What I've Learned So Far - Part 2

For the last five days Jeannie and I have been at a retreat in Delafield, Wisconsin called “Cedarly Pastor’s Retreat.” It has been a time of rest, reflection and a true Sabbath. It has been time without television, internet or cell phones. The focus has been getting quiet enough to listen to God rather than the usual one-sided conversations that we curiously call “prayer.” I have learned a great deal during this time that I believe, most of all, will impact me as a person but also as a pastor and leader. I’m sure it will take some time to process all that God has been teaching me through being quiet, but I wanted to share a “part 2” of some of the things that I have learned during the entire sabbatical.

Here are some more of the things that God has been teaching me during the whole sabbatical (again in random order):

· God knows what it will take to transform me completely and so for me to complain about His method is to set my own selfish ideas above His.
· God’s development of me is an ongoing process with words like “show” and “teach.” I must never be proud of my progress or judge someone else’s because I don’t know where they started or what they’ve gone through.
· Most of my prayers tend to focus on my desires and want God to accommodate those rather than using my prayer to place myself under His desires.
· Truly following and obeying God is never safe or easy, but I am increasingly becoming dissatisfied with any other alternative – it leaves me totally unfulfilled and guilty.
· I need to learn to be able to follow God on a step-by-step, “need to know” basis and not assume that I always need the big picture. Often, I just need to obey and listen for the next step.
· Going “deeper with God” is simply this: becoming more like Jesus Christ. God will do nothing more or nothing less than His expressed will to make us like Jesus.

I believe that the bottom line message that God has been repeating in numerous ways during the sabbatical is that I need to trust Him. Now on a casual reading you may respond with something like: “it took you twelve weeks of sabbatical to figure that out?!” But believe me, trust is no small thing and the ways that God has revealed that it is lacking in my life are astounding.
- Trust means it is OK to spend and hour just listening for a word from God when I have a whole list of unfinished tasks.
- Trust means that I can take more time to simply invest in being with people, even when an unfinished sermon sits on my desk.
- Trust means that I can press ahead with God’s kingdom agenda, even if everyone else isn’t totally on-board yet.
- Trust does mean that I acknowledge I can’t do it all and God never intended for me to think that I could.
That is just scratching the surface of some of the things God is teaching me about trust. I hope that, likewise, God has been impressing you with the same message – He is God and we are not!

I would love to hear what God is teaching you!

What I've Learned So Far

Since we arrived home from Europe I haven’t done much with the blog, but the first part of this week (6/30-7/6), I went on a three day personal retreat and did some reflecting about what I have learned in the first half of my sabbatical. I plan to continue to post on the blog, but no more beautiful pictures of Europe. I will be sharing what God is showing me through my prayers and reading and through the experiences of visiting different churches and from the pastor and wife retreat in Wisconsin that Jeannie and I will be attending July 13-18.

Here – in random reflections – are some of the things that God has been teaching me during the first part of the sabbatical:

· Being “in the Father” – intimacy with God is both subjective and objective. I experience it but it is also known to others by the fruit of the Spirit in my life.
· I should trust completely that God has placed me where He wants to use me and not compare my situation with others. I am convinced that my role in the big picture of First Baptist is to lead the church through transitions. The first was the transition of building and location. The next, and more difficult, is the transition to doing ministry intentional rather than just repeating activities year after year. Ultimately my role is to lead us to God’s agenda.
· I need to learn to manage my time better, especially focusing more on relationships. I want to be more like Jesus in the sense of being with people more.
· Fear is not God’s desire for me, nor is pretending to be courageous, but instead the genuine courage that comes from integrity of thought and action.
· To understand the ways of God and to saturate my life with Scripture, I need to memorize Scripture in a systematic way.
· I am inadequate in my own strength and nothing that I try to do in my own strength can change that. Rather, that awareness should drive me deeper into God.
· Worship is a dynamic – giving honor, praise, and glory to God but also being confronted by God and choosing to respond in obedience. I cannot honestly come before a holy God and remain unchanged.
· I tend to operate from an attitude of expecting to fail instead of expecting to succeed. This “spirit of fear” comes into my life whenever there is a lack of integrity. The area of fear and the area of the lack of integrity may not necessarily be related. It’s just that any lack of integrity in my life opens the door to fear – and it invades with a vengeance.
· I think way too much about myself and my needs, fears, worries, etc. and not near enough about others. Likewise, I can barely understand myself – motives, feelings – what makes me think I can understand others or judge them?
· I have not always allowed the hurts and disappointments in my life to become opportunities to bless those who have hurt me – which is little better than seeking revenge.
· We all have a tendency to identify our cultural form of Christianity as the “true” or “pure” form and yet every expression of the Christian faith is tied to culture and contains flaws and prejudices.
· I want to learn to be like Moses in that my first response to any problem is to fall on my face before God.

That’s just part of what I wrote down from my journal. I will share some more in the next posting.

Greater Love Has No Man...

John 15:13 says “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” On Wednesday our whole family went on a nine hour D-Day Normandy tour and it was, quite honestly, one of the most memorable and moving experiences I’ve ever had. Our group was small, only eight people plus the guide. We began our tour in the little village of Ste. Marie Eglise. It was a landing site for some paratroopers from the 101st Airborne division and it waws featured in the movie The Longest Day. Our guide, Julian, was from the south of England and was a wealth of knowledge about WWII and especially D-Day and the tactics that led up to it. We left the first site having a greater respect for paratroopers and how difficult their job was.
Our tour continued at a tiny village called Angoville-Au-Plain. In this town of only 43 people, two medics set up an aid station in the little church and even thought one had received a week of training and the other only one day of training, together they saved the lives of 80 wounded men and one child. In this church was the first place I saw a stained glass window with John 15:13.
Our tour then took us to Utah Beach where part of the invasion force landed on June 6, 1944. As the invasion unfolded, the troops landed in the wrong spot but that proved providential as they encountered the weakest opposition and less than 20 men were killed. At Utah Beach, the memorial also had John 15:13 inscribed.
At a site called Pointe du Hoc, we saw the remains of Nazi bunkers and machine gun nests and craters from the shells and bombs of 64 years ago. It was somewhat surreal. At Pointe du Hoc, the soldiers had to climb up sheer cliffs in 30 seconds or less while being shot at.
From Pointe du Hoc it was a short drive to Omaha Beach. It was at Omaha Beach that John 15:13the American invasion force paid the highest price in terms of lives lost. Out of a landing force of 34,000 at Omaha Beach, 1,700 were killed on the beach itself and another 2,500 lost their lives scaling the cliffs or taking the stronghold. Standing on that beach where so many lives were lost was quite an emotional experience for me but that was mild compared to when we arrived at the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach.
Even thought I do not personally know anyone buried there, a wave of emotion of gratitude and sorrow flooded over me. That peaked when we were able to meet 90-year-old Mike Fitch from South Carolina who was there to visit the graves of friends who died right beside him on June 6, 1944. He was a survivor of Omaha Beach and graciously spoke with us for a few minutes. It is hard to describe in words the feeling of seeing so many graves of people, over 9,000 in all, who died in such a short period of time—in a sense for me, to preserve the freedom I enjoy every day.
This experience has changed forever the way I see those who serve in the armed forces. I have always been appreciate and grateful, but after coming to Normandy, I will always see these events and people in a totally different light.
“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends,” What then is to be said of love that gives it’s life for someone it never even met? Incredible! The only thing greater is the love of Christ Himself.

Great Birthday, Great Father's Day

The posts to the blog are getting fewer and far between! As the last post said, I spent the week of June 9-13 attending the “Toolbox” conference at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. This organization was founded 25 years ago by John R.W. Stott as a way to help Christians understand and engage with the cure around them. Stott believed that all Christians should be in the Word and also in the world, seeking to transform the world through the Word. The conference was incredibly enlightening and I enjoyed making friends with people from England, Scotland, Ireland, America and even Sri Lanka.
Friday was my birthday and the conference group sang Happy Birthday and gave me a cake—they were all really nice and devoutly committed disciples. Many work in an environment where they are one of only a handful of Christians or they serve churches in a country where only 7-8% of the population attend church more than once a month. After the conference ended we celebrated my birthday at a great fish and chips restaurant and went to the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London. It is a 700 year old tradition of locking the castle that now houses the crown jewels.
Saturday was a travel day—taking the train to Paris. We arrived in the afternoon and explored the area around Notre Dame. Sunday was Father’s Day and it was one of the best ever for me because I got to spend time with each of my sons separately. Jonathan and I went out mid-morning and did some exploring and picture taking. We climbed to the top of the Arc de Triomphe for some cool pictures. We all had lunch at a Chinese restaurant together and since it was Father’s Day they brought a couple of special things for me and since they mainly spoke French, they kept pointing at me and saying “for you, for you.”
After lunch I got to spend time with David walking around and taking pictures. We went to the Place de Concorde (where Marie Antoinette lost her head), the Arc and the Eiffel Tower. We had a great time and joked around laughed a lot. Later in the day, I also got to spend some time with Matt watching one of the many soccer games on TV (in French of course). It was a great Father’s Day.
Yesterday we finally got to the top of the Eiffel Tower. We saved time and money by walking up the first two levels (680 steps) and all agreed that it would have been worth the money to ride the elevator all the way. Before we left this morning we walked in one more huge, old church. I noticed something that I’d seen several times before, but this time it struck me as odd. They want you to pay to light a candle signifying a prayer (in Europe you pay for almost everything, even to use the bathroom). It occurred to me, I don’t need to pay to pray. Because of what Jesus did on the cross, I can talk to God anytime—for free. Thank God for the freedom to pray 24/7.

Farewell to London

Steve has been in a conference all week at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity and has enjoyed learning a lot about how we are Christians need to engage our culture and bring the light of Christ to a dark world. It has been very practical and he is excited about bringing back new ideas and applications to FBC Siloam. He gets through at 3 pm today and since it is his birthday, we will go wherever he wants and eat a special dinner. Then at 10 pm tonight we have tickets to something called the "Ceremony of the Keys" at the Tower of London. This has been going on every night for 700 years and it involves the "Beefeater" guards from the tower locking up the Crown Jewels and the Tower for the night in a special ceremony.
I think the three boys have had a great week in London together. We've done some things together and a few apart: Kensington Palace (Jeannie), the London Aquarium, Tower of London, London Movie Museum, Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, Big Ben, Westminster, Houses of Parliament, and then lots of pictures of all that and exploring bookstores and their favorite sports stores (looking for soccer "football" jerseys) and other cool London clothes.
One of the highlights of this week was the Sunday service at Hillsong London (see picture). This is a contemporary church that meets on Sundays in the Dominion Theatre (which during the rest of the week has the show "Queen"). The boys have loved Hillsong United and Hillsong music for a long time and it was great to be in this church and worship together. Matt was down front with all the kids jumping up and down. Steve and I were back a few rows with some of the older swaying, clapping, hand-raising folks. The music was awesome and the preacher was good (not as good as someone I know) and it was great to worship together. Another great experience happened on Thursday when I came out of St. Martins-in-the-Field church by Trafalgar Square. I heard Christian music and walked across the street to the square and found a group of Asian Christians singing praise songs together. What a joy to join with a group of strangers and sing "How Great is our God" in the very heart of London.
Tomorrow we head to Paris for three days and then to the Normandy area for two days in order to explore World War II sites. Then it is back to London for a couple of days and we fly home on June 22. We are having a great time but Steve and I in particular are ready to get back to the USA and specifically, back to Siloam Springs and the best church in the world!

What's a Minster?

Before we left Scotland, Matt and I decided we had to try a native Scottish dish called “haggis.” It is a sausage of sorts that contains several things you really don’t want to think about when you are eating it. So the morning we were leaving Edinburgh, Matt and I went out for breakfast and had some haggis. Here’s a little travel advisory: if you come to Scotland, skip the haggis! Oh well, it was fun to try it.
When we left Scotland we travelled to the town of York. York has been around since a Roman settlement in 300 AD and then the Vikings were there a few hundred years later. Ultimately, it became a northern capital of England in their battles against Scotland. It has great architecture, old walls you can walk on around the city, and an area called the “Shambles” with buildings right out of a Dickens tale. The centerpiece of York is the HUGE church called the York Minster. You may wonder, “what’s a minster?” According to the people at the church, minster means a “missionary sending center.” The York Minster was for many years the center of the Protestant Reformation in England under Henry VIII. Henry acted for the wrong reasons, but God used those circumstances to spread the gospel in England and Scotland and ultimately to America.
When I learned what a “minster” was, I thought: isn’t that what every church needs to be—a missionary sending center with a red-hot passion for seeing lost people come to know Jesus.
Starting Monday, I will be attending the Toolbox Conference at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity and FBC will be starting the week of Mission Siloam. As we pray for God to use Mission Siloam to enlarge His kingdom, please pray that God will use this conference to help me enlarge my heart for a lost world.
On a lighter note, we toured Hampton Court Palace outside of London which was the home of Henry VIII. This is an enormous palace with “drawing rooms” and “withdrawing rooms!” and even closets that were twice as big as our hotel room. Henry had way too much money to spend and apparently was a legend in his own mind!

Following Great Examples

A lot has happened since my last posting. Jeannie and I finished out our anniversary trip to Austria by going to Salzburg. Salzburg is a beautiful city with over 70 churches – most of them Roman Catholic because the city was ruled by archbishops for hundreds of years. But the main attraction to us was seeing the scenes from the movie The Sound of Music (see pictures). We went on a Sound of Music tour that allowed us to see many of the places that were used in the movie and then when we got back to Oxford we rented the movie and watched it again. We had a great time in Salzburg and seeing the churches and artifacts prompted more questions about the difference between form and function in Christianity. All of these beautiful but empty churches are proof that what a church does is infinitely more important than how they do it and if we get stuck thinking there is only one way to worship and do church, we will end up being a museum not a church.

When we returned to Oxford, we were excited that David and Matt were coming soon. Jeannie and I always enjoy time to ourselves, but both of us found ourselves really missing the boys after this long! I spent a couple of days doing some research at the world famous Bodleian library and we prepared to say good-bye to Oxford. We very much enjoyed our time in Oxford. We enjoyed participating in the life of the college and we enjoyed the relaxed pace of our days that allowed us time to read and listen to the Lord.

On Saturday May 31, we took a train to Edinburgh, Scotland and began a time of exploring new places with David and Matt. We are staying in an apartment right next to Edinburgh Castle – you can actually see the castle out of our window! There are a lot of castles in Scotland and we have visited three so far. The most elaborate was Edinburgh Castle that is rich in history of Scotland and all of Great Britain. We also visited a place called Stirling Castle. It is located in a small community near Edinburgh and is most well known for being the place where William Wallace defeated the English in 1297. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Braveheart” you know the story of William Wallace. We watched the movie Sunday evening and then the next day went to the very place where William Wallace lived and fought. It was pretty cool!

The other castle we visited is in a place called Doune. It is a remote little village and the only reason we knew about this castle was it was the one used in the movie, “Monte Python and the Holy Grail.” We had a great time laughing about scenes from the movie and the people at the castle even loaned us coconuts and a helmet like the black knight so we could do some fun movies and pictures.

As much fun as it was to visit sites of history and movie significance, I was impressed by the example of integrity and courage in two men of Scotland: William Wallace and John Knox. Both were men of great integrity and courage. It was said of John Knox after he died, “there lies a man who had no fear of any man.” Of course, William Wallace’s nickname was “Braveheart.” But the thing that clinched these impressions for me was finding out the name Abbott comes from the Scottish clan of McNab whose motto was “let all fear be absent.” May that be true of all of us as we follow God’s will.