http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/23/religion-to-go-extinct-in-9-countries-experts-predict/?iref=obinsite

Interesting the similarities in those nations.

On a positive note, this provides substantial opportunity for evangelism and spreading the love of Jesus Christ. Any of you who have a heart for evangelism but thinking you have to move to a nation where you don’t understand the language or culture? Know you now have several other options, perhaps just as significant need in the eyes of God.

This feeling of disappointment is an alarm – not our phone on vibrate-mode. This alarm is probably at least on level 3 of 5, and we need to take care of the problem before it gets any worse. And it will… it’s like the roller coaster when it “tick, tick, ticks” up to the top of that big hill. The amount of time between a level 3 problem and a level-5 problem is exponentially shorter than between a 1 and 3 problem.

Here is the twist to responding to this alarm. The answer will not have you following the standard advice. I’ll go so far as to say the standard advice for this situation will make it even worse. It’s like throwing water on a grease fire.

The standard advice when dealing with difficult people or people that let us down/disappoint us is to realize they don’t control our lives. They have their problems to deal with and that isn’t our responsibility.

The standard advice goes awry because the root of our feelings isn’t that other people let us down. It is our own pride. If our pride is left unchecked, it barrels downhill at break-neck speeds. If it is at the point you are consciously aware of feeling either specific people or people in general usually let you down, we’re already heading downhill pretty fast. You don’t want to hit bottom on this one – trust me. Let’s see if we can turn this one around with God’s help.

Defending the concept that I am right and everyone else is wrong is an impossible reality to perpetuate so it needs help – a push in the right direction now and then to keep it going. Being in recovery groups over the years gave me insight into something I’ve certainly done at times, by seeing it play out in other people’s lives. This is yet another bonus to creating true accountability in our lives.

To effectively defend a view that people let me down, I and most likely you create situations this other person we know the other person will not respond to in the way we want. This reinforces our view that they are wrong and we are right.

Couple problems with this scenario

1. Creating this situation to test the person usually causes us pain in the process. Why would someone willingly hurt themselves to reinforce their worldview? It’s no different than an alcoholic drinking 20 beers and being sick the next 2 days.
2. There is a reason God calls us to forgive. It isn’t for our self-preservation – reducing stress or bad juju in our lives. It is because we’re not nearly as right as we think we are.
3. There is a reason God calls us to forgive. It is because we’re not nearly as right as we think we are. Yes, I meant to say that twice. When a person is struggling with blame, they need to think about this about 50 times… an hour… until the blaming stops.

Codependency is idolatry – placing other people in the position of God. The root of this though is not the people. What you typically see when a person seeks recovery from codependency without the Word of God in their lives is they’ll either inwardly or outwardly say to the other person, things like, “I’m not going to let you do ___ or ___ to me anymore.” In the case of an abusive relationship, this is a good thing – but that is a tiny, tiny minority of the situations.

The root of codependency is pride. God will not let us think we’re as awesome as we think we are. Pride separates us from God, so the codependent person feels some distance from Him. Instead of thinking the problem could be with us (because we’re prideful), we’ll think either God doesn’t care, or more likely create a different reality of God – one who loves us, but isn’t quite as personal and intimately involved in our minute-by-minute lives as the Bible makes it sound.

So the codependent person seeks this self-reinforcement somewhere else. “Who out there will make me feel valued… to think I’m as awesome as I think I am”? We’ll find people who will do this, too. People with their own set of problems who are looking for someone else to pull them out of their issues.

Of course, we’re all weak. I don’t mean this in a Christian coffee-cup verse way. I mean we’re really, really weak. The more I ponder the universe, watch things like the discovery channel, or even the local news, the more I realize we are specks of insignificance outside of God.

So why would we seek value in other people? People are broken – if we ride a bicycle to work in the morning, we don’t get to blame the bike because it’s slower than a car. More importantly, why would we seek value in ourselves and substitute shallow relationship with God in order to keep our own pride afloat?

Insanity for sure. Fortunately we are blessed to have God’s word in our lives. We’re blessed to have Christ-centered ministries like Celebrate Recovery and many others around the world which give us accountability as we pursue truth about God and let him reveal our hearts.

If you made it through this article, I give a most-sincere congratulations. A person who struggles with the sin of pride via codependency is the least responsive to notions they need to mend their ways out of any of the struggles we help with at Celebrate Recovery.

I don’t mean that in a snotty way by any means. I struggle with codependency considerably. This was less obvious when I was drugging or drinking my way through life because that helped me toward my tendency to isolate. The root is the same though. Where codependent people struggle with responsiveness to signs we need help is we condition ourselves to think people with alcohol, drug, sexual addiction, or some other morally-disapproved activity are the people who need help.

I’m lucky, because God brought me into a group for all my morally-reprehensible living and as the process worked itself out, I also became aware of my struggles with pride as it pertains to other people… my “codependency”. I am thankful God gave me insight into why I do what I do so I can get out of denial and be in a position to act on God’s word.

I hope this has been fruitful to you as well – let’s ask God to reveal our true motivations behind struggles with other people. What part are unhealthy boundaries, and what part is my pride. I can think of a situation right now I’ve got to go make right because I’ve been blaming someone else for my own deal. Be blessed -

I’m starting to catch these reminders on instance #2 instead of #3, 5 or 7 and before I’m sitting in an 8×10 cell. I prayed over the past few years about God helping me pay less “stupid tax” and learn lessons an easier way, so it is super-encouraging to see this start to happen.

This week’s “theme” seems to be the 12th step of Celebrate Recovery:

Having had a spritual experience as a result of these (12) steps, we try to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

“Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently, But watch yourself, or you may also be tempted” Galatians 6:1

It started off with me pondering God’s direction in my life.

• I have been struggling with producing what I consider true fruit in my career – am I going to right the ship?
• Is my career going to morph into something else?
• If my career morphs, how does it change – is it a sub-field of my current one, or is it something radically different?
• It seems like God is turning my strengths into weaknesses these days and using my weaknesses as his strengths. Very frustrating, as I put a great deal of time into developing what I assume are strengths. However, I’ve noted pretty much everyone God uses in the Bible had serious flaws. Those were what God used to bring himself glory and also bestow some residual glory on them, so I shouldn’t be surprised. I should even be encouraged.
• Is God going to make sense of a few overtly spiritual and personal experiences I’ve had over the past couple years and do they come into play with these other issues? The experiences were certainly weird and cool at the same time and definitely God, but could be interpreted in several ways. Unless God is bringing someone into my life who has some insight, then I have to take it as God wanted me to just know he has a plan and loves me. The details at this point aren’t that important though, regardless of how much I want a complete picture. God dropped into my heart the week before how God is looking for people to say “Yes, God” before knowing the question God is asking.

Sharing Christ with People I Know Very Well…

Next I was sporadically coming in contact with a person I know who has been struggling mightily over the past few years with something spiritual in nature. I experienced many of the same struggles, though they manifested themselves differently in my life.

After watching myself and listening to others first going through a 12-step program, I’ve realized it is extremely difficult for people to connect to other people’s stories unless there are direct correlations at first. (e.g. I struggle with alcohol and so did they).

Once a person is in a Christ-centered 12-step program (or perhaps any 12-step – I’m just speaking to my experience), God starts dropping truth in their heart, where they realize the root of literally any issue in people’s lives has the same root. This root crosses geography, culture, language, sex, and any other division we’ve created to break down our world into digestible chunks.

For the aforementioned reason, any previous efforts to make a connection turned up nothing. Of course I usually did it with at least a beer in my system so not sure what I was really expecting – not saying God hates beer. Just that it impairs judgement which is needed in its entirety for delicate matters like discerning God’s wisdom.

So, even though I identify with this person’s struggle, I don’t know how to help other than pray. Neither does my wife. Neither does anyone else who knows them.

So instead of praying for them, I decided to avoid them – smart, huh?

Revealing My “Fear of Man”

God then dropped a message from J.R. Vassar into my ipod via the Village Church podcast.

The subject was “fear of man” – and covered all these different ways we show fear of man (hint, most don’t have any usual evidence of “fear” so they go unchecked). I wasn’t surprised by this – had realized this before, but it rekindled those embers God previously laid in my heart.

The part of the message that ended up sticking in my gut was how I am not opening my heart to God to “be used to bring this good news to others.” My fear didn’t involve this person rejecting me.

It was that they weren’t going along with my idea so I didn’t feel powerful or useful. Ugh.

Sharing Christ with Neighbors, Coworkers, and Others in My Circle of Daily Influence…

Sure, I share on a blog – but this is easy. You and I will probably never meet this side of heaven. How about my neighbors? How about my co-workers? Shoot, how about even family?

And I’m not talking about handing out some tracts or books, or giving them the save you from hell story. I’m talking about letting people into my life. If they then reveal they are struggling, as everyone is and will usually reveal if we are in a deep enough relationship with them, then just sharing what God has been doing over the past few years.

Sure, I’m not a “good person” now (nor will I ever be). I’m also not above falling back into any of the multitude of ways I try to substitute for a relationship with God that end up in compulsive and destructive habits or harmful acts. Even though I have been set free from sin in Christ, I still give in to free will. God even points out we will all do this all our lives. Yet he still calls us to be willing to be used by him according to his good purpose – sharing the gospel of Christ and to give glory to God.

God does the rest. It isn’t my job to come up with a stirring oratory, a bullet-proof case for God, or even to be responsible for the other person’s actions when I simply share my experience with God.

My “fear of man” manifested in everything from excuses, isolation or aloofness, anger, and prideful wasting of time on frivolous activities surrounding my own temporary happiness keep me from being used by God.

Finally God used the Friday-night message at Celebrate Recovery which happens (of course) to be about this very message God has been drumming into my head the past week.

Okay, that’s reminder #3 in just a few short days – time to let God make some changes…

Next Steps for Sharing My Spiritual Experience Via a Christian 12-Step Program

I know there are a couple other CR ministries in town that are relatively new and lacking in people with experience to share their testimony. That would be an easy start since I’ve given my testimony in front of a decently-large crowd and lived to tell about it.

Other than that, I don’t know anything more than my answer needs to be “Yes”, and spend more time listening to God and spending less time on empty activity or even praying through a list of “God please help with ____ for (insert me or another person)”

There are times where I’ve done the “Yes”, and interesting… okay, amazing things happened in my life. If I’m not letting God stretch me, then I shrink – simple as that.

Intimidated About Sharing God’s Story of Restoration from Your Mistakes?

It’s probably more than you or I realize on a given day. That good news should be shared in whatever way God “tells” us.

God doesn’t want us to wait until this day when we have it all figured out before we’re qualified to share about the grace and mercy through Jesus Christ. All we have to be is one step ahead of the person who God puts in front of us with a need in their life.

Sometimes being “steps behind” others still gives us room to share. This is because the whole “step ahead” or “step behind” is bogus. This perception is based on our own clouded judgment of another person’s life. I have no idea what a person is really struggling with on a given day or over the course of a week, month, or year. Even my failures where God picked me back up is an encouragement.

Sharing comes in many packages, too. For some it is a warm meal, a hug, or a listening ear.

However, watch out for the following. Many people use non-verbal sharing of Christ’s love as an excuse for never sharing the good news of the gospel. The root of this is fear of man, covered up in a cloak of charity, compassion… and denial. Beware of this – if God isn’t doing something in your life that freaks you out a bit, that is probably a huge red alert that something is wrong in the relationship.

How Has God Restored You from Screw-Ups?

I appreciate your prayers that God will help my faith to be a “Yes, God” person while I live out my days and trust him with the rest. You can also add your prayer requests or experiences in sharing God’s work to restore the trainwrecks you’ve made in your life.

Let’s keep the comments for this post based on sharing God’s fixing your mess rather than evangelism as a whole. Like Christ,  this blog is more focused on the unrighteous than the righteous.

Thanks in advance for everyone’s transparency and honesty today and am excited about the good work he is continuing to do in your hearts until the end of time.

The customer says since this business owner advertised on a Christian radio station, they knew it was someone they could trust.

Seriously?

I get what the radio station is going after, but how many people outside of the knowledge of God’s grace through Christ (or even under that) experienced substantial problems when dealing with a Christ-follower?

Everyone is going to fail us and church communities are littered with examples of people doing grave financial harm to their Christian brothers and sisters.

In theory, doing business with a Christian should be a good experience. We know where their moral compass should be pointing and there is additional accountability.

So long as we follow God’s commands without considering justification for our own response to the problem…

I’ve expressed my concerns about Christianity as a business niche in the past and while that post comes off a bit more heavy-handed these days, I haven’t softened my position all that much.

If we have a product or service we believe makes people’s lives better while considering the cost, we want to share that with the people we love.

That may include people in our local extension of the body of Christ (church or other Christian community), but we must be extremely careful in the process.

This requires so much care, I completely stayed away from promoting my business around the Church. This is a personal choice for everyone to make. Maybe I’m in the spot like a guy who drives crazy so he doesn’t put a fish on his car.

Attaching anything with God to something we are doing in the business realm so it puts us in a similar position of social responsibility much like a pastor. Our actions impact how others see and understand Christ, whether that is logical/fair, or not.

It is important for business owners who are also followers of Christ to be extremely circumspect in how we market our business lest we do some Christian anti-evangelism.

Matt Chandler of Village Church made a great point in a sermon, there really is no “Christian music”. There is music with Christian lyrics – there is no “Christian music”.

In a similar fashion, we do not operate “Christian businesses”. We are Christians who operate a business.

Maybe I’m down too much in the semantics, but hopefully you get my point. On a regular basis, we should all take our jobs/businesses before the Lord including everything from the business model, product, promotion, finances, etc. and ask God to point out anything in our actions and motives he does not like (Psalm 139:23-34).

So, let’s say we lived in a nation with practically no infrastructure and no capital to build one, how would we get a job?

Fortunately, God gave us the internet. So long as someone knows the language of a highly-developed nation (e.g. English, French, German), has an internet connection, and a computer, it doesn’t really matter where you live.

Evidence of this are all the programmers I hire for odd jobs from countries where $300 a month gives you a comfortable living. In Africa, the average monthly income is substantially lower than that, and people always need odd little programming or web dev projects done. Sounds like an opportunity knocking…

The one sticking point is, “How would someone in Africa gain these skills”?

So glad you asked

Hackers for Charity is working to provide food, computer gear, and training in East Africa. The founder also has one of the most interesting stories about God using those in the tech industry. My experience and connections in the web industry has shown the personality types typically working on the web or with computers are not the type to be followers of Christ so this is exceptionally unique, and exceptionally cool. Check out the blog at least.

Does this thread of emails look familiar?

sara: Hey gang, anyone want to help bring meals for the Millers this week since they just had that baby?
steve: sounds great. I’ll do it saturday. Sara, you and the millers hang out all the time – any dietary restrictions?
sara: Thanks steve. We’ll take the next monday.
nora: We’ll do tuesday then
sara: thanks nora. Any takers for wed-fri?
jason: Hey we’d love to do it but we’re out of town every day but monday. Steve, can we switch you for wed?
steve: sure. How about those dietary restrictions?
jane: I need directions or their new cell number
sara: I’m lost w/o my garmin so I’m not good w/ directions. Jenny’s number is 867-5309. Ask if she’ll post directions to the group
jason: thanks steve. yeah, how about the diet? Wasn’t jenny allergic to eggs, or a vegan, or some other horrible affliction?
nora: hey jane, you want to grab lunch w/ the kids this week?
phil: we’ll take friday.
jane: sure nora. what time works for you?
steve: hey there “thread hijackers” … anyone know about that vegan rumor? If so this sausage gumbo ain’t going to fly.

and about 47 emails later, the week of meals comes to fruition (along with sara’s first grey hair)…

If you’ve ever sympathized with their plight, check out http://www.takethemameal.com/ had some friends using this recently and it does a nice job of keeping things organized.

• schedule of dates, dishes
• Place for notes so steve can finally get an answer to his question
• google maps integrated with the address
• printable
• easy to locate friends by name and password

takethemameal.com

Okay, so I’m guessing this is more awkward for me jumping back on the blog but I watched this song probably a good 6-9 months ago and really dug it. If anyone reading this blog knows me on a super-personal level then you’d know Phil Wickham would probably not be an artist you’d find in my MP3… but the Lord works in mysterious ways. Between this, the next song & others, I’ve been blessed.

or if you’re one of those folks that don’t like the acoustic/live gig, try this one

And yes, I’m aware of the other versions. Jeff Buckley rocks & it’s a shame because he went way too soon. If you are a follower of Christ or even pondering that decision, it is easy to see the sincerity in what Phil is singing about.

or enjoy some live flavor – just fast forward a minute or two. Song hits at 3:00 but you want at least a 30 sec lead-in.

Starting to actually care about other people – I remember doing charitable acts as parts of groups (church stuff, scouts, etc.) but I never remember doing it outside of formalized groups. Even now when it’s not work time or school time, I want to make it either “me” time, or “us” time (meaning my family)… however, God is starting to break that down where I’m seeing needs and how God may want to bless another. Of course whether I do it or not is a different story, but it’s much different than before.

So how about you? What has changed in your life now that you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Higher Power?

While dorking around the web, I run across ideas like Meetup.com. Tell them what you are interested in and find immediately everyone in your area to a particular mile radius that is also interested, and organize  meetings. The site even comes with pictures and a creepy ability to add comments to just about anyone’s profile. It’s place for people with all kinds of random interests where they simply never would have met people back in the day without working out the six degrees of separation on their entire metro area.

This service can also provide ministry experiences I never really though of before. Let’s look at one more in-depth, but we’ll keep it fairly anonymous to protect the innocent.

I live in an area that that rhymes with Farleston, Mouth Farolina. Where it actually is in the US doesn’t really matter. All you need to know is that there are people there that are hurting and the goal here is to do some serving. And I don’t mean this way.

• Starting a church? – Toss it out on Meetup.com. You’ll get all kinds of crackpots responding to your profile, but isn’t that what you were looking for, anyway? My church didn’t do an effective job of screening me at the door, and I’m still there 4 years later.
• People new to a town – Every church I talk to swears the only way people end up at their church is by personal invitation from a current member. What about the people that don’t know their church members?
• Wanting to minster to the hurting? The hurting have groups. They’re not usually grouped by the struggle itself, so they’re a little more challenging to find. Let’s say I have a chronic illness – our town has a group dedicated to people with chronic illnesses supporting each other. Great place to build friendships of those in similar circumstance. Naturally there may be some opportunities to share Christ with your friends.
• Wanting to start a pagan parenting group? 17 Pagan Parents in just the small suburb of where I live signed up to meet when the moon is right and Pan the goat God requires our worship for a good oyster season.

Plenty of reasons the Lord gave us the Internet – it’s great to see people using it instead of just calling it an evil porn factory or 100% filled with lies. From what I remember in history classes, “the church” hasn’t been all that hot on people reading the Bible for themselves at times. Serious thanks to the Lord for the Web, Martin Luther and every other person in every other denomination of the body of Christ who has worked to remove human idols from the equation of God + man.

At first glance that doesn’t seem like an auspicious beginning to the new year and some would say, “Matt, take it easy on yourself – you just have to be more positive about change.” And that is partly correct because I should. God says that he will continue the good work he began in us until the end of time. However, it is God that will bring this healing and change – not me.

If I could do it, I would. I’ve tried all kinds of self-help books, rigid plans (legalism) to bring about order, kicking my butt, positive thinking, etc. to remove sin/problems resulting from sin from my life and none of it worked. I was still left with the same issues. When I shut one down, my problems worked into another area. It was like one of those stress balls. I would squeeze it but the goo never went anywhere (and it was goo). It just went into another area of the ball.

The first step of real life change

It was when God led me to the ministry of Celebrate Recovery that I read the first step and truly began a journey down the road to healing. I’ve seen more change in the past few years than in my entire life put together and it all started with this one thing.

“Realize I’m not God. I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable” (Principle 1 of ‘The Road to Recovery’)

Isn’t that strange that a ministry such as this wouldn’t put “Stop doing ‘X’” as the first step? If I’m smoking crack, committing adultery, or laying guilt trips on my kids, wouldn’t I want to address this problem first?

How God handles life change in the Bible.

I was reading Jeremiah and saw the following passage that God instructed Jeremiah to tell the people:

Therefore, go and say these words to Israel, ‘This is what the Lord says: O Israel, my faithless people, come home to me again, for I am merciful. I will not be angry with you forever. Only acknowledge your guilt. Admit that you rebelled against the Lord your God and committed adultery against him by worshiping idols under every green tree. Confess that you refused to follow me. I, the Lord, have spoken’ Jeremiah 3:12 (NLT)

Acknowledge, admit, and confess. He doesn’t say “stop.” These three things require a great amount of humility because to do any of those, we must first admit we are wrong, which means we acknowledge that something else is right. This is a huge step in societies with relative morality, but really it is hard in societies with absolute morality as well. People are sinners, and we are proud. I don’t like admitting I’m wrong at all. Other people are good at admitting they are wrong, but that is only because they don’t like conflict. Inwardly they “know they are right.”

Admitting my powerlessness and sin brings healing saves me from wrath and judgment.

And yet you say, ‘I haven’t done anything wrong. Surely he isn’t angry with me!’ Now I will punish you severely because you claim you have not sinned. Jeremiah 2:35 (NLT)

Notice how God says he will punish me for my denial / blocking out the light of truth, not that I will be punished because I’m a bad, bad man.

Wrath and judgment is a highly unpopular topic in the Bible and the Christian church today but the fact remains there is judgment spoken about by every person God throws out there as a vessel of his message including Jesus Christ. It has to be addressed, and we all know it, even if it’s just deep, deep (deep) down there in the innermost parts of our heart.