Lifo Suction!

Sunday, we began a teaching series at the Springs gatherings on Sundays.  The thought behind the teaching was that everyone has certain things and certain people that drains them dry.  If we are going to live the "abundant life" that Jesus seemed to promise, how can we keep from allowing those things and those people to suck the life out of us.

I'm not sure that I ever thought I'd hear myself say "suck" so much in church.  My mom didn't even like it when I said it growing up.  You know...it was one of those words that floated somewhere between profanity and socially acceptable words.  Sorry Mom, if this grates on you.

Cameron's teaching on Sunday was called "Schedule Therapy: Giving God Control of Your Schedule Before It Controls You" and the need that we all have to live our lives with space.  It's easy for all of us to cram something into every minute of free time during the day and during the week.  If we are going to experience the life God wants for us, we can't allow our schedules to suck the life out of us.

I will be teaching at our next gathering and my teaching is called "Family Makeover: Becoming a Family of Life-Givers instead of Life-Suckers."  Our competency focus for the day will be patience.  We believe that our family members have the ability to suck the life out of us, just like anyone else.  The problem here is that they don't leave!  For better or worse, our families are our families.  Except in extreme cases, our family sticks in their with us, and we are supposed to stick in there with them.  What happens, though, when our well-meaning family begins to suck the life out of me?  What happens when they drain me emotionally, physically or financially?  We can't just sweep it under the rug, can we?

Check out our creed  for our core virtue of patience:

I take a long time to overheat and endure patiently under the unavoidable pressures of life.

Is that true of you?  It's not always true of me...especially with my family.  Proverbs 14:29 says,

"Slowness to anger makes for deep understanding;

a quick-tempered person stockpiles stupidity."

May this be true of me.  Most of the time, I am a joyful person.  I find a lot of funny and fun my life, both with me and with others.  I may not always look like I am angry on the outside, but it often finds a comfortable place to hang out right beneath the surface of my life.  I have had patience issues in the past, but God has been building in me His patience, which I hope is more evident to those who spend the most time with me!

I'm looking for some of you to partner with me as I prepare my teaching for January 18.  If you have any thoughts, ideas, stories, etc. pertaining to patience with family members, please let me know.  You can either post here, or you can email me.  Either way is fine.

Okay, Okay...

Okay, everyone should be caught up at least in the readings for Tangible Kingdom.  Hopefully some of you are past chapter 9 and may have even finished the book.  Way to go cubsfan for finishing in a sprint!  I'm going to be posting more regularly regarding the book through the end.  There are a couple of days when I'll probably cover more than one chapter also.  You'll understand why as you read through the back half of the book.  

Colorado was great.  Snyder was also good.  Now we are back home...3/4 of us.  We leave tomorrow to go to Arlington to see the Rangers play the White Sox...oh and also to pick up Garin!  After Monday, we should all be back together and here for the rest of the summer.  It's been a crazy few weeks.  At the SignShop, we landed a big job that will be taking a lot of my time through July, and the Springs is all about getting students off to camp on Monday and an Astros game next weekend and a baptism celebration the next.  Then we hit August!  Wow!

I hope some of you are planning on going to the game with us next weekend - July 20.  We are going right after the gathering at the Y.  We have about 23 tickets left for people to purchase, so you can email me if you want to go with us.  They are playing the 1st place Cubs, so it should be fun.

Sorry for the delay in posts, but the next one will be Chapter 10 from TK, so I'll catch you then.

It's been a crazy back half...

Eat This Book has been set aside for a couple of days.  After a trip to my friend's hometown for her father's memorial service, a mad rush of gathering students for camp this summer, preparing a message for Sunday and working more at the Sign Shop than I would like to this week, I'm not going to be able to read enough of the book to post for today, so I thought I'd just let you into my brain a little today.

This Sunday I will be talking about "Starting Spiritual Conversations with Your Kids."  It's part two of our series of family-based messages called Starter Homes.  One thing I've realized over the past 10 days or so is that having spiritual conversations means something very different for different parents.  I really want to encourage parents to talk to their kids about spiritual things and not rely on someone else, but a lot of parents don't even have conversations with their kids, so the thought of having spiritual conversations scares them to death.  

I had a great conversation last night with a couple at our Table last night.  There were only the four of us, and the conversation was good.  They are in their twenties (barely!) and have a 2 year old son.  We talked about spiritual conversations with our parents.  I knew that Sarah had grown up in a family that talked about God and their faith regularly, so I wanted to pick her brain a little.  As we talked it became clear that having spiritual conversations isn't something that you can just plan.  What I mean is that, just as with any conversation, good conversation with your kids comes from cultivating an environment for conversation, honesty and self-disclosure.  

We discussed the value of parents being authentic and sharing mistakes and struggles with their kids.  Sarah said, "Perfection isn't approachable," and I totally agree with that.  The fact is that none of us are perfect.  As the church at large, we have entered into what might be called a "grace era."  Most contemporary churches today understand the value of accepting people right where they are.  They also understand the value of being real - pastors that share their struggles and their doubts and their fears.  However, I'm not so sure that this has translated into our homes.  Are we, as parents, willing to let our kids into our doubts, our fears and our failures?  Should we?  Can we?

If you get this today, would you be willing to share with me some of the ways that you talked about following-Christ with your parents?  Or if you didn't, what do you wish you could have talked to your parents about?  What could they have done to make it easier for you to talk to them about spiritual issues?  Also, what are you implementing in your family to help with the conversations with your kids?  Anyone?  Anyone?

Priority of Time v. Time Management

Yesterday, my message was entitled Marginal Time :: Creating Space in a Crowded Schedule.  As I was planning out the message over the past couple of weeks, one thing that struck me is not that we need to learn how to manage our time better, but how to prioritize our time better.  All of the tools to help us manage our time better will do us absolutely no good, unless we are better "prioritizers" of the time we've been given.  If I tell you I don't have time to go to the mall this afternoon, then it's because going to the mall is not high enough on my priority list to go.  If I come to your birthday party, then I discerned that your birthday party ranked higher during the hours of 5-8 on that day than anything else in my world at that time.

I once heard a teacher say, "If Satan can't make you bad, he'll make you busy."  I'm not sure Satan is the one making me busy all the time, but I can allow busyness to consume me if I'm not careful, thus ruining my effectiveness for kingdom purposes.  If I practice the core Christian practice of "giving away my time" then I must have time to give, and if I really belief that "everything I am or own belongs to God" then that includes my time as well.  These priorities ought to shape my calendar.

If you came yesterday looking for a quick fix solution to your calendar problems, I am sorry if you walked away disappointed.  My intention was to go beyond the surface quick fixes (that don't seem to really work anyway) and get to the root issue of managing time - How did God set up our time and why does it matter that we pay attention to it?

If you weren't at the Y for the message, I encourage you to stop reading and listen here.  When you are finished come back and join the discussion.

The ancient Hebrews constructed their days according to a divine day-timer.  Their days began at sundown, not sun up.  They placed significance on what you and I might call the "end of the day."  For them it was the first part of the day, and for the Hebrews, "first" always carried a sense of sacredness to it.  In the evenings they would share a meal together with family and friends and enjoy good conversation over the course of the evening.  Their bodies were adjusted to the natural light patterns and they would begin to "shut down" after the sun set.  Did you know we actually have a light-sensitive gland in our brain that tells our bodies when it's time to shut down?  After a good nights rest, they would wake up ready to finish the day strong.

You may be asking what the big deal is about this, so let's dig a little.  Why I believe it's so important to understand this is because we either believe that the time between our work and our sleep is sacred or left-overs.  If you view it asleft-overs then it's easy to check out on your family or waste it away everyday going from event to event.  If you view it as sacred, then you will protect that time rigorously and save it for family and friends.  It's a priority issue not a management issue.

Our goal as Christ-followers is to replace our priorities with God's priorities over the course of time.  Our journey on this earth is full of small priority shifts that slowly transform us into His likeness.  When our priorities are right, then our "time management" begins to take care of itself.

So, if you buy into what I'm saying about the sacredness of the after-work hours, primarily between sundown and bedtime, what will look different about your schedule?  You tell me?  I have some ideas, but I'd really like to hear from some of you that have made the transition and are seeing positive strides in your scheduling as a family.  Here is one big one to get you started, though:

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University released a study in 2005 indicating benefits of family dinners.  Here are 10 benefits they found in kids regarding family dinners.

The survey notes 10 positive trends for teens who eat dinner often with their families:

• Less likely to smoke cigarettes
• Less likely to drink alcohol
• Less likely to try marijuana
• Less likely to have friends who use illicit drugs
• Less likely to have friends who abuse prescription drugs
• More likely to get mostly A's and B's at school
• More likely to say they would confide in one or both parents about a serious problem
• More likely to report that their parents are very proud of them
• More likely to report lower levels of stress and tension at home
• More likely to talk to their families during dinner and have the TV off during the meal

Those findings come from comparing teens who have five or more family dinners per week with those who have three or fewer weekly family dinners. (In the 2006 release, findings weren't any different.)

Because of our belief in the sacredness of evenings, coupled with our learnings from this report and others like it, we have set aside our evening for family dinners.  It's easy for us right now, but we are setting precedent for years to come that our family table is central.  Now we may share family meals with friends and/or family, but it's very high on our priority list.

So...let's hear some of your opinions and thoughts on the sacredness of our after-work, after-school times?  How do you demonstrate this in your family.