming as a whole.  Yet I am too dissatisfied with where I am to stay there.

So... I'm going to break it down into smaller more manageable parts and press deeper.  I am so disgusted by who I am sometimes that I nearly weep.  Yeah I'll admit it.  Call me a pansy, or a sissy.  I don't care anymore.  I know I must be brutally honest with myself in this process. I'm seeking a more real prayer life. I'm opening myself up to what I have messed up, and inviting God to look at those mistakes and me give me correction.

Pray for me to learn from his wisdom.

-Dave

Selah

It's been a long couple of weeks.  I worked a lot (12 hours a day for nine of the last eleven days) so blogging had to be postponed. It was too many hours to be honest.  It wears you out and takes away your ability to look at your life as a whole.  Don't get me wrong, there are times when you just need to work long hours on something for a while and to do so is the best thing you can do.  For example: the relief work in Japan after the earthquake is not a task that allows one to simply stop the effort and go home because it's that time of day.  However, these times must be balanced with times of reflection and intentional focus.

In Psalms the term "Selah" was often used to designate something worth thinking about.  No one actually knows what "Selah" means exactly. The general consensus is that it is either a musical term, used to mark a pause, or that it was meant to imply a break which was meant to be used to think about the weight of what was just said.  Either way the implication to me becomes clear that it's good to stop and reflect from time to time, especially before or after a period of hard work.

I feel like I need to take time to pray and reflect .  So that's what I'm going to be doing for the next several posts.  I'll be looking at the journey that God has been working on in my heart for the last several years and how I ended up where I am now.  Some of it will be stuff I have already figured out about myself, but hopefully some of it will be things I have grown in and I will be able to learn about myself and my beliefs.


Psalm 19:14
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

Measuring part 2

My last post on measuring community was about practical and concrete evidence. Recently I had an opportunity to have a conversation with Bob Laurent, teaching pastor at Granger Community Church about how you measure true community. This brief talk with Bob led me to a fact that may seem easy to measure, but in actuality is not.  Here it is:

"What God touches grows."
  If we are in a truly God centered community, where His vision and purpose are central, then that community will grow in numbers, in maturity, and  in how it impacts the community around it.  It's not about numbers alone.  Strictly looking at numbers can be very mis-representative of the health of a community because there can be growth without God's touch.  What you cannot have is God's touch without growth.  Numbers are easy to count, so many churches will stop there: attendance, hands raised in commitment, size of the budget.  But how do you count maturity and community impact? How do you measure those? That was the question I had for Bob.

 Here is his answer: Sacrifice. Being willing to be vulnerable is one of the greatest sacrifices you can make.  To be willing to take off the mask you wear, and show who you really are is a huge sacrifice because it puts your very self on the table for examination.  It's personally risky because every one of us knows that it's like dying if that openness is cut down, judged, and dismissed as lacking.  And we all know we aren't perfect, so we know what we are revealing when we are vulnerable.  We know we are revealing something that is not good enough, and never will be good enough.  There's something broken in everything, including ourselves. We are broken, and admitting it to someone is risky.

 Here's what I would add to this: Christ calls us to go one step further into that sacrifice, to not only be real with each other, but to also openly confess to each other where we fall short.  And when someone confesses to you, your job is to forgive as God's representative.  There's a lot of meaning in offering this forgiveness.  For starters, we are being given the responsibility and authority of heaven with this task of forgiveness.  Jesus said when he gave his disciples the Holy Spirit in John 20:23 "If you forgive anyone's sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."  And after he taught the Lord's prayer in Matthew 6 he immediately followed it with the words "If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."  So not only do we have the job of giving forgiveness, but we have a personal stake in doing so.  If we withhold forgiveness, God will withhold forgiveness from us.

So, if we are trying to measure a community by how well is sacrifices, here's how we do it:  look at how well that community offers forgiveness.  How gracious are we, when we are cut off while driving?  How forgiving are we when someone hurts us?  How patient are we?

Matthew 6:12  "and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us."