The Training Table: Minding the Crucially Crucial “You—you” GAP!

by JohnDozPosted on February 11, 2015 Posted in Training Table — No Comments ↓

Welcome to the Training Table where you can depend on some spiritually-nourishing chow, carefully prepared, to help you run the Godly and good race! For what good is a good race, unless it’s a Godly race (2 Timothy 4:7; 1 Corinthians 9:24)?

Ever since The Fall in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3—when Eve then Adam used their free will to disobey God and passed along the strain of enmity between God and the human race ever since then) humankind has shared a common and most dreadful plight: An identity crisis.

When God chose a way… the only way, truth, and life… to resolve this existential reality and persistent angst, He essentially said, “There is absolutely nothing humanity can do to fix a crisis so deep and thorough as its identity; broken cannot produce unbrokenness; darkness cannot produce light; deadness cannot produce life; the solution can only come from outside of humanity; I, We will make it possible for each human being to be born again.”

So the one and only true God of all things seen and unseen made the only way possible to occur and redeem humanity’s identity crisis by the birth, death, and resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus Christ—”The Way, the Truth, and the Life”. Jesus Himself said, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6). And Jesus Christ, then, is either a liar, a lunatic, or the very GodMan and Lord who He said He was. There is no other way.

At what level of detail have you parsed-out the real identity of Jesus Christ? Why do you believe what you believe… about Him… and your identity?

It is only due to the strain and stain of Original Sin (Genesis 3) that our first and broken response to this True Truth is, “What the hell! I can’t believe God could be so exclusive, close-minded, unjust, narrow, and cruel as that. Only one way, truth, and life?! Isn’t it God’s responsibility to cut me some slack.”

Rather, and perhaps, just a pinprick of reality, self-awareness, and humility should cause us to say, “Praise God from the bottom to the top of my heart that He has made a way, truth, and life… at all.”

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see. (John Newton)

God’s grace is merciful and utterly undeserving… But not a way and an offer that will last forever. If any human being will not take Him up on the only way of His Son Jesus Christ, God will be respectful and deferential enough to allow any human being to choose hell rather than heaven. To say no rather than yes. “The doors of hell are locked from the inside.” (C.S. Lewis)

God can forgive ANY sin if we repent and are saved; but God cannot forgive ANY sin if we do not. (Mark 3:22-30; Matthew 12:31-32)

As the nearby inset image portrays, “Who am I?” No matter what array of material stuff, cosmetics, and damnable good works humanity piles on top of being LOST, the reality of a bottomless, unfilled, God-shaped hole in our heart is undeniable and casts a shadow of shame, condemnation, being orphaned, a life of anxieties of yesterday, fears of today, and worries of tomorrow over everything we are first, and then do thereafter. We need a Redeemer to initiate the change by supernaturally turning our heart of stone into a heart of flesh—then, in Christ, we will be God’s people and He will be our God. (Ezekiel 11:17-22)

God Did It… Have We?

It has been wisely said in a variety of ways that the Christian journey of faith can be summed by recognizing and closing the GAP between the OBJECTIVE True Truth and Love of God in Christ… and our SUBJECTIVE internalization, experience, and faithful living out what of what was done and is already truly true of a Christian. And not true of any human being who has not been re-born… Or re-Identified.

If any human being has come to a realization—by the Spirit first regenerating the heart and making him or her capable of doing so—God is God, he or she is not, repentance for Sin [Adam’s] and sinning [habitually] is required, beseeching Jesus Christ to Save him or her from hell in time and for eternity, and centering his or her life on Christ as disciple of his or her Lord… That human being has taken the first and absolutely necessary step in resolving and reversing his or her IDENTITY CRISIS. It’s true: God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whosoever would believe in Him will not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16).

The GAP between what’s Objectively True of us and our subjective, personal life is one that is similar yet different in every born-again, new creation in Christ. But the goal of faith is the same: “Minding the GAP”, closing it, becoming more and more like Christ—it’s called the journey of justification, discipleship, sanctification, purification, perseverance, and conformation—so that our Christlikeness enables us to “co-redeem” the world… Bringing heaven to earth… Until heaven comes back to this earth when Christ returns to make all things new.

Martin Luther described a born-again Christians [there is no other kind, John 3:7] as “Little Christs”—because of what God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit DID. Has it been done in YOU? In the people closest to you? Have you and/or yours resolved The Identity Crisis of the fallen Image Bearer of God?

There is no more important question and answer any human being can ask or resolve “Today…” (Psalm 95:7-8)!

Say It Again…

God’s completed, yet not fully consummated, work in Christ is finished (John 19:30)—but has it started, and is it progressing, IN YOU?

Especially in the New Testament parts of the Bible, the words “In Christ…” [or synonyms] appear many times because the Spirit of God—by means of the Bible writers—is reminding, encouraging, admonishing, exhorting, warning, preaching, and teaching to the church… about exactly WHO they objectively are! The First Century Church was establishing “a root system” that could not and would not fail. Again and again, as we know by how the Bible tells us, God’s own people were continually relapsing and relying on who they WERE and not who they ARE… In Christ.

This is HUGE, my friends. In fact, it pretty much sums up the entirety of God’s Plan of Redemption: God objectively made a plan to rescue and redeem the universe so that you and I could subjectively have it come to pass… One fallen yet redeemed heart, spirit, and life at a time: That’s how God counts the fulfillment of His plan in Christ: Have you and yours been rescued and redeemed?

“God chose faith as the way to justification because faith accords with grace and grace is the free and sovereign work of God that makes the promise certain. “For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants.” (Romans 4:16) God means to justify us by faith because it gives us strong assurance. God’s free and sovereign grace is what guarantees the promise of salvation and makes it sure. And faith is the one condition of the heart that accords with grace in justification. Faith says yes to grace and is glad that God will save us that way and rests in that wonderful work of grace.” (John Piper, emphasis added)

In closing, please allow me to offer one monumentally important, wide, deep and unspeakably full-filling passage from the Bible that my men’s Bible fellowship is presently in the midst of studying.

1 Peter is a book of the Bible written to First Century Christians who were undergoing an array of suffering “from the inside-out” [their own faith transition from God’s chosen in the Old Testament to their “New Testament identity in Christ”], and “from the outside-in” [persecution by Rome and “the old Jewish guard”].

Net-net? The recipients of this letter were hurting big time… And there’s no better way to begin the process of remembering and redeeming than recapitulation: “Remind me again, what’s the Good News of the Gospel?” What exactly is objectively true of me that I can subjectively, personally, intimately stand on, embrace, absorb, and live out once again? Remembering and renewing are two activities that show up in the Bible many times—and should do so in our lives beginning early every morning (Mark 1:35).

Please note how I have created a “You          you” GAP between what the Spirit of God, by means of the apostle Peter, is pleading to the early church… to YOU… ME… to see, remember, and live out in word and deed: What is objectively True in You [big “Y”] as a new creation is Christ is and should be subjectively lived out in you [little “y”] each and every day, Beloved of God.

This is the fact of faith, discipleship, and being more and more like Jesus to used of God: Minding and closing the GAP between who “You” are as Christ in “you”, and who you are in Christ.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who are the elect exiles [Christ followers] of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to “You         you”.

Born Again to a Living Hope

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for “You         you”, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this “You         you” rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, “You         you” have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though “You         you” have not seen him, “You         you” love him. Though “You         you” do not now see him, “You         you” believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of “Your         your” faith, the salvation of “Your         your” souls. (1 Peter 1:1-9 ESV)

Saved… to Serve!

Now, even though there will be varying levels of excitement, gratitude, joy, worship, a passion for The Body of Christ and the lost, thankfulness, and a desire to be used for God’s main purpose: To glorify Him and bless others…

This opening passage from 1 Peter above should rock your world from the inside out.

Please read it again… and again as needed… in order to search your heart about any/all GAPS between the “You” of what God has objectively done in Christ for the universe and The Body of Christ Universal as well as for the “you” of your own, personal, intimate, heart-of-heart story. Please take this sort of meditative and prayerful time not just “Today…” (Psalm 96:7-8), but regularly and within a trusted community of faith.

[If the passage feels more like dead or just words on a page, please, deeply consider the nature of your faith. Perhaps you or someone you love or know has yet to embrace the faith. Words of this kind in the Bible deeply resonate, “Spirit-to-Spirit”, when a born-again believer lets such words dwell in the heart. Holy affections, the thrill of God’s beauty, grace, and truth, vibrates deep-down inside. (Matthew 10:20; Romans 8:14-16; 2 Corinthians 1:22)]

Pray and meditate and recite and remember and help others do the same: In Christ you have actually, really, truly been supernaturally born again to a living hope so that you can be Christ to any and all “human doings”—who want more than anything to be re-identified human beings… FIRST. Identity precedes all else and God has made a way, truth, and life for us to be re-identified, justified, and sanctified to serve, as we Mind the GAP!

If you are in Christ and have crossed the line between being unrepentant and repentant, idolatrous and loving God, your own lord and Christ as Lord, unsaved and saved, dead and born again, presumptuous and thankful, etc, etc, etc… God has transformed history… In you. Believe it.

If not… Believe it as well.

JohnDoz

Resources:
Crucial Questions

Finding Your Identity, RC Sproul

The Purpose and Perseverance of Faith, John Piper

Bearing the Image: Identity, the Work of Christ, and the Church, Thabiti Anyabwile

Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness?, John Piper

Slave: The Hidden Truth About Your Identity in Christ, John MacArthur

The Training Table: God’s Design for Transforming the Heart… and the World!

by JohnDozPosted on February 4, 2015 Posted in Training Table — No Comments ↓

Welcome to the Training Table where you can depend on some spiritually-nourishing chow, carefully prepared, to help you run the Godly and good race! For what good is a good race, unless it’s a Godly race (2 Timothy 4:7; 1 Corinthians 9:24)?

I hope you’ve arrived at today’s Training Table with a very big yet discerning appetite. This feast for the born-again, famished, sacrificial, and serving heart is… YUM!

The ingredients of God’s Plan of Redemption includes a variety doctrinal truths which make up the foundations of the Biblical, Christian faith. The content below is one of my favorite truisms concerning how The Trinity, a) created humankind’s heart in the beginning (Genesis 1,2), b) how it all went bad (Genesis 3), and c) how the three persons of The Trinity work both separately and together to use what went BAD… in order to make all things GOOD (Romans 8:28) and eventually brand new again (Revelation 21:5).

The Heart of the Matter is a Matter of the Heart.

There’s a very short yet jam-packed verse in the Bible that’s just loaded with meaning, wisdom, importance, exhortation, warning, and loving and truthful advice from God: Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life (Proverbs 4:23).

“Above ALL else…”?! Yes, ALL else. How so? The heart of the matter is to always begin with the disposition of the heart. And, from God and the Bible’s perspective, there’s a very good chance that “the heart” takes into account much more than you currently know, assume, or imagine. Taking care of the heart… your heart… is very, very important.

God’s Heart-Spirit-Life Ecosystem (in part from The Weeping, the Window, the Way, by John Dozier)

“By far one of the most important principles and promises to understand about the Bible [and how it relates to how God created us] is the emphasis that God places on the heart: As God’s Image-Bearers, the Trinity’s heart of Pure Love and Truth is reflected in each and every one of our hearts—the repository of God’s Character, His Communicable Attributes, His Love and Truth.

But, [a way-big but…] humanity’s heart went horribly wrong at The Fall (Genesis 3) when Eve and Adam chose to be God rather than obey God as God, and henceforth all hearts, our heart, is now “wholly dis-eased” (Genesis 6;5), “deceitful and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9), “sin-filled, stained, and infected from birth” (Psalm 51:5), an “idol factory” (John Calvin, Romans 1:18-32) churning and turning out “little gods” as effectively as Campbell’s Soup produces new flavors to satisfy every taste.

But, The Good News is that in Christ [by means of repentance, faith, and justification by grace alone], the heart can be radically [yet only partially] redeemed! God has offered every Image Bearer, human being, in the world the chance to cross THE LINE: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16, emphasis added).

This is where heart transformation begins… And ONLY where. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4;12).

The Holy Spirit Must Make the First Move to Transform the Heart in “Regeneration”—This work of God is closely, yet mysteriously, linked with his effectual calling so that the two could conceivably be considered one simultaneous work of God. It is distinguished as that act of God’s grace whereby he supernaturally implants a new, Christ-aware heart and spiritual life in us so that our internal spiritual governance changes. It “carries with it the operative grace whereby a person called is enabled to answer [God’s specific and effectual] call…to embrace Jesus Christ as he is freely offered in the gospel.” (1)  This supernatural work of the Triune God working separately and in union is frequently illustrated in Scripture as God’s gift of a new heart, a heart that is alive and honorably responsive to Biblical truth. It is God’s work alone that initially changes the heart, and yet Christians are called to evangelize and make disciples. This apparent contradiction or tension is God’s to command and ours to obey, nonetheless. (2) (John Dozier, WWW, Appendix “B”, God’s Redemptive Plan, Have Peace: There’s a Person, a Promise, and Perfect Plan in Place)

[1] Berkhoff, Systematic Theology. [2] See Ezekiel 11:19; 36:26-26; John 1:13; 3:8; 6:44-45; 1 Corinthians 2:5,12, 14; 2 Corinthians 3:3, 6; 1 John 2:29, 3:9, 4:7, 5:1, 4, 18; James 1:18; and 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14.

When Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength…” (Matthew 22: 37), He was using “heart synonyms” to describe and focus on “the center of our being”: The Heart. Your heart, Beloved of God. This is NOT the “Westernized” depiction of the heart as being the source of our emotions and the head being the source of our thinking. More on that in the next course of the feast…

“The care and feeding of the heart” has far-reaching… even and especially eternal… repercussions.

It is no mere coincidence that the word “heart” (Heb. lebab/leb [b’bel], Gk. kardia [kardiva]) and its synonyms [mind, soul, strength, inner being, wisdom, understanding, etc.] show up thousands of times in the Bible. The heart is central to how God created us (Genesis 2:7); how we strayed from God so thoroughly (Exodus 20:3); and how God’s Plan of Redemption begins in us with the problems of heart being the first issue that’s addressed by God (Ezekiel 11:19; 36:26-27; John 3:3-5; 1 Peter 3:15; 1 John 5:1; “Regeneration” above).

The only change of heart that matters is, [God said] I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 11:19). PLEASE NOTE: Who exactly is the One Who is initiating the crucial changes of the inherited, darkened, depraved, and dead heart? Only God, Only God, Only God… can begin the change from outside us. No form of self-help or religion [both impossible, man-made ways to reach God Who is perfect and we are certainly not] can initiate such a change of heart.

It’s 100% impossible for any fallen Image Bearer to save him or her self. But God the Father in Election, God the Son on the cross, and God the Holy Spirit in Regeneration is capable and does initiate the change. Period.

Please be real: The only ingredient, “merit”, or “offering” we bring to God’s plan of salvation is our sin. But, If we repent and confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).

Have you crossed this line? Have you been born again? Can you tell someone… anyone… the story of your conversion? If you were to die today, what would be the basis upon which God should allow you into His heaven?

Look Again…

The Bible does not use the Westernized “mind-cognition-thinking” VS. “heart-emotions-feelings” dichotomy. No, not at all. As the inset graphic depicts, God separates, empowers, and interconnects our HEART—SPIRIT—LIFE ACTIONS into a holistic ecosystem of life: It’s the way God first SAVES us and then SANCTIFIES and CONFORMS into the likeness of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1… lots more) as we are discipled, matured, grown-up, made holy, and conformed more and more into the likeness and “serving effectiveness” of Jesus Christ. This is huge, friends.

The “HEART—SPIRIT—LIFE ecosystem / cycle” first exists in and for salvation, and then occurs, over and over again in and for purification—until we die and stand face-to-face with God, or Jesus returns to make all things new. And it’s ALL, 100% accomplished by God’s most marvelous and merciful Plan of Redemption!

This is no small matter, right? If we miss the divine design God has created as part and parcel of our BEING, we will inevitably get way [way] off track in our all of our DOING. We must BE born again before we can DO anything but displease God.

It’s What Inside That Counts!

The HEART contains our worldview, ideologies, core beliefs, truths, falsehoods, dreams… our non-negotiables. The sort of things we think about when we’re all alone, and what we hold most dear in life. The heart is the center of our being. [Not where our feelings reside.]

The SPIRIT—the Hebrew word ru′ach, or the Greek word pneu′ma, both meaning “wind”, “force”, “life-force” in the Old Testament; but when used in the New Testament will often be referring to our “emotions” [fleeting, superficial, often over-powering] and our “affections” [long-lasting, deep, abiding, and consistent with beliefs].

The content of heart affects the rest of a person: A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit (Proverbs 15:13); a cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones (Proverbs 17:22).

LIFE IN ACTION/FAITH—is how we live each and every day in word and deed. Every single action we take in life is but a consequence, a reflection, and the result of [the fruit of] the COMBINATION of the prior two spheres of our life: The state of our emotions, that flow from a heart, are RIGHT or WRONG with regards to whether or not they are aligned with God’s Love and Truth found in the Bible (2 Timothy 3:15-17).

If your HEART is in the right place—in concert with God’s Scripture—your EMOTIONS, AFFECTIONS have less and less anxiety from yesterday; less fear for today; and less worry about tomorrow: For freedom Christ has set us free… (Galatians 5:1)! And more and more assurance, Shalom peace, resistance from the ways of the world, your dead and old “flesh” [ways of sinful habits], and the devil, friends!

The more that God’s Love and Truth found in the Bible fills your heart, the more the Fruits of the Spirit will define all of your life in word and deed: The more Christ-like you and I will be. Period.

God’s key takeaways?

1. If we are regenerate (Titus 3:5), heart-brokenly repentant (1 John 1:9), converted (Acts 2:38), born-again (John 3:3), new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17), in Christ (Galatians 3:28), God’s loving command, …love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and love you neighbor as yourself… WILL result in a harvest of The Fruit of the Spirit: …love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control… (Galatians 5:22-23).

2. BUT, if we are not—if we hard-heartedly shun God’s offer of salvation, lordship, and mission in and for Christ (John 3:16; Mark 16:15)—the heart has no other path but to produce and worship idols (Exodus 20:3-6), to harden (Hebrews 11:6), to hate (1 John 4:20) and to degrade further and further into …sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. (Galatians 5:19-21). God has most graciously offered NEW LIFE, but He will not force anyone to accept it. Remember, the doors of hell are locked from the inside (C.S. Lewis)

3. We must use God’s “design for re-design” and transformation: Part of the reparative, sanctifying work of the Christian includes using God’s design to “Tracing It Back” by being a vital part of a community of Saints to regularly, a) look at our behavior, b) look at our emotions, and, c) trace the behavioral and emotional content BACK to the heart of the matter: The details of what exactly you and I hold as being TRUE and/or FALSE—contained within the heart!

If we are in Christ, while none of our continued Sin [in Adam] and/or sinning [habits] can take us out of heaven (Romans 8), BUT it can take us out of fellowship with The Trinity… and The Holy Spirit in particular… and act as a block to our prayers and faith life and fellowship with other Christians, among other things. So, seeing the sin, tracing it back, repenting of it, and being sanctified, purified, made more holy as a result… is how it works! (Psalm 51)

The most merciful and miraculous gift of God in the “heart-spirit-life ecosystem” SAVES, SANCTIFIES, so that we can SERVE like Jesus… And redeem the heart’s fallen propensity to be egotistic, self-centered, pretentious, prideful… and yucky!

That’s the rub, my fellow race runners for Christ: What we hold in our heart as being the TRUE TRUTH AND LOVE OF GOD or a FALSEHOODS from the world, our own sin, or the devil, effects everything in our life in TIME—from the inside-out—AND will have a direct impact on the disposition of the rewards, stature, and station in heaven for ETERNITY (Matthew 5:10-12; 16:27; 25:20-23; Revelation 22:12; 1 Corinthians 3:11-14; Philippians 3:14; 2 Timothy 4:8).

The wellspring of God’s Love and True Truth creates blessed emotions, affections which then free us to live out our faith more and more as Jesus Christ did.” (John Dozier, WWW)

Please don’t miss a very important, seminal point about “The Heart-Spirit-Life Ecosystem”: It’s real; it exists; it affects all of your life… whether you believe it does or not. It’s working in you and I because God put it there. Sure, our free will and manifold choices to try and deny reality might feel like we can simply ignore all this stuff. But that would be a lie and, worse yet, a denial of our own stories.

And you and I know this to be true. If we hold FALSEHOODS about God and life in our heart, we will be fearful, unhappy at some or many levels, worried, shame-filled, unworthy, constantly comparing ourselves to others, judgmental, isolated, and horribly compartmentalized. But if we hold the TRUE TRUTH and LOVE about God and life in our heart, we will be… far from perfect… but free, secure, joy-filled, assured, abiding in love, whole, happily vulnerable, ready to give our life away, on mission for Jesus, and wholly integrated!

There are certainly some mysteries God has chosen NOT to reveal to us about the nature and process of His Plan of Redemption; but The Heart-Spirit-Life Ecosystem is NOT one of the mysteries! It’s real and it’s temporal-eternal life transforming!

So, repeat after me, Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life (Proverbs 4:23)! And, as an added treasure and responsibility, Above all else, be on guard with and for your neighbor’s and fellow Christian’s heart, for it is the wellspring of our communal life in Christ!

Amen. And Amen.

JohnDoz

The Training Table: What’s at the Heart of Great and/or Gruesome Leadership? Part 3 of 3.

by JohnDozPosted on January 28, 2015 Posted in Training Table — No Comments ↓

Welcome to the Training Table where you can depend on some spiritually-nourishing chow, carefully prepared, to help you run the Godly and good race! For what good is a good race, unless it’s a Godly race (2 Timothy 4:7; 1 Corinthians 9:24)?

Here’s an appetizer… I have a statement-question for you: Leaders, leaders everywhere, but are the led being fed and flourished? I would venture that a conservative answer to this question would be that 85% of folks would respond by saying, “No way.”

And this is based on the fact that I’m just bumping another statistic up a wee bit: 70% of CEOs are alleviated of their leadership duties due to their inability to execute the Vision-Mission of their organization.

So, what can we take from this? Let’s get something straight about leadership once and for all: A leader’s—any leader’s—Job #1 is to execute the Vision-Mission of the organization. And… “Where there is no vision, the people perish…” (Proverbs 29:18)… Or, at the very least, languish, whither, brood, rot, under-perform, and deteriorate into “clockwatchers”:

What’s the top answer to the question of an employee like, “Hey, how’s your day going?” “Well”, he or she will too often say as they glance at the clock, “I’ve got about  X  hours until I get off…” What does that tell you about far too many people’s work life?

And yes, this means ANY organization of ANY kind ANY place in the world. And please get this: beginning with the most vital “organization” first: An “organization of one”… The leader him or her self!

If any given leader has no personal Vision, Mission, Core Values, etc, he or she will be woefully ill-equipped to execute the corporate Vision, Mission, Core Values, etc. [It’s worth reading this line over again. To what extent do you believe it’s true?]

But I’m getting ahead of myself… sort of…

As a reminder, here’s the menu at The Training Table thus far:
January 14—7 Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives;
January 21—Leadership: When and How Did It All Go Wrong?
January 28—Leadership: It’s an Inside-Out Job. So Let’s Get It Right!

Leadership: It’s an Inside-Out Job.
So Let’s Get It Right!

I would say that Job #1 is to execute the Vision/Mission of the organization. should be the most universally-held principle and practice about the role and goals of leadership… on the planet… if not the entire Milky Way.

Why? Because it incorporates two main truisms:

1) All human beings—Image Bearers of God—are inspired to be all they can be by playing a vital, contributing role in achieving a Vision and Mission of some kind, and,

2) it’s at the heart of good-to-great leadership, as articulated by John Gardner, …leaders set a vision and use their authority to create an environment where people can contribute to the vision’s success and flourish doing so.

And the reason leadership is an INSIDE-OUT job is this: The main, the only, the first-and-foremost, the summum bonum—”the highest good”—that any leader can achieve is to not simply grasp a nice sounding colloquialism like, “The heart of leadership is a matter of the heart.”

But to go for with all of his or her might in pursuit of this truth: The Knowledge of God and the Knowledge of Self—is contained within the heart of a memorable, enduring, transformational leader. The Bible’s treatment of this principle is so important to see, Above ALL else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life (Proverbs 4:23, emphasis added). And leader who is out of touch with his or her heart’s core beliefs is not just a bad leader, but a “killer app”… in a really bad way… for all those being led!

Leadership: It’s an Inside-Out Job. So Let’s Get It Right!

Any man or woman who aspires to be a great leader needs to embrace a few principles such as this:

1) Job #1 is to execute the a) Vision and b) Mission by means of incorporating the principles and processes of the c) Core Values, d) Strategic Roadmap, e) Alignment, f) Personal Responsibility, and g) Results… on a CORPORATE level.

This involves a holistic, common sense, yet complicated process of integrating the above 7 realms of an organizational effectiveness model. In fact, “the most complicated aspect” of the endeavor is tied to the spiritual, emotional, psychological, and physical well-being of the leader him or herself.

So…

2) Job #2—in order to achieve Job #1—is to execute the Vision and Mission by means of incorporating the principles and processes of the Core Values, Strategic Roadmap, Alignment, Personal Responsibility, and Results… on a PERSONAL level—Inside-Out [B4 “Outside-In”].

This is the inside-out job that makes all the difference between counterfeit, fabricated, spurious, or short-lived leadership AND memorable, enduring, transformational leadership. The choice is yours… ours… to make. But the difference is not just monumentally important, it’s impact will last for time and eternity! (James 1:12; 2 Timothy 4:8; 2 Corinthians 5:10)

Stephen Covey famously said, In a very real sense there is no such thing as “organizational behavior”. There is only individual behavior. Everything else flows out of that. (Principled-Centered Leadership, emphasis added) The “individual” Covey is referring to is the person and nature of leadership at the helm.

When “Emotional Intelligence” Came into Vogue

“Leadership: It’s an Inside-Out Job. So Let’s Get It Right!”

The reason this statement is so vitally important to dig into is that along the journey of any leader executing the Vision and Mission by means of incorporating the principles and processes of the Core Values, Strategic Roadmap, Alignment, Personal Responsibility, and Results on a PERSONAL level… is that it is along the incredibly arduous yet equally rewarding journey, a leader’s life can be get any closer to better KNOWING GOD and KNOWING SELF. The “inside-out journey” is the best and only path towards being the best with the “outside-in journey”… of leading other people.

By means of Daniel Goleman’s 5 Emotional Intelligence Factors [below, Emotional Intelligence], please consider the connection with the heart of leadership when he or she takes all the time, talent, and treasure needed to come up with their PERSONAL “organizational effectiveness model” made up of their own Vision, Mission, Core Values, Strategic Roadmap, Alignment, Personal Responsibility, and Results.

The Journey of the Heart… It’s the Road [WAY] Less Traveled…

Commit to Today… to Go Where Few Have Gone Before!

Along the journey, the heart of leadership is made more intentional, established, grown-up, matured, more wise, compassionate, increased in perseverance, and far more empathetic about the myriad of challenges and rewards involved in his or her job as being responsible for executing the CORPORATE version… on the job!

The emotional intelligence factors which are so crucial to good-to-great leadership are directly impacted by this journey of the heart—the road rarely traveled by leadership of our day.

Make no mistake, Goleman’s “modern-day” and “revolutionary” insight [with my added Scripture references] was well-known by God when He made humankind “In the beginning…” (Genesis 1,2). Emotional Intelligence was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half, with more than 5,000,000 copies in print worldwide in 40 languages, and has been a best seller in many countries. I firmly believe that the reason for the success is all about “getting back to the Bible”—knowing God and knowing self brings out the best of humankind.

Not knowing God and self brings out the worst in us. Period.

The reason “the heart of leadership is a matter of the heart” is that when anyone’s heart is captured by God FIRST, leading is actually based upon, rooted in a) REALITY, and b) GOD’S TRUE TRUTH and LOVE. It’s as sublimely simple as that—but made frustratingly complicated by sin, foolishness, and leaders acting like infants!

It is precisely because the vast majority of leadership, a) leave God out of the picture and has, b) never taken the their own Vision, Mission, Core Values, Strategic Roadmap, Alignment, Personal Responsibility, and Results journey, that the lion’s share of leadership, c) measure-up so poorly on his or her emotional intelligence factors.

Self-Awareness (Gen 1; Ps 139:23-24; Jer 17:9; Mt 5; Rom 1:18-32, 8, 10:8-13; John 3:16; 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15; Rev 21:1-8) The ability to recognize and understand your most core beliefs, value system, emotions, and drives –as well as their effect on others.

Self-Regulation (Ps 17:4, 119:11; Prov 1:7; 1 Cor 9:25; Gal 5:23; 1 Pet 1:13; 2 Pet 1:6; Heb 12:1; Tit 1:8) The ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods. The propensity to suspend judgment—o think before acting.

Motivation (Pr 21:21; Ps 40:6-8; Mk 12:28-31; Acts 17:11-12;  Rom 15:4; 1 Pet 2:20; 2 Tim. 3:16-17) A passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status. A propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence.

Empathy (Rom 15:1; 2 Cor 1:3-7; Jn 1:14; Lk 1:32; Eph 2:8; Phil 2:7; Col 1:15; 1 Tim 2:5; Heb 13:3) The ability to understand the emotional makeup of other people. Skill in treating people according to their (heart) emotional reactions.

Social Skill (Ps 133:1; John 17:20-23; Rom 12:9-16; Rom 15:5; 1 Cor 1:10, 13; Eph 4:3-13, Col 3:14; Phil 1:3-11, 2:1-2) Proficiency in managing relationships and building networks. An ability to find common ground and build rapport.

“So Let’s Get It Right!”

Obviously, there are numerous other factors that go into growing a leader into all he or she can be, but consider with me the implications of taking the journey I’m getting at here—the sorts of questions we must ALL ask and answer if we are going to life a vitally important and impactful life. Please repeat after me, “Applying the model inside-out changes the heart of leadership. Applying the model inside-out changes the heart of leadership. Applying the model inside-out changes the heart of leadership.”

Vision—Why do I exist? What is my purpose in life?

Mission—What are the essentials of how I achieve my Vision?

Core Values—What explicit behaviors do I need to exhibit to achieve my Vision and Mission?

Strategic Roadmap—What is the reality of my circumstances, environment, “marketplace”, and how do I need to intentionally use my time, talent, and treasure to add value to “my world”?

Alignment—Are all the stakeholders in my life aware of all of the above?

Personal Responsibility—In what specific ways am I using a small community of trusted people and processes to keep me accountable and on track—in order to keep my Vision-Mission vital [not some dead exercise, once done, placed in a drawer and never heard of again]?

Results—Which few yet crucial and explicit results do I use as a “dashboard” to measure whether I am making progress in executing my personal Vision-Mission?

Have you ever undertaken this arduous yet supremely important
and transformational journey in and for yourself?

Leaders of any and all kinds, please consider this fact: If you have not undertaken the personal, inside-out, transformational version of the organizational effectiveness model in and for your own life, you are working NOT ONLY at a tiny fraction of your potential to LEAD—but it’s actually far worse than that.

You are doing a grave disservice to those who are being influenced under your leadership authority.

Any leader who has not addressed the “I” in the big questions of his or her personal life, will never be equipped to address the “WE” at the organizational or public level.

By using the entirety of the John Gardner quote from above, Effective, enduring and memorable leaders set a vision and use their authority to create an environment where people can contribute to the vision’s success and flourish doing so.  Leaders are environmentalists. (Emphasis added.)

If you or anyone in a position of leadership have, are, or will in the future, DENY and/or AVOID “the inside-out journey” we’ve reviewed above, you will be axiomatically… without doubt, by logic and unintentional design… be creating an organizational environment, culture that is power- and ego-based, corrosive, secretive, acerbic, divisive, caustic, and undeniably conducive to an UNSATISFACTORY place to work.

Done! That is the hallmark of the vast majority of workplaces in the world today: Employee satisfaction ratings are at an all-time low; and the three top reasons for this is leadership.leadership, and leadership.

It’s never too late to begin the inside-out, heart-transforming, emotion-maturing, leader-developing journey, my friends. Please get going, do not do it alone, and remember: It took us as a culture—and all the people, leaders and institutions therein—a long while and many complicated interactions to get to the place of chaos in which we exist today. It’s impossible to undo what’s been done either overnight, or in an easy fashion. But please focus on the character, courage, and in the right community to try with all your mind, soul, and strength “Today…” (Psalm 95:7-8).

JohnDoz

Resources:
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey

Leading with a Limp, Dan Allender

The Leadership Challenge, by Kouzes and Posner

On Leadership, HBR

The Marks of a Spiritual Leader, by John Piper

The Training Table: What’s at the Heart of Great and/or Gruesome Leadership? Part 2 of 3.

by JohnDozPosted on January 21, 2015 Posted in Training Table — No Comments ↓

Welcome to the Training Table where you can depend on some spiritually-nourishing chow, carefully prepared, to help you run the Godly and good race! For what good is a good race, unless it’s a Godly race (2 Timothy 4:7; 1 Corinthians 9:24)?

What’s at the Heart of Great and/or Gruesome Leadership?

As a reminder, here’s the plan: January 14—7 Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives; January 21—Leadership: When and How Did It All Go Wrong? January 28—Leadership: It’s an Inside-Out Job. So Let’s Get It Right!

When and How Did the Ideals of Leadership… Actual Leaders…

Begin to Degenerate in So Many Ways?

This is a really great question, right? Or does the question and an answer really even matter? Fact is, it matters a great deal.

St. Paul in his letter to the church at Philippi famously said, Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14).

The best and only way to thoroughly transform our thinking about any given subject is to, a) “forget the past” by first remembering exactly what it consisted of, b) why this was the case, c) what God did or didn’t have to do with the reality, d) what we did or didn’t have to do with the reality, e) to humbly and openly place both the truths and falsehoods of the reality at the foot of the cross, and f) to move back into the present not simply with a better understanding and a “healed sense of the past”—but a reconciled and redeemed version of how to restore reality… IN and UNDER CHRIST.

In order to “forget in a redemptive fashion”, we FIRST must apply a holy, redeemed, and sanctified remembering to and of the past—which then creates a whole array of spiritual, emotional, psychological, and physical conditions of preparedness, repentance, gratitude, a reality check, and the great potential for transformed, long-term behavioral change, aimed at glorifying God and blessing others in word and deed. [Far, far too many folks delve into the past and get stuck there in order to catalog and coalesce their identity as a victim; God has another way… And it’s all about being God-aware, self-aware, and VICTORIOUS in Christ!]

Like anything in life we wish to do far better than we’ve done it before, “pressing forward for the prize of LEADERSHIP” requires we look at the past and apply a detailed and holy forgetting—in the PRESENT to best prepare us for the FUTURE! It stands to reason that forgetting first requires remembering. How can we forget what we don’t first remember? But it’s not simply a rehash of the good, bad, and ugly of the past… Rather, it’s the hard yet richly rewarding work of REDEEMING the past… because God is not in the business of wasting ANY of our story!

Using the past for our ultimate good or to our detriment: The difference is huge.

Context is Everything! Ideas Have Consequences.

Always Start at 30,000’ and Move Down to Ground Zero.

Here’s a [way] high and cursory perspective of how things got so far off track in the realms of the culture’s perspective on LEADERSHIP… and the consequences of how individual LEADERS have suffered as well:

1) The consequences of ideas and “the domino game effect” [how one thing leads to another], “the law of the farm” [sowing and reaping], or exactly how consequences occur… is fascinating and extremely instructive.

The idea of leadership and the prevalence within our past culture of [primarily] men to lead, is dramatically different than the glaring absence of leadership learning and actual leaders in our day.

The reason for the slow, incremental, stage-by-stage, and sure change in leadership and leaders is the same rationale for all of the massive “plate tectonic” forces and changes in the culture—and the hearts of everyone therein! The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart… Ideas have consequences; and the heart of leadership has devolved in the same manner the rest of our culture has over the past 75-100 years.

The first philosopher’s ideas—such as Plato, Aristotle and others—had an impact on the worldview, thinking, and postulating new, “modern” philosophical treatises and ideas of the likes of… don’t miss the various lines of progression, “sowing and reaping”… Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes [father of modern rationalism], John Locke [father of modern empiricism], David Hume [father of modern skepticism], Immanuel Kant [revolutionary philosopher], Karl Marx [father of modern utopianism], Soren Kierkegaard [the father of modern existentialism], Frederick Nietzsche [atheistic existentialist], Jean-Paul Sartre [existential nihilist], and Darwin [naturalistic, anti-theistic evolution—the dignity of human beings is at risk, origins and destinies questioned, humanism promoted] and Freud [founder of psychoanalysis, religion is simply rooted in deep psychological needs and wish projection… nothing more].

It’s worth reading this “line of reasoning”, “the flow of ideas and consequences”… and how the import of “The Age of Reason” [religion no longer needed to explain life], Enlightenment, Humanistic thinking and worldview began to have a radical influence on Western culture: It was an incremental yet sure movement away from being God-centered and towards being self-centered.

“Christians, in the last 80 years or so, have only been seeing things as bits and pieces which have gradually begun to trouble them and others, instead of understanding that they are the natural outcome of a change from a Christian World View to a Humanistic one; things such as over-permissiveness, pornography, the problem of the public schools, the breakdown of the family, abortion, infanticide (the killing of newborn babies), increased emphasis upon the euthanasia of the old and many, many other things.

All of these things and many more are only the results. We may be troubled with the individual thing, but in reality we are missing the whole thing if we do not see each of these things and many more as only symptoms of the deeper problem. And that is the change in our society, a change in our country, a change in the Western world from a Judeo-Christian consensus to a Humanistic one.

That is, instead of the final reality that exists being the infinite creator God; instead of that which is the basis of all reality being such a creator God, now largely, all else is seen as only material or energy which has existed forever in some form, shaped into its present complex form only by pure chance. (Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 1982, emphasis added)

The “hinge point of worldview history” in our land came when the ideas and consequences of the previous era came to fruition in “the ‘60’s” and ushered in a sea change of revolutionary sexual promiscuity [many consequences], the lowering of social mores, the implosion of the family nucleus, radical feminism, experimentation with psychedelic drugs of all sorts, etc.—all of which occurred, in large part, due to the glaring lack of Godly, male leadership.

Like a sublimely simple yet mind-bogglingly complex game of “idea, worldview domino’s”, each idea and person [above] has taken their place in advancing [or degrading] Western culture to get us to the place where we are today:

2) The philosophical and material fruit of the past… evidenced in our day?

Rampant Secularization—all that exists is the here-and-now; no transcendent, eternal realm exists; functionally, practically, there is no God; and no more shame.

Rampant Privatization—what we do in private has no bearing on our public life.

Rampant Pluralism—no more True Truth; what is true for you isn’t necessarily true for me; we all have a version of the truth; a relativistic culture.

The result is, as Francis Schaeffer so eloquently stated reality as being “a death in the city” began as a death in the heart of Western man as his estrangement from God became a more and more pervasive aspect of the culture:

When the Scripture speaks of man being thus foolish, it does not mean he is foolish only religiously. Rather, it means that he has accepted a position that is intellectually foolish not only with regard to what the Bible says, but also to what exists—the universe and its form, and the mannishness of man. In turning away from God and the truth which He has given, man has thus become foolishly foolish in regard to what man is and what the universe is. He is left with a position with which he cannot live, and he is caught in a multitude of intellectual and personal tensions. (Francis A. Schaeffer, Death in the City, 2002, Ch. 1, referring to Romans 1:21-22, emphasis added)

The Boiling Frog Syndrome…

Leadership Principles and Leaders Alike—Slow Cooked—But Just as Dead.

The boiling frog story is a widespread anecdote describing a frog slowly being boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to significant changes that occur gradually… (Snopes)

Gradually… the import of philosophical ideas transformed leaders into the state and behavior of family-less, father-less “men without chests”, “geldings who the culture demands be fruitful”… For man is not just a chance configuration of atoms in the slipstream of meaningless chance history. No. Man, made in the image of God, has a purpose — to be in relationship to the God who is there. And whether it is in Jeremiah’s day, or in our own recent generations, the effect is the same. Man forgets his purpose, and thus he forgets who he is and what life means. (Francis A. Schaeffer, Death in the City, Ch. 1)

Virtually every institution in society has been seduced, assaulted, depredated, defiled, ransacked, dumbed-down, and stupefied by the above-referenced domino game of ideas and their consequences. Today’s leadership principles and leaders alike have, in far too many cases… not all… lost their sense of God, and, as a consequence, lost their sense of self as well.

Neither male nor female can lead in this state of heart and the circumstances that demand more than ever we know the principles of sound, enduring, and influencing leadership and the words and deeds of being a leader as well.

Whether we look at the lack of God-honoring and people-blessing leadership principles and/or leaders, we have arrived at the place we are today by slowly but surely—philosophy-by-philosophy, idea-by-idea, creed-by-creed, action-by-action, degradation-by-degradation, institution-by-institution—giving ourselves the freedom to jettison and suppress God’s True Truth and Love in exchange for falsehoods, idols, and passing fancies based upon our culture of comfort and our addiction to various kinds of narcissistic supplies! (Romans 1:18-32)

We’ve gotten ourselves into a helluva leadership pickle…

Is It Possible to Reverse Course?

We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. (C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man)

I personally find the above history, consequences of ideas, and how it all has had an impact on the degradation of the principles of enduring leadership and the hearts of leaders alike… to be fascinating.

It’s possible to reverse course, but [WAY] far from easy! In fact, it will take mostly miracle and a splash of man’s cooperation… That’s how bad it is, and how good God can be if we turn back to Him.

More importantly, knowing this [albeit on a very cursory level that deserves MUCH more thought and discussion…] provides us a connection to the next part of this 3-part series: January 28—Leadership: It’s an Inside-Out Job. So Let’s Get It Right!

Under the auspices of God’s Plan of Redemption, anything is possible to redeem. But the window of opportunity will not remain open indefinitely. When [not if…] we die, or Jesus Christ returns to make all things new, the window will not only be closed, but our choices as to whether we will or will not take up the battle on improving leadership in all realms of life and culture WILL be reflected in our statute and station in heaven or hell… for eternity. This is not a scare tactic but the reality of our existence. Our stewardship of leadership will be reflected in heaven and/or hell. It’s no small matter for God and it should not be minimized by us either.

There is little else in history and especially in our own day that’s more important than recouping the principles and practice of leadership. Because in order to do so, we have to FIRST turn back to God.

Please take a good chunk of your intentional and communal [not alone] time, talent, and treasure to ramp up your grasp of leadership principles and practices, my fellow marathoners for Christ. People are perishing for the lack of Godly leadership—and we will feast on how to get back to great leadership next time we sup’ at The Training Table. Bring a good appetite!

God richly bless you,
JohnDoz

What strikes you as being most surprising—or most expected—in the “consequences of ideas” above?

What are the top five characteristics of leadership you most appreciate? Why these?

What characteristics of poor leadership have been most harmful to you?

Resources:

The Consequences of Ideas, RC Sproul

Death in the City, Francis Schaeffer

The Abolition of Man, CS Lewis

A Christian Manifesto, Francis Schaeffer

The Training Table: What’s at the Heart of Great and/or Gruesome Leadership? Part 1 of 3.

by JohnDozPosted on January 14, 2015 Posted in Training Table — No Comments ↓

Welcome to the Training Table where you can depend on some spiritually-nourishing chow, carefully prepared, to help you run the Godly and good race! For what good is a good race, unless it’s a Godly race (2 Timothy 4:7; 1 Corinthians 9:24)?

As you fine folks who have been supplementing your spiritual diet here at The Feast of the Heart Training Table for a while know, I’m way passionate about the topic of leadership: a) the absolute necessity of it, b) the spectacular lack thereof, c) what’s at the heart of it, and d) the hope that whoever might want to break out and intentionally pursue the principles of leadership and grow as a leader will do so… like ASAP… or sooner!

I’ve had the greatest pleasure… challenges, successes, failures, high’s, low’s, in’s and out’s… of having numerous iterations of careers and working with leaders and on leadership for a long while. My inspiration to move from the marketing agency world to leadership consulting came one day when a couple of decades of the marketing and communications work flew through my mind like a high-speed film. Then it all slowed to a slow-mo speed and, strangely enough, the helm of the Titanic came to mind: “That’s where I’d love to be! At the helm. Not “down here where it seems like rearranging the chairs” too many times… I want to help keep the entire ship on course!”

So that’s where I focused all my time, talent, and treasure for the next stage of my career: Leadership coaching, organizational effectiveness, and strategic planning. It’s like anything in life that represents a “high leverage opportunity”: Even relatively small gains can have an hunormous impact on one’s life—and other lives… on an exponentially big scale! Leadership is everything.

For the next three menus on leadership at The Training Table, we WILL be chewing our food well, right? Really, my beloved and courageous fellow marathoners for Christ: Being involved in SOME way, shape, or form in the ramping up of great-to-greater leadership is something we ALL have to be involved in—each and every day. People, entire civilizations, perish for the lack of God-honoring, people-blessing leadership.

So here’s the plan: January 14—7 Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives; January 21—Leadership: When and How Did It All Go Wrong?; January 28—Leadership: It’s an Inside-Out Job. So Let’s Get It Right!

I will be praying that you will be working up an appetite for change in the coming New Year—one God-given, faith-empowered, and other-loving… day at a time (Psalm 95:7-8).

Enjoy. Employ. Deploy—no knowledge, growth, Godness or goodness is for us alone (Romans 15:1-2)!

JohnDoz

7 Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives, by, Sydney Finkelstein
It’s not easy to become as disastrous a boss as Dennis Kozlowski, Jean-Marie Messier, or Jill Barad — but you can, if you work at it. And here’s the best part: Each of the qualities that you need to be a spectacular failure is widely admired in today’s business world.

The past few years have witnessed some admirable business successes — and some exceptional failures. Among the companies that have hit hard times are a few of the most storied names in business — think Arthur Andersen, Rubbermaid, and Schwinn Bicycle — as well as a collection of former highfliers — think Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom. Behind each of these failures stands a towering figure: a CEO or business leader who will long be remembered for being spectacularly unsuccessful.

The truth is, it takes some special personal qualities to be spectacularly unsuccessful. I’m talking about people who took world-renowned business operations and made them almost worthless. People who destroyed billions of dollars of value. People whose destructive capacities go far beyond the scope of ordinary human beings.

What’s amazing is not that such people exist, or even that they rise to positions of authority. What’s remarkable is that the personal qualities that make this magnitude of destruction possible are regularly found in conjunction with genuinely admirable qualities. It makes sense: Hardly anyone gets a chance to destroy so much value without demonstrating the potential for creating it. Most of the great destroyers of value are people of unusual intelligence and talent. They show personal magnetism and often inspire others. They are the men and women whose faces appear on the covers of Fortune and Forbes .

Yet when it comes to the crunch, these people fail — and fail monumentally. The list of leaders who have failed spectacularly isn’t a list of people who merely weren’t up for the job. It’s a list of people who had a special gift for taking what could have been a modest failure and turning it into a gigantic one. (See “Big-Time Failures,” page 88.)

What’s the secret of their destructive powers? Seven habits characterize spectacularly unsuccessful people. Nearly all of the leaders who preside over major business failures exhibit four or five of these habits. The truly gifted ones exhibit all seven. But here’s what’s really remarkable: Each of these seven habits represents a quality that is widely admired in the business world. Business not only tolerates the qualities that make these leaders spectacularly unsuccessful; business celebrates them.

Here, then, are seven habits of spectacularly unsuccessful people. Study them. Learn to recognize them. These habits are most destructive when a CEO exhibits them, but any manager who has these habits can do terrible harm — including you.

#1 They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environment.

This first habit may be the most insidious, since it appears to be highly desirable. Shouldn’t a CEO be ambitious? Shouldn’t the company try to dominate its business environment, shape the future of its markets, and set the pace within them?

The answer to all of these questions is yes — but there’s a catch. Successful leaders try to shape the future precisely because they know that they can’t dominate the environment. They know that no matter how successful they’ve been in the past, they’re at the mercy of changing circumstances. Leaders who think that they and their companies dominate their environment tend to forget this. They vastly overestimate the extent to which they actually control events and vastly underestimate the role of chance and circumstance in their success.

CEOs who fall prey to this belief suffer from the illusion of personal preeminence: Like certain film directors, they see themselves as the auteurs of their companies. As far as they’re concerned, everyone else in the company is there to carry out their personal conception of what the company should be. CEOs who do, in fact, exhibit a degree of business genius tend to think that it’s transferable from business to business. Samsung’s CEO Kun-Hee Lee was so successful with electronics that he thought he could repeat this success with automobiles. He invested $5 billion in an already oversaturated auto market. Why? There was no business case. Lee simply loved cars and had always wanted to be in the auto business.

One symptom of leaders who suffer from the illusion of personal preeminence: They tend to see people as instruments to be used, as materials to be molded, or as audiences for their performances. Just as frequently, they tend to believe that their companies are central to suppliers and customers. Rather than looking to satisfy customer needs, CEOs who believe that they run preeminent companies act as if their customers were the lucky ones. And that is a prescription for a spectacular failure.

#2 They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s interests.

Like the first habit, this one seems innocuous, perhaps even beneficial. We want business leaders to be completely committed to their companies. We want their interests to be tightly joined. But when you examine spectacular failures, you find that failed executives weren’t identifying too little with the company, but rather too much. Instead of treating companies as enterprises that they need to nurture, spectacular failures treat them as extensions of themselves. They start to have a “private empire” mentality. They begin to behave as if they own their companies, and they begin to act as if they have the right to do anything they want with them.

CEOs who succumb to this mentality often use their companies to carry out personal ambitions. Once they launch a project, such leaders often invest in it with no sense of proportion or restraint, because they feel that betting on the project is betting on themselves. They take big risks with other people’s money, not because it’s other people’s money, but because they are treating it as their own money and they happen to be big risk takers.

The most slippery slope of all for these executives is their tendency to use corporate funds for personal reasons. CEOs who have been on the job for a long time or who have overseen a period of rapid growth may come to feel that they’ve made so much money for the company that the expenditures they make on themselves, even if extravagant, are trivial by comparison.

This twisted logic seems to have been one of the factors that shaped the behavior of Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco. His pride in his company and his pride in his own extravagance weren’t in conflict. They seem, in fact, to have reinforced each other — which is why he could sound so sincere making speeches about ethics while using corporate funds for personal purposes. Being CEO of a sizable corporation today is probably the closest thing to being king of your own country — and that’s a dangerous, and sometimes self-destructive, title to assume.

#3 They think they have all the answers.

Here’s the image of executive competence that we’ve been taught to admire for decades: a dynamic leader, making a dozen decisions a minute, dealing with many crises simultaneously, and taking only seconds to size up situations that have stumped everyone else for days.

The problem with this picture is that it’s a fraud. Leaders who are invariably crisp and decisive tend to settle issues so quickly that they have no opportunity to grasp the ramifications. Worse, because these leaders need to feel that they have all the answers, they have no way to learn new answers. Their instinct, whenever something truly important is at stake, is to allow no uncertainty — even when uncertainty is appropriate.

One of the special pleasures of having all the answers is the performance that executives can give, where they summon underlings and make a point of making snap decisions. CEO Wolfgang Schmitt of Rubbermaid was fond of demonstrating his ability to sort out difficult issues in a flash. A former colleague remembers that under Schmitt, “the joke went, ‘Wolf knows everything about everything.’ In one discussion, where we were talking about a particularly complex acquisition we made in Europe, Wolf, without hearing different points of view, just said, ‘Well, this is what we are going to do.’ ” But that kind of arrogance has real consequences. Rubbermaid went from being Fortune’s most admired company in America in 1993 to being acquired by the conglomerate Newell a few years later.

#4 They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t 100% behind them.

CEOs who think that their job is to instill a belief in their vision also think that it is their job to get everyone to buy into it. Anyone who doesn’t rally to the cause is undermining the vision. Hesitant managers have a choice: Get with the plan, or leave.

The problem with this approach is that it’s both unnecessary and destructive. CEOs don’t need to have everyone endorse their vision without reservation to have it carried out successfully. In fact, by eliminating all dissenting and contrasting viewpoints, destructive CEOs cut themselves off from their best chance of seeing and correcting problems as they arise. Sometimes CEOs who seek to stifle dissent only drive it underground. Once this happens, the entire organization grinds to a halt — regardless of whether the CEOs were right or wrong in their judgments.

Executives who have presided over major business disasters have regularly removed or ousted anyone likely to take a critical or contrasting position. General Motors’ Roger Smith was especially successful at getting rid of any executives or board members who happened to see things differently than he did — sometimes by having them fired, but often by sending them to distant outposts where they could have no influence on what happened at headquarters.

At Mattel, Jill Barad removed her senior lieutenants in short order if she thought they harbored serious reservations about the way that she was running things. Schmitt created such a threatening atmosphere at Rubbermaid that firings were often unnecessary. When new executives who had been brought in to effect change realized that they’d get no support from the CEO, many of them left almost as fast as they’d come on board.

Eventually, these CEOs had everyone on their staff completely behind them. But where they were headed was toward disaster. And no one was left to warn them.

#5 They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image.

You know these CEOs: high-profile executives who are constantly in the public eye. They spend a lot of time giving speeches, appearing on television, and being interviewed by journalists. They regularly perform with remarkable charisma and aplomb. Their public persona inspires confidence among employees, potential new recruits, the public at large, and, especially, investors.

The problem is that amid all the media frenzy and accolades, these leaders’ management efforts become shallow and ineffective. Instead of actually accomplishing things, they often settle for the appearance of accomplishing things. In extreme cases, they can no longer tell the difference: A meeting where they give a good performance seems as valuable as a meeting where something actually gets done.

Behind these media darlings is a simple fact of executive life: CEOs don’t achieve a high level of media attention without devoting themselves assiduously to public relations. Samuel Waksal, the former CEO of ImClone who pleaded guilty to insider-trading charges, was a master at drumming up media interest in his company’s cancer drug Erbitux.

Consumed as they are by their public-relations efforts, these CEOs often leave the mundane details of their business affairs to others. Tyco’s Kozlowski sometimes intervened in remarkably minor matters but left most of the company’s day-to-day operations unsupervised. When CEOs are obsessed with their image, they have little time for operational details.

As a final negative twist, when CEOs make the company’s image their top priority, they tend to encourage financial-reporting practices that promote that image. In other words, instead of treating their financial accounts as a control tool, they treat them as a public-relations tool. The creative accounting that is practiced by such executives as Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling or Tyco’s Kozlowski is as much or more an attempt to promote the company’s image as it is to deceive the public: In their eyes, everything that the company does is public relations.

#6 They underestimate obstacles.

Part of the allure of being a CEO is the opportunity to espouse a vision. What happens next is predictable: CEOs become so enamored with their vision of what they want to achieve that they overlook or underestimate the difficulty of actually getting there. And when it turns out that certain obstacles that they casually waved aside are more troublesome than they anticipated, these CEOs have a habit of plunging full steam into the abyss.

For example, when Webvan’s existing operations were racking up huge losses, CEO George Shaheen was busy expanding those operations at an awesome rate. While Tyco was struggling to maintain profitability in many of its divisions, Kozlowski responded to every setback by simply increasing the pace of his acquisitions — earning himself the nickname “Deal-a-Month Dennis.”

Why don’t CEOs in this situation reevaluate their course of action, or at least hold back for a while until it becomes clearer whether their policies will work? Some feel an enormous need to be right in every important decision they make, partly for the same reason that they think they are responsible for their company’s success. If they admit to being fallible, their position as CEO seems highly precarious. Their employees, business journalists, and the investment community all want the company to be run by someone with the almost-magical ability to get things right. Once a CEO admits that he or she made the wrong call on an important issue, there will always be people who say that that CEO wasn’t up for the job.

All of these unrealistic expectations make it exceedingly hard for a CEO to pull back from any chosen course of action. What’s more, if the only option available to you is to keep going in the same direction, then your response to an obstacle can only be to push that much harder. That’s why leaders at Iridium and Motorola kept investing billions of dollars to launch satellites even after it had become apparent that land-based cell phones were a better alternative. After each succeeding round of investment, it becomes more difficult to change direction.

It’s almost impossible for the person in charge to recognize when an escalating commitment is getting out of hand. Most leaders want recognition for their determination and for their persistence. Take the case of Quaker Oats’ acquisition of Snapple in 1994. Quaker’s CEO, William Smithburg, paid $1.7 billion for Snapple, assuming mistakenly that the drink would be another smash hit like Gatorade — and without analyzing the real differences between the products. When Snapple started to tank, Smithburg stood his ground, publicly stating that he would never give up on Snapple because, as he put it, “I’ve never run away from a challenge, and I’m not running away from this one.” In 1997, Quaker sold Snapple for a paltry $300 million.

We’re all taught to admire courage in the face of adversity. In the case of Quaker’s acquisition of Snapple, however, the longer that Smithburg held fast to his resolve, the more damage was done, both to Snapple and to its parent company.

#7 They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past.

Many CEOs on their way to becoming spectacularly unsuccessful accelerate their company’s decline by reverting to what they regard as tried-and-true methods. In their desire to make the most of what they regard as their core strengths, they cling to a static business model. They insist on providing a product to a market that no longer exists, or they fail to consider innovations in areas other than those that made the company successful in the past. Instead of considering a range of options that fit new circumstances, they use their own careers as the only point of reference and do the things that made them successful in the past.

When Jill Barad was trying to promote educational software for Mattel, she used the promotional techniques that had been effective for her when she was promoting Barbie dolls — despite the fact that software is not distributed or consumed the way that dolls are.

Frequently, CEOs who fall prey to this habit owe their careers to some “defining moment” — a critical decision or policy choice that resulted in their most notable success. It’s usually the one thing that they’re most known for, the thing that gets them all of their subsequent jobs, the thing that makes them special.

The problem is that after people have had the experience of that defining moment, they tend to let themselves be defined by it for the rest of their careers. And if they become the CEO of a large company, they allow their defining moment to define the company as well. The sad irony is that CEOs who get caught in an endless repetition of their defining moment fail not because they can’t learn. They fail because they learned one particular lesson all too well.

Sidebar: Big-Time Failures
Welcome to the CEO Hall of Shame. Here are six leaders who were spectacularly unsuccessful, the habits that help explain their particular failures, descriptions of the craters they left, and executive summaries of their core (in)competencies.

William Smithburg : Quaker Oats
Habits: 3, 4, 6, 7
Failure: Acquired Snapple for $1.7 billion in 1994 and wound up having to unload Snapple just three years later for a paltry $300 million.
Diagnosis: Missed numerous warning signs during the due-diligence process; never really knew what made the Snapple brand successful; assumed that he and his colleagues at Quaker knew Snapple better than Snapple knew Snapple.

Dennis Kozlowski : Tyco
Habits: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7
Failure: Company lost almost 90% of its market value in less than a year.
Diagnosis: Took the company on an acquisition binge, which brought it straight up, then straight down; led Tyco during its era of questionable accounting and expenditures; was accused of spending company funds for personal use.

George Shaheen : Webvan
Habits: 1, 3, 5, 6, 7
Failure: Gave up millions to take a CEO job in a company that ended up losing billions.
Diagnosis: Adopted a business plan that was flawed; hired to bring credibility but ended up as chief operating officer fighting fires; cheerleader for first-mover advantage that never came.

Jean-Marie Messier : Vivendi Universal
Habits: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6
Failure: His hubris cost shareholders billions of dollars.
Diagnosis: Transformed company from water utility to media giant but didn’t stop to consider how to make money in the process; spent a lot of time blaming others for what went wrong; let the trappings of leadership dominate him.

Jill Barad : Mattel
Habits: 4, 5, 7
Failure: Branding genius, promoted to top job, decimated earnings and morale.
Diagnosis: Vastly overpaid for Learning Company acquisition and then let its failure dominate her tenure; consistently missed earnings estimates but kept promising that next quarter would be better; her intransigence drove away most of her top lieutenants.

Samuel Waksal : ImClone
Habits: 2, 3, 5, 6, 7
Failure: Fast-and-loose stewardship of company ate up 80% of its market cap, with continuing earnings restatements.
Diagnosis: Played the industry like a hustler, hyping the cancer drug Erbitux until he and the company lost credibility; reveled in his celebrity while ImClone foundered; copped a plea on a variety of insider-trading charges.

Sydney Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School at Dartmouth College. Read about his book on the Web (www.whysmartexecutivesfail.com). Why Smart Executives Fail, by Sydney Finkelstein.

Copyright © Sydney Finkelstein, 2003. Reprinted by arrangement with Portfolio, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright © 2003 Gruner + Jahr USA Publishing. All rights reserved.
Fast Company, 77 North Washington St., Boston, MA 02114

The Training Table: “Let’s Get Real.” (Jesus)

by JohnDozPosted on December 17, 2014 Posted in Training Table — No Comments ↓

Welcome to the Training Table where you can depend on some spiritually-nourishing chow, carefully prepared, to help you run the Godly and good race (1 Corinthians 9:24)! For what good is a good race, unless it’s a Godly race?

First off, lest anyone believe I’m misquoting Jesus Christ in the title of this feast at the Training Table, please review the numerous Bible passages included in the link below and scads more that all conclude the very same thing: The historical person of Jesus Christ… the miraculously born, 100% God-100% Man, preaching-teaching, crucified, died, buried, descended into hell for three days, and resurrected to the right hand of the Father… was urgently, unequivocally, and sacrificially devoted to the point of death to helping Humankind GET REAL!

Getting real… It was a very big, intergalactically-sized deal… a culturally-offensive mission for Jesus… that, by today’s standards of deep denial [and vast array of commensurate distractions] about what reality consists of… is even more culturally offensive and crucially important for God’s people to take up each and every day!

Because Jesus Christ the very Son of God was real… Let us please GET REAL.

“When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Matthew 9:12-13). + many, many more…

We live in a day, at a time, in a place when and where [as Ravi Zacharias has said] the 75+ years of incremental philosophical, cultural, institutional, societal, and personal effects of radical secularization [reality consists of the here-and-now, no God, no shame], radical privatization [what we do in our private lives has no bearing on our public life], and radical pluralization [no True Truth, relativism, what’s true for you may not be true for me] have left our heads spinning out of deception, confusion, and denial… about what’s real.

The result? We need to revisit “the planks of the faith”… our own personal faith… more often and more deeply than ever.

A Feast of the Heart
“Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him” (Psalm 34:8).

Have You Been Born Again?
“Jesus said, you should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again'” (John 3:7). Practically every institution in society—including far too many churches—would have us believe that “being a born-again Christian” is only meant for that small segment of particularly needy, sinful, dirty, and destitute folks who require a radical change of heart and life. In reality, being born-again is the absolute “low bar” of God’s requirement for heart regeneration and saving faith.

As we have chewed on at The Training Table many times before, please never forget, God’s Plan of Redemption goes like this: [Out of necessity these doctrinal, “start-to-finish” realities are sufficient yet highly abbreviated and not properly footnoted in the Bible here… But every part is—as quoted in “Appendix B” my book.]

Effectual Calling—This is the supernatural work of God’s Holy Spirit, by His own sovereign and free will, to convince a person of his sin and misery, enlighten his mind in the knowledge of Christ, and renew, persuade, and enable him to embrace Christ as he is freely offered in the gospel. All of this began before time when God wrote the names of those who would believe in time in The Lamb’s Book of Life.

Regeneration—This work of God is closely, yet mysteriously, linked with His effectual calling so that the two could conceivably be considered one simultaneous work of God. It is distinguished as that act of God’s grace whereby He supernaturally implants a new, Christ-aware heart and spiritual life in us so that our internal spiritual governance changes.

Faith and Repentance—These actions are demonstrated only by those whom God has first effectually called and regenerated. They are interdependent so that faith leads to repentance and repentance requires true faith. Faith, therefore, consists of knowledge, conviction and trust specifically in Christ as Lord and Savior as He is presented in the gospel.

Justification—How can sinful people be just or right with a holy God, and therefore justified before our Judge? This also is a work of God alone and is a gift from Him, a gift freely offered to those whom He effectually calls and regenerates. It has to do with how we are made just (legally right, righteous, or “at peace”) with the God of the Bible.

Adoption—“But as many as received Him, to them gave He the authority to become children of God, to those who believe in His name” (John 1:12). We become children of God because He bestows that right upon us. He gives this right to all who believe on Jesus’ name. God adopts believers in Christ, and we become His own children.

Sanctification—This is a continual work of God’s grace that begins at justification and ends at glorification. As the word implies, sanctification involves God’s “scrubbing program,” carried out by him as he graciously and sovereignly applies the realities of the Gospel and the various Christian disciplines to the hearts of his regenerated, justified, adopted, and faithful people. In so doing, God works to release us from the power of sin and grows us up to be more like Christ, both in our inward thoughts and outward behaviors.

Perseverance—Like all that has come before, perseverance has to do with God’s work in and for His adopted children. Many mistakenly pivot perseverance on a new Christian’s dutiful discipline or continued faithfulness. While these things are essential to our experience of security in Christ, they do not determine it. Perseverance is a work of God whereby He seals and secures His adopted children as such to the very end, to glorification.

Glorification—When Christ returns to make all things new… If justification is God’s freeing His people from the penalty of sin, and sanctification is His freeing us from the power of sin, then glorification is His freeing us completely from the presence of sin.

It’s all of grace… The manifold mercies of God. Period.

God’s Plan of Redemption is THE Most Awesome Thing Ever!

Self-Aware, Broken, Repentant, Saved
“Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Romans 10:9-10). “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Saved by Grace Alone
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10). “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16).

Adopted into a New Family
“He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:11-13 ESV).

Living with No More Shame
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

Made Alive by the Spirit, Born-Again, Baptized, Cleansed
“Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Saved to Serve; Rescued to Rescue; Comforted to Comfort; Accepted Accepting.
“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-5).

The Resident Spirit Within… Speaks

It was Sunday morning May 3rd, while attending the 9:00am Greentree Community Church service. I can’t remember which hymn it was but about a quarter of the way in I sensed the Holy Spirit rising up within my heart: The seesaw of sin and salvation began as an innocuous back and forth interplay of “a little bit of this and a little bit of that”.

But by the three-quarter-through mark I was nearly overcome by an uncontrollable flow of tears. Had I simply released the floodgate of spiritual affections, I would have crumbled to the floor in “cathartic Gospel weeping”: On one extreme of the seesaw, I was overcome by the utter depravity of this world and my desperately darkened heart within it and, at the next moment, I was lifted up to a place where I could sense the sublimely real mercies of God, the joy, and the innumerable, undeserved blessings in my life. The reality of each extreme became more than I could bear. Due to the Gospel-reality of being “more sinful and yet more loved”, the Spirit [unveiling my affections for Jesus within] was bursting to get out!

Back and forth, up and down… Each salty-sweet tear was associated with the reality of the profound destruction that the Fall ushered-in while being mixed with a blessing and eternal joy God had graced and unmeritoriously blessed me with. Like stopping the blast of a sneeze, I had to tamp my feelings down to stop the tsunami of bitter-sweet emotions… and gain control again.

The song ended, but the Gospel weeping of extreme sadness coupled with sublime joy had not. In fact, I did my best hold fast to this gift of reality and remembrance I was given by God the Father, the Son, and especially the Holy Spirit.

Conversion: Making the Fact and Hallmarks of Our Faith REAL
Before I left church, I was given another gift that lay within the years, study, and memories I have garnered while plumbing the depth of the human heart in art, literature, science, music, and my own life.

Of particular note were the works of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards is one of the richest resources of the faith in all of history, but at the centerpiece of his purpose and passion are his sermons and writings about the details of true conversion… and matters of the heart, affections, and faith lived-out.

Here’s the rub of getting real: Please accept a loving and truthful remembrance of the hallmarks of true conversion which Jonathan Edwards wrote so abundantly and clearly about. These truths were wafting through my mind as I left church on this most sacred Sabbath Sunday. Due to the nature of my personal story and conversion, I knew without a doubt that, in 1983, I had been radically emptied and begun to be filled again… all beginning at the age of 31.

All conversion stories are different and yet have a common outcomes that we need to be aware of and not make the mistake of NOT being sure… OF BEING ASSURED… of. We live in a largely unchurched society and church; church leadership [like Jonathan Edwards] must be lovingly and truthfully clear about what being born-again really means and looks like… and so must we. The world, the flesh, and the devil will try and keep this hidden, “assumed”, presumed, and compartmentalized; we must NOT do the very same!

Please note that the reason I’m lovingly, respectfully yet intentionally offering this reality and remembrance is twofold:

a) The Saints, called to minister to both the saved and the lost, need to be resolutely assured of their own conversion—based upon God’s universal and utterly trustworthy promises in the Bible and the details of their own personal conversion story.

b) The times we live in, analogous in many ways to Edwards’ time of increasing secularization, humanism within a culture of comfort, is rife with deception and confusion about the nature of true conversion. As one might figure, this issue is right smack dab in the sweet spot of Satan’s plan in this in-between time after Christ was resurrected and before He returns to make all things new: To keep unbelievers unbelieving, and believers as ineffective as possible.

PLEASE NOTE: If you and I are not brutally honest with ourselves [while including a faith community] about the true nature of our faith, then “the up’s and down’s OF the faith” will axiomatically, necessarily, “beyond a doubtedly”… Turn into “the up’s and down’s of a daisy-chain theology”: God loves me; He loves me not… loves me; loves me not… loves me; loves me not. And this. my feasting friends and family, is hell on earth.

Getting Real About Our Beliefs, Supernatural Transformation, and Emotions (*Taken in part from John McArthur’s treatment of the same subject. See: Resources below.)

“In 1746, about six years after The Great Awakening, in which Jonathan Edwards was the primary instrument of God to preach the Gospel and bring about the greatest revival in American history thus far, Edwards wrote A Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections.”

At the heart of this magnificent yet very challenging piece of writing, Edward’s chief concern was helping THE CHURCH be reminded of how one can tell whether The Holy Spirit has performed a saving operation within the heart of the Christian. “In Edwards’s day, while various excesses and heightened emotional experiences were common, scores of people did not demonstrate any evidence in their lives to verify their claim to know and love Jesus Christ. The supreme proof of true conversion is what Edwards called “holy affections” which are a zeal for holy things, a longing after God, and an intentional pursuit of personal holiness.”

Following are some crucial attributes or fruits of true conversion we can use as a marker—first for our own faith foundations, but also for those whom we minister to:

1. Do you have a conversion story?
2. Have you enjoyed fellowship with Christ and the Father?
3. Are you sensitive to sin?
4. Do you thirst for God’s “living water” in His word, the Bible?
5. Do you obey God’s word?
6. Are you very much aware of the spiritual battle going on within you?
7. Do you reject this evil world?
8. Do you eagerly await Christ’s return?
9. Do you see a decreasing pattern of sin in your life?
10. Do you love other Christians (and spend time in community with them)?
11. Have you made a commitment to a local church—membership, preaching/teaching, worship, growth, the sacraments, and service?
12. Do you try and radically give of your time, talents, and treasure for Kingdom-building work in word and deed?
13. Do you experience answered prayer?
14. Do you experience the ministry of the Holy Spirit?
15. Can you discern between spiritual truth and error?
16. Have you suffered rejection because of your faith?
17. Do you have a strong desire to know your own gifts and use them to fulfill God’s command of being light, salt, and of service?
18. As you experience everyday life and the people therein, are you always listening for signs of whether or not they are saved?
19. Are you angry, indignant, offended, insulted, or so confused that you’re reeling inside… by any of the above? If so, please use these emotions as a sign that you should seriously question the nature of your faith—and speak to someone of a bona fide, born-again, Biblical faith… ASAP.

Please consider first looking inwardly at these attributes offered by the Bible, Edwards, MacArthur, and then look outwardly at how you can be the sort of loving and truthful listener and caregiver in other lives to discern whether a profession of faith is accompanied by these fruits.

God may well use you to help others come to the place of blessed assurance which He intends for those He loves—and yet may be in a place of potential deception and/or confusion about the nature of a Bible-based, supernatural conversion, and living faith in word and in deed.

“The Other Side of the Coin… or Heart”
In closing, please consider what all of God’s offer of salvation, a brand new family, no more shame, and being sent on the most exciting mission any human being could ask for… Looks like when we decline God’s offer of the gift His grace: “Hell on earth as it is in Hell.” Just because we never hear about Hell anymore—obviously from this passing world that wouldn’t bring it up, but even from the church that doesn’t wish to offend—doesn’t mean Hell doesn’t exist. Jesus brought it up more than anyone…

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened… The doors of Hell are locked from the inside…” (C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce)

God bless you as New Creations in Christ “TODAY…” (Hebrews 3:15)… Saved to Serve!

JohnDoz

Resources:
Is It Real?, John MacArthur, Grace to You

The Five Sola’s of the Reformed Faith

Assurance of Faith, R.C. Sproul

The Works of Faith and Assurance, Martin Luther

Crucial Questions Booklets, Ligonier Ministries

Can I Be Sure I’m Saved?, Ligonier Ministries

The Training Table: The Compartmentalized and Secretive Heart

by JohnDozPosted on December 11, 2014 Posted in Training Table — No Comments ↓

Welcome to the Training Table where you can depend on some spiritually-nourishing chow, carefully prepared, to help you run the Godly and good race (1 Corinthians 9:24)! For what good is a good race, unless it’s a Godly race?

A Feast of the Heart
“Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.” (Psalm 34:8)

Shadowy Secrets Swelling Within
“My grief all lies within; and these external manners of laments are merely shadows of the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul.” (William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act 4, Scene 1)

Right off the top: We’re not talking about the ability to keep a confidence here, right? Betraying a confidence, gossip, slander, backbiting is a whole other issue… In the Garden of Eden a good while back (Genesis 3), Eve made a grievous error that Adam became complicit in as he stood nearby in SILENCE. The silence of Adam has mushroomed [kinda like the cloud from a nuclear blast…] into a much bigger problem since then!

Ministering to a Compartmentalized, Swollen, Bloated People
If there is a plight common to EveryMan, but never more prevalent than in our Western, secularized, privatized, and relativistic culture today; it’s secret-keeping. At the most fundamental level, secret-keeping [the polar opposite of using God-given words to freely, lovingly, truthfully, and transparently express ourselves] is due to The Fall (Genesis 3; Romans 1:18-32), a hardened and depraved heart, and the resultant worldliness, pride and egotism (Galatians 6:3; Ephesians 2:3) common to us all: Mankind’s inheritance of the fig leaf Adam used to cover his ________… which was only a symbol of his “base alienation” from God, his covering the shame, his sin, and the first form of hardening and hiding all humans are now desperately prone to.

Secret-keeping—just one of the vast array of consequences of attempting to compartmentalize our heart, emotions, psychology, and physical selves—is a “killer application” of all sorts of things in our horribly broken world. “Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so ‘in-between’ things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe.” (Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World)

An Aim to Be Authentic: The Heart of the Matter is a Matter of the Heart
Even though God desires some things be done “in secret” [below], far too many even in the church have become far too worldly by way of living in the untenable fashion of “secret-keeping hypocrisy” so roundly condemned by Jesus Christ—condemned as an idol standing in the way of loving the one True God, but also as a form of spiritual, emotional, psychological, and physical suicide that harms all people who God dearly loves! The Bible is 1000% clear about God’s desire that the outflow of our heart match the actions of our lives… and are a reflection of His Love and Truth. (Matthew 5:18; Mark 7:20-21; James 3:6)

“It is altogether possible to practice an outward display of piety—to “talk the talk”—without demonstrating any inner reality of godliness. This is true of every professing Christian, and it is especially true of those engaged in Christian ministry. Authentic Christianity requires an outward and discernible “work of faith” (1 Thess. 1:3; 2 Thess. 1:11). But it also requires genuine godly affections and an inner discipline of the heart.

There is a manner of ministry that is more about self-service than self-sacrifice, self-indulgence than self-discipline, and self-promotion than self-denial. There is also giving that is designed for recognition—plaques on walls intended to be read by generations to come, or press releases informing the world of “generous donations”; prayers in pristine Cranmer-like language of the sixteenth century suggesting depths of personal piety; fasting that is shown via open-necked T-shirts revealing a ribbed torso.

But all these outward demonstrations of piety may be no more than mere hypocrisy. The Greek word translated “hypocrites” (Matt. 6:2, 5) refers to the masks worn by ancient actors as symbols of pretense and show. Thus, give with fanfare; pray with pride; fast with notice. This ministry is inauthentic. It is a sham.” (Derek Thomas, “In Secret”)

• Give “in secret…and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:4).
• Pray “in secret…and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (v. 6).
• Fast “in secret…and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (v. 18).

God did not design and create humankind to keep secrets and partition off the various parts of each of our own persona… and/or the innumerable, other lives who we come into contact each and every day. Secrets, between me and God, and me and myself, is the start of all other damning, delusional, and divisive secrets between all mankind.

“We were created perfect in a perfect world. Adam and Eve rebelled against God’s rule, which resulted in sin, shame, and nakedness. Ever since, we have been trying to cover our nakedness and hide our true selves from God, ourselves, and other people. We can never adequately deal with our nakedness, but God has come into our wrecked world to provide a perfect cover for us.” (Tim Keller, “Nakedness & the Holiness of God“)

“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

In my experience, one major, God-ordained, Christ-provided, and Spirit-awakened antidote for this common malady of a fallen heart-spirit relationship is found in St. Peter’s first letter to first-century followers of Christ. This process to “lance the boil of unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul” is to constantly and proactively share what each of us has inherited under the cross: a) the elimination of shame and b) an adoption into a new family.

“But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.” (1 Peter 3:15-16; Romans 1:16; 2 Timothy 2:15; Psalm 3:3)

Ministering to another hurting secret-keeper requires we allow others to see how we have been [really!] set free by the cross [no shame, a new family]—in very practical, relevant, soul-bearing, humble, and yet bold ways. The silence must broken by humble and healing words that are meaningful to both parties, right?

Can we… can you… begin a meaningful conversation with another fallen, secret-keeping, and hurting Image Bearer of God by saying something such as, “The best, most meritorious and true thing I can say about myself is that I am a sinner saved by grace.”? It is pretty damned hard to close-off our heart and life story to another person after we have thankfully, freely, humbly, lovingly, transparently, and truthfully admitted our life story has been fully seen and yet radically redeemed by God in Christ… for all mankind to see if needed to glorify God and bless other Image Bearers.

As it says in The Good Book, we are, with careful and mature discernment, to be an Open Book to anyone who needs to see their own life’s brokenness and God’s offer for redemption… in me… and in you.

Shattered, Scattered, Re-Assembled, and Redeemed!
One of God’s most important and strategic aims in allowing suffering to occur is to free secret-keepers of “the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul”. Redemptive suffering is first experienced as a heart-shattering experience whereby the careful, sinful, and strategic compartmentalization of our heart is deconstructed, laid bare, and lay in pieces all around us. This is a most dreadful and disastrous condition to find ourselves in, right?

BUT, [insert a way-huge “BUT!“] when we avail ourselves to the God of the Bible’s Way, Truth, and Life of putting the shattered and scattered pieces back together again, it is done in the most magnificent way imaginable: “Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.’ And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. (Ezekiel 11:17-20 ESV)

Redeemed, sanctified suffering is absolutely needed and necessary in the process of moving anyone from a secret-keeper to a wounded healer. [And this is one of the main reasons I wrote about redemptive suffering with the exact target audience in mind that I did: “Christians living in a culture of comfort.” If God’s people live like the world—avoiding DIS-comfort of any kind—it’s a very big problem!]

Redemptive suffering is one of the primary ways God will use the unavoidable brokenness of this world to free us from the deadliness of living a compartmentalized, secretive, bitter, shameful, hide-and-seek, fearful, isolated, worry- and anxiety-based, and despairing life.

When we are utterly secure in Christ, there are no secrets or insecurities capable of keeping us in bondage to compartmentalization, shame, abandonment, and anonymity.

The shape of the cross is command and all the direction and hope we need: “Jesus answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'” (Luke 10:27)

A Personal and Universal Heart Dis-Ease
Don’t for a moment think that I speak of this malicious malady of the heart purely from an outsider’s perspective, my fellow marathoners for Christ! As mentioned again just last week, my own story of childhood shame, criticism, and anonymity was the perfect greenhouse for growing me into the consummate secret- keeper, liar, hypocrite, and “social chameleon” [adapting to everyone’s needs so I could be accepted]… that one could imagine.

And yes, it was hell on earth; it’s far better now; but a “thorn in the flesh” that I pray each day I will be more and more sanctified and delivered from. Secret-keeping is a habit of the hard and hiding heart that is deeply rooted… UP-rooting it is a daily reliance on The Trinity, a community of sanctifying Saints, and service to others in Jesus’ name.

This is the sense of C.S. Lewis’ marvelous quote, [Jesus is saying] “Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self… in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart.” (Mere Christianity, emphasis added)

Whenever any child’s existence, identity, or unique contributions to mankind are ignored, shamed, criticized, or twisted to mirror any parent’s preferences, regrets, aspirations, or shortcomings… The child will desperately suppress his or her special traits to appease the parent’s vision of the child. Children want to be loved no matter what the cost… Even if it’s the death of his or her own self. Satan, The Accuser, The Father of Lies, The Murderer, The Chief Architect of Deception, is more than happy to be hired as the contractor: Compartment after compartment—truths, falsehoods, and their complementary emotions, strategically sealed off from one another—is constructed within the heart of such a child. This is the only means of survival for a child; but living in this way as an adult [or even a child] WILL DESTROY A LIFE and many other lives as collateral damage.

Do you know and trust God enough [by means of a vital relationship with His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit living within your heart] have at least one person who you feel you can be completely free to talk about ANYTHING with? We must first be secure with God so that we can begin to be free to live free to share our hearts.

The Key to the Secret-Keeping Heart: Freedom and Life in the Spirit
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1-5)

“May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Colossians 1:11-14)

There is little doubt that the “negative version of secret-keeping” we’ve been chowing down on here at The Training Table flows first from a shame-filled, hardened, and worldly heart… and domino’s from there to our attempts to live a compartmentalized life. This is diametrically opposite of how God designed and created us. And a life of this kind will not function. It cannot… It will fall apart.

Please… oh please… if this matter of the heart is true of you or someone you love, do not mistake your ability to distance yourself from the problem, deny it exists, squeak by with just a smattering of compartmentalization, secret-keeping, and hypocrisy, or mark it up to being resilient and capable of dealing with this heart dis-ease.

The reason God has not allowed the problem to justifiably take any of us out is due to His unfathomable and manifold and long-suffering mercies. God can forgive ANY sin is we turn to Him; but He cannot forgive ANY sin if we do not. (Matthew 12:31-32)

“Father God, Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit, it’s no secret that You have called me Beloved. And even though I can so easily slip back into my sinful and fleshly past by compartmentalizing my heart, keeping secrets, and orphaning myself, remind me each day of exactly who I am in Christ: Utterly seen by You and completely loved just the same! As I awake each day, before I even step foot out of bed, would you, by God the Father’s sovereignty, by God the Son’s atoning death and resurrection, and by God the Spirit’s enlivening power and counsel, please help me to always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks me to give the reason for the hope that You have given me in Christ Jesus. For, in fact, this is the only reason You have given me “TODAY…” (Psalm 95:7-8)!”

Amen.

JohnDoz

Resources:
The Power of Secrets, Psychology Today

The Secret of Sanctification, by Nicholas Batzig

The Eyes of the Heart, by Frederick Buechner

Bloodletting: A Memoir of Secrets, Self-Harm, and Survival, by Victoria Leatham

Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul [Revised & Updated], by John Eldredge

The Healing Path, by Dan Allender

Brené Brown: Vulnerability via Listening to Shame

The Training Table: “Vide Avant Complet!” [Empty Before Filled]

by JohnDozPosted on December 4, 2014 Posted in Training Table — No Comments ↓

Welcome to the Training Table where you can depend on some spiritually-nourishing chow, carefully prepared, to help you run the Godly and good race! For what good is a good race, unless it’s a Godly race? (2 Timothy 4:7; 1 Corinthians 9:24; Galatians 5:7)

God Never Strays from Common Sense:
We Must be Emptied… Before We are Filled!

God in Christ was emptied…
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9; Philippians 2:6-7; Hebrews 9:27; 1 John 2:2).

…so we have to be emptied…
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:1-3; Genesis 6:5; Psalm 51:5; Jeremiah 17:9; Romans 3:23; 1 John 1:9).

…so that God, in Christ, by the Spirit, can fill us to the full… and the uttermost!
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (John 1:14-16; Romans 15:29; Ephesians 3:14-19; Colossians 1:19, 2:9; Hebrews 4:12; ).

There is absolutely no way of filling anything unless that anything is emptied first. In the case of the Christian faith, what we need to be emptied of is our idols—that is anything that stands between each one of us and God. (Deuteronomy 5:6-8) Anything that we place on His throne instead of Him. An idol, placed in the role of God, will demand all that God does of us… but with none of the mercies of God when we don’t achieve the idols demands. God knows this; it takes us a very long time [if at all] to get it—even after our dearest idols have demanded and beat the living daylights out of us!

As the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it, God’s greatest desire is that “Man’s chief end is to glorify God (Psalm 86; Isaiah 60:21; 1 Corinthians 6:20, 10:31) and to enjoy Him forever” (Luke 2:10; Philippians 4:4)—and a heart crowded with idols and hardened to God’s Love and Truth cannot achieve this end unless it is broken and emptied first.

Idolatry is a malady of the fallen heart (Genesis 3) that is universal to all humankind and yet highly personal in the way each of our life stories creates and sustains very certain idols—idols peculiar to each of our unique story and brokenness and the subsequent substitution of GOOD [work, looks, fitness, sex, money, religion, etc] things fashioned in the factory of our idolatrous and self-centered hearts into ONLY things… idols, lesser gods (Exodus 20:3-4), broken cisterns (Jeremiah 2:13), treasures and materialism (Hebrews 13:5), worldliness (Luke 16:13), sex, drugs, rock and roll (Romans 1:18-32), and a whole host of such and similar vanities (Ecclesiastes 1:1-18).

Idolatry brings us to a realization of our need for a Savior from hell and a Lord to disciple and lead us in our Christian life; but through the Christian life journey the slow but sure and continued expulsion of our idols lead us to maturity, holiness, Christ-likeness—the ever-brighter light of Truth and saltier salt of Love for serving in Jesus’ name.

God would be completely justified to destroy us because of our idolatry, but instead His manifold mercies and love for His fallen Image Bearers have made a way for us to see our desperate need for Him by means of the utter destruction of ourselves at the hands of our own idols… so that we might repent and turn back to Him.

The proper and best order of things for us… is to know for the first time or remember if we’ve forgotten is this: a) the Holy Spirit first touches our heart and makes us aware that we are indeed idolatrous and sinful in some way—short of this “first cause” of heart regeneration and being born-again by the Holy Spirit the total depravity of our hearts prevents us from a self-realization of this kind; b) that God is utterly holy and cannot abide imperfection of any kind—including and especially His fallen Image Bearers whose lineage of disobedience beginning in The Garden has marred all humanity ever since; c) that we are in need of “first being emptied” by repenting of our sinfulness; d) that we must, with heart-broken sincerity and abject humility, beseech Jesus Christ for forgiveness and to come into our wretched lives first as Savior from hell and second as the Lord of our life from this point on; e) commanded to be baptized as a public celebration of our new birth and finally, f) that we are then prepared to be “filled and fulfilled” by entering into a Christ-centered and committed life of church membership, the sacraments, discipleship, marriage and procreation, service, light and salt influence… all for the purpose of sanctification, perseverance, conformation into the likeness of Christ, ending in glorification when we die or Christ returns.

This is The Trinity’s Plan of Redemption. The only and unimaginably best plan there is…

“Whatever is most personal is the most universal.” (Soren Kierkegaard)

First Emptied, then Filled, is the Way God Saves and Redeems His Own.

The story of my own personal conversion is already known to many of you, but please allow me to remind you of how God’s perfect, massively merciful, and universal Plan of Redemption [for those in the world who believe] is based upon the fact that EMPTINESS must precede being filled—and the FULLNESS offered by means of an ongoing, ascending, and increasingly holy and intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.

I grew up in a home where shame, criticism, and anonymity hardened and filled my heart to the overflow—and to the consequential harm of others. I never experienced the sort of Love and Truth that flowed into my heart from God in Special Grace [E.g., saving grace] or from my parent’s very flawed version of love and truth: Both were absent. [By God’s Common Grace He mercifully blessed me, prophesied my eventual salvation when I was 10 years old, and kept me for such a time as I would be converted by His Special Grace at the age of 31.]

As an aside [if you haven’t seen and agreed already] it’s important to note that my personal experience of shame, criticism, and anonymity—and the consequences of looking for love in all the wrong places—is likely the most universal malady of the heart for the past couple of generations of folks. The existence of narcissistic, wounded, and absentee parenting flourishes heart dis-ease of this kind. But it can be radically redeemed by Christ… and Christ only!

As a result, I spent the first 30 years of my life desperately, selfishly, blindly, and ravenously looking for love in all the wrong places—a black hole of neediness, sexual promiscuity, pathological lying, pleasing others, being the center of attention yet hating it, playing the role the tearful clown and joke-teller of the party, striving like mad[ness] to be seen and admired, being as angry and vengeful as could be, and measuring everyone else’s worth through the grid of my own woeful sense of unworthiness.

My heart was so jammed-packed-full of spiritual darkness, insecurity, unworthiness, egotism, self-centeredness, emotional warfare, pretense, and a “psychological MunchMare” [The Scream] that nothing else could remotely squeeze in.

In October of 1983, in the Dordogne region of south-western France, in a town so small the entire population could fit into a café for breakfast… I was touring the area with a young lady who was just the most recent of females I mistreated in my search for love in all the wrong places and blind self-centeredness… desperately substituting lust for love.

God Infinitely yet Intimately Emptied Me.

[How about you?]

“Louise” [alias] had tired of my neediness and was just gone, divinely extricated from my life and heart, when I woke up one God-ordained and fateful morning. In that very moment of realizing I was utterly alone—I couldn’t leave Europe yet due to ticketing; I couldn’t speak the language; I couldn’t move due to being paralyzed by fear—I was perfectly and providentially so alone and so available to God that you could almost hear the sucking sound as God, by the Holy Spirit, lovingly removed the controlling idol from my heart.

My very personal yet universal wounds of shame, criticism, and anonymity were transformed into an idol of looking for love in all the wrong places. This idol had been so thoroughly entrenched, codified, and incorporated into my heart that when, at just the right time, the Holy Spirit strategically yet forthrightly extricated it from my heart…

The void, breadth, and depth of the blackness revealed in my heart was shocking and terrifically fearful to me. It was the first time I could see how the vastness of the vacuum was perfectly commensurate to the particular shape and size of the idol I had held so precious… My Precious… [Tolkien] and dear to life. I was completely emptied of anything remotely recognizable about myself—except the place of supremacy the idol had retained for all of my life… until it was gone.

The abyss of blackness I saw in my own heart scared the hell out of me… So that God could begin to fill my heart with His Love and Truth in place of the now-absent idol(s). [All idolatry will not be expunged from the heart until Christ returns.] It was a while before I could do so, but now I had the deep desire to look for Love and Truth in all the right places!

An Amazing and Most Particular Grace!

I was paralyzed and weeping, sitting on a fountain’s edge in the middle of the tiny town square, when, of all the sorts of people on the planet, a Roman Catholic priest [the church of my childhood and unfortunately the religious comparison to my parent’s version of shame, criticism, and anonymity] gently tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I would like to attend morning Mass and have breakfast with and a friend of his afterward.

I did so… Father Anthony’s [schooled in America] friend was a 100+ year-old blind woman who approached me when we first met. She felt my face, remarked to Fr. Anthony about my sadness, felt along the shelf nearby and found a pendant of The Virgin Mary to place in my hand. She then cradled my cheeks in her rough and ancient hands, and said in French, “This will get you home…”

God so intimately knew my story, my idols, my need, and my wounds that He emptied me and yet held my shattered heart so carefully, so ironically*, and so providentially that I was literally carried along to the next place on the three-day solo journey towards going home. [*God said of His orchestrating my meeting Fr. Anthony and the church of my youth, “I know where the hurt came from, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, John. I can use broken things for My glory and your good too… Trust Me.”]

For three days, God perfectly orchestrated my being alone with my emptiness and His seen and unseen mercies to carry me along… by each step, pedal stroke, train ride, flight, word, breath, heartbeat, tear, and longing for home.

“Complet. Complet. Complet.”

On my way home to Aspen, en route to Gatwick airport south of London where I had begun my bike tour around Scotland four weeks earlier, I eventually made my way north to Paris via train with bike in tow. I was utterly broken, empty, alone, and in shock.

Upon my arrival in a very cold, gloomy, and jammed-packed Paris [due to a very big jazz festival], I was immediately faced with a circumstance and irony that could only happen by God’s grace: Walking in the rain with my fully loaded touring bike, every hotel of any kind had the same notice in the doorway, “Complet.”

“Complete… Full. Full. Full.”

As utterly empty as I was, all I was greeted by was “Complet.”… “Complete.”… Full-Up… No room.

It was 2:00am in the morning and I was within moments of unpacking my gear and tent to sleep in the shelter of an alley-way roof, when I noticed a room for rent on the uppermost floor of an old Parisian building. My room on the top floor was so small I had to put my entire bike in first, crawl over it, and lay on the bed next to it.

As I stared out the tiny window into the dark, wet and cold Paris night, I was emptied and empty but dry and warm. That was a start… I was going to make it to the next milestone towards eventually being filled!

Upon arriving in Aspen I was greeted by three dear friends [John, Carl, and Fr. Tom] whom God had ready, willing, and more than able to catch the empty shell of me, hold me, and show me for the first time how God, in Christ, by the Spirit could fill me… to the fullest. These friends were the first measure of God’s spiritual incarnational-relational filling until I could recover enough to be filled by a long and fulfilling journey of repentance, discipleship, repentance, growth, repentance, wisdom, repentance, and service to others in Jesus’ name.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (John 1:14-16).

We Must be Emptied… Before We are Filled.

See the empty idols, repent, and be saved to then be filled to the uttermost!

Beloved in Christ—and those who have not yet been emptied and then filled-up by Him through the Spirit—God is infinitely in command of each and every heart, soul, strength and life who has ever been and will be “ill-conceived in Sin and sinning” (Genesis 3). And yet, even in our inherited Sin and habitual sinning, God so loves us and is intimately involved in the details of our stories, He will use the very things we love more than Him to bring us to being aware and emptied of those things vying, competing for His love… so that we will turn to Him… and only Him to be filled and fulfilled.

“Forgetting what is behind…” (Philippians 3:13).

It’s important to know that within a few years of my conversion I committed to spending as long as it would take [nearly 3 years…] to fulfill Paul’s nearly-untranslatable plea to the Church of Philippi about what our story consists of. Paul, by means of the Spirit, essentially said… is saying to us right now:

“Go back into your past story; recall the details of any hurts and happinesses that mattered in your life; experience and express the context, people, emotions associated with the hurts and happinesses in the safety of your security in Jesus Christ [in a biblical, trusted, competent community of faith]; place each and every story, hurt, happinesses at the foot of the cross to be washed in the blood of Christ’s atoning, propitiating grace; and then move back into the present not only freed of any harm your past can do to you, but assured that God will use these parts of your story as an integral part of how He has called you redeemed… To redeem!”

Some iteration of this vitally important, remembering, cleansing, freeing, and redemptive process of seeing God at His finest, “knowing your story and co-authoring your destiny” [Dan Allender], is extremely important to undertake, Beloved. Satan knows it well—and between the evil one, your own flesh / “old-man/woman”, and this broken world, your story will come back to HAUNT you or HELP you glorify God, love yourself, and love and serve others as well.

How aware are you of the context, people, details, hurts, happinesses, trials, treasures… all of it… of your story? How aware are you that God does not waste ANY detail of your story—a glorious thread of detail within His Story of Creation, The Fall, Redemption, and Glorification?

What idols were you emptied of when you first came to see the bankrupt condition of your heart and your need for first a Savior from hell (Matthew 25:46; Revelation 21:8), and then a Lord to be discipled by (Matthew 28:18-20), serving under (Matthew 5:14-16), and battling for (Ephesians 6:10-18) as your Captain, Priest, and King?

What idols still stand in the way of your journey of discipleship and service to others today? Are there others who know them and are helping you drain them of their place and power in your life?

What has been or is presently your Precious? Power? Unhealthy relationships? Work? Pleasure? Money? Intellect? Religion? Immortality? Stoicism? Victimhood? Hiding? Hardening? Revenge? Legalism? Other?

How does the most personal nature of your story, idols, and redemption help you empathize with and relate to others in compassion, urgency, boldness, and humility?

Does the vastness, breadth, and depth of God’s comfort to you get passed along to others as a comfort for their idolatrous, shameful, wounded, and [far too many times] anonymous life?

Your Old Life and Your New Life… is Not Your Own.

Far, far from it…

“But I talk about my life anyway… because if, on the one hand, hardly anything could be less important, on the other hand, hardly anything could be more important. My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is yours also.  Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories, of who we are and where we come from, and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories—in all of their particularity—that God makes Himself known to each of us most powerfully and most personally.  If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly, but also spiritually.” (“Telling Secrets”, Fredrick Buechner)

Remember your idol-filled and hardened heart; remember your emptiness when God helped you see it and repent of it; remember your joy in being loved in spite of the vacuum left in your heart; remember the promises of God the Father in Election, God the Son in Propitiation, and God the Spirit in Regeneration, Assurance, and Sanctification… as, slow but sure, The Trinity began to fill you with more and more of Jesus each and every day! It is solely and only by grace that we are saved… But cheap, uncostly, grace is not grace but diversion, delusion instead.

Once emptied and filled upon our conversion, the cycle repeats itself as we die to and are emptied of self and live filled, fulfilled in the fullness of and for Christ each and everyday, Beloved. That’s the Way, Truth, and Life… of how it works.

Please remember each and every “Today…” (Psalm 95:7-8),
JohnDoz

Resources:
Breaking the Idols of the Heart, Dan Allender

Removing the Idols of the Heart, Sermon, Tim Keller

Converted by the Spirit, Sermon, Tim Keller

Resources for Idolatry, Desiring God, John Piper, others

Sex and Money: Pleasures That Leave You Empty and Grace That Satisfies, Paul Tripp

The Training Table: Giving Thanks

by JohnDozPosted on November 26, 2014 Posted in Training Table — No Comments ↓

Welcome to the Training Table where you can depend on some spiritually-nourishing chow, carefully prepared, to help you run the Godly and good race! For what good is a good race, unless it’s a Godly race? (2 Timothy 4:7; 1 Corinthians 9:24; Galatians 5:7)

The Most Scrumpdillyicious Feast of the Heart? Giving Thanks!

Thanks for What? Jesus!

On the eve of The Thanksgiving Holiday we’re here today to feast on the fact that GIVING THANKS is both the foundational measurement of giving God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit the glory AND the highest realm we can reach in our minute-by-minute acknowledgment and praise of Him AND what is the most essential thing missing when we suppress the True Truth and Love of God if we do not have faith in Him by faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. (Romans 1:18-32)

Giving thanks to God softens our heart; not giving thanks to God hardens the heart. (Ezekiel 11:17-21)

Giving thanks to God will always make us better; not giving thanks to God will always make us bitter. (1 Thessalonians 5:23; Ephesians 4:31-32)

Giving thanks to God will fill us with joy; not giving thanks to God will fill us with fear. (James 1; 2 Timothy 1:7)

Giving thanks to God will grow our fruitfulness in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; not giving thanks to God will diminish the fruitfulness in our life and replace it with the works of the flesh such as sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. (Galatians 5:16-24)

Due the The Fall in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3), the hearts of humankind have a default mode: Sin, sinning, and a form of radical self-centeredness that is more murderous and afflicted than we could ever dare imagine AND YET by the totally unmerited favor of God the Father’s mercies, God the Son’s sacrifice on the cross, and God the Spirit’s heart regenerating “jump-start” from  death to life… We can repent and be born-again and live to serve King Jesus with a heart-full of immeasurable thanks!

Having a heart full of thanks to God is absolutely essential to life; and the lack thereof is an attribute of death… even as we live. This is so because being capable of reaching outside ourselves and attributing each and every joy, jot, tear, and tilttle of life to God flourishes ALL of our life. And the opposite is sadly and most searingly true as well: Devoid of being able to get outside ourselves and glorify God, ALL, ALL… RE: ALL of life is about ME, YOU, OURSELVES. It’s choosing a life of a dead man walking, Beloved: Only our pride, pretense, egotism, and vacuous self-centeredness can reign… When God, in Christ, and by the Spirit does not Reign instead.

It is as predictable, axiomatic, and anecdotal as the rise and fall of the sun. Period. The second oldest religion is humanism! And even the slightest hint of reaching outside ourselves to acknowledge dependence on another… especially God… is a very good thing indeed.

Don’t just pig-out on turkey!

Please spend lots of quality time feasting on the promises of God in Holy Scriptures [below] pertaining to what having repented and having faith in Jesus Christ assures you of.

Give All Your Heart and Life to Thanksgiving to God for Jesus Christ…

…in You, the Hope of Glory!

2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

1 Peter 2:9
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Romans 8:1
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 2:10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

“We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is good, because it is good, if bad, because it works in us patience, humility and the contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country.” (C.S. Lewis)

John 1:12
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,

2 Corinthians 5:21
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

1 Corinthians 6:19
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,

John 15:5
I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

“The Lord afflicts us at times; but it is always a thousand times less than we deserve, and much less than many of our fellow-creatures are suffering around us. Let us therefore pray for grace to be humble, thankful, and patient.” (John Newton)

Romans 12:2
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

1 John 4:4
Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

1 Corinthians 12:27
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

John 15:15
No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

“Gratitude is an offering precious in the sight of God, and it is one that the poorest of us can make and be not poorer but richer for having made it.” (A.W. Tozer)

Galatians 3:26
For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.

Philippians 3:20
But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,

1 Peter 2:9-10
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

1 Corinthians 3:16
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

2 Timothy 1:7
For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

“Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow.” (Henry Ward Beecher)

1 Thessalonians
For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.

1 Corinthians 6:17
But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

Romans 5:1
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Peter 1:4
By which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

2 Corinthians 5:20
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

1 John 5:18
We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.

“A thankful heart is one of the primary identifying characteristics of a believer. It stands in stark contrast to pride, selfishness, and worry. And it helps fortify the believer’s trust in the Lord and reliance of His provision, even in the toughest times. No matter how choppy the seas become, a believer’s heart is buoyed by constant praise and gratefulness to the Lord.” (John MacArthur)

1 Corinthians 6:20
For you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Philippians 1:6
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 2:18
For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

Ephesians 2:6
And raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

2 Corinthians 2:15
For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing…

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” (G.K. Chesterton)

Ephesians 2:8-9
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Romans 6:18
And, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

Psalm 139:14
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

“Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” (Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings)

1 John 5:14-15
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.

James 1:22
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

Matthew 5:14
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

“A state of mind that sees God in everything is evidence of growth in grace and a thankful heart.” (Charles Finney)

Acts 1:8
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Colossians 3:12
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,

John 15:16
Jesus said, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

Hebrews 4:16
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

1 Peter 2:5
You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

“I exalt gratitude as a central biblical response of the heart to the grace of God. The Bible commands gratitude to God as one of our highest duties. “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name” (Psalm 100:4). God says that gratitude honors him: “He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me”” (Psalm 50:23). (John Piper, Future Grace, 32)

Philippians 4:13
I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

John 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Ephesians 1:5
He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,

“Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.” (Zig Ziglar)

1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Philippians 4:6-7
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 1:7-8
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight

“I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful, happy accent.” (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre)

Colossians 1:13
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,

2 Corinthians 1:22
And who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

Romans 5:19
For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

1 Corinthians 2:16
“For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” (Marcus Tullius Cicero)

Ephesians 6:11
Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

1 Corinthians 3:9
For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

Jeremiah 33:3
Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.

Philippians 4:19
And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

“Those blessings are sweetest that are won with prayers and won with thanks.” (Thomas Goodwin)

Romans 8:1-39
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

Galatians 4:6
And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”

2 Corinthians 5:15
And he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

Romans 8:17
And if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

Romans 5:8
But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

“Take a saint, and put him into any condition, and he knows how to rejoice in the Lord.” (Walter Cradock)

John 15:1-5
Jesus said, I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

1 Peter 2:11
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

James 4:7
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Romans 8:28
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

1 John 1:1-10
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

“No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.” (Elie Wiesel)

1 Peter 5:8
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Colossians 3:3
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Ephesians 4:1
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called…

“Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.” (Corrie ten Boom)

Ephesians 3:12
In whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

John 14:6
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Matthew 5:13
You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

“As we grow in the practice of thankfulness, in a mysterious way, more of our heart of flesh is unbound from its encasing stones. Gratitude produces life, joy, and healing.” (Anon.)

Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Psalm 5:3
O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.

1 Peter 4:10
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace:

2 Corinthians 1:21
And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us,

John 11:40
Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

“The Christian struggle with gratitude is because we have become immune to the size of the debt paid by God in Christ.” (Tim Keller)

1 Peter 3:15
But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,

Hebrews 13:5
Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

1 Corinthians 12:13
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

Romans 10:9
Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Matthew 5:16
In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

“True gratitude or thankfulness to God for his kindness to us, arises from a foundation laid before, of love to God for what he is in himself; whereas a natural gratitude has no such antecedent foundation. The gracious stirrings of grateful affection to God, for kindness received, always are from a stock of love already in the heart, established in the first place on other grounds, viz. God’s own excellency.” (Jonathan Edwards)

Colossians 2:10
And you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

John 10:10
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

2 Timothy 3:16
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

Colossians 1:22
He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

Ephesians 4:1-32
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism…

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

1 Corinthians 1:2
To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:

Colossians 1:14
In whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Ephesians 1:14
Who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Romans 12:3
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Romans 5:11
More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.” (Seneca)

John 17:17
Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

John 15:10
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

John 8:12
Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Matthew 6:14
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Ephesians 4:30
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

“To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us – and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.” (Thomas Merton)

1 Peter 1:23
Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;

Colossians 3:13
Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Ephesians 2:1
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins

Romans 3:23
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…

May you and your be THANK-FULL TO THE OVERFLOW each and every day.

“If the only prayer you said was ‘Thank you.’ that would be enough.” (Meister Eckhart)

JohnDoz

The Training Table: Don’t Make the Road Less Traveled “Highway 101”!

by JohnDozPosted on November 19, 2014 Posted in Training Table — No Comments ↓

Welcome to the Training Table where you can depend on some spiritually-nourishing chow, carefully prepared, to help you run the Godly and good race! For what good is a good race, unless it’s a Godly race? (2 Timothy 4:7; 1 Corinthians 9:24; Galatians 5:7)

The “101’s” of Life

Def., “101”— the basics, the elementary knowledge, the ABC’s, the essentials, the foundational principles, the introductory course work, the bedrock, nuts and bolts… that upon all else rests. (Matthew 7:24; 1 Corinthians 3:11-13; Isaiah 28:16; Psalm 11:3; 2 Peter 3:17)

This bible-based and carefully basted feast at the Training Table is devoted to the concept of building any sort of structure or any sort of life: The foundation is the first thing to build upon, and the last thing that any thoughtful architect, leader, or human being hoping to have a satisfactory life… will approach in an unthinking or sloppy manner! Right?

And yet… And WAY yet… As we all know, and have likely experienced in a whole host of ways, there are far, far too many people and things that are being built-upon today that are sorely lacking in the realms of having a rock solid foundation under it, at all. All sorts of things are tumbling down all around us… And being put back together in very foolish ways.

If Humpty Dumpty’s shattered state is only tended to by the world’s ways, it will be much more than a good egg such as he that will take a fall: Civilizations come and go based on the same false paradigm.

Be Aware… It’s a Foolish Era

Especially in our day—having lived a while in a culture of relativism where no True Truth exists anymore—the very notion of foundational things… things that have been, are now, and will forever be TRUE… is usually left way up in the air and completely unattended to… Until things begin to topple. And if this truism is left unattended to for a long enough period of time even after things topple, and we’re frantically trying to clean up all the mess, putting things back together devoid of Godly foundational concepts is a fool’s errand to say the least.

And yet we do this every single day. Having expunged God from so many realms of the culture, the first thing we need to build or rebuild is usually the last thing on our mind.

The “101’s” of Faith…

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion (Proverbs 18:2).

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction (Proverbs 1:7).

Over the course of my life my own story, my hardwiring, and God’s redemptive influence in my life, for better or for worse, it has left me with a propensity of looking at things beginning on a foundational level… On the level of always asking myself and others things like:

What’s the net-net here? What are the basics of this problem? What’s the vision and mission of the organization? Let’s start with what we do know and what we all can agree on. What sort of foundations are we attempting to build upon here? As we begin to make and grow disciples, what is an example of ‘Discipleship 101’? What’s the milk and where’s the beef? What sorts of things will never, ever leave us or forsake us? What are the doctrines that we cannot compromise on? When someone comes to Christ, what will we use to help him or her know, grow, and sow in faith?

As this personal tendency pertains to a particular penchant I have as a member of any given church—knowing that, in more cases than not, the congregation consists largely unchurched people—my hope is to hear leadership in the church use any opportunity to recapitulate about the tenants… Or “The 101’s”… Of the faith. Now is the time the planks of the Reformed, biblical faith must be remembered, re-laid as a firm foundation, and used as a platform for all else in word and deed!

[I personally believe that this is a particularly important subject and process for churches to be spending an inordinate amount of time, talent, and treasure focusing on: What are the “101’s”, “102’s”, “103’s”, “104’s”, and “105’s” of the Reformed faith?! The lack of any systematic Discipleship principles, programs, and processes always leads to infant Christians taking on adult problems—and non-Christians to rely on works to save themselves. It’s an inexcusable and bad deal all around.]

Come Rain, Sleet, Snow or Shine… Highway 101 Here I Come!

In the fall of 1982, I saw it all! Rain, sleet, snow and [some] shine… But I had a foundation to build upon… “Stick to Route 101”!

I was as excited as I ever was by plotting out another solo bike tour route for myself. The 3-4 week route would begin in the small town of Campbell River on Vancouver Island and end somewhere in northern California.

But there was one major caveat: I aimed to hug the coast every mile of the way it was possible to do so. This was my goal on subsequent tours while pedaling the coast of Maine and circumnavigating the coast of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton… as well as Bonnie Old Scotland a tour or two down the road. And I loved every mile of the way(s)!

On the Maine, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton tour, I followed the coast of Maine north on Highway 1, hopped the ferry to the Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Highways 101, 103, 7… all the way around the two islands.

Circumnavigating Scotland was equally wonderful in sticking to the comparable “Hwy 101’s” like the coastal byways of A90, 96, 9, 838, 894… Just pedal as close to the coast as I could… And relish in some of the most spectacular places, people, and God’s natural surroundings imaginable.

With the exception of Route 19 out of Campbell River southeast to Victoria, and winding my way through and around Seattle, Highway 101 and I could be likened to rain, sleet, snow and [some] shine… “Adventure 101!”

By Analogy… “Another 101”

What are the Foundations, “The 101’s”, of Your Faith?

When I first began to think about the basics of my really wonderful experiences on the sort of bike tours mentioned above, it was on the occasion of celebrating the 497th anniversary of the Reformation this past October.

As I began to think about the basics of my bike rides, the foundation upon which I built a route and the aim to achieve it until the very last measure—and how my “cycling routes 101” crossed paths with “the Reformed foundations of my faith 101”.

Having a plan in mind and plotting out the route to achieve my plan in cycling yielded some of the most wonderful relationships, places, and experiences of my life. There were not only some great difficulties, nasty falls, and near-death-misses along the way, but also times of great joy, victory, warmth, camaraderie, and innumerable blessings for all of my senses and sensibilities!

Way personal and foundational…

In fact, it was in the course of my bike ride around Scotland, and following in southwestern France, that was used of and by God as the seminal moment in my temporal and eternal life where I came to the end of myself and the beginning of Christ in my life.

My own conversion occurred “along highway 101” as I pedaled my bike, recycled my sin-filled life, and began a new adventure unlike any before!

So, for me to say that the foundations or “the basics of 101” are important, I am stating an understatement so significant that it will take me the rest of eternity to mete it out. What exactly are “The 101’s of Your Life?”

“Reformation 101”

In the course of recently celebrating the anniversary of the Reformation—and some of the founding people and principles that were involved at the time—I thought I would offer a handful of those founders who built upon the foundation… To serve as a feast of the heart and your edification.

Especially in our day of lax, often-muddled, even completely mangled doctrine, we need to feast on “The 101’s of the Faith” frequently, friends.

Clearly, when it comes to the foundation of the Reformation, the “Five Sola’s” is a term used to designate five great foundational rallying cries of the Protestant reformers. They are as follows: “Sola Scriptura” (Scripture Alone); “Sola Gratia” (Grace Alone); “Sola Fide” (Faith Alone); “Solus Christus” (Christ Alone); and “Soli Deo Gloria” (To God Alone Be Glory).

Each and every new creation in Christ should make it their business to unpack the Five Sola’s. Sound, Biblical Doctrine is the ultimate and divine feast of the born-again heart! Without it, spiritual starvation, emotional deprivation, and then behavioral aberration is inevitable.

But getting down to the grassroots level, I would like to offer some of the “Reformation 101” foundational comments from the founders and lovers of God and the Reformation. These pithy quotes need a lot more unpacking than this space allows, but please spend some time chewing, digesting, sharing, and living God’s truth and love that’s contained therein.

Please don’t let the Old English prevent you from reading and wrestling with these gems, chewing on them, gobbling them up, meditating on them, and using them as a way to increase your love of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and those God-loving folks who the Trinity has providentially placed in your life.

William Flavel
Whatsoever we have over-loved, idolized, and leaned upon, God has from time to time broken it, and made us to see the vanity of it; so that we find the readiest course to be rid of our comforts is to set our hearts inordinately upon them.

“Discipleship 101”
Sin is best described not so much as doing bad things but rather making good things only things. God will often use the things of the world, the flesh, and the devil that we have turned into idols as a way of personally and intimately breaking us—and in our brokenness be made whole in Him. This is exactly how I came to faith. Lean on Christ and Christ alone.

John Calvin
All our words ought to be filled with true sweetness and grace; and this will be so if we mingle the useful [truth] with the sweet [love].

“Discipleship 101”
For the born-again, Christ-centered person, speaking the truth in love, loving others truthfully is the summum bonum, “the highest good”, of the faith. The perfect balance between love and truth will not be achieved until Christ comes again. We all tend to err to one side or the other. But try we must each and every day. Do we know the Truth? Are we capable of loving? Light and salt is God’s Truth and Love incarnate in you and me and let loose in this dark and decaying world.

Pierre Viret
Wherefore I esteem more highly the judgment of a simple Christian laborer, being one of the elect of God and regenerate by His Holy Spirit, than that of all the Popes, bishops, priests, philosophers and doctors who are infidels and hypocrites.

“Discipleship 101”
The “common”, born-again, new creation in Christ, as a vessel of God’s truth and love and God’s light to reveal ignorance and salt to heal decay, is more real, valuable, and redemptive that all the wisdom, institutions, prognostications, and false premises the world could ever dream of providing.

William Gurnall
God would not rub so hard if it were not to fetch out the dirt that is ingrained in our natures. God loves purity so well He had rather see a hole than a spot in His child’s garments.

“Discipleship 101”
In Christ, all punishment for sin has been taken care of—“It is finished!”—on the cross. So in God’s providence He will use the brokenness of this world, and even our own sin/idolatry, towards the end of achieving our purity, our holiness, our sanctification, are maturity, our Christ-likeness. The Puritans spoke about the command, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds…” (James 1:2) in terms that they actually looked forward to the next trial, incidence of suffering… faithfully and experientially knowing God would providentially use it to further transform them into “little Christ’s” (Luther).

Richard Sibbes
The whole life of a Christian should be nothing but praises and thanks to God; we should neither eat nor sleep, but eat to God and sleep to God and work to God and talk to God, do all to His glory and praise.

“Discipleship 101”
Admittedly, it is strange to hear that the first worst possible consequence or outcome of not believing in God, E.g., “suppressing the truth of God” (Romans 1:18-23), is not giving thanks. So simple and yet so fundamentally telling. So, looking at the absolute opposite of not believing in God, based in the first command of God, is in Exodus 20, “You shall have no other gods before Me. And loving God with our whole heart mind soul, strength…” And thanks! If it were possible for us to follow each heartbeat, each breath, with a heart of gratitude and thanks to God… that would just be the beginning of all the blessings He has heaped on top of these things!

John Owen
It is not the glorious battlements, the painted windows, the crouching gargoyles that support a building, but the stones that lie unseen in or upon the earth. It is often those who are despised and trampled on that bear up the weight of a whole nation.

“Discipleship 101”
The life of a single Saint, the repentant, born-again Christian… you and I… undyingly devoted to the cause of Christ can, and has, changed the world. When we gaze on high at the most glorious cathedrals imaginable, it’s so important to remember that memorials of this kind are built for Christ—alive and well in each and every converted and indwelt heart! Sin makes us addicts of God’s creativity; sanctified service in Jesus’ name grafts us to Him with infinite intimacy.

Thomas Watson
How soon are we broken on the soft pillow of ease! Adam in paradise was overcome, when Job on the dunghill was a conqueror.

“Discipleship 101”
Sin, pride, selfishness, egomania is deeply rooted within the hearts of all men. When comforts of any kind come into the life of AnyFallenMan, the sinful heart defaults to its worse condition—self-sufficiency, pretense, humanism. Stripped of our creaturely comforts, naked of our foolish notions about even one breath or heartbeat being possible devoid of God, we are [once again] forced to resort to reality: Sinners saved by grace, indwelt by the Spirit of God, are more than conquerors! In our weakness, we are most strong.

Don’t Make the Road Less Traveled “Highway 101”!

Whether it’s being given the most precious gift of grace-based faith by your Father God’s election of you, His Son’s death on the cross for you, and the Spirit’s regenerating act to bring you back from your spiritual death, or it’s finding and following the very best route to and from any of life’s little and long journeys of any kind, the Bible is “the 101″… For All of the Highways and Byways of Life! And the many Saints who have written many awesome things that reflect the Bible is for your spiritual, emotional, psychological, and physical well being and that of any whom you impart any of it to, Beloved of God.

We should make it our daily bread to feast on “The 101’s of the Faith”!

JohnDoz

Resources:
Stand to Reason

Everyone’s a Theologian

Crucial Questions Set

Puritan Prayers

The Valley of Vision