Category: General

Pray then like this:

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Matthew 6:9-13, English Standard Version

Monday evening, during my evening prayer time, as I was praying The Lord’s Prayer, my spirit was quickened to the power and importance of applying Jesus’ model for prayer in this particular moment, when we, as a society, are in turmoil in the aftermath of the homicide of George Floyd in the custody of the Minneapolis police. The Lord’s Prayer, common to every branch of Christianity can be robbed of its place and power due to our familiarity with it; we know it so well and have said it so many times that we often hurry past it, not allowing it to speak to us, even as we talk to God. I believe it has much to teach us today.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
He is our father, not my father, not their father. God is the father of us all and we are all his children: black, white, brown, or any other color or race; Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and every other faith or no faith at all. We are all children of the one Father. That is a reminder and a lesson we need today.
Father, help to remember that everyone is my brother or sister, that we are all children of the same father.

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
What are we asking for when we ask for God’s kingdom to come to us, for his will do be done here on earth? We are asking for a kingdom where the supreme rule is extravagant love: love that is sacrificial, unmerited, and unconditional. When we ask that God’s will be done on earth we are asking that we “cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.” (Isaiah 1:16-17, ESV) We are asking that “justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24, ESV) I need to remember that asking for God’s kingdom and that his will be done means that I need to be an agent of that kingdom and divine will; I need to love with God’s love, learn to do good, seek justice and correct oppression.
Father, my actions and attitudes show that I desire my kingdom and that my will be done. Forgive me and renew my heart, mind and soul; align my desires with your will!

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
Many of us learned the latter part of this petition as “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” or “forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” No matter the formulation, the troubling implication remains: in this prayer we ask God to give us the same measure of forgiveness as we give to others. The debts I owe God are many; I do not love as I should, I desire my will and way, not his, I am too willing to look the other way and let injustice go by unnoticed and unchallenged, especially injustice done to others. I have much to be forgiven. Do I forgive others? An easy test for me is to ask, “am I judging?” If I am judging, then I am setting myself up to forgive only when I think someone merits forgiveness. I certainly do not what the Father to have that same meager level of forgiveness to me!
Father, forgive me for not loving as you love, for not crying out against injustice and correcting oppression; forgive me for desiring my will over yours. And forgive my lack of forgiveness to others; fill my heart with your Holy Spirit, replacing my judgments with your love and forgiveness for others.

Lead us not into temptation
What are my temptations? It is a long list. I am tempted by a spirit of fear; I fear that we have gone too far, that the tears in our social fabric cannot be repaired; I fear for my safety and security. I am tempted by a spirit of apathy, a desire to bury my head in the sand and pretend nothing is happening. I am tempted by a spirit of judgment, judgment of the police, our leaders, the protesters, and the rioters. I am tempted by a rationalizing spirit; I am tempted to convince myself that my fears, my apathy, and my judgments are all reasonable.
Father, show me my temptations for what they are: reactions to my persistent attempts at running my own life. By your spirit, replace my temptations with a desire for your will and your kingdom.

but deliver us from evil.
There seems to be no end of evil in the world today; you can have your pick of villains. Yet as I ponder the words “deliver us from evil,” I can’t help but think about the evil in our own hearts. :I need to be delivered from a heart that would rather judge than love, a heart that fears instead of trusting in God’s power and goodness, a heart that would rather look away and not confront injustice. That is the evil I need to be delivered from today.
Lord, I do want to be delivered from all evil, but especially today, break any power the enemy holds over my heart. Teach me to hear his deceits for what they are. Do not let me become ensnared in webs of judgement, hopelessness, fear, and apathy.

Featured image by Fibonacci Blue at https://flickr.com/photos/44550450@N04/49940390081, licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

This is the third (and, I think, last) in a series post on Spiritual Lessons from The Lord of the Rings. For a bit more background, see the previous posts, “Don’t Be Like Denethor!” and “Listen to Gandalf!”

Of all the characters so artfully drawn in The Lord of the Rings, Sam could seem the most unlikely source of inspiration. He is not a lordly ruler like Denethor or a powerful and mysterious wizard like Gandalf. Sam is a simple Hobbit. Even among Hobbits, he is seemingly of little account. Frodo was the brave ring bearer. Pippin and Merry become warriors. Sam begins as a gardener and works his way up to be Frodo’s servant. He is drawn into the epic adventure only because he is conscripted after he is caught eavesdropping on a private conversation.

Yet we are well-advised to attend to Sam’s virtues. He is brave and loyal. He is a steadfast and true friend. Sam does what needs to be done even when it is not what he wants to do, and even when it places him in grave danger. Though seemingly simple, he is drawn to beauty and the numinous. Sam never gives up. He always presses forward. He knows there is good in the world and that it is worth fighting to preserve it.

Sam has one more virtue, which may be the fruit of all the others: Hope. That is what caught my attention as I was re-reading The Lord of the Rings.  A particular passage caught my attention and stuck with me. Sam and Frodo are in the heart of Mordor, Evil’s realm. The landscape is befouled. Enemies surrounded them. They know that there is no path back for them, even if they should succeed in destroying the Ring of Power. While Sam stands watch so that Frodo might sleep, he has this insight:

Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

Given where we find ourselves today, with government shut-downs, sheltering in place, economic uncertainty, and ever-mounting numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths, it is easy to lose hope. We can forget that our “Shadow” is only a small and passing thing and that there is light and beauty forever beyond the shadow’s reach.

Hope, as we use it here, does not mean “wish,” as in “I hope to see Paris one day” or “I hope you feel better soon.” In Christian thought, hope has a deeper, more solid meaning. It is one of the three Christian virtues, along with Faith and Love (see 1 Corinthians 13:13). Our hope looks forward with expectancy, knowing that our Father loves us and that he is in control. Hope combines our desire to be cherished and cared for by God, with faith that it is so. We know that things may not go the way we would like them to, but our Hope is the God who loves us. It is our expectation of Good winning out in the end.

As much as we are able, try to be like Sam. It is easy to see the darkness; any newscast will show us how grim and fraught with danger our time is. But we can allow beauty and love to smite our hearts. Spend time with God not only asking for our safety and security but also asking to see his beauty and to know, deep in our hearts, his love for us. As Sam, looking up from the darkness around him, perceived beauty and hope and thereby found peace, we too, by shifting our gaze away from our darkness and looking instead at God’s goodness, love, and beauty, can find peace for our souls.

This is a second in a series post on Spiritual Lessons from The Lord of the Rings. For a bit more background, see the first post, “Don’t Be Like Denethor!”

If you are a fan of Tolkien’s novel, this second lesson may seem self-evident: Listen to Gandalf! For those who haven’t read “The Lord of the Rings,” or perhaps haven’t read it recently, Gandalf is a Wizard. In Tolkien’s work, that means a bit more than what we think. Gandalf is a wise and powerful being, dispatched to Middle Earth (the setting of the novel) to aid men and other mortals in their fight against Sauron, the embodiment of Evil.

Early in the story, Gandalf is advising Frodo, encouraging him to undertake a perilous and possibly futile mission to combat the growing specter of Evil. Frodo is a hobbit from the Shire, a bucolic backwater that, unbeknownst to its inhabitants, has long been sheltered and protected. As Frodo becomes aware of the growing danger and what may be asked of him, we have this exchange.

‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.

‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings (p. 51). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

In our time of global pandemic, it is easy for us to empathize with Frodo. It has been generations since our world has experienced such global upheaval. No one is safe. All countries, regions, and classes of society are in the same boat. We find ourselves, like Frodo, suddenly aware of a grave danger that we struggle to understand and feel ill-prepared to deal with. It is not surprising that we should wish Covid-19 need not have happened in our time.

The words of Gandalf offer some reassurance and a challenge. The reassurance is that our wish is not a sign of weakness. Even Gandalf, ancient, wise, and wielding great power, wishes the same. The challenge is for us to decide what to do with the time that is given us. That is a key question: What are we, living in this pandemic, to do with the time given us?

Tolkien’s friend and fellow author C. S. Lewis offered us a helpful answer. In 1948, England, along with most of the world, was gravely concerned with the very real likelihood of being attacked with nuclear weapons. Lewis wrote an essay, “On Living in the Atomic Age,” where he provided an answer to the question of “what shall we do with the time given us?”

If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

Lewis, C. S.. Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays . HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

In Lewis’ day, the threat was just that, a threat. We are living with the effects of the pandemic, yet we are also under threat. How long will it last? How bad will the economy get? Will I get it? Will someone I love?

What shall we do with the time given us, a time of pandemic and its social and economic dislocations? We should do “sensible and human things.” We should get along with our lives as best we can while responsibly protecting ourselves and others from contagion. We should love our families, our neighbors, and our communities. We should eat and laugh and pray and offer support. We cannot choose how we feel, but we can choose what we think about and dwell on. Let us not let Covid-19 dominate our minds. Let us focus on being the best husbands, wives, parents, friends, neighbors, and Christians that we can be.

I am a pretty big fan of J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel, “The Lord of the Rings.” I usually re-read it once a year a so. I had started in on it early this year and as I was finishing the third volume as the Covid-19 pandemic was ramping up. I found myself drawing some fresh wisdom from Tolkien that applies in our current situation. One of those lessons is to not be Denethor.

For those who haven’t read “The Lord of the Rings,” or perhaps haven’t read is recently, here is some background. The central story is a quest of Good against Evil. As in real-life, many characters are mostly good, but have their failings. Such is Denethor, the Steward of Gondor. The once mighty kingdom of Gondor, ruled for many, many years by stewards, is the last hope for the forces of Good. Denethor is a wise, strong and brave leader of men. However, as the peril to the kingdom grew, he dared to use a Palantir, a “seeing stone” that allowed him to see events that were happening far away.

None of this sounds too bad. However, Sauron, the embodiment of Evil and the enemy of Good, also had a Palantir and due to the strength of his will he could use it to limit what Denethor sees and influence how he interpreted what he saw when he dared to use the Palantir. Denethor sees only the massed forces of evil arrayed against him and does not see others who are coming do the aid of Gondor. As the war begins and Sauron’s forces attack Gondor, Denethor believes the cause is hopeless and burns himself alive.

Don’t be like Denethor. What was his mistake? He over estimated his own strength. He wrestled with the enemy and with his own doubts and grief in secret. He thought that he could go it alone and did not avail himself of the council of others who could have helped him see through the enemy’s half truths and deceptions. Instead, he grew more and more despondent and discouraged as he was fed a steady diet of half-truths carefully shaded reality.

How do we avoid this mistake today, especially as we struggle to adjust to ever-shifting realities of life in a pandemic? Unlike Denethor, we must not isolate ourselves. It is natural and normal to have fears and anxiety. However it is madness to think we can walk this out on our own. Our enemy, the ultimate Evil, Satan, is happy to have discouraged and fearful. He is likely encouraging in us feelings of anxiety and hopelessness. He does his best work in the darkness, when we share our fears with others we bring them into the light, where Evil is greatly weakened. Sharing our feelings on social media is not the solution. We must share at the heart level with a friend who we can trust to safeguard our hearts.

We also must share our hearts with Jesus. He is the most compassionate, understanding friend we have. He has suffered far more than most of us will ever have to endure and knows what we were going through. He knows our hearts, our fears, and our hopes and loves us. I invite you to join together with other Christ-followers to share your burdens together in prayer with Jesus.

When we try to “tough it out” and do it on our own and isolate ourselves, when we do not share our hearts with others, and with Jesus, whether due to shame or pride or any other reason, we are falling into Denethor’s mistake. Yes we need to stay physically separated. We do not need to be spiritually and emotionally isolated. Don’t be like Denethor.

Less than a week ago I shared Three Questions to Ask Yourself in the Face of Covid-19. Those thoughts focused on recognizing what God may be inviting us to, what our temptations are, and what we might learn about ourselves. I concluded that post with the admission that I had not been sitting with the Father with those questions.

As I have now taken my own advice and pondered those three questions I learned much about myself. I learned that my temptation in this time is to double down on my attempts to understand and control the situation. Needless to say, that is not fruitful, especially not what we think we know is constantly shifting. My need to know and to understand can be an enormous distraction.

This level of self-awareness is no doubt something the Lord was inviting me to. However, He desires to help me let go of my desire to master the situation, and as that happens, a new question presents itself: How does God want to use us in this time of fear and doubt? What gifts and talents has he given you that he might call you to use in this time. Are given wisdom? Share it. Are you given faith? Lend your faith to those whose faith is wavering. If you have a gift of healing, by all means heal the sick. Do you have a prophetic gift? Use your gift to convey God’s truth to those who need to hear it.

We have an enemy. He wishes us harm. We could debate whether he causes our illnesses, but there is no question that he uses the hard places we find ourselves in. Our enemy desires that we stay focused on ourselves and not ask how we can effectively be Jesus’ body and earth to those who are suffering and lost. He wants us on the sidelines and out of the game.

We have a choice. Do we stay focused inward, being concerned mainly with ourselves, or do we ask: “Lord, how do you want to use me to help a hurting world?”

It is challenging to know what to say in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and our reactions to it, both rational and panicked. I don’t have any answers or advice you haven’t heard elsewhere, but perhaps the Lord has something to say to you today. Here are three questions to ask yourself that may help you see where God is moving in your life in this time.

1: What is God inviting you to?

When we are knocked out of our normal, when our well-laid plans are in tatters, it is good to ask ourselves, “What is God inviting me to?” I do not believe that God has sent the pandemic to us, but I do believe “God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (Romans 8:28, [NLT]) When we are forced to let loose of our plans and our sense of how are lives should be we can ask Jesus, “What are you inviting me to? How do you want to use this for my good?”

2: What is my temptation?

The other side of the “invitation” coin is temptation. In times like these we are easily tempted to double down on our attempts to be in control of the situation.  We may be tempted to fear and anxiety, greed and self-centeredness, and isolation. Perhaps our greatest danger is that we fall into our temptations without even realizing it. We don’t sit down and say, “I think my best course of action today is to be fearful and greedy,” yet that is often where we find ourselves. By being aware of our temptations we are less likely to fall into them. It is important that we ask God, who knows you best, to show you where are being tempted.

3: What can I learn about myself?

Times of stress can be times of great learning about ourselves. Take the time to reflect on what you are feeling. What activities and attitudes are drawing you closer to God and closer to his invitations to you? What activities and attitudes are leading me to slip unknowingly into our self-destructive temptations? Keeping a journal can be a great way to reflect over time. Pray for God’s assistance in knowing yourself and showing you the paths to being the person you are meant to be.

Ask these questions prayerfully.

I have not been regularly asking myself these questions and have not been praying as I now suggest, but I am starting today. I invite you to join me in pressing into these questions in prayer. Here is how I will be praying.

Father, I am more fearful and anxious than I should be. I lay those fears and anxieties at your cross. Forgive me. Give me the grace to be kind to myself and to others in this time of stress an uncertainty. Give me the grace to see and embrace your invitation to me; to join in the good you will work in this situation. I ask also for the grace to see my temptations and for the strength and wisdom to turn away from them. Give me the grace of self-knowledge and the courage to open myself to the power of Holy Spirit to reform me in the image of Christ, in whose name I pray.

C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters is one of my favorite books. From time to time I find myself in possession of a letter that appears to be from Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood, but was not written by Lewis. Here is one of those letters, dealing chiefly with how to neuter a Christian’s resolve to pray.

My dear Wormword,

I have received your letter where you raise your alarm about your patient’s resolve to pray regularly. I do have some advice for you, but first and foremost: get a grip on yourself! In your letter your panic is palpable. If I can detect it in your written (and presumably measured) words, it is very likely the patient will sense it as well.

As you know, we must remain anonymous until the patient is firmly and irrevocably ours. As I think of it, anonymous is too soft a word; we must remain invisible. The patient must never suspect our presence. The greater their ignorance, the greater our power. You are too young to have tasted much yet, but few delights surpass the exquisiteness of the patient’s anguish and horror when they realize that we have been there all along, whispering a thought here, offering a pleasant distraction there; now a convenient rationale to avoid a duty, then a reminder that he is not the sort of person to be taken in by spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Many a delectable morsel has been elevated to ecstatic heights by the soul’s dismay and horror when at the last possible moment, we reveal ourselves and the creature sees who really has been leading him and how firmly he is ours. But I digress (and make myself quite hungry).

As to practical advice, if you are panicked by some turn of events, such as your patient’s resolve to be regular in prayer, you are likely to over-play your hand and increase the likelihood of the patient detecting your presence and activity. You have already failed in that he has joined that infernal church. There is every chance that should he notice you now, the patient will go groveling to the Enemy, seeking His help to defang us. That would prove damaging, if not fatal, to your cause and yourself.

Assuming you can master yourself and not give away the game, the question remains: what to do about your patient’s loathsome lurch toward prayer? Your naïve suggestion that perhaps “do nothing” is the best course is fool-hardy. Do not forget that anytime one of these creatures sets itself to prayer; there is the very real possibility that it will recognize that it has actually come into direct contact with the Enemy. Should that happen, you are dire straights indeed. No, passivity cannot be your strategy here.

Your first strategy is to keep the patient’s heart and mind entirely out of his prayer. Teach him that simply mouthing flowery words is all that is necessary. Do not let him think about what he is saying, and certainly do not let him notice how he feels while praying. In His pathetic love for these creatures, the Enemy will honor almost any attempt, no matter how feeble and half-hearted. So, you must teach your patient to say his prayers while encouraging him to not bother about attending to them.

It is a fine thing if the patient thinks of prayer as some sort of magic spell or incantation. Teach him that just saying the right words is the important thing. If you can keep him sufficiently distracted so that he does not notice the Enemy’s presence, your patient can easily be shown that “parroting a bunch of empty phrases doesn’t do one any good after all!”

A second strategy is to ensure that the patient does not come to understand that in the Enemy’s calculus, intent matters. It seems at times to be the only thing that matters to Him! Your game then is to keep the patient’s intent or expectation separate from his actions. For prayer, as for almost any overtly religious activity, he may undertake, teach him that it is a duty, something that must be done. If handled carefully, you can turn it into a bothersome and even resented obligation. Alternately, you can spin it up into a source of pride. Something he does to show his pious and religious nature. A man who brags about his prayer is a special treat.

The third card in your hand is to keep prayer distant from any sense of belief or expectation. These creatures have been carefully taught to distrust anything they cannot see, measure, and understand. As you know, this is due in no small part to our Father Below’s masterful work in what they call their “enlightenment.” Do not waste your time trying to understand how belief and faith enter into prayer; our best minds have been unable to solve that riddle. Nonetheless, you must teach your patient to wonder about “how it all works.” Show him that, since he cannot understand how something could happen as a result of his babbling, nothing is or even could be happening. You and I know that somehow what he believes about his prayers is essential; it is a key factor in his actually encountering the Enemy. Therefore you must keep the patient from any faith or expectations getting caught up in his prayers.

Taken all together, these strategies sum up to “settling.” Teach the patient not to expect anything; to settle. His church will teach him to be humble. You show him that humility means not expecting anything, settling for what you get. He must be taught that expecting anything to really happen is not realistic, certainly not in this modern age. Teach him that discontent is “sin.” Whatever state he finds himself in is what he should settle for, lest he is arrogant and proud! As long as the patient is content where he is, he is unlikely to take any serious steps that might lead to disaster for you.

Make no mistake, nephew. You have already badly blundered your assignment by allowing your man to become a Christian. (And don’t waste your time complaining that you did the best you could and that the Enemy isn’t playing fair.) Every move you make now is fraught with peril for your cause. This is nowhere truer than in the practice of prayer, where the Enemy inexplicably and unfairly offers to meet with his pets. Each time that is allowed to happen your danger multiplies. Diligently apply yourself to neutering his prayers in hopes that he will eventually find them tiresome and give up the whole undertaking. I need not remind you of the penalty you face should you fail in this. We will be fed. For my sister’s sake, I’d rather that our morsel be your patient.

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape

If you found any instruction or encouragement in this letter, I highly recommend Lewis’s original: The Screwtape Letters.

The following is derived from a sermon I delivered at Wonderful Mercy Church. You can listen to the full message online.

Before reading on, take a moment to read Galatians 5:1, 13-25. The link will take you the New Living Translation, but feel free to use whatever translation you like. When You’ve read the Galatians passage come on back and we’ll chat about it.

What do we make of this passage? In my experience, our natural approach (my approach, anyway) is this. We really only pay attention to the two lists at the end. We treat them as a rule book. Don’t do the bad things, do the good things! It can be very tempting to live the checklist life. We steel ourselves to avoid the bad, start or increase the good fruit, and congratulate ourselves on our spiritual progress. The checklist life is tempting, but it is not where Paul is trying to point us.

So, what is wrong with the checklist life? Quite a lot, really. To start with, it is the opposite of freedom, and that is the main thrust of Paul here. The reading began with 5:1: “So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.” But living the checklist life is doing the opposite. Living the checklist life is binding myself up in the “law,” not the law of Moses, but my checklist serves as my law nonetheless.

Next, the checklist life ignores the central thrust of Paul’s teaching here. He is describing what our lives look like when we are controlled by our sinful natures (all the bad stuff) and what they look like when we are controlled by the spirit (the good stuff). He is not talking about what we do, but what God does when we are controlled by the spirit. Verse 16, in the Voice translation, makes this very clear. “Here’s my instruction: walk in the Spirit, and let the Spirit bring order to your life..”

Not only Paul’s teaching, but adopting the checklist life ignores Jesus’ teaching, and he had some pretty strong feeling on the matter. Consider Matthew 23:25-28, in the Message translation. Here we find Jesus addressing the Scribes and Pharisees, the masters of living the checklist life:

“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. 26 Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something.

27 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You’re like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. 28 People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds.

Matthew 23: 25-28, Message Translation

There is no doubt: In Jesus’ view what we do is not nearly as important as who we are on the inside.

Now, if none of those arguments against the checklist life don’t convince you, I have one more. IT DOESN’T WORK! If we are living the checklist life we will, sooner or later, fail. Jesus used the metaphor of trees and fruit to talk about people. See, for example, Mt 12:33. If we think of ourselves as tree and we are living the checklist life, we will be about the business of trying to pluck off the bad fruit and somehow produce good fruit, or at least a close approximation of good fruit. We may be successful for a while, as long as things as going our way. But one day, we will be tired or frustrated or overworked and all our good efforts will collapse in a heap. We may justify ourselves, citing extenuating circumstances, but the truth is we will be revealing our true, unfiltered, unregulated self. As Jesus said, “A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.” (Mt 12:35) Any change we seem to make is ephemeral and will eventually fail. How we are when our defenses are down reflects how we truly are.

No, The checklist life; the self-improvement road, is not the road we should be on. Both Jesus and Paul warn us off this path and our experience tells us that any success will be short lived. That leave us the question of how do we rid ourselves of the bad fruit and produce the good? The answer is pay attention to the kind of tree you are; to tend to the tree, not the fruit. Examine the fruit we produce, but good fruit is not the goal; aim to be the kind of person that produces good fruit.

  “A good person produces good things from the treasury
of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things
from the treasury of an evil heart.” (Mt 12:35) 

  So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you
won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. (Gal 5:17) 

We are not asked to “fix” ourselves (if that is even possible). Our part is to invite Holy Spirit’s ministry and position ourselves to receive it. That is where Spiritual Disciplines come in. Spiritual Disciplines, activities like prayer, meditation, memorizing scripture, and fasting are: ” Intentional practices that help as “keep company” with Jesus. “(adapted from Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, Adele Calhoun, p 19). Dallas Willard characterized Spiritual Disciples as direct actions taken to achieve indirect results.
Disciplines do not, by themselves make us better; they open the door for God.

As we begin to practice spiritual disciplines, as we begin to “keep company” with Jesus, we will begin to change us. Soon, often we we least expect it, we find the fruit we used to strive for now spontaneously appearing. We begin to see the Fruit of the Spirit described by Paul.

Why not spend some time, now is as good as any, asking the Lord to show you what “bad” fruit He notices in your life. Ask Him too, what good fruit is lacking. Don’t be surprised if you He points out things that would not have occurred to you! Finally, see if He is inviting you to any Spiritual Disciplines, direct actions on your part to allow him to produce His results. Here is a paritial list of Spiritual Disciplines, if an unfamiliar one is brought to your mind, don’t write it off. Descriptions are easy to find!

Solitude, Silence, Fasting, Sabbath, Hiddenness,
Submission, Bible Reading, Scripture Memorization,
Worship, Prayer, Spiritual Direction, Examen, Service,
Meditation, Stewardship, Journaling 

If you have spent some time in prayer just now, you likely have a clearer understanding of the health of your soul and of what God may be suggesting you do about that.

If you begin a journey of Spiritual Disciplines, come back some time and leave a comment. I’d love the hear what the Lord is doing in you!