Love Letters . . .

I almost made a big mistake the other day. A really big mistake. You know the kind—the oh-my-gosh-I’d-never-make-that-up type of mistake. I was online and decided to visit an old email account. It is one that has become inactive, and in a spirit of organization and cleanliness, I decided I should just delete the account. Just as I was in the process of erasing the account forever, I thought, I should check to make sure there is nothing important here. Oh my, was I glad I did! Because that account is full of love letters.


Maybe you grew up in the era where love letters happened with a pen and paper. Or, maybe you’re growing up in the time where love letters happen on Facebook or in a text. But for me, most of Liz’s love letters came by way of hotmail.com. Years ago, that account became so overrun with spam that I quit using it. But it still has all the love letters. Over the first 2 years we dated, Liz wrote me 144 emails to that account.

Do you remember what it is like to get a love letter? I do. One summer while we were dating, I was interning and she was working a ‘normal job’. I was halfway through a 14-day stretch on the Salmon River when one of my friends came up to camp. He had in his hand . . . a love letter! It was like a cold drink of water on that 112-degree day! Hurriedly, I found a private place to read it. With eager anticipation, I ripped open the envelope. At first, I read the whole letter, scouring for precious tidbits of updates and information. Then I re-read the letter, soaking in the parts that touched my heart. I read it again the next day, and again the day after that. Why? Because it was a love letter! That’s what you do when someone loves you!

Have you ever noticed that you don’t analyze a love letter? That you don’t consciously look for ‘the meaning’? You don’t outline, you don’t chart, you don’t even really ‘study’. You don’t marvel over the grammar, or gush over the syntax. You just absorb. You just allow—even urge—your heart to notice the right things. Because it isn’t about the letter, is it? It’s about the author—your lover. It’s about doing whatever it takes to know your lover better. The author has already captured your heart, and this letter is a delightful opportunity to meet with your lover.

It’s a love letter. Everyone knows how to read a love letter. Or do we?

(Part 2 next week . . .)

Better go make sure that email account stays active!





Who do you trust?

It’s possible that this isn’t a noticed struggle for you. Lucky. You may be the type of person that just doesn’t have too much of an issue. Your temperament, personality, and drive just don’t push you toward this pit. Maybe.

Or, it could be that you struggle and don’t know it. Selfish ambition is something we’re good at disguising. We live in a world that glorifies in-your-face pride, and sometimes we feel pretty good by comparison.

Either way, I’ve been defining it wrong.

And how we define things influences how we live.

I first really wrestled with the issue of pride and humility when I followed it as a theme in my Bible read-thru one year. Well, at least, that was when I decided to acknowledge my wrestling. Pride has always been a temptation for me. As a young child, my mom had me memorize a verse in Proverbs about letting others compliment you—because I was a little too good at complimenting myself. As I got older, I got smarter. I’m sure the pride seeped out into the open sometimes, but it mostly resided in the hidden-from-others areas of my heart. After all, out-in-the-open pride isn’t too acceptable in the Christian community, but hidden pride is. We just call it ‘drive’, or ‘competitiveness’. But, I never liked pride. I knew it wasn’t such a good thing. So I followed the idea in my read-thru one year and it changed my life. I realized that pride isn’t only wrong—it’s stupid. We serve a God who is so big that any accomplishment I make is trivial in comparison. I realized that Paul wasn’t exaggerating when he said that he would only boast in “Christ and Him crucified.” So I defined (and taught) humility as “seeing yourself accurately in the sight of God.” I wasn’t asking us to pretend that we’re not good at things (false humility), nor was I defining humility in terms of personality. It seemed like a good definition, and I attempted to live by it.

But, there were a couple of problems. For one, I discovered that “seeing myself accurately in the sight of God” wasn’t always enough to stop a bout of pride. When I am drunk on grandiose thoughts of myself, imagining myself from God’s perspective doesn’t always cut through to my heart. Sometimes, I just don’t care. I also discovered it was a wrong definition. Well, actually, one of my students discovered it for me.

I love it when people I’m discipling start to disciple me. Sky Henderson began to question my definition of humility. His basis was 1 Peter 5:6-7: “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.” He told me that the Greek grammar links humbling ourselves and casting our anxieties on God. In other words, humility is an act of trust, not just a change of perspective. It’s relational. Zephaniah 3:11-12 make the same connection, stating that humility is about the focus of our trust. In other words, pride is about self-trust, and humility is about God-trust.

But, if pride and humility are a matter of trust, how do I know who I trust? What are the evidences of my trust focus? I’d love to know what you think, and here’s a few to get us started:
• Peace—It’s no coincidence that Jesus follows His teaching on treasure with teaching on worry, because what we worry about shows us what we love. If God is our source, we can be at internal peace.
• Credit—If God is the source of my trust, than He gets the credit for anything good. But if I trust myself, than I take the credit.
• Simplicity—I love to strategize, and I would never want to confuse simplicity with laziness. But, if God is in charge, I can rely on His strategy. If I’m in charge, I have to agonize over every detail of my strategy, believing that the results depend on me.
• Prayer—If God is my trust focus, than wouldn’t I want to talk to Him about what is going on?
• Relationship—I don’t think it is coincidence that the Bible declares Moses to be “more humble than anyone on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3) and the only man “whom the LORD knew face to face” (Deut. 34:10). If I want to be humble, it will be a result of the presence of God inside me, not a result of my human effort.

How does this affect how we live? If pride isn’t pretending we’re less than we are, or seeing ourselves ‘smaller’, or simply a change of perspective, than we’re free to dream big dreams. We’re free to recognize the drives, gifts, and abilities God is shaping in us. Rather than spending our energy defending against pride, we can pursue the trust that comes with a well-nourished relationship with God. Rather than hesitating to engage because of fear of feeding our pride, we can leap to pour ourselves out for others, knowing it is God who does the work. And, rather than holding back because we fear we have nothing to offer, we can engage and relate, knowing that we can only offer Christ.

How about you? How does selfish ambition creep into your heart? How do you shift the focus of your trust back to Christ? What evidences do you see of the focus of one’s trust?

Primary Questions and Secondary Questions

Questions. They rattle through our heads like a string of cans tied to a scared dog’s tail, bouncing, crashing, skipping around erratically. The more noise they make the faster our mind goes. . .
What questions do you ask?
Will I have enough money in 2011 to pay my debts from 2010? Where should I go to college? Will that business deal come through this week? Will that person ever like me? What am I going to do with this medical situation?
For me right now, its
Will we have enough money? Is our house going to sell? Will we move to Croatia in time for summer ministry?
Questions. I wonder what questions you and I ask. And I wonder how those questions control our stress levels, our faith level, and, ultimately, our actions. What questions do you ask?

In Numbers 13, Moses sends a group of 12 guys into “The Promised Land”. When sending them, he asks some questions:
See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many. What kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? What kind of towns do they live in? Are they unwalled or fortified? How is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees on it or not? (v.18-20)

Now, I have no idea whether Moses was following the Holy Spirit or not, (and, of course, I trust the sovereignty of God), but you probably know the ‘result’ of these questions. The 12 guys come back and give an accurate report:
We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. . . . We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are. . . . The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. . . . We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them. (v.27-33)

You know the rest of the story. The Israelites packed their bags to head ‘home’ to Egypt. God had miraculously led them out of Egypt. He had parted the Red Sea. He had provided for their every need. Here they were, sitting on the edge of “The Promised Land” (the title should have provided a hint!), and they wouldn’t go in. All because they asked (and answered) the wrong questions. What questions do you ask?

God was the one who had sent the men into the land: The LORD said to Moses, “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites.” (v.1) But, He had already answered THE question. THE question should have been, Lord, do you want us to go? THE question should have been, God, will you be with us? And God had already answered that question.

It comes down to primary questions and secondary questions. For me, our finances, our house, and our timing are all secondary questions. God already answered the primary question when He called us to Croatia with absolute clarity. What are the secondary questions that rule your life? What are the primary questions that God has already answered? What questions do you ask? And what do those questions reveal about your heart?