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Lessons from Failure

One of the most interesting confluences of the good purposes of God intersecting with the evil plans of man is the lessons that can be gained from failure. And when I say failure, I mean failure in the sense of disobedience to God. This may come in the form of lust, pride, lying (shading the truth), gossip, jealousy, selfishness, etc. I try to make it a habit to write down lessons I learn when God grants me grace to return to my senses. Here are some of the lessons I have learned:

1. Moving from godly, Christ centered thinking to pure sin and fleshly indulgence does not take very long. My gut instinct would think that if I was meditating on the sacrificial love of Christ and being blown away by his love that this picture of Christ would sustain me for a long period of time. It is my experience that the power of the flesh can creep in within minutes and steel away this perspective if I am not actively guarding against it.
2. A warning sign for a drifting heart is idleness and boredom. The way overused phrase, “an idle heart is the devil’s workshop” is not overused for no reason. It seems to me that boredom stems from being distant from spiritual reality. No solider is bored in battle. Since we are all in a battle (for purity, for souls) boredom is a sign that we have lost touch with reality.
3. A second warning sign of the impending danger of sin is succumbing to “small” sins. The sin of an undisciplined mind will quickly spiral into greater sin if not repented of. The sin of gossip will progress into hatred, church splits, etc. The sin of pride and selfishness will progress into marital tension, bitter arguments and divorce. Not caring about sin that God brings to mind seers the conscious and kills godliness
4. Not believing that God’s way is the best way is at the heart of every failure. Failure to acknowledge that my sin is shaking my fist at God’s expressed good plan for my life makes sin seem innocuous when it fact it is obstinate disobedience. The heart doesn’t have to shake the fist at God in order for the action to be perceived as outright rebellion.
5. Bible Reading does not insure successful sin-free living. Bible reading that seeks to make Jesus the treasure in your life does insure sin free living
6. Not asking for Jesus’ help guarantees failure. Pride kills spiritual progress since at the heart of sin is an unwillingness to surrender to Jesus and admit inferiority.
7. A focus on performance rather that Jesus guarantees failure. Outward indicators of success are incredibly attractive for me. I love to look at what I have accomplished externally and totally ignore the heart issues.
8. History of success breeds spiritual pride and makes the soul lazy. Take heed, lest I fall.
9. One of the best lessons that comes out of failure is learning that at any moment life can spin out of my control reminding me that I was never in control.
10. When I have sinned, normal life decisions are so difficult to make and there is virtually no assurance that God is with me when I fail.
11. The gross feeling that is inside of me when I sin lasts for days and weeks. It is not worth the momentary reward it offers. Holiness is built like blocks. Sin knocks the tower over and I have to rebuild it again.
12. Depression is linked with disobedience.
13. Distance from Jesus dries out the kindling of the flesh so that the slightest spark ignites evil desires. It seems to me that the strongest temptations are at the tail end of a spiritual dry spell.

Lessons from Sickness

Being a parent of four young boys has its challenges. One of those challenges is staying healthy. Our kids are walking petri dishes. There are definitely lessons to be learned from sickness. Here is what the Lord is teaching me.

1. Physical weakness is a reminder of spiritual weakness. I think almost every physical reality has a spiritual counterpart (it’s almost as if someone designed it that way). Being physically sick is a good reminder of what it is like to be spiritually sick. Here are some things that characterize sickness: Response time is slow. Alertness is way down. Energy down; lethargy up. Overly sensitive to stimuli. Easily annoyed. Can only care for self.
2. Physical weakness is a reminder of my dependence on Jesus. I always need Jesus, but when I my back is up against the wall and I can do nothing to fix myself, it is a reminder of how frail and weak and needy and dependent I am. That is exactly how I should feel always.
3. Physical weakness is very telling of the true condition of my heart. It is easy to be nice to my family when it is convenient and comfortable and I feel good. But when I am grumpy and hurt and am low on energy, my true character comes out. What am i willing to do for others when it is not easy? How eager am I to serve when it costs me much? The greater the pressure, the more I need to lean on Christ.
4. Physical weakness makes me long for heaven. Whenever I feel sick it is a healthy reminder that it is only going to get worse. As I age, the weakness grows. There is not much to look forward to in this regard. This might be incredibly depressing if it were not for the promise of heaven and being with Jesus. Weakness makes me realize I am living for another world and not this world.

Lessons from Parenting

A popular contemporary Christian song goes like this:

Lord I want to be just like you
‘cause he wants to be just like me
I want to be a holy example for his
innocent eyes to see (learning from the father)
Help me be a living Bible,
Lord that my little boy can read
I wanna be just like you
‘cause he wants to be like me

This perfectly encapsulates the responsibility I feel as a parent to show my boys the love of Christ. I cannot help but wonder what kind of meaning I am infusing into the word “father” by my example. What mental image is being poured into that all important vocabulary word by my actions? Oh, the power of godly father upon his kids. Lord I beg of you now to break into my life and reveal areas of weakness in my life. Cause me to be the godly man that I must be to show my kids the beauty and joy of following You. I want my kids to know how attractive and wholy other You are. Help me to be the kind of dad that sacrificially, intentionally loves his kids, and cause my kids to love me despite my weakness and sinfulness.

Below are parenting principles as God impresses them on my heart.

1. Don’t appeal to pride for obedience. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy’s Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity – that is, by Pride.
2. Don’t let selfishness dictate discipline. Inconvenience to self is not a reason to discipline. Is the heart sinful when your child is inconveniencing you? Is your anger in proportion to the degree to which you are inconvenienced?
3. Create an attitude of dependency and receiving. The opposite of appealing to pride is appealing to our sense of dependency. The best way to practically do this is to pray and ask Jesus to help us in our weakness.
4. Punish with consistent forms: Don’t capitalize on bad behavior to punish with unlikable tasks. Examples of this might be, Caleb doesn’t like to get ready for bed. It is getting late and parents are dreading putting him to bed because it means fighting the will. Caleb acts up and disobeys. Mom and Dad’s punishment is you now have to “go to bed.” The root problem with this kind of parenting is confusing consequences for sin with lame things in life. The child may reason (and rightly so because he is being trained this way), If I am bad, the consequence I will receive is exactly what is going to happen anyway, even if I am good. Caleb will eventually deduce that me sending him to bed is my laziness in discipline trying to take shortcuts by killing two birds with one stone.
5. Monitor with dependent vigilance what parental techniques are reaching the heart (i.e. when does it look like my kids are really listening). Monitor the environments that these rare opportunities present themselves and then work like crazy to reproduce them.
6. Anger is a sure fire way of closing down communication channels and addressing the heart. Anger can be effective at modifying behavior, which is why it is so dangerous as a parent. It is so important to monitor the heart.
7. Children are not impressed with daddy’s accomplishments. Children are impressed when daddy cares for his kids. It is so refreshing that my kids don’t care what I do. They only care that I love them. Incredible. I wish I were more like them.
8. Monitoring friends is a crucial role as a parent. Intervention seems to be most important when my kids look up to and respect someone with ungodly character. Interaction with ungodliness is inevitable and necessary. However, when my kids begin respecting someone who is ungodly, that is when I must ring the alarm!