"In the Day of Trouble"
For Our Country
ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favour and glad to do thy will. Bless our land with honourable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
—from The Book of Common Prayer (1928). [credit: Alan Jacobs]
How to Have a Great Lent
Lent is about preparation.
Will you be ready?
Beginning Ash Wednesday and ending Holy Saturday, Lent is the 40 day period leading up to Easter.
Here are 3 ways to get yourself ready for the raucous good news of Easter Sunday!
Fast
Before modern times, virtually all Christians spent time in fasting. Why not try it this Lent?
Give up a certain type of food for a certain period, e.g., skipping lunch on Wednesdays and Fridays.
Pray
Make regular prayer a Lenten habit.
Here’s how: Sit in the same place each time. Put your phone in another room. Focus your thoughts on the Lord. (I find a prayer rope helps me.)
And any Mungarians reading this should definitely take a shift in our Easter Prayer Vigil.
Worship
Attend Sunday worship every week—NO MATTER WHAT. Unless you are sick, don’t miss Sunday worship—and being out of town is not a reason to miss—other towns have churches, too.
If you are a Mungarian, attend Wednesday morning communion (7:30-8:00 AM). I lead it every week in the sanctuary.
Plan now and schedule your life around Holy Week services.
Easter is always good news, but when we prepare—when we remember that the Cross comes before the Crown—Easter becomes ELECTRIC.
Will you be ready?
Open Letter from Detained Chinese Pastor
Pastor Wang Yi was detained by the Chinese government on December 9. Yesterday during my sermon, I read the following portions of a letter he wrote and instructed to be published in the event of his imprisonment. [The entire letter can be found here.]
On the basis of the teachings of the Bible and the mission of the gospel, I respect the authorities God has established in China. For God deposes kings and raises up kings. This is why I submit to the historical and institutional arrangements of God in China…. As a pastor, my disobedience is one part of the gospel commission. Christ’s great commission requires of us great disobedience. The goal of disobedience is not to change the world but to testify about another world.For the mission of the church is only to be the church and not to become a part of any secular institution. From a negative perspective, the church must separate itself from the world and keep itself from being institutionalized by the world. From a positive perspective, all acts of the church are attempts to prove to the world the real existence of another world. The Bible teaches us that, in all matters relating to the gospel and human conscience, we must obey God and not men. For this reason, spiritual disobedience and bodily suffering are both ways we testify to another eternal world and to another glorious King…. If God decides to use the persecution of this Communist regime against the church to help more Chinese people to despair of their futures, to lead them through a wilderness of spiritual disillusionment and through this to make them know Jesus, if through this he continues disciplining and building up his church, then I am joyfully willing to submit to God’s plans, for his plans are always benevolent and good. Precisely because none of my words and actions are directed toward seeking and hoping for societal and political transformation, I have no fear of any social or political power. For the Bible teaches us that God establishes governmental authorities in order to terrorize evildoers, not to terrorize doers of good. If believers in Jesus do no wrong then they should not be afraid of dark powers. Even though I am often weak, I firmly believe this is the promise of the gospel. It is what I’ve devoted all of my energy to. It is the good news that I am spreading throughout Chinese society. I also understand that this happens to be the very reason why the Communist regime is filled with fear at a church that is no longer afraid of it…. Those who lock me up will one day be locked up by angels. Those who interrogate me will finally be questioned and judged by Christ. When I think of this, the Lord fills me with a natural compassion and grief toward those who are attempting to and actively imprisoning me. Pray that the Lord would use me, that he would grant me patience and wisdom, that I might take the gospel to them. Separate me from my wife and children, ruin my reputation, destroy my life and my family — the authorities are capable of doing all of these things. However, no one in this world can force me to renounce my faith; no one can make me change my life; and no one can raise me from the dead…. I firmly believe that in carrying out spiritual disobedience, the Bible demands me to rely on the grace and resurrection power of Christ, that I must respect and not overstep two boundaries. The first boundary is that of the heart. Love toward the soul, and not hatred toward the body, is the motivation of spiritual disobedience. Transformation of the soul, and not the changing of circumstances, is the aim of spiritual disobedience. At any time, if external oppression and violence rob me of inner peace and endurance, so that my heart begins to breed hatred and bitterness toward those who persecute the church and abuse Christians, then spiritual disobedience fails at that point. The second boundary is that of behavior. The gospel demands that disobedience of faith must be non-violent. The mystery of the gospel lies in actively suffering, even being willing to endure unrighteous punishment, as a substitute for physical resistance. Peaceful disobedience is the result of love and forgiveness. The cross means being willing to suffer when one does not have to suffer. For Christ had limitless ability to fight back, yet he endured all of the humility and hurt. The way that Christ resisted the world that resisted him was by extending an olive branch of peace on the cross to the world that crucified him. I firmly believe that Christ has called me to carry out this faithful disobedience through a life of service, under this regime that opposes the gospel and persecutes the church. This is the means by which I preach the gospel, and it is the mystery of the gospel which I preach. The Lord’s servant,Wang Yi
Please read the whole thing. Wang Yi's wife was also detained; apparently they have children.Please pray for their release, safety, and strength. There were children at our church yesterday who heard me tell Wang Yi's story and have been concerned about it--invite your children to be praying too.
Here's a Clip of Pastor Yi Preaching
This is a 4 minute clip of a fiery sermon Pastor Yi previously preached.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWuv55YgKjY[/embed]
Real-Life 1984
This is a truly disturbing story in The New York Times about the Orwellian "re-education" camps the Chinese are forcing Uighurs into. (The Uighurs are ethnic Muslims.)
PRAY
I don't know why our lives are so easy, while other people are currently facing persecution. But I do know what we should do about it: pray.
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One More Year
One more year. We've been spared to see another year. Last Sunday, my wife and I knelt at the communion rail at our church and prayed and thanked the Lord for his provision over the previous twelve months. Another year wasn't promised to any of us, and yet we made it. We thanked God for all the cool stuff that had happened since Christmas Commitment Sunday last year, and all the blessings we received, and all the joys we experienced, and we were grateful. Thank you Jesus! We then prayed for God's blessing on our family and our work for the year to come. We asked for his favor on our lives and for him to give us strength for today and a bright hope for tomorrow.One more year.Amen.
I’ve written a very short whitepaper on a subject I care a lot about: communication.Click HERE to subscribe to my newsletter and I’ll send it to you for free:The Simple Technique Anyone Can Immediately Use To Become a Better Communicator.(If you are already a subscriber, drop me a line and I’ll send you the whitepaper.)
What This Picture Means to Me
From Tuesday evening through Wednesday afternoon, my website went down. I know you folks have been worried sick that the Russians got to me. Good news: I'm okay, and it appears we fixed the problem. The eagle will fly again.
Last night, we had a youth ministry volunteer vision dinner. I was really worried about it--would anybody show up, and if they did, would it even be worth it?We ended up having a great turnout and a great time, and we closed the evening by having folks circle up in small groups and pray for our students and our church. I took the photo above while folks were praying.I've been worried about taking over the leadership of our youth ministry this fall.
- Is the additional responsibility going to drive me into the ground? Will I be able to keep up my energy? Will this commitment hurt my family?
- Will anyone step up to help? Are we going to get buy-in from parents?
- Will any families show up at our kickoff? Will any students show up after that?
- Will any of this even work?
Seeing all those folks praying last night was a good reminder:Everything is going to be all right. We are so blessed.
P.S. Note to my Subscribers
I'm still working out the kinks to the newsletter I want to send out. Right now, you'll still receive an email when I post an article, and I'm still planning on blogging daily through the Gospel of Matthew. Stay tuned.How to subscribe:
I‘ve written a very short whitepaper on a subject I care a lot about communication.Click HERE to subscribe to my newsletter and I’ll send it to you for free:The Simple Technique Anyone Can Immediately Use To Become a Better Communicator.(If you are already a subscriber, drop me a line and I’ll send you the whitepaper.)
Look at What I Found This Morning
I hadn't been in my office for two weeks; when I walked in this morning this beautiful prayer kneeler was waiting for me.My friend and colleague Jake Porter made it for me and surprised me with it. I had no idea he was working on this; apparently he started earlier this summer, because he had some wood leftover from another project. (I'm particularly impressed with the Munger cross he cut out using a jigsaw.)What a thoughtful, beautiful gift.
All the Cool Kids are Meditating, Man
I was just listening to the Brian Koppelman interview on Tim Ferriss's?Tribe of Mentors podcast, when one of Koppelman's answers struck me. The?Tribe of Mentors podcast is billed as "short life advice from the best of the best," and in it Ferriss asks his guests a series of standard questions, in a much shorter format than on his more well-known?The?Tim Ferriss Show podcast. One of the standard questions (a really good one) is:In the last five years what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?Here is Brian Koppelman's answer (beginning at 10:52 in the podcast):
"I know many of Tim's guests say this, and the answer is: meditation. For me, I do transcendental meditation, and I do it every day for twenty minutes, two times...first when I wake up in the morning, and then around 3, or 4, or 5, or 6 in the afternoon. And what I have found is that doing this mediation--taking this time--has drastically decreased the physical manifestations of anxiety and it has given me far more clarity and far more peace."
Some quick thoughts:
- ?He's right: many of Tim Ferriss's guests on this podcast and on the?Tim Ferriss Show talk about meditation. These folks often tend to be Silicon Valley/Hollywood/Venture Capitalist types, and they often mention how meditation has been a helpful practice to them.
- Because these folks are Silicon Valley/Hollywood/Venture Capitalist types--"California" in mindset, if not location--their practice of mediation tends to be "spiritual and not religious" in a New Age vein.
- It shouldn't be surprising that spending time quieting the mind and the soul brings helpful benefits. This shouldn't surprise us because people have known this for literally thousands of years, in every culture that I know of.
- It's almost as if we were created a certain way, and certain practices--independent of time and place, across all cultures and centuries--just produce good things in people's lives....
- Maybe human nature isn't plastic; maybe wisdom is not making yourself what you want to be, but rather making yourself fit the world.
- If the same folks on Tim Ferriss's podcasts had kept saying "prayer" instead of "meditation," they wouldn't seem nearly as cool, would they? Prayer is boring; meditation is cool.
- We're a culture that's forgotten what we used to know, and so we grab various life-giving practices out of the heap, but because we've forgotten what we used to know (like the folks in the Foundation in the Isaac Asimov novels), we're not able to use them to their full benefit.
- I recently heard Robert Barron say something interesting about prayer:
"Please don't think of prayer as something that God needs: God doesn't need your prayer, doesn't need my prayer. It's not like we're in this sort of pagan thing, where 'unless I get this much done, God's not going to do something'--don't think of it that way; he's not a 'pasha' that we're trying to impress with our supplications--prayer is for you, prayer's good for you, it's not good for God. God loves it because it makes you better and happier. It's not for God's sake, it's for your sake."
- The difference between Christian prayer and meditation seems to me to lie primarily in what you believe about ultimate reality: meditation is about quieting your heart and mind so you can experience the inner peace that comes from becoming more in tune with Reality, whereas prayer in the way and name of Jesus is about a relationship with the Person behind all reality. In the Christian tradition (and Jewish tradition, for that matter), Reality is not impersonal at all.
- The unique insight of the gospel is that Reality is a Person, and he's made himself known to us in the manger.
- Christians believe that God is Love. That beautiful idea is popular, but think about it: love requires personhood--love cannot be impersonal. Meditation is a good thing, but I don't think it can lead to love in the same way that prayer can, because prayer is about coming to know the source of Love itself, and his name is the LORD.
Anyway, it just struck me that many of the world-class performers that Tim Ferriss has interviewed have mentioned mediation. (Though I don't think I've ever heard a single one of them mention prayer.)