Humility/Submission

I live in a neighborhood called North Lawndale which is located on the west side of Chicago. I often bike or walk to work which is only a ½ mile down the street so it only takes a few minutes. I often walk by drug dealers or gang bangers who externally work hard at looking “hard” and “acting” confident. I see them all the time and it breaks my heart that the world has influenced these individuals to walk around this way and put on this act all day every day to feel important and to feel like they have some form of power.

Now I will take a trip in my mind back to high school when I myself use to walk the halls of school every Friday in the fall with my football jersey on, which was our team’s tradition, and strut myself around school. I had this feeling of importance and power because of my role on the football team or being a part of a group that was glamorized, or because I read my name in the local paper the day after a games. Well, I guess I should specify that I occasionally read my name in the local paper the day after the game. Nevertheless, I hope you see my point of how we oftentimes do certain things, cling to certain groups, or act a certain way to feel important or powerful.

As I have gained a few years in my life and have observed people I greatly respect and have studied the Word about how we gain our significance, my mind has been “renewed” to how we really become powerful and become important. I have always been attracted to Jesus’ humility and submission to His Father’s will. I have come to learn that through submitting to my heavenly Father and constantly remain in a spirit of humility, as Jesus did, I have an overwhelming sense of fullness and confidence that I really can’t describe in words. When I keep this focus, the confidence is just there.

I think of so many situations in life call for me to submit to maintain the fullness and the sense of empowerment that comes only through the Holy Spirit. One of my main goals is to be fully alive through the Holy Spirit that dwells in me. Think on that, the Holy Spirit dwells in you if you are a follower of Jesus. We just have to be in step with that Spirit and mindful of when our flesh gets in the way so that the Spirit can redirect our paths to the Father's will.

Abundance!

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us… (Ephesians 3:20)

During our engagement, my wife and I were living in two separate states. I was in Chicago, Illinois helping to organize a little league on the west side and she was a waitress and weight loss counselor in Canton, Ohio. We managed, for the most part, to plan and organize just about all the details of the wedding being separated physically except for our vows. We were committed to writing our own personal vows that would be straight from our heart and something we would cherish forever. The problem was, we didn’t know how to start. Should we email or talk on the phone. Nothing was happening or working so we had to come up with something soon or else we were going to just have to use traditional vows. When the technology failed to be a useful tool in this process of communication, we decided to meet half-way on a Sunday and see each other face to face. We met after not seeing each other for a few weeks on the western side of Ohio in a town that has slipped my memory. I do remember though, that we sat at an Olive Garden and started writing as we sat face to face. The first line we came up with was, “Truly/Brian you are more than I could have ever imagined.” That was as clear as we could be to start out our vows. We had never envisioned in our finite minds how amazing God could weave two hearts together and make us one. In the verses prior to Ephesians 3:20 Paul makes says, “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:17b-19).” I have always been a hopeless romantic and always created amazing situations in my mind, but this girl that came into my life and I was about to be married to was beyond anything I could ever have imagined. We have been married almost 5 years now and I feel closer to her now than I have ever felt. In this third Chapter of Ephesians Paul also says in verse 16, “I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being.” All of this “Abundance” in my marriage would not be a fruit in my life if the Lord did not give me strength daily through His Spirit that is living inside of me.

Forgiving Spirit

My wife is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. Her example to not hold grudges or think about negative thoughts about people is amazing. She is the most accepting and non-judgemental person you could find who is always quick to forgive. As I have lived with her and have done life with an angel, I have grown more and more into what I feel like is another Jesus trait that He gave us to follow. When I experience someone doing something wrong to me I immediately experience a little inner turmoil. I always think, “Why would they do that to me?” As arrogant as that thought is, I feel that it may be pretty common. If I look at all the bad that is being done to people around the world and I really think about that, what makes me any different to receive poor treatment from another human being. There are millions of innocent people out there who have been treated a million times worse than I have and I get upset when someone cuts me off on the highway.

I live in Chicago and one thing that is actually bad about Chicago is the traffic. I live on the west side and I often take the Eisenhower expressway toward the loop to go running on the lake or do something downtown. If you decide to get off the Eisenhower and go either towards Wisconsin or Indiana via 90/94 you usually experience a delay getting off the ramp. I can’t tell you how this experience causes me to sin so often but because I struggle with how human beings treat each other, it causes me to sin a lot. What happens is, there is actually usually quite a delay on the two right lanes about a mile before you can even get off. What people do to make the delay even longer, they drive in the two left lanes and then when they find a tiny gap they squeeze their way in. In elementary school we use to call this “cutting” and if anyone do it, we would pout and cry and tell the teacher. Well, in this situation all you can do is pout to yourself, feel sorry for yourself because you waited your turn in the two right lanes. This is so frustrating and just thinking about it gets me mad. The problem is, allowing this to get to me, I create turmoil in my heart and sacrifice the fullness that God wants for me in my life. Now you could say that it is just human to feel this way and that is what we say to a lot of things but what if we discipline our minds to have a heart and mind that is quick to forgive and not so quick to get angry and think, “How could they do that to me?” When you think about it, how often do we do things like this to others? Maybe were at the grocery store and we don’t feel like putting the cart in the corral so we leave it in the parking lot. Maybe we drop something on the ground and don’t feel like picking it up because it may make our hands dirty so we leave it for someone else to pick it up. These are just a few things that we may choose to not do but it affects someone else and makes their job harder. If we really think about it, why not just forgive people? There is so much freedom in forgiveness.
I remember when I was in college I was reading a book and in the book it started discussing a situation where a father was having the “sex talk” with their child and how awkward this was. All of a sudden I started weeping because of the void that was created in my life because of my father’s drinking and his lack of intentionally being in my life to teach me about things like the “birds and the bees.” I immediately started writing a forgiveness letter to my father because I felt this overwhelming feeling to express forgiveness towards him. I remember feeling so much being lifted off off my heart and mind during this process. I was taking the shackles off and through forgiving, experienced freedom like I never experienced up to that point.

Live for Self?

(Thursday Night Before David’s Funeral-in a plane)

In America it seems that if you aren’t making choices that benefit either you or you family, they aren’t good choices. I’m not sure that is biblical…because when I read the bible I hear Jesus calling us to live a sacrificial life. I just can’t get over the picture of my Savior not having a place to lay his head. Here is a thought, “how about mankind, especially Americans, (To whom much is given, much is expected) make choices that benefit the good of society and not self. I guess there are pockets of this type of thought that is somewhat mainstream as we think about the movement for sustainable farming, and others, but overall our individualistic society says we need to be “me” focused. At the beginning of this week, I found out my uncle had shot and killed himself. As I gathered information about why this occurred, it appeared he was very stressed out about a second home that he and my aunt had bought to relax and enjoy nature. This has led me to contemplate pretty hard about what God values. The word “sacrifice” keeps coming to my mind, not the word “self.” Are we truly happy if we consume more and more because we can? Does just because we can mean that we should? Because a lot of Americans have such an abundance, does that mean that it is ok to buy a second home, a second car (for yourself), a television for every room, and the list continues? I’m not asking this question to judge or to put down individuals that do, I’m just asking a question for people to think about. What is a better life? I remember my parents reactions when I told them that I wanted to move to the inner city. They felt that I was stepping on the American dream and spitting in their face. They thought if I raised children in the inner city I would be depriving them of what my parents worked so hard to give me. Is this true? The best word that I can describe 4 years after I made this decision is the word “rich.” But, if some people would look at my life they may say that I am sacrificing some things that just doesn’t make sense to do, but all I feel is “rich.” How is that? I’m not talking about rich in the monetary sense, I’m talking about rich being the feeling that I experience as I go through life experiencing many cultures and many beautiful people. How do I feel rich when I’m trying to live what ones would consider sacrifice? It doesn’t really make logical sense. In order to get to this richness, though, you have to get past the surface. I think in our consumeristic society we have created this acceptance of superficiality and it may be a bold statement to say consuming things creates shallowness but I truly feel there is a connection. What I can’t get out of my mind and my heart is that I’m unsure we are fully taking Jesus up on his offer in John 10:10 to give us life to the full. Do we understand what he was saying? The conclusion that I have come up with in my life so far is that when I don’t live for self, I seem to feel more full.