What’s Your Battle?

Bob A Clifton

A recent book I picked up has led me to a little nugget of scripture that I think is great. In 2 Samuel 23:20 it talks of a valiant fighter from Kabzeel named Benaiah. Benaiah is displayed in the bible as having some mighty feats. One of which is just part of verse 20. The text simply says “he also went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion.” Pretty simple, but let’s take a closer look.

First, what would it mean to kill a lion? We see a couple stories in the bible of a lion being killed by a lion, but this is not common activity today unless done from a distance with a gun in hand. Now I imagine perfect weather for killing lions would be 75 degrees, maybe partly cloudy so the sun does not create a glare while the lion is coming at you 35 miles per hour. Take note, Benaiah went down into a snowy pit. Snowy usually means slick. Slick, cold, and hungry lion do not sound like the challenge I am looking for these days. Benaiah was brave enough to not only kill a lion, but to step down into a slippery pit to get the job done.

Just camp out on this thought for a moment! If the lion is in a pit this means I got a pretty good shot at escaping. I will not have to kill anything to get on my way. Not that I know, but I can’t imagine lion is good food for the hungry. What a man’s man!

This led to his question he posed in the book; what kind of lion are you facing these days? Something in life you are looking at and thinking “no way”! There is no way I can take that on. I will stick to smaller battles and leave that one alone. Maybe stick to something you can do in your own strength. Could be something you have calculated and know that victory is inevitable. Possibly you are choosing many smaller battles so you stay busy and create the feeling that you are succeeding. What is your big battle right now?

A recent job transition has brought on a big battle for me. I have transitioned away from staying home with my two children to full time work. It has been over six years since I worked a full time job. My first thought was “piece of cake”. How hard can it be to go back to work, doing something that I love? Much bigger than I thought! I knew that I would miss my kids and I knew that it would have some difference in how I spent my time. I did not know that it would shake my world up to the degree it has.

A month ago I noticed that some of the things in life that I usually find enjoyable did not entertain me now. I had lost interest in reading and exercising. I was feeling checked out when I got home from work. Typically loving my time with my children had become a labor to engage them. Definitely not typical for someone that has enjoyed spending time with his kids for the last six years. I describe it as miniature depression. You can tell it is temporary, but at the same time have no clue how you got there.

I thought for a while that it will just disappear, but it wasn’t. I decided this weekend to step down into the snowy pit. I knew God had brought this into my life to raise something up and begin a healing process on it. As I invited God into this tough place I noticed him going after how I structure my time. See every other job I have had in the past has been very structured with a definite end goal to the day. My new current line of work allows more freedom. I noticed that Satan was using this freedom to fire up some guilt and shame. Frankly I just noticed! I could not see it for what it was early on.

No chicken soup story about walking out of this, but a step into the pit is what I sensed God wanting. Not that I have to win the battle today, but to step into the battle. Stepping into the battle allows God to go after something in my heart that only he can work on. I could choose a smaller battle and not allow God access to this tough place, but I saw what he wanted to go after.

So what’s the battle? Not the small battle, but the one that God will have to come through for you to win? Does he have a snowy pit that he wants you to step down into and face it. Take courage. Get some brothers around you and step into the battle.

Our Shimmering Self

For what shall we do when we wake one day to find we have lost touch with our heart and with it the very refuge where God’s presence resides?

Starting very early, life has taught all of us to ignore and distrust the deepest yearnings of our heart. Life, for the most part, teaches us to suppress our longing and live only in the external world where efficiency and performance are everything. We have learned from parents and peers, at school, at work, and even from our spiritual mentors that something else is wanted from us other than our heart, which is to say, that which is most deeply us. Very seldom are we ever invited to live out of our heart. If we are wanted, we are often wanted for what we can offer functionally. If rich, we are honored for our wealth; if beautiful, for our looks; if intelligent, for our brains. So we learn to offer only those parts of us that are approved, living out a carefully crafted performance to gain acceptance from those who represent life to us. We divorce ourselves from our heart and begin to live a double life. Frederick Buechner expresses this phenomenon in his biographical work, Telling Secrets:

[Our] original shimmering self gets buried so deep we hardly live out of it at all . . . rather, we learn to live out of all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather. (John Eldredge; The Sacred Romance , 5)

Balance

by Bob A Clifton

This last month my fascination in the Bible keeps coming back to my man Peter. Something about Peter and how willing he was to throw himself out there and see what comes back in return. My bible reading last week led me to another story of him in John 13. Jesus was enjoying an evening meal with his disciples. Jesus knew his time was drawing near and to better demonstrates for his disciples what it means to be a servant, he took to washing their feet. First up, Simon Peter, come on over you are the first contestant on “wash which foot?” Peter in all his intelligence asks “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus realizing this seemed confusing to him explains that you probably won’t get the significance now, but in the future you will. In an abrupt fashion Peter tells him no. A New Testament bible scholar interprets the Greek as Peter saying “no, not never”.

I picture life like a teeter totter sometimes. Early in Christian walk I craved black and white explanation of the scriptures. “What does this mean” was a question I asked often. Followed up by, what exactly am I supposed to do in this situation”? I wanted the answer to fall on one side of the teeter totter or the other. Up or down, black or white, ying or yang. At this point in Peter’s story I get the idea that he is pretty adamant that he doesn’t want his feet washed. So persistent, he told Jesus no way!

Picking the story back up, Jesus reminds Peter that if he does not wash his feet Peter will have no part with me, the “me” being Jesus. It clicks for Peter at this point. And for Peter there is no way he is going to get left out of Jesus plan. So instead of saying “OK Jesus, wash away on the feet”. No Peter goes to the other side of the teeter totter with “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well”. In other words “come on with it”.

In the process of growing in my maturity, I can see plenty of situations where I went overboard. Sometimes I struggle with my prayer life. I remember leaving a bible study that talked about the importance of daily prayer. Well at that time I had no prayer life, so surely if I go pray three times a day I can make up for never praying. I may set out to fast for a meal and decide the only way too really get through to God is fast for the whole day. I have set out to volunteer, but instead of serving within my limits I find myself visiting with people or at church 4 nights out of the week.

What does it mean to strike a balance? Shawn’s last blog does a great job in expressing the need to take care of our self. In order to take care of ourselves we will need to strike the right balance. This issue of balance has surfaced again as our church looks at the spiritual disciplines. Taking a close look at these again has caused me to examine what are priorities in life. Some of the time I found that I was wasting was being wasted to worry or unstructured time where I have nothing to do.

How do you examine your balance? One thing I like to do is look at them through the lens of five different categories; Intellectual, Physical, Spiritual, Emotional, Economical. Taking a close look at these will often reveal chinks in the armor that could be better examined to determine how to correct and find more balance. I also like to ask close friends. A good friend of mine has been pressing up against me about my schedule for the last couple weeks. Trusting that he is not there to abuse me I have submitted my schedule to the microscope to get clarity from what he is saying. He was able to bring clarity to odds and ends that I could not put my finger on. Ask your wife? What does she think about the way you use your time?

I think we can learn from Peter. As we see Peter’s ministry develop in the book of Acts we find that he understands balance more as he matures in his faith.

What’s Your Self Care Plan?

by Shawn Martin

A couple nights ago I was talking with the Father about finding time for ‘rest’ each week; ‘me-time’. A time to unplug from everything that fights for my time and energy. All distractions gone; just quiet and the Father. I was hard-pressed to find any. Then just now, I picked up a copy of some powerpoint presentation I’ve had on my desk for months but haven’t read. Near the end of the copy, is a page titled, “Develop Your Own Self Care Plan”. The first two of three points were to spend plenty of quiet time alone and recharge your batteries daily. 

Is this brand new information? No. I’ve heard this dozens of times over the years in the field of service I work in. But the timing of the last 48 hours is what makes this a clear prompting from the Father. 

I would suspect most of you feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. My last bi-monthly letter mentioned how summer time is busier than any other time for my family. Besides everything else, I’ve got a list of 46 projects that need to be done to our old farm house. It’s so overwhelming that I just don’t even want to start. There’s a room in my house that has been slated to be my 'study'; my 'man room', for a number of years. Finally, this February I got the green light from my wife to remodel the room (Visualize Tim the Tool Man Taylor grunting). The plan was to have it completed by mid-April. About a month ago the sheetrock was finally hung, mudded and sanded. And I even hired that out cause I just didn’t have the time to do it myself. All that’s left is painting and laying in a floor – and I’ve done nothing for a month. 

Do I have a lot on my plate? – sure. Can I cut back in some places? – possibly. But the truth is that for months on end I have not focused on taking care of myself, emotionally. I sleep. I eat. I shower. But I’m not recharging my soul. I’m not making time for the things I desire, that excite my spirit. And over time that adds up to a mountain of complacency that spills over into all my relationships. I snap at my kids, I resent my wife, I go passive at work, I don’t spend time in the Word, I don’t spend time with the Father. And when that happens, the Enemy has very little trouble at taking me out in one area or another. 

Walking with God is a commitment and involves time, daily. And while I’m not diminishing the importance of reading the Bible and praying with the Father, what I do believe is that if you don’t take care of yourself (emotionally and physically), you can’t take care of others. Everything else suffers. I can read my Bible daily and all those other disciplines I wrote about last time, but if I’m not making time for me in ways that rest and recharge me – then I’m offering God the very minimum of what’s left in my energy and emotion tanks. The result is unfocused time in the Word and distracted time in prayer. And the hazy fog continues to follow me as I get further disconnected from life. 

What are you doing each week to make sure you can attend to yourself in quietness where there is just you and the Father? Does the thought of sitting in silence for any period of time make you squirm in your seat? As tired as I am, I could turn around and spend more borrowed energy planning some me-time activity, but for those of us who need more hours in the day, it begins, ironically, by spending some of that precious time doing nothing; being quiet. I know I have the ability to find 5-10 minutes in a day to get quiet. More would be a luxury, but any time is a start. At first you’ll find that your mind still seems to be racing with distraction – stick with it. You’re just sending your body into shock. Inactivity is foreign to it – stick with it. As you allow yourself time for rest and reflection you’ll begin to be able to offer more of yourself to the Father. As you free up more of yourself to the Father, the deeper he can work on your heart and that will transform every other area of your life.