Journey Of Faith Blog

Remember how great those first days, weeks, even years were with the Lord? The times with Him in Bible reading and prayer were so special. Whatever happened to them? The Rat Race—that’s what happened. We’ve gotten caught up in the hurry, the pressures, and stress of life. Relationships, as we will soon see, have gotten strained, and our excitement about the Lord has drained out as the pressures and concerns have flowed in.

The urgent has become a tyrant and our priorities have gotten confused. Our once strong desire to be with the Lord and enjoyment with Him have become dulled, uninteresting, and at times, (we are embarrassed to admit) almost a burden. Why? Because we have allowed our love for Him to be “choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures…” (Luke 8:14).

The following quiz will help you see how far you have gone down the road away from your First Love.

Answer “yes” or “no.”


Part of the reason we drift away from the Lord is because we let our times of prayer and Bible study fall behind. We let other things press in on us and steal our close relationship with the Lord. We are often more focused on ourselves, our problems, and our needs than we are on the Lord. We can get on a lukewarm path without even realizing it. So how do we get back on the right path?



Return to Your First Love



One day the disciples made a significant request of Jesus: “Teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). How strange. We all know how to pray, don’t we? But how many of us know how to do miracles? Why didn’t Jesus’ disciples ask to be taught how to perform miracles, how to heal, or how to cast out demons? If I were there, I might have asked how to be more like Jesus or how to preach with greater power. If prayer is as simple as most seem to think it is, why make such a request? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to asking to be taught to eat or sleep?

The answer lies in the life of Jesus. He valued prayer. He modeled it. He lived a life above reproach and with great power. In fact, His disciples had come to realize a crucial truth—prayer was foundational to all Jesus was and all Jesus did. Jesus was a man of prayer. It saturated everything He did. Jesus prayed as a way of life, not just occasionally. He prayed early in the morning, late at night, all night, during the day, and even while He ministered to people. He “said grace” for His food and the food multiplied.

The power and impact of Jesus’ prayer life was not lost on the disciples then or on many believers since. They have all realized that if they really know how to pray, then the results in their own lives and ministries will have much of the miraculous quality that Jesus’ life displayed.

A modern-day example is the prayer-saturated life of George Mueller who constantly saw marvelous and often miraculous answers to prayer. Mueller ran many orphanages in the 1900s. When he needed land to build an orphanage but had no money, he wasn’t fazed. He simply prayed until God miraculously provided it. Mueller was always praying for food for his orphanages. They never missed a meal. Once when they had nothing to eat, he returned thanks for the food, believing God would answer his prayer to supply all their needs. Just then a truck loaded with perishable food broke down in front of his door.

I can just hear you say, “Sure, Jesus could do this; He was God. But what about me? How can I avoid the Rat Race? It seems so inevitable. How can I return to my first love?” The following nine principles should help you do just that. They are designed to follow the example of Jesus and help you make prayer more alive and relevant to your life.

1. See prayer as a time of developing a close relationship with a wonderful, desirable person who is eager to have such a relationship. In James 4:8, the Lord says to draw near to Him and He will draw near to you. Expect to learn more about God or to start feeling deeper things towards Him.

2. Understand that this prayer time is helping develop spiritual maturity and fine tuning your spiritual life.

3. Know that prayer is your life line to success in your race. Prayer will help set your course straight for the day and help you receive input from your wise Coach.

4. Make prayer your highest priority.

5. Determine that your time in prayer will be enjoyable and that you will come away with something of value. Because the Word is a vital part of the prayer process, when you pray, ask the Lord to show you one meaningful truth for your life from your Bible reading. The Psalms, Proverbs, and Paul’s letters are gold mines for promises that will encourage you for the day.

6. Recognize that prayer makes your day go better and helps you impact people positively.

7. See prayer as a wonderful problem solver and a way of positively influencing circumstances and people in a way that you could not do so alone.

8. Use variety to keep your prayer life fresh. Pray for family and immediate concerns each day. Whenever possible, start out and close your time with praise and thanksgiving. These help keep your eyes on the Lord to show you that He is quite capable of doing in your life what needs to be done. Draw from the Scriptures to enhance your prayer times. Pray Scripture back to the Lord, agreeing with the concepts and, when appropriate, telling Him how this applies to your life and what you are currently facing.

9. When you are in a time of crisis, stop and pray. If you can, get alone and away from distraction. We see Jesus doing this in Luke 5:16 and John 6:15.

In the final analysis, many people who are caught in the Rat Race are living their lives for themselves. At times, they will consult the Lord to see what he wants, but even then it is with the view that they will go His way only if that seems best in their eyes. In stark contrast is Jesus who says, “…I seek not to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30). By following the above nine principles, you should be able to make your prayer life dynamic and a time of refreshing and refuge from the pressures of the Rat Race. Learn to follow as your model, using prayer as a key part of avoiding the many traps of life.

On the journey with you,

Pastor Glen

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            Some people handle their personal pain by isolating themselves. Others on the fast track use their personal pace as a sedative. They keep so busy that they have no time for other people or to think about their own perceived inadequacies or past failures. They hope that what they accomplish today will offset any weaknesses or past problems.

 

Read the rest of this entry…

 

            Although accomplished in their field, people who fail to heed this warning sign find that the people around them are neglected and anticipating “second best.” Don’t get me wrong, this concept is not gender relative. Husbands and wives both can become “wedded to work.” Men and women can become too busy for their partners and friends. Socializing takes a back seat to the tension to get ahead or just caught up. So how strained are your relationships?

 

 

 

Our Need for Community

 

            At the core of every person is a deep need for community. Strained relationships are the signs of a life that is headed for or trapped in the Rat Race. Strained relationships build barriers between friends and family. Strained relationships create exclusiveness and individualism. But you were designed by God to desire to be with other people, to need to belong and be accepted by others. But not all relationships are on the same level. That is what community is all about. There are different levels of friendship.

1. There are activity-based friendships. These relationships are founded upon common activities such as shopping, raising kids, hobbies, or even studying. This level of friendship is necessary, but does not necessarily mean that the other person knows the “real you.”
2. A second kind of friendships is what I call historical friendships. These are the people with whom we have been connected for many years, maybe even as far back as our youth. The intimacy level never goes very deep because the tie with them is merely a common background, not authenticity and openness.
3. Professional friendships make up the third category. These include your work associates, other parents at your child’s school, and those people in your life with whom contact will only occur when a task must be accomplished. There probably will never be a need to reveal feelings or inner struggles in such settings because the project at hand is more the focus than are the people.
4. Community friendships are a primary way by which to learn how to develop other relationships in our life. With the help of a rich pool of community friendships, we have a basis on which to work out our insecurities and fears, and we can gather the strength, love, and support that is necessary to develop new friends. With this type of fellowship, we can carry out the same healing attributes with parents, mates, children coworkers and even the strangers with whom we will have contact every day of our lives.           

 

How can you develop community friendships?

 

1.  Challenge yourself and others to grow. Paul wrote the church in Ephesus and told them, “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received” (Eph. 4:1). The challenge? Grow into the men and women God wants us to be.

2.  Share your confidence in others. Life runs more smoothly when others show confidence in us. Remember how our Lord did this with Peter? “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matt. 16:18). Peter…a rock? Not the Peter I read about. Peter only opened his mouth long enough to exchange feet. He was impulsive, not an immovable rock. But our Lord’s confidence extended far beyond Peter’s struggles and failings. Our Lord knew that it would be Peter who would deny Him three times. And yet this frail, unimpressive man would be entrusted by the Son of God with a major role in the early Christian church. When you talk with others, see their potential, not just their problem areas. Anticipate something good in their lives and convey your confidence in them.

            3.  Make encouragement a priority. How Paul needed encouragement from Barnabas, “the Son of Encouragement!” Can you imagine the shattered image Paul must have had of himself when he finally realized the truth about who Jesus is? It was bad enough that he had rejected Jesus, let alone that he had actively sought out believers and brought them to Jerusalem to be mocked, often tortured and then killed. Barnabas took Paul under his wing, introducing him to other believers and sticking up for him when Paul had yet to prove the truth of his changed ways. God alone knows how different church history might have been had Barnabas not been there to encourage Paul to be the leader he was to become.

            4.  Correct others lovingly. There will be times when you will need to lovingly build up people while correcting them; our Lord did. In Mark 9, Jesus had just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration where Peter, James, and John had seen Jesus in His glorified state. Coming to the base of the mountain, they must have seen the other disciples huddled together and arguing with other people. Evidently the disciples had tried in vain to cast a demon from a boy who was having seizures. Jesus told them to bring the boy to Him and He cast the demon from the boy. When asked by the disciples why they couldn’t drive the demon out, Jesus replied, “ ‘This kind can come out only by prayer’ ” (Mark 9:29). Our Lord confronted their unbelief and dependence on personal achievement and abilities. Jesus turned an embarrassing event into a teachable moment…with loving correction.

            5.  Accept people the way God has accepted you. God has made many different personality types. Each type responds to situations differently. When we try to change the way God has made people, and try to make them fit the type we are, we can mess things up. Let God be God and you be the human being who makes “every effort to live in peace with all men” (Heb. 12:14).

            6.  Have more fun. The term “lighten up” is tailor-made for Rat Racers. Friends spend time together doing things that bring them joy. Adding spontaneity and trying to bring joy to someone else are just two of the many ways we can add fun to our relationships.

            7.  Relax. The statement, “I feel guilty when I relax” had to be coined by a Rat Race participant. Doctors tell us that relaxation is crucial to our well being. God not only instituted a day of rest but modeled it for us. “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done” (Genesis 2:2-3).

            8.  Be patient with others. The word patience in the New Testament means to have a long fuse. Patience is the ability to see that people, problems, and situations are not always the way you would like them to be, but everything will be all right as you trust in Christ to work all things together for good. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

            9.  Empathize, don’t criticize. Making allowances for others will become easier if you can learn to put yourself in another’s place. Most of us misunderstand empathy. Some perceive empathy as our ability to carry everyone else’s problems. Others see it as an intense withdrawal from life in search of a more sensitive you. Empathy is merely the ability to put yourself in other person’s shoes, to see the world through their eyes, to genuinely feel what they may be feeling.

            10.  Repair hurting relationships. People caught in the Rat Race can wreak havoc on the people around them. Their nit-picking, pessimistic attitudes cause much unwarranted stress and pain in their relationships. When one of your relationships is strained, take the initiative to repair it immediately. Talk the problem over with your friend. Seek or give forgiveness where it is needed. Even difficult times can bring growth in ourselves and our relationships.

 

On the journey with you,

Pastor Glen

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Warning Sign #4 - Perfectionism

My wife has perfectionist tendencies and often feels like a card-carrying member of the Rat Race. Perfectionists are ruthless in self-evaluation. Their inner drive can be depressing for both themselves and others as they continually push to set and achieve higher standards. At the very core of this warning sign is an innate fear of failure and rejection. The main problem for the perfectionist is the inability to distinguish between the “I should’s” and the “I could’s.” Overuse of the words “should” or “ought” drive into you the inability to meet your own standards. Your self-esteem then plummets.

Here are twelve statements to help you see how much of a perfectionist you are.

Answer “yes” or “no.”

1. I can’t sit through even a half hour TV show without getting up to do something during the commercials. 2. I have to look at many selections before buying the “right” gift. 3. When I listen to a sermon, I easily pick up on grammatical mistakes. 4. I can’t stand a messy desk or work space. 5. I often find it takes a long time to finish a project because I keep thinking of new ways to improve it. 6. I am always straightening up after family members, even when they are not finished with the item. 7. I can often think of a better way to do something than the way someone else did it. 8. It takes me a long time to decide what to wear to special occasions. 9. I walk into a room and notice if a picture on the wall is crooked. 10. When I got a “B” on a test, I felt my world was crashing in on me. 11. I never start anything I know I can’t do well. 12. It drives me up a wall to see the greeting cards out of place in the store, so I straighten them.

What if every area of your life is caught in the “all-or-nothingism” of the perfectionist’s thinking? What if you have reduced your life to a system of black-and-white polar opposites, so that either all is well in your world or nothing is? What if you must achieve complete success -- a piece of work flawlessly executed, a relationship with no conflicts in it, your personal best in every race, an “A” on every test? If you are caught in this endless trap of tunnel vision, blaming and shoulds, musts and have-tos, there is only one way you will ever get out of it. You need to stop and spend time alone with God in prayer and meditate on what He shows you.

Put Aside Perfectionism There will probably be several areas, in which you will want to seek God’s input. We will look at four common ones. 1. Establish your priorities. Sometimes we get so caught up in our perfectionist ways that we neglect critical areas of our lives. When we get out of balance in any of the following five priorities, we are in trouble. By bringing them back into God’s perspective and balance, we can often intercept the perfectionist tendencies that may be there because we are weak in one or more of these areas:

Spiritual Health. We need to have quality time with the Lord. This means that if we are not regularly praying and reading the Word we well may find ourselves trying to compensate by doing things for God, pushing ourselves to accomplish things that please Him. Too often we buy into the Enemy lie that the things we do for God are the most important things. Spending time with Him can sometimes seem less important than our witnessing, teaching a Bible study, or serving on committees. The visible becomes more valuable in our minds than the less visible. But God’s priorities are exactly the opposite. He wants us to spend time with Him so we can in turn be and do what He wants. We have to grow in Him to stay spiritually healthy.

Emotional Health. Oftentimes, we try to get our self-worth from the wrong source—accomplishments. When we feel uncertain about our acceptance before God or with others, we can get caught in the trap of performance, which leads to perfectionism. What we need to do is to know who we are in Christ. There are many wonderful statements in Scripture telling us just that. For example, “for he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight” (Eph. 1:4). We are dearly loved (John 3:16) and highly valued according to the parables Jesus tells about the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price (Matt. 13:44-46).

Another misconception in the area of emotional health is that we have to be perfect in order for God to be pleased with us. But if we will look at Ephesians 1:6 (KJV) we read that we are “accepted in the beloved.” This acceptance is not because of what we do but rather because of who Jesus is and the fact that we are in Him if we have invited Him into our lives as Lord and Savior. Therefore even perfectionists can and should be willing to risk falling short of perfection when they attempt to do what the Lord has asked them to do. Emotionally, it is very helpful to keep our eyes on Jesus, do what He asks, and not worry about the results. Leave the results in His hands. When we do this, we free ourselves from many traps of the Enemy such as worrying about what others think, or beating up on ourselves when we don’t measure up to perfection.

Social Health. People need to be made a higher priority than things. Perfectionists too often strain relationships by demanding the same high standards of others as they do themselves. Just as emotionally we have to see and accept ourselves as God sees and accepts us, so also we have to let others be imperfect and make mistakes. In other words, we have to give others the same permission to be less than perfect that God gives us. If we don’t, we will end up alienating people.

Intellectual Health. God has given each of us one or more abilities. But as with any talent, it takes time to develop the skills necessary to do well in an area in which we are gifted. Fear of failure can cause perfectionists to lose out on much that God wants them to do because they are not willing to take risks and be seen as less than perfect.

2. Seek the Lord’s help in dealing with perfectionism. Begin by identifying those areas in which you are a perfectionist. Then ask the Lord to show you why you are a perfectionist. Are you insecure, fearful, trying to please, wanting a sense of accomplishment and meaning? After you identify the sources of your perfectionism, ask God to help you overcome them. Share your discoveries with your spouse or a trusted friend and enlist their help as you try to overcome. 3. Learn to relax. One of the things that is crucial in avoiding the pressures of the Rat Race is to free your mind from the anxieties of the day. I have a “dump tree” which serves this purpose. It is a large tree overhanging a stop sign on the way home. Each day, as I drive past that tree on my way home, I mentally “dump” all the concerns of the day at the base of the tree. The next day as I return to church, I “pick them up” as I pass by the tree. Part of being able to cope well with life is to get enough rest. When we are tired, we become inefficient. We need to learn to pace ourselves, even to schedule rest and recreation in order to avoid the tyranny of perfectionism. 4. Admit that you are not God. When we decide to take control of our lives -- to play God -- we often find that God has to let us come to the end of our rope, to have to cry out to Him, before we will turn loose and let Him once again be in control. There is only one God and we cannot usurp His place! We need to learn how to keep from putting yourselves in the place of God, how to let Him lead us, and how to draw closer to Him so we can avoid all Enemy traps to lure us away from His will for our lives.

On the journey with you, Pastor Glen

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