Less stuff.

Less to think about.

Less to do.

Saint Benedict wrote his Rule over 1,500 years ago, yet it is still followed by many today. Does it have anything to say to us familial suburbanites in 2015 hurry busy America?

Have you ever been to a retreat center and stayed in one of those rooms with nothing but a desk, lamp, and bed? There’s just something about simple surroundings that fosters peace and spiritual openness, while the atmosphere of “stuff” serves as a spiritual distraction.

“Prefer nothing whatever to Christ,” Benedict advises, and “let peace be your quest and aim.”

Centering life on Christ and seeking this peace form the foundation of simplicity and frame five practices from Benedict’s Rule:

• Moderation
• Balance and Flexibility
• Attending to the Present Moment
• Generosity of Spirit
• Time with God

“These practices guide our relationship with possessions, with God, and with others to form a framework for living simply.” -Rev. Dr. Jane Tomaine

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria

• Our desire for control and power
• Our desire for affection, esteem, and approval
• Our desire for security and survival

At first, this list seems like utter insanity and against everything in us, against our nature.

But is it?

Or is it utter sanity?

To me, it is nothing but maddening and eventually dismantling to expend vast amounts of energy on these things that the God of the universe owns and/or promises to give us Himself.

As I journey toward God, I find myself needing less and less to go my way in order to have a good day (hey, that rhymed!).

Time alone with Jesus is about my only requirement these days for a complete day. Without a couple hours of that, I start to get a little cranky. Reminds me naturally of Ace Ventura in “When Nature Calls” when he said, “If I don’t get to practice my mantra, I tend to get a little–CRANKY.”

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria

Think about it.

But not too much.

How much of our limited energy and capacity is spent toward something so futile? We can’t possibly know all the thoughts in someone’s mind. Heck, do we even understand our own thinking? And I know whenever I predict what someone is or was thinking, especially in regard to me, I’m usually wrong anyway. A mind reader I shall never be.

I’ve thought for a while how we are groomed to judge others in our culture here. In between sets at the gym, I walk around the magazine rack perusing the train wreck of glossy papers stapled together. So what if Bruce Jenner is cross dressing and possibly becoming a woman? What good does it do me or the world to take time speculating on his (her?) life?? Not only have I never met these people being gossiped about, I don’t even know anyone who knows them. I know nothing about them, their family, their childhood. So we’re not conditioned to love others as much as to judge them on the most minuscule of information. It’s like an evil game show: “OK, you know how it works, we’re gonna flash one sentence this person said, or one outfit they wore one day, and YOU judge their entire life based on that information! Let’s get started!!!”

How awful and ugly.

As Christians, are we called to love or to judge?

What’s a practical step we can take to become more loving? Well, we can turn our fruitless and impossible predictive thoughts into prayers for that person. Typically this changes my demeanor immediately. Pray for their good. For them to seek God with all their heart, and your judgement will most likely fade into “Stupid Land” where it belongs.

Look people, let’s be real, we can in no way at all know what has gone into and shaped a person over the journey that is their lifetime and has brought them to what they are thinking right now–even if we do know what they are thinking right now.

It’s best for us to pray for others to our God who does know everything in their heads, and to keep our thinking about thinking to our own thinking, which I think will do us well.

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria

The aim of God for humanity is healthy relationship with Himself. And being the loving Initiator of relationship that He is, God provided the means for that relationship–Jesus. All of history led up to and radiates out from that point–the consummation of Jesus Christ as eternal high priest.

In referring to the Old testament and proclaiming Jesus as a “priest forever,” the author of Hebrews is saying that God’s new covenant way of relating to people has replaced the old and will never be altered. It continues in this paradigm forever without change. “Consequently, Hebrews’ view of reality, grounded in the eternal high priesthood of the Son of God, offers us lasting stability for life,” says George Guthrie in his commentary on this passage.

For us today, chances are, we are not tempted to relate to God via Levitical priests or goat sacrifices. But what false, non-God-given ways do we relate to God? What do we need to turn from in order to relate rightly with YHWH? What paradigm do we still cling to that needs to shift in order to be in healthy relationship with our Creator? For some, maybe you need to repent of reading your Bible or going to church in order to be close to God. Maybe you need to turn from relating to God as wrathful, eager-to-punish task master since that is not the truth revealed by Jesus. For others, you need to stop running yourself ragged serving God, ministering to people, doing good deeds for the purpose of intimacy with God. For that comes only through a humble clinging to the one and only mediator between God and humans–our eternal High Priest.

Perfection, God’s desired end of healthy relationship with Him, comes through Jesus Christ, our means, guarantor, saver complete, and eternal intercessor. The paradigm for relationship with God shifted cosmically with Jesus, and was set never to shift again.

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria

In the Kingdom of God, a person is good in relation to how much of God’s love is flowing through their heart.

A good person is humble. In fact, the greatest person in the kingdom of God, Jesus tells us, is the one who is the most humble and most serving of all others.  A humble person thinks of others more than themselves. A humble person is not obsessed with them self.

A good person is forgiving. Always. They have a default setting of forgiveness. They harbor no unforgiveness in their heart.

A good person shows mercy, just as our heavenly Father is merciful.

So we see from Jesus of Nazareth, the human, perfect, and final revelation of who God is, that what makes for a good person is one with God’s love flowing through their heart to the point of humility, forgiveness, and mercy. One who lives agape.

I was explaining to Gaby and Zayra this week that what makes a person good is how much love is in their heart. That’s it. That’s how God defines a good person, and let no one else tell you differently. Already I see their little identities being challenged by this ultra retarded culture we live in. The competing voices of idiocy yelling at them (and all of us) about what makes for a good or “valuable” person.

Have you seen the commercial where a small group of women are asked to look at side by side pictures of the same guy standing in the same place, but by two different cars, and they’re asked which guy is hotter? Obviously the one where he’s standing by the big red truck, not the little silver car. Are you serious??? This is what we deem worthy of promoting??? God help us. (And I’m not just saying this because I drive a silver car)

Let’s keep filling our children, and ourselves, with God’s truth of who we are in Him, and that God is the ONLY authority on defining us! That is freedom.

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria

How do we know if these things are for real, genuine, authentic, godly? We test to see if they are in accordance with God’s word, of course. But sometimes people speak the truth and may even technically be doctrinally sound. Then what? I’ve run into this. Twisting truth and Scripture and God’s will.

Speaking with a couple fellow travelers this week, we talked about the horrendous wake that is left from a ministry gone awry. It got me thinking about tests to make sure you’re staying on track–for God, and not for self.

So here’s some thoughts that seem good to test these meditations against before sending them out. These can be for organizations, people…yourself:

• Does it inspire you to love God more? – Joy and inner peace
• Does it fuel your love for others? – compassion
• Does it build a healthier love of self – soul care
• Does it bring glory to God? In other words, does it promote and draw attention to Jesus or yourself?
• Does it draw you more toward God or away from God?

Many have spoken accurately according to the Bible and failed every above test.

I’d love to hear from you if you have more thoughts on this…

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria

But this idea that purity of heart is to be single-minded seems to be a much more authentic, rich, and accurate description does it not? To be centered on a single focus is purity, and it permeates all of life the more concentrated it is. You can still screw up and be pure in heart.

If the focus of your life is loving God, truly, seriously, then it will radiate out through your life and affect the way you live and love. The more and more you become motivated solely by the love of God, the more compassionate, thoughtful, patient, joyful, peaceful faithful, self-controlled person you will become. You will stumble, no doubt, but you will get back up for love of God.

Remember, a double-minded person is unstable in all their ways, James 1:8 tells us. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do as it says in the NLT. To have a split focus is horrendous and unhealthy. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there as you meander through life not knowing what you want.

Imagine how nice it would be to know what you want and to be singularly focused on that. What if all you really deeply cared about was loving God? That nothing moved you in life more than being close to Jesus and in union with the Holy Spirit. Think of how freeing it would be. How unoffended you’d be at so much the world throws at you because you’re so lasered in on loving God and living in His unconditional love of you in every aspect of life. Perhaps this is a little glimpse into what Jesus had in mind when He proclaimed, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Because they are singly focused on seeing Him everywhere, in everything, and in every person. Crap still hits the fan, but you see God even in the midst of the crapstorm. Your eyes stay on Jesus no matter what is happening around you or to you.

Purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Which must mean that when your heart is pure, you will be single-minded. To purify your heart is to tunnel your vision down to the one thing needed–loving God via paying attention to Him at all times.

Today I rewrote my life mission statement as follows:

To be single-mindedly focused on the present moment, listening for God and what He may be offering in it.

So my old one, if anyone needs one and wants to take it, was:

To be single-mindedly focused on God and doing His will in everything, distracted by nothing.

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria

Jesus is the way to nearness with God. For Jesus has gone and been where no human has gone and been. He has accomplished what no human has or can accomplish. What no system can accomplish.

The old way has been annulled. Jesus is the law, priest forever, and the temple.

Seeking God through any other means is futile, whether we know it or not. If you’re seeking God through means other than the One He provided to connect you directly to Him, then you are wasting your time and spinning your wheels in weak, useless, ineffective efforts.

It’s kinda like if you have close friends who live in Japan, and because they want to see and be with you all the time, they buy you a “Forever” plane ticket (it’s like a forever stamp, get it?), so that you can come out to visit any time you want. But instead of using this generous means they provided, you elect to take the much more efficient and effective route of hitchhiking to California and swimming across the Pacific.

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria