10.05.19 - week 23
on fake it til you make it
better to be lowly and have a servant than to play the great man and lack bread.
proverbs 12.9 –
our culture rewards seeming a certain way over being a certain way. take it from someone who has been caricatured a bit, (some of us) have reached a point where peoples ‘persona’ is more real than their flesh + blood.
meaning, many people know and perceive your online self as the reality by which your real life self should be considered. and so people live for it. cultivate it endlessly. spend money they don’t have to pick apples they don’t want so they can post a picture that conveys ‘happy family.’ this tendency isn’t new, it’s just that social media is a perfectly designed world to tempt us towards embellishment of reality.
the point of the proverb is worth pondering. what would happen in your life if all effort went towards being, and almost none towards seeming.
KG Korner
(a few wise words from lady kristen macdonald)
It began probably a month ago, we were two months into our new adventure and Felicity was feeling it, especially when she went to church. So much so that ‘church’ would get brought up in some form on Saturday and she would say out loud multiple times ‘no cryin!’ You see, the first two weeks at church she shed all the tears but the dear people in the nursery decided they wanted my little girl to make it through the service still in nursery. And so I would tell her before we got there, you don’t need to cry and I may have bribed her with a donut. But it never fails… even though now she can make it through church class without crying whenever church is brought up she says ‘no cryin!’
At first I thought it was cute. Then it came to me: she is preaching to herself! And it reminded me of what I’ve heard many times before: we are the most powerful preacher to ourselves.
So I come to the question again, what are you preaching to yourself daily? Although tears are healthy and good some of us need to take Felicity’s advice and “not cry today.” Yes there can be hard things that we have walked through or are currently walking through but my whole day doesn’t have to be full of tears. As I read God’s Word this morning I was reminded of this real good three word sermon… ‘Hope in God.’ If you want to add a few more words that are helpful to this particular sermon (I mean psalm) “for I shall again praise him, my salvation (and my God.) psalm 42:5 & 11.
This psalm recounts the desperation of life when you are clinging for hope and the thing I love about it is that it’s a short sermon but a daily needed sermon. The world is screaming at us to hope in our kids, in our bank account, in our marriage, in our friendships, in our zipcode, in our occupation and yet time and time again those disappoint us and somehow we are surprised when they do. Then the psalmist instructs us to praise Him because of who He is. We don’t have to wait til things are good again or life looks as though we are an ‘influencer on instagram’ - we can praise him in it. You can praise him before, during and after the thing you are walking through; but it’s a choice for me and you every single day.
I think if we take a second to think to ourselves that we have salvation in God who WON’T disappoint us - God who sent his only Son to die a cruel death on a cross for our sin and then rose on the third day to conquer death, that’s reason enough to praise!!!! There is hope EVERY SINGLE DAY because of that. You don’t have to practice the sermon over and over or be nervous to proclaim it to hundreds of people, the most important person you preach to today is yourself : “Hope in God, for you shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”
Cup of Leadership
remember when you were in high school and you would stare at the clock during physics? as if you could push the hands or digital digits (depending on your age J) forward by sheer force of will?
you know when you are trying to lose weight the worst thing you can do is weigh yourself twice a day, because the biologically inevitable fluctuations drive you crazy and sap your willpower?
have you ever worked with one of those dudes who checks his stock portfolio every two hours? just click after click imagining that that condo in naples will be all of a sudden affordable by dinner time?
is there anyone unhappier than the mid – to – late career civil servant who has the time til retirement app and can tell you at any given moment, ‘only 641 days left’?
we treat god’s timing like that. if we are constantly taking the temperature on whether the promises we are waiting for have come true yet, we won’t be satisfied.
abraham/sarah/noah/joseph/simeon/anna/david/moses/ to name a few.
could they have been patient for decades if they fixated on the length of their waiting?
we must have the spirit-filled, good sense to lose ourselves in the mundane of right now or we won’t be faithful til the payoff.
Book Review
most textbooks are boring because they intellectualize a subject away from its emotional realities.
fred sanders revolutionizes teaching on the trinity us loving rather than tolerating the trinity, drives a more fully orbed spiritual life. frankly, i would rather you read the pages below than hear anything i else i could try to say about it. this book is phenomenal.
Sermon of the Week
all 6 messages from my series on the life of joseph are now on youtube, would love for you to check them out.
3 Things I Really Liked This Week
1. this short leadership devotional from brian houston encouraged me quite a bit
2. during my workouts this week, i have been watching this documentary, like any great piece of art, its about way more than you can see on the surface, highly recommend.
3. last call - i wrote an article about the joseph series, would love for you to read it here.