In the space between my last post and this, I have learned some really important lessons and I would like to share a couple of them with you:

1. I have to take time for extended get-aways - It has been over 5 years since my family and I took more than a 4 day vacation and I had no idea how much I needed it! Now, we didn’t get much rest, but what we did get was 8 days to unplug and not think about ministry and work. When I came home, I was totally refreshed and full of renewed energy for my ministry. Believe me, we will do this again soon:-)
2. Not writing is a good reminder that the world is bigger than me - When I am blogging every day and talking about the deep things of the soul, it isn’t too far fetched to say that it could turn narcissistic pretty quickly for me. The break of not writing on my blog for two weeks reminds me that life goes on without my story and although my writing can be an encouragement, it is not a necessity.
3. My computer time can interfere with my family time - Over the past several weeks I have realized that the time I take on my blog and on my computer is taking away my time for other things and if I am not careful it is my family time that suffers. So, I am dedicating myself to writing and blogging with a careful eye on not overdoing my time away from the family.

I know these aren’t earth shattering or even particularly clever, but they have been really important reminders for me and ones I will carry forward into practice.

Godspeed!

S.

I am so excited to be taking my son to Disney for the first time this week! I remember going when I was little and remembering that it is a magical place! Crazy how time flies by! Although my trips to Disney as a child in many ways feels so long ago, in some ways it feels just like yesterday.

This week is a time for making memories, a time to have fun and chance to have some good down time with my family! I hope that you have made it a regular habit to take the opportunity to enjoy fun times and down time. Whether it is a small moment at home, or a big moment like a vacation, God has wired us all to take those moments and enjoy and appreciate them!

So, here’s to the chance to take time for fun!

OK, my family is waking up now, so I am signing off:-)

Godspeed!

S.

I first heard the term “Hungry Ghosts” while reading “Time and the Soul” by Jacob Needleman. The origin of this concept is rooted in Eastern Religion (which my faith of Christianity comes from) with the thought that we are all searching for significance and meaning, yet we spend most of our time running around at a frenetic pace that causes us to miss the deep things of the heart and soul from which we can truly draw fulfillment and meaning.

As I write this, I am well aware that it will be impossible for me to do this topic justice in a short blog post, but I do think that I can capture the essence of this in a way that we can practically apply in our lives. The best way to do this, I think, is to ask a question: “How deep is your inner life?” For many of us our outer lives are very deep and rich. We have spent countless hours, days and years building toward outward success, fortune and fulfillment and I would say most of us have been rewarded for that work.

As we have worked hard and been rewarded our speed has increased and the desire to grow outwardly with position, wealth, health, etc… has grown and for many caused us to run even faster. But at what expense? Most likely it is at the expense of the inner life. Yet, the inner life is, in all spiritual traditions, including mine, the most important aspect of who we are. It is the most important part of what we give to others and it is the part that will live on long after we are gone from this world. So, why don’t we spend more time on it? I would say it is because we are too easily distracted….maybe we have traded a big part of the truth for a lie? The lie that what I have on the outside is what is most important.

Yet, the things that speak to who we really are and what ultimately make us most successful in life are those things that are rooted in the inner world. Things like love, integrity, mercy, forgiveness, etc… These are the things that ultimately satisfy the hunger for meaning we have been given by God. A hunger that we falsely believe can be filled by outward success.

The truth is, the outward can never fulfill this God given hunger. It is only the inward journey with our Heavenly Father that allows us to fully embrace who we were meant to be. It is only the inward journey that allows us to ultimately live as fully human and fulfill the hunger of meaning, purpose and passion in life. It is this journey that makes us more than Hungry Ghosts…it turns us into satisfied beings who can live deeply, fully and present in life that God has given us.

If our focus continues to be on the outer life, the inner will never fully develop, but as we begin to put more focus on the inner life the amazing thing is that the outer life begins to deepen as well and we become more fully alive in the life that God has given us!

So, what about you? How deep is your inner life? How much time do you spend working on the inside as opposed to the outside? What a tragedy if we live our whole lives and what we end up with at the end is a deep and successful outer life, with a shallow and meaningless inner life! I hope that today you will spend some time developing the inner life and that we live our lives as satisfied beings rather than hungry ghosts.

Thanks for reading and godspeed to you today…

S.

]]> http://togetherwethink.com/2010/03/11/hungry-ghosts/feed/ http://togetherwethink.com/2010/03/03/healing-not-healed/ http://togetherwethink.com/2010/03/03/healing-not-healed/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:22:03 +0000 scott http://togetherwethink.com/?p=692 I have decided to drop the day count from my posts, because I am not sure how many days I will need for this journey and in many respects it will be every day for the rest of my life.

It would be great to say that I am finally healed and in some ways I know I will get there, but in many other way’s true healing won’t come until my life is through because I live in a broken world. A couple weeks ago I called my counselor to talk since I was having a particularly challenging day. My frustrated question to her was, “Am I ever going to get past this? Am I ever going to heal?’!! Her wise response was, “Do you want the good news, or the bad news?”

Of course I wanted the good news first! She said, “The good news is that you are healing now and will continue to. The bad news is, you will never fully heal in this life because deep down inside what you are longing for is to be home, and this world isn’t home.”

As I left our conversation that day, I was struck by that stark reality. As much as we want to be healed and as much as we can be if we are willing to do the hard work of forgiveness, patience, love, etc… the reality in all of our lives is that we will always deal with the brokenness of this world…there will always be a nagging void…we will always wrestle with some broken part of who we are until one day we walk into the arms of our Heavenly Father’s “Well done!” Until then, we continue growing, learning, challenging ourselves and loving others so that we can mature and heal as much as possible.

Depending on how you look at this thought, it could be encouraging or discouraging. I hope you take it as encouraging! Just to know that one day everything will be healed…everything will be as it should be. In the meantime, we get to lean on the Lord and each other to grow, love, heal and live life to it’s fullest in this beautiful mess that is our life in the world!

I realize that this is really a mixed bag and two sides of the same coin, because part of this is really healthy. It is the way God has designed us to work hard, use our gifts and find satisfaction in our chosen field. Having said that, what I want to focus on today is the dark side of needing something from our work, title, position that it just cannot provide.

For those of you who know the Myers Briggs personality profile, I am wired as an INFP, or as some might call it, “The Dreamer”. The problem with being wired this way is that it is not what I necessarily would choose as my primary wiring if you were to ask me. What I would really love to be is a Natural Born Leader. Why? Because the culture I have grown up around tends to worship at the altar of natural born, bigger than life leaders. Sounds a little overstated, I know, but for many of us, that statement isn’t too strong because we have convinced ourselves that with greater positions of leadership, we are more valuable.

As I write, I am well aware that I do not represent all of you, some of you are natural born leaders and some are perfectly content with who you are, but for me, a lot of my value has been attached to whatever position I  might have or think I might want to have. The problem is that when I have it, it actually doesn’t deliver the value I am hoping it will and when I don’t get it, I can become easily frustrated and discouraged.

Let me try to explain… Because I am not a natural born leader, it takes a lot more work and effort for me to obtain and execute new levels of team leadership. For some of you reading this, leading others comes very easily, but for me, it does not. It is a lot of work to figure out how to lead a team toward a common goal and purpose. With my wiring, I am great at self-leadership, thought leadership and leading in the moment, but people leadership toward a long-term goal can be a real struggle for me.

Although this is a good realization to have, it can be pretty tough in organizational leadership life, because what gets noticed many times are those who lead teams and big initiatives to successful outcomes over time. When this type of leadership isn’t your strong suite and you feel like this is what you will gain your ultimate value from, then it can leave you feeling less than and discouraged. It can also lead to frustration because new doors of leadership opportunity may not open as fast or at all and when you attach your value to these doors, it is a rough place to live for sure!

So, what do I do about this? I must learn to find my value in who my Heavenly Father has made me to be. I must learn to say “Thank you Lord!” in every circumstance. Now, I find in my life, that it is easy to say “Thank You Lord!” for the good things. Thanks for my family, my ministry, my stuff, etc… But, it is much harder to say “Thank you Lord!” for our weaknesses or deficiency’s. Thanks that I’m not a natural born leader, thanks for this job transition, thanks for this constant struggle that forces me to depend on You, etc… And yet, scripture says we should do just that. Paul said that he had learned to be content in any circumstance. (Phil. 4:12) Man Paul, you are a better man than me:-)

So, what is my point? What can we learn from this?

We must learn that God has made us exactly who he wants us to be. Not what others say we should be or what leaders and leadership experts say is the thing we need to be great! Or what a culture says is or is not valuable. We are already priceless in God’s eyes! We are so much more valuable to Him than we can ever know! We don’t have to find our true value from any position or title. We find it in Him!

So, today, regardless of what position or title your aspire to, take the time to remind yourself that you are exactly who your Heavenly Father has created you to be and no title/position or lack there of can ever change your value in His eyes! When you view life in this way, then it much easier to look at whatever door or position God has opened for us and just say thank you to the one who is Able to bring true value from our lives!

I hope this helps and Godspeed…

S.

• My house
• My cars
• My clothes
• My watches
• My health

There are a lot of things I find valuable in life. Some are more important than others, but all can become a distraction if I’m not careful. In the picture above you see my 1965 Dodge Coronet. Yes, I am kind of a car guy and no, I do not own this car anymore. I sold it before our move to Georgia, but man did I have fun with it when it was mine, (Thanks to my bride for putting up with it!!) and yes, it was very valuable to me!

There is nothing wrong with finding things valuable and enjoying nice things. The problem comes when I try to gain my value from them. Let me tell you this is all to easy for me to do. I all too often have a tendency to try and define myself by the clothes I wear, the cars I drive, the watch on me wrist, the home I live in…ad infinitum!

I have walked around many days in my life not only defining myself by these things, but hoping others might find my value in them and valuing others by these things as well. It is a part of the human condition, and it is hard to stop.

We live in a society that in many ways pushes us to define ouselves by how much we have, how nice it is, how good we look , and the list could go on and on. The reason this is so insidious for us as followers of Christ is that it flies completely in the face of where our true value comes from. All through scripture it tells us that we find our value in our Heavenly Father. It is because He has made us and loves us that we have true value. And yet, we strive hard to find value in so many other things.

The ultimate problem with this striving is that it never works. The recognition from others fades quickly; the home or car gets old quickly and someone has a nicer one; the clothes and accessories are only new once; someone always makes more than me; and the list goes on and on.

Why do we do this? What’s going on inside of us? The Bible says that God has “planted eternity in the hearts of men” (Ecc. 3:11) God wired us for something greater. He made us to love us and help us discover our incredible value in Him. He made us to experience His love and appreciation, so this desire to be valued is a good and noble desire! It is just all to often misplaced in our lives. We all too often mistake the temporal values for the eternal and we look to the possessions of this world to define who we are instead of the One who made us and loves us. The problem with these possessions and positions is that they are not Val- “You”-able! They cannot fulfill the hunger inside us that needs to be valued and loved. Only our Heavenly Father can do that as we grow more and more in love with Him. Only He is Val- “You”- able in our lives!

The questions as we close today is, what possessions are you trying to gain your value from? How can you set those aside and turn today toward the One who is able to help you understand and find your true value?

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” Matthew 6: 25,26

Before I spend some time reflecting on the story in the Bible about Nehemiah and how it relates to my (and possibly your) personal journey, I want to start by saying how important I believe it is to find stories and people with which you can relate personally. It has been my experience that comparing and engaging with the stories of others, whether alive or in history helps us discover more about our own journey’s and gives us great traveling partners through the ups and downs of our journey!

OK, enough of the ethereal stuff! Let’s take a look at the life of Nehemiah and how I believe it relates to many of our journey’s. As a quick background, Nehemiah was alive during a time when Jerusalem was destroyed and the nation of Israel was carried into captivity. Nehemiah was blessed enough to find himself serving in the court of the king as the cup bearer and it was through this position that God gave him the opportunity to fulfill a passion and dream…to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

It is with this context as our background that we join Nehemiah on his trip back to survey the city and the walls that surrounded it. In the book of Nehemiah we find the story of his journey.

There are a few things that strike me about his journey:

1. Nehemiah begins his story by mourning and grieving the loss of what was supposed to be: Walls around the city of Jerusalem.
2. Nehemiah goes back to Jerusalem to survey the damaged walls and come up with a plan for how to fix them.
3. After surveying the walls and planning, Nehemiah begins the hard work of rebuilding the walls.
4. There are a lot of challenges in rebuilding the walls, including the mocking and attacks of others.
5. The dream of the rebuilt walls is fulfilled through hard work and teamwork.

Now, I realize at this point that the applications for our lives are so obvious that I probably don’t have to write another word, but let’s go there for a second.

Here are the point by point personal applications for me:

1. There is a “supposed to be” in all of our lives. As we enter into the “broken walls” of our personal story, we realize that much of our brokenness is not what God had intended. Something was done to us or we did something that tore down the walls of our lives and it is painful and hard to see the results.
2. We must begin the process of rebuilding in our lives by first surveying and discovering what has happened and what needs to be done to rebuild.
3. At some point, we must begin to rebuild the broken parts of our lives.
4. We will face challenges and attacks from the enemy who doesn’t want us to become healthy and whole.
5. If we are willing to do the hard work and walk with others who can lead us and encourage us on the journey, we will ultimately, find the healing that God wants to bring to the brokenness in our lives.

In closing, where I find myself right now, is still a bit in the surveying stage. I am doing a little bit of the work of rebuilding, but at times feel stuck in the surveying stage, so my  next step is to move fully into the rebuilding stage. How about you? Where are you in this journey?

Thanks for reading and possibly sharing! Godspeed!

S.

I want to talk for a few minutes about how these triggers function and what we can do to recognize their presence and prepare for the battle and temptation ahead. First, we need to recognize when these triggers are most likely to appear. Here are some thoughts:

• You have just had an argument with your spouse and are feeling unappreciated.
• You have had a really rough day at work.
• You have just had a spiritual high and there is a let down coming.
• You had an interaction at work or home that tapped into your insecurity and you feel like less of a person.
• You had a difficult conversation with a family member or friend and it didn’t turn out as you had hoped.
• You feel out of control in some way.

I could go on and on, but I am sure that at least one of these resonated with you. There are situations and emotions in all of us that when presented are triggers that cause us to run to something in a blind way to ease the sense of tension, pain or stress. This is why pornography is so prevalent because it taps into our natural sexual wiring, gives us a feeling of satisfaction and control and makes us feel good for the moment. It is a pretty potent concoction isn’t it?

And yet, those of us who struggle with it all know that it doesn’t work well for long because the feelings of desperation and guilt that quickly follow leave us worse off than we were before. So, why do so many of us continue to go back? Because the pain we are experiencing is ultimately, greater than the guilt and shame we experience after, so we keep going back.

So, where does this leave us? In a vicious cycle if we don’t step off the crazy train and find some healing. The beautiful thing is that healing is what our Heavenly Father offers. Healing from the insecurity, pain, frustration and brokenness is exactly why He sent His son and stands ready to help us at any moment. All we must really do, is turn to Him, admit our brokenness and allow Him to move and work in our soul to heal the broken places.

So, what are your triggers? If you are not aware of what they are, your first step is to begin to recognize them. If you know what they are, your next step is to take them to your Heavenly Father and ask for His help. Once you have asked Him for help, you need to be aware of when the triggers are coming or have come and set up some boundaries to help you move in a different direction than toward your sin. Lastly, you must be open and honest with at least one person who can help guide you in your healing and someone who can hold you accountable in making a better choice.

Tomorrow, we will talk about the concept of accountability; what it is, and why it is so important.

Thanks for reading and godspeed!

S.

First, let me say that this issue is one of the big white elephants in the room of the church. It is so prevalent and yet it so often get’s ignored because it is a hard and ugly subject. It also gets handled far too often as a “just stop doing it” sin topic rather than dealing with the heart of the issue. And the heart of it is much deeper than the act. Let me explain…I was introduced to pornography around the age of 9. This happened to coincide with my mom leaving my dad and me being separated from her. It has only been in the past couple years that I have recognized that this was perfect timing on the part of the enemy. Not only did a little boy feel like he lost his mom, but his confusion was amplified by the objectification of women in the form of nudity and pornographic material.

My counselor shared with me recently, that it is natural for children to self-soothe when they experience pain and brokenness and for many boys, the easiest or best thing they can find is pornography and masturbation.

One of the greatest challenges in dealing with this whole subject and struggle is that it taps into a beautiful part of who God made us to be as sexual beings. The enemy is very clever in that he uses something that is noble and created by God and twists it to use it against us. Men, for some of us the first step in our journey will be to begin understanding our sexuality not as a dirty thing, but as something beautiful, created by God.

Now, I know I can’t speak for every man, but I do believe that for most of us their is something much deeper going on in this struggle of lust and I want to make my best attempt to explain.

For me, when my mom left, I became very confused about the opposite sex. The loss of not only her presence, but her guidance on how to handle and interact in a healthy way with a woman caused me to have to figure it out on my own. And, honestly, I didn’t do a very good job of figuring that out.

So, here I am, 9 years old. My mom is gone from day-to-day life, I am introduced to pornography and I feel like I am on my own. Bad combination, right?! Back in the 80’s pornographic content wasn’t nearly as accessible as it is now through the internet, so it was an occasional look at a store, at a friends house, or maybe on tv. Over the years, as it became more accessible, it would be at times frequent and then infrequent depending on the season of life, but it has remained a temptation even up to this day.

At this point, I want to make a very important statement. My use of pornographic materials (whether it be tv, computer, etc…) has never been gratuitous. I can honestly tell you without a doubt that when I have turned to it, it has been in times of stress, fear, hopelessness, struggles, spiritual highs, etc… All those things in life that tap into my brokenness and insecurities. All those things in life that bring out the little broken boy who needed to self-soothe.

Why is this important? Because we need to know that there is something much deeper going on under the surface when we use lust. We need to know that it is not just about stopping it, but doing the hard work of going back and healing in some areas that bring us to a place where we no longer need to self-soothe in an unhealthy way…where we learn that it is our Heavenly Father who can help us heal and grow through and beyond the pain.

This is where we will spend some time the next couple days exploring the subject and discovering what is really going on under the surface….

I would encourage you to forward this on to any man you know, because if statistics are right, they are struggling at some level with this. I am praying today, that for you and many others, the discussion of this topic and my own healing journey, will begin a whole new level of healing in you!

Thanks for reading something that is a difficult topic, but oh so important in this day and age.

Until tomorrow, godspeed…

S.

The subject of my post today is very subtle. In a society where we value the self-made man, pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps and the freedom to be and do whatever we want, it is hard to imagine how self reliance could be a bad thing.

I have been laboring over this post for over 24 hours because I know what is in my heart to say, but getting that up into my head and out onto the page has been really difficult.

The reason it has been difficult to articulate is that I believe strongly in personal responsibility and want to do my best to make wise and good decisions in life. I also love the idea of the American Dream and the fact that we have so much freedom here to go after what we want to accomplish!

The subtle shift I am talking about may be small, but I believe it is very dangerous to our spiritual life. So, what exactly am I talking about? Let me give you a little background…When my parents went through their separation, I felt in those days and moments that I had to figure life out on my own. The two people who were supposed to be my guides in life during that season were in their own battles and facing such major obstacles that I believed I was alone.

Now, I am not saying that my feeling of being alone was necessarily true. I did have some support from my parents, I was involved in a great church and God was certainly with me, but what I believed and carried out of those years, was that I had to depend on myself to figure life out.

And so, that is what I did and in many ways have continued to do through the past 25 years.  At every turn I did my best to figure things out on my own: Moving around to 3 different high schools in 4 years, moving to Miami, Florida from Michigan before my senior year of high school, going to college without a clue of how I was going to pay for it, trying to pass classes when I was really not a great or disciplined student, dating girls for the first time in college, etc… I have lived my life for a long time in such a way as to say, “I am going to figure this out. I am relying on myself.”

The unfortunate thing about this mindset is that it can seem to work for a very long time. But, I believe at some point it leads to a lot of problems and deep down inside it is more than any one person can bear. Let me list a few of the outcomes for me:

• Not recognizing that God is walking with me as my Heavenly Father and not being able to trust that He is in control.
• Being overwhelmed, frustrated and discouraged when things don’t work out as I planned.
• Not being able to love and serve people in the way that I should because my mind is full of my own issues, challenges and agenda.
• Turning to things that felt good, eased the pain inside and gave me a feeling of control: pornography, food, dating relationships, etc…

As you read some of those things, I am sure you might be able to relate or have a list of your own ways that self-reliance drove you toward some unhealthy things. The key to healing from this messed up mindset is first that we are growing in our awareness of how it shows up negatively in our lives and second that we have enough humility to ask for help and be open and honest about who and where we are in life.

A big part of this blogging journey for me is to be open in a way that can bring freedom. Not just for me, but I am prayerful that it might, in a small way, do the same for you. I have been blown away by those of you who have already reached out to encourage and thank me because something I am learning has caused you to learn or see your journey in a new way. Thank you for your encouragement and humility! I hope that we can continue this journey together and that as I am growing, God might use my growth to spark the flame of your growth as well!

My good friend, Lance Witt (www.replenish.net) shared a powerful verse with me a few years ago that has been a guiding force in my life as I take this journey of discovery and healing:

“This is what the LORD says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls’.”  Jeremiah 6:16

Here is what I am learning about this truth and what I hope you will take away today:

1. We all stand at crossroads every day. Some are big and some are small. Some come from others and some come from ourselves.
2. The wisdom of God has been around for a long time and we must ask for His guidance in every area of life, not just try and figure things out on our own.
3. Once we have discovered the right way, by asking God, we must then take the personal responsibility to obey and walk down that path.
4. When we do this, we are not promised that everything will succeed or that all of our dreams will come true, but that we will find rest for our souls.

Now, I have to be honest, having a soul at rest has not been a hallmark in my life throughout the years. All too many times, my self-reliance; my belief that I was alone; my driveness to make my own way, took me to a place of brokenness and despair. I believe that the step I have neglected consistently so far in my life has been the asking for the wisdom that comes from God, because I felt like I had to make it my own.

But the reality I am discovering more and more in my life is not only that I am not alone, but that I have never been alone. God, as my Heavenly Father has been with me every step of the way. He has guarded me in so many ways, even when I made really poor and desperate self-reliant decisions. What a beautiful thing to discover that not only are we not alone, but we don’t have to rely on our broken selves. We get to rely on the God who created us, loves us and has our best interest in my mind. The results of discovering and living in this truth is that our souls will be at rest in Him:-) That is my prayer today for both your life and mine!

Thank you again for reading and godspeed!

S.