A Bad Day's Work

This article was written nearly three years ago in Thailand but still holds relevant insight:

Recently I had a very bad day. It was one of those days that started rotten from the moment I woke up after missing my prayer time and just seemed to keep on trucking down the Bad Day Expressway. I made some mild attempts to fight it – maybe even tried harder than I usually might have. I asked my wife to pray for me (a big thing for a strong man like myself), tried briefly for prayer on my own and even toyed with my E-Sword Bible software, giving up after about 28 seconds of trying to make sense of 1 John 2 in the King James.

At the end of the day, I found myself sitting on my bed in my room (which is also my couch) unable to shake the oppressive feeling that seemed to have latched on to me. Throughout the day I had found myself getting angry over things that didn’t usually bother me, worked up about things that don’t faze me and stressed about nothing. So, I sat there in my end-of-the-day time, trying to figure out what to do next.

For some reason, I found myself more aware than usual. I knew that if I watched a DVD or played on the computer I would just be trying to distract myself from whatever was happening inside me. My wife came and suggested we get out or do something fun like play cards but I knew that if I did that I would just be trying to comfort myself without really dealing with whatever was happening inside of me. It wasn’t complicated. When I thought about what I needed to do, I clearly knew that what was out of joint in me was that I needed time with my Heavenly Dad. If I just spent some minutes with Him, sitting on His lap and letting Him love me, I would be fixed up proper and be able to re-enter my world in a much different mood.

Yet, I felt resistance to this idea. I didn’t want this to be the answer – didn’t want it to be so simple. Judging from the surprised look on my wife’s face when I suggested I would take some time to pray through, it is not often that I do accept this answer either. Why am I so resistant to needing to spend time with God in order to be right with the world? I think I am worried about being too weak to do it myself. I think it is lame or hokey if I need some “prayer time” (this should be said with a southern twang) in order to be a happy fellow.

I imagine the look on my friend’s face after I emerge from my room now thoroughly “Christed” and peaceful and I answer his questioning look with a suave but casual, “Just needed some God time.” I don’t like that look – it says, “I like you enough to overlook this weird conversation.” Clearly my pride is in the way of living out the truth of my dependence on God. Deep down I want to do it myself and resist any “crutch” to lean on. Funny thing is that I’ve always been the kind of guy to say, “If Christianity is a crutch, then give me two!” (and of course I would get that same look again) It seems, however, that there is a gap between what I know to be true and the living out of that truth.

For the same reasons that I struggle to pray with my wife, receive advice about areas of strength and read directions before assembling furniture, I run from an intimate, daily walk with God. I don’t want to humble myself, be vulnerable to rejection or failure and admit my inability to do life on my own. When Paul says that in 2 Cor. 12 that God’s “strength is made perfect in our weakness”, he is also saying that we need to open our weakness to God so He can infuse it with His strength. Paul was talking about a thorn in the flesh, but God’s answer seems to shows that He is referring to a much wider scope of weakness. Maybe that thorn in the flesh was sent to reveal Paul’s weakness because his pride was getting in the way. I guess this is the same reason that God is using this bad day to be a mirror to me. God, help me to humble myself before You. Help me to recognize that admitting my need is aligning myself with You and choosing to be strong in You. That’s what it means to be a strong man. Amen.

Ben Gumienny is SO grateful to live in such a beautiful setting. He enjoys the people within his community and lately has enjoyed all the scents of spring.

Will I Ever Enjoy Church Again?

Recently I have had more opportunities to talk with Christian leaders from different walks of life. Although they come from different perspectives it is interesting how certain themes stand out regardless. One of those themes is a growing dissatisfaction with church and, in particular, Sundays and services. One leader I talked with had just gone to a Good Friday service at a mainstream church. They shared how now that they have seen both sides of church (from the congregation and from the leadership side) they felt like they couldn’t go to a church without wondering what was really going on. Did the pastor have a bad week? Was the worship leader fighting with his wife? And permeating it all was this strange but persistent subculture of rituals that would not make sense outside of a religious context. They ended with the lament, “Will I ever enjoy church again?”

I must admit, that sentiment has crossed my mind at times. Throughout my life I’ve had a love/hate affair with Sunday morning church. I love the people and I love God but sometimes how we approach Him just doesn’t jive with my spirit. Recently I was at a well-known, popular conference. I felt like I was on Mars or in some news network’s expose of Christian weirdness. As the people jumped and swirled to Jewish tunes and high-octane praise songs I couldn’t help wondering what an unchurched person would feel coming into this scene. I’d like to think they’d find God but I wasn’t sure because I was really struggling to do that. I went because I was really hungry for more of God, but I felt stymied by all the hype. Is it possible to so long for revival and manifestations of power and exciting worship that we miss meeting with the Person of God? It’s an uncomfortable question for me – especially because I am aware that a part of the problem I had could be with my own judgments and wounds.

What I can’t deny is the growing concern I feel as I see many people giving up on the Church altogether and walking away from spiritual community. One thing I strongly believe is that God is not giving up on His church. He loves His Bride the Church dearly and will see her presented flawlessly to Him on that day. I love His Church too. I can’t walk away from those whom God loves so much.

Another leader I talked to recently acknowledged the difficulty of the current situation. They spoke of the transition that we are in at this time in history and how we are in the process of moving from old to new. They felt strongly that God has not yet released us fully into the new. The problem comes from the growing dissatisfaction with the old and the discomfort of the transition time. They had observed young leaders who had rushed into the new prematurely and had become hurt when it didn’t work out. Often these leaders would find that their “new” form would end up looking the same as what they had tried to leave behind. The call was to call to those who were struggling and tell them to not give up hope but to be patient to wait for God’s timing to release His Church into the new that He has for Her.

I agree. It is not always easy for me to get motivated to scrape myself out of bed on Sundays and get myself to church. Even when I am leading the service I find myself at times deeply dissatisfied with the outcomes. I long to see what’s next and to walk forward into new forms and new expressions, yet we only have limited release from God to do that in this season. To the extent that it is “good to the Holy Spirit and us” we will experiment and try new things. However, we are aware that there is much more newness that God has yet to release His Church into.

If you are feeling dissatisfied, discouraged or frustrated with the Church, I urge you not to give up hope. God loves His Church and those who want to be like Him will find His love in their heart to do the same. The transitions in life are uncomfortable and often are the times that people are tempted to give up. Many marriages fall apart when kids come, in mid-life crisis or menopause or when the kids leave and there’s “empty nest syndrome”. Yet those that persevere reap the fruit when the transitions pass and they find that loving through the hard times was worth it. So it is with His Church - those who make it across the Jordan will find themselves in land of Promise. That’s worth the wait.

Ben believes in creating bridges for people to connect to each other - one of them being the bridge from the old to new ways of being the Church during this transition time. Ben recently took up the hobby of tennis.

The Trouble with Freedom

The trouble with freedom is that it puts the responsibility on the one who has the freedom to make the right choices, to use the freedom for good and not evil. To recognize the one who gave them the freedom and make the choices that honor the gift. God trusted us with freedom knowing that in our free will we could and would make the wrong decisions with that freedom.

CS Lewis wrote of his revelation concerning freedom in Mere Christianity;

“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which is free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata – of creatures that work like machines – would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.”

Of course God knew what would happen: If they used their freedom for right we also could for wrong. Apparently He thought it was worth the risk! His provision of Jesus was to atone for the wrong decisions and to give us a path back to the right ones…but it is your choice!

The trouble with freedom is that the risk is, we may use the freedom, in the wrong way. But unlike God many of us in the church don’t understand why the risk was worth it. The risk of misused freedom seams to outweigh the prize of true freedom. So the result is that we get scared and we let fear enter. This can lead us to use our freedom incorrectly by not extending grace to the person who used theirs wrong.

The trouble with freedom is that asks me to extend the freedom I have been given to those who I may not think deserve it!

The trouble with freedom is I will be responsible for how I used it… not how you choose to use it…

The Value of freedom is that no matter how much I have chosen the wrong uses with it; “IT” is still there for me to use the right way today. Jesus’ mercy is new every day so it does not matter how you have chosen to use freedom yesterday or a minute ago, it matters what you choose to do with it NOW! What is your choice? With great freedom comes GREAT LOVE!

Mark is really an apostle at heart - someone who hears from heaven, connects and fathers people. Mark is excited about the "deck time" that the coming summer brings.