When Distractions Keep Us From Life

“Mom. Mom. Mom!” I looked up at my son. “I’m sorry. What?” I asked. “Did you hear anything I said?” “No,” I admitted. “I think you are addicted to your phone,” he remarked. Does this sound like a conversation in your house sometimes? Unfortunately it has happened to both me and my wife.
Justifications and excuses linger on the tip of our tongues. You want to tell them about the “important” email you had to send. But the truth is, they're right.

One of the biggest drains of our time is technology because of the access it gives us to a virtual life. Our lives revolve around this access and its pull on us is strong. There’s always email to check, texts to respond to, statuses to update, images and videos to see or post. And they must be done right away (or so we think), putting everything else on pause. No doubt, technology provides many benefits to our lives. But we can’t be naïve to the consequences, including primarily its impact on our in-person relationships. It entices us away from face-to-face contact and real authentic connections. More often than not, it’s a time waster. It sucks us in and consumes hours. We think we are logging in to check one thing and an hour later we finally come up for air. The limited granules in the sands of our life’s clock trickle down while our fingers swipe and click our days away. And like all our kids remind us sometimes; much of real life is missed when our eyes are glued to the screen of our virtual life?

Technology, like anything good, can turn sour when our hearts distort its role. The ability we have to read emails, texts, and status updates gives us a rush. It’s fun, and we just keep going back for more. But time is too valuable. It is a treasure in its own right. And make no mistake: the inordinate use of technology lusts for our time, and our treasure, which lusts for our hearts. It subtly moves in and tries to prop up the idol of self, attempting to convince us that the virtual world of “me, myself, and I” is more important than the real life happening right in front of us. When I really think about it, my heart is convicted. I don’t want my kids to think that I care more about responding to a message than I do about them. When we consider how much time we waste, time we will never get back, we're doubly convicted. Guilt settles in. We try harder and set rules for our use of technology. We resolve to not be consumed by it. But then sooner or later we fail again.

Scripture touches all areas of our life, including this battle with how we use technology. In his letter to the Romans, Paul speaks about his own battle with sin. He expressed a frustration to which we can all relate, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15). We are all sinners. “There is no one righteous, not one” (Romans 3:10). As long as we live in this world, we will battle against our sinful nature. But Paul points us to the source of our help, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24–25). Many of us may realize the pull that technology has on us and feel the weight of our guilt because of the wasted time. But like Paul says, Jesus is our rescuer. He came to redeem us from each and every sin, including the squandering away our time on the iPhone. His perfect life has become ours. His sacrificial death paid our debt in full. What this means is that the work of Christ is sufficient and complete to cover all our sins and empower our fight in the struggle.

Every time we fail and stumble in this battle against sin, we need to return to the gospel over and over again. Though the pull of sin is strong, and though technology tempts us with its false claims of affirmation, success, and importance, the power of God’s grace is stronger. It is his grace that saves us from the power of sin and it is his grace that saves us from the presence of sin in our daily lives. The cross stands there for us, not as a one-time source for forgiveness and assurance of eternal salvation, but also as a source of grace for each moment of our days. And as we turn from our sin in repentance, we can respond in thanksgiving to our gracious God because though we are more sinful than we ever thought, we are also more loved and more forgiven than we will ever know.

You know it and I know it, there are more important things in our life than what our computers and phones and online platforms have to offer. As we seek to redeem our time for eternity, we must rest in the grace of Christ and cling to this promise: “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).

Sass Is My Transformation

There is a new complexity that has popped up into our lives; and that complexity stands at barely three feet tall. I'm speaking of our little girl. Our son had all of about two weeks of the terrible two's, then was very calm up till now. However, our daughter is a totally different story. She has embraced the terrible two's, added in the third and fourth year, and tacked on the attitude of a teenager. As I like to say, "the sass is strong with this one." Some days I wake up and nothing seems to go right. The alarm fails to sound. The kids are slow to get ready. The fridge is empty of food for breakfast, (or at least empty of the one thing they want). And then the route to work is filled with red lights. Soon I find myself at work while she bounces off the walls. After work, we stop at the grocery store on the way home (for the one thing they will eat) and she acts like a wild animal that broke free from a zoo. My heart sighs and I wish I could just rewind time and start the day all over.

Days like this would often leave me in despair. I felt frustrated, stressed, and overwhelmed. I desperately tried to figure out why my life was chaotic and how I could fix it. And then I felt guilty over my inability to do so. I thought that maybe I just needed to be more organized. If I could get control over the details of my life, maybe I wouldn’t have these stressful days. I searched the blogs and read the books, hoping to find ways to make my life run smoothly, thinking the whole time that there must be something I can do; that there must be someway to grab back control over my days. But I really needed theology. I needed what I knew about God to press down deep into my daily life. I realized that if I believe in the doctrine of God’s sovereignty I had to face the truth that God is never surprised by any frustrating event I encounter. Spurgeon once said that even a speck of dust cannot move unless God wants it to. God is in sovereign control of all he has made and of all the details of our lives. “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.” (Psalm 135:6).

Since this is true, since nothing happens outside God’s will and plan, then my daily parenting challenges are under his sovereign control, too. He knows about the tantrums over lost toys, the kids getting sick right before an important event, and the everyday-stress of getting children to go to sleep. He is not surprised by sibling spats, markers on the walls, my daughter cutting her hair and hiding it under her bed, or potty timing fiascos. All the events of our lives that feel out of our control are actually in God’s control. Lamentations 3:37–38 says, “Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?” God is in control of every circumstance and every event of our lives, and he uses them, often in some mysterious way, to change us more into the likeness of Christ. What this means for me as a parent is that every late appointment and every empty jug of milk is sovereignly decreed and used for my good. My child’s tantrum is for my transformation.

And this truth has given me great freedom. Instead of despairing over the seemingly random and chaotic events in my life, I can view them in light of his sovereign care. When my days are long and everything seems to go wrong, I know it has all happened for a reason. In fact, all of my parenting challenges are used for my spiritual good — they are to make me more like Christ (Romans 8:28–29). This is what God is about. He is not in the business of making my life comfortable and free of any stress. He has something greater planned for me: my holiness. In the midst of the chaos, I see Jesus and how much I need the gospel each and every moment. The God of grace who saved me from sin is the God of grace who will help me have patience in the close confines of my home. Every challenging situation becomes an opportunity for me to trust him, to obey, to learn, to grow, to rely more on his grace.

So when the dryer breaks and I get a flat tire, instead of despair there is hope. Life doesn’t feel out of control if we know Who is in control. We can trust and rest in God’s sovereignty, knowing that he is using our every stress for our transformation and his glory.

The Dragon Under Our Beds

How we approach a situation reveals what we expect to find. Imagine it is 2 A.M. and I’m asleep. My wife taps my shoulder and says, “I heard something. I think there’s an intruder downstairs.” My mind immediately kicks into high-gear. I reach underneath my bed and grab the only thing I can find to protect the family, a roll of wrapping paper. "Oh well." So I slowly make my way to the kitchen where my wife heard the sound. Even though I live in a older house, I know exactly how to sneak down my staircase without making a creak. My heart pounds in the still night. My eyes search in the dark: the doors, the hallway mirror, the main-level windows that I know a person can squeeze through. Meanwhile, my wife is upstairs with her phone. She has dialed “9” and “1,” and she has her finger waiting on that second “1.” She’s waiting for me to scream, or for someone else to scream after I yell, “Fore!” See, my whole approach to this situation reveals what I expected to find.

But now imagine that at 2 A.M. my four-year-old daughter taps my shoulder, “Daddy, there’s a dragon underneath my bed.” I smile dreamily at her. “Okay, pumpkin,” I mumble. “Let’s go take care of that dragon.” Slowly, I slip out of the covers and drop my feet on the bedroom floor. Holding her hand, I stumble toward her room. But don’t confuse my walking for waking; I am still in stage two of R.E.M. — pretty much unconscious. I get to her room and kneel down, dutifully sticking my face under her bed. “Nope,” I say, “No dragons under here. Go back to sleep, pumpkin. I’ll see you in the morning.” Now, we know this would have been very different had I thought dragons were real. The point stands: how I approached the situation revealed what I expected to find.

And here’s the question for us this weekend: How will we approach God in worship? Do we expect an intruder? Or just a “dragon” under our beds? Is he a real person we will encounter? Or do we keep him imaginary? Many of us open our Bibles claiming readiness to “hear from God,” but the way we really approach the word looks different. Maybe we just want to check off the box or impress our friends or pacify our small group leader. Many of us claim that prayer is our opportunity to “speak with God,” but the way we really pray looks different. Maybe we just dash off a few well-worn clichés, again. And many of us say we are going to the church’s gathering to “meet with God,” but the real approach, well, it looks different, too. We stumble in hardly awake, like we’re chasing down dragons under our beds.

But God is no fictional character lurking in our imagination. He is the Lion of Judah (Revelation 5:5). He is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29). David says to him, “O you who hear prayer” (Psalm 65:2). And he proclaims, “Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts!” (Psalm 65:4).

As we come together in worship, God will bring us near — and near he will be. How we approach him reveals what we think we’ll find.

The Church Cleaner

She is always in church, wearing faded jeans, an old t-shirt and slippers to clean and arrange the seats, decorate and clean the pulpit whenever it is dirty. For six years, she never missed a single Saturday coming to clean the church.

One Saturday, a young man walked into the church while she was still arranging the chairs. He went and sat down watching as the lady was working. He was impressed that a lady who looked quite beautiful even in the old clothes and scarf over her hair could be so dedicated to her work in the church. He thought within himself that this was an unfortunate lady who probably had no one to take care of her education and could probably be an orange seller or some petty trader struggling to make ends meet at the market stall. He watched and within his heart felt he knew what God wanted him to do. When he had felt a compulsion to come very early to church, he had not understood but now he thought he did.

He went back to his car and took out some money. When the lady finished her work and was about to leave, he called her and commended her for her service and gave her the money. She respectfully declined the money, but he insisted pressing it into her hands. He asked if she lived close so he could give her a ride. She thanked him and told him that her car was outside, but he did not understand what she had said. He walked her out determined to find out all he could about this lady that God wanted him to help change her level. They walked out of the church with him telling her where he worked and how God had asked him to come early to church that day and how he believed God was directing him to make a difference in her life. He was so busy talking he had not realized they had walked directly to a BMW X6 2017 limited edition parked under trees in the parking lot.

The car made his one year old car look like a worn out wheelbarrow. The lady opened the driver's door stepped in and handed over her card to the man and said, "I believe God sent you here for a purpose, but I do not think it was to change my level, most likely it was to change yours." I am tempted to say it took a forklift to shut the young man's mouth and move him from his place he was glued to as the lady drove off. God had a purpose for bringing him to church that morning and that purpose was to teach him humility which he learned well.

Many times we think so highly of ourselves that where God sends us to learn we go trying to teach. We always imagine ourselves as teachers, never as students. Pride and lack of humility have brought many great people to their knees. I personally have felt this perception about me on many occasions. We as humans have a bad habit of judging others by looks, financial status, personality, or many other reasons. In our hectic lives it's easier to superficially judge someone rather than spend the time to get to know them. I've known poor people that were the salt of the earth, and also some that were truly not good. In the same respect, I've known wealthy people that go out of their way to give the shirt off their back in helping others. As well there are many who are wealthy that feel their level makes them greater than others.

We will all have our day of a reality check. Whether it be sooner, and there is time to change our lives. Or on that Day of Judgement, when reality will come full force and there will be no time to change. Oh Lord teach us to be humble. We are all the same, sinners in need of a reality check. Sinners in the need of salvation. Sinners in the need of forgiveness. Help us to keep our pride in check, and always stay humble.

Heavenly Sense

In the sixteenth-century Netherlands, Dirk Willems had been labeled an "Anabaptist" during the rule of Spanish Catholics and imprisoned. Now he was running for his life. He had escaped out the tiny window and lowered himself on a rope made of old rags. Landing on the frozen pond along side of the prison wall, he stepped gingerly on the ice, wondering if he would fall through. But the months of starvation endured in prison now served him well. He barely weighed one hundred pounds.

Before he reached the other side of the pond, a scream broke the night silence. "Halt immediately!" yelled the guard coming out the window Dirk had climbed through only moments ago. Dirk was too close to freedom. He kept going.

The guard yelled again as he set foot on the ice. Quickly he began to chase after Dirk, but on his third step there was a crack. A splash followed as the guard fell through the ice. His screams changed to shrieks of cold and terror. "Help me, please! Help me!" Dirk paused, looking toward freedom. Then he turned and quickly made his way back to the prison pond. He laid on his stomach and stretched his arms to rescue the nearly frozen guard. In sarcastic gratitude, the guard grabbed Dirk and ordered him back to his cell. Despite his heroism, Dirk was burned at the stake for his faith.

Committed Christians don't live according to common sense. They do the unthinkable with full knowledge of the consequences. They do the impossible as if it were commonplace. Believers live according to a higher calling. Their actions and reactions are so unnatural that they are often misunderstood. For some, Dirk's extreme rescue seems an unnatural choice. Even, perhaps, a bit foolish. Dirk, however, believed he was simply following the basics of the Bible. He put another's needs above his own.

When we make sacrifices, we may not always make sense to the world, but we know we are making progress from a heavenly perspective. Do you most often live according to common sense? Or are you committed to following God's commands at any cost?

Do We Fear Rest?

Have you ever fallen into the busy trap? Do you never stop working or doing some form of activity? Have you ever said the term, “Rest is for the weak or the dead"? When your heart is saying things like that, your hands won’t stop finding things to do. The busy trap is the self-defeating spiral of nonstop action that feeds on the belief that restfulness is weakness. But rest is not weakness. Rest is an irreducible ingredient for the life that enjoys God.

Have you ever stopped to wonder why, exactly, God would get so upset when Israel forgot to practice the Sabbath? In Ezekiel 20, the prophet is going after Israel for this very thing. There, God says, “I gave them my Sabbaths, as a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them” (Ezekiel 20:12). Yet, Israel refused to rest. By forgetting to stop, we forget God. Restlessness, the refusal to lay down our work so we can open our arms to God, means that our busy hands are always full. This robs God of glory; his weighty significance in our lives. Holy time given to a holy God makes us more wholly aware that we are not gods; we neither create nor save ourselves. God does. If we won’t stop to experience the glory of God in rest, we won’t be able to glorify him in work either.

Forgetting God has deadly side effects. If we won’t worship God in rest, then our work will soon metastasize into the worship of some idol; self-importance, control, money, or recognition. That’s exactly what Israel had done. By working without Sabbath rest, the work of their hands became the idols of their hearts. Ezekiel continues, “because they rejected my rules and did not walk in my statutes, and profaned my Sabbaths; for their heart went after their idols” (Ezekiel 20:16). Our hearts are not neutral. Chances are, if we’re not finding our rest in God, we’re wrongly finding it somewhere else. Tell me, if you imagine a regular day of actual rest, does it make you feel anxious? Your fear of stopping might reveal what you’re really worshiping. Because anxiety is very often the evidence of unbelief.

One doesn’t actually need the Bible to see the effects of ceaseless labor. You may achieve some good goals. You may acquire money and career success. Your course may chart steadily upward, for a while. But at what cost: sleeplessness, anxiety, overwork, dissolved relationships, a damaged marriage, distant children, and a neglected God? We work without rest to arrive at some future rest without work. But that’s a bad deal on both sides. Humans weren’t made to work without rest. But even if you burn the midnight oil, scorching the candle on both ends, then what? You arrive at your retirement; a rest with no work. And slowly you begin to realize that too is a nightmare. Humans weren’t made for that either. Jeremiah shows us what such a life looks like when the Lord says, “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). A restless life is like trying to fill a bucket that is constantly leaking. No matter how much we save, spend, exert, or fret, the dripping away of our lives will eventually lead to ruin. Rest returns us to the true fountain and mends the vessels of our lives to carry the water we find there.

If it is true that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, and it is true, then it is a sad irony that so many of us Christians refuse to pause long enough to enjoy him. Sure, you can love God in your work (and you should!). But the God and Father of Jesus Christ is not the false god of Pharaoh who demands ceaseless work to gain entry into their paltry heavens. The true God has actually done all the work necessary to invite us to rest in him. You can learn the art of rest, but only if you’ll repent of your restlessness. The end of Ezekiel’s prophecy promises that one day God’s people will no longer forsake their rest. And when they learn to stop, they’ll walk in more health and provision than they had ever known (Ezekiel 44:23–31). This is why Jesus was able to look at his weary people and say, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30)

The restless will only find their rest in him. You will only find your rest in him.

The Empty Pocket

The story is told of a man with two pockets. One pocket has a hole that he never repairs. The other pocket has no holes, and if a hole develops, he gets it sown up immediately. Throughout the day, whenever he experiences something negative, he puts it in the pocket with a hole. But every good thing he experiences, he places in the pocket without the hole. Every evening, he empties out his pocket and all he has are blessings.

Too many of us put all the good in our lives in the pocket with holes. We take them for granted, forget them, and don’t treasure them. Yet, all the negative things we deal with, our problems, frustrations, and worries, we place in the pocket with no holes. Then at the end of the day, we empty our pockets and find all sorts of problems and no blessings.

A quick look at Facebook and Twitter shows how many people today feel #blessed. In our social-media world, saying you’re blessed can be a way of boasting while trying to sound humble. College scholarship? #Blessed. Unexpected raise? #Blessed. Wonderful family? #Blessed. As Christians we use that term too, of course. We pray God will bless our family. We attribute our undeserved gifts to “God’s blessings.” We talk about ministries being blessed. But what does it really mean? How should we understand the blessing of God? For believers, is the blessed life synonymous with the successful life? Is it the Christian version of the good life? A loving marriage, obedient children, a vibrant ministry, a healthy body, a successful career, trusted friends, financial abundance — if these are the characteristics of a blessed life, then having all of them should translate into an extraordinarily blessed life. But does it? If someone had all those things, would they be extraordinarily blessed? Rather than turning to God, they might feel self-sufficient and proud. Perhaps a bit smug and self-righteous. After all, their hard work would be yielding good fruit. Moreover, they wouldn’t need to cry out to God for deliverance; everything would already be perfect. They wouldn’t need to trust God; they could trust in themselves. They wouldn’t need God to fill them; they would already be satisfied.

My desire for God is greatly fueled by my need. And it is in the areas of loss where I feel my need most intensely. Unmet desires keep me on my knees. Deepen my prayer life. Make me ransack the Bible for God’s promises. Earthly blessings are temporary; they can all be taken away. Job’s blessings all disappeared in one fateful day. Trials ground our faith in ways that prosperity and abundance never could. While our trials may not be blessings in themselves, they were channels for them. As Laura Story asks in her song “Blessings,” “What if your blessings come through rain drops? What if trials of this life — the rain, the storms, the hardest nights — are your mercies in disguise?” This revolutionary idea of blessing is also firmly established in Scripture. One translation of the New Testament (ESV) has 112 references with the words bless, blessing, or blessed, none of which connect blessing to material prosperity. (Matthew 5:3–4, 10–11), (Luke 11:28), (Romans 4:7; quoting Psalm 32:1), (James 1:12), (Revelation 14:13, 19:9).

There is no hint of material prosperity or perfect circumstances in any New Testament reference. On the contrary, blessing is typically connected with either poverty and trial or the spiritual benefits of being joined by faith to Jesus. According to the Key-Word Study Bible, “The Greek word translated blessed in these passages is makarioi which means to be fully satisfied. It refers to those receiving God’s favor, regardless of the circumstances” What is blessing, then? Scripture shows that blessing is anything God gives that makes us fully satisfied in him. Anything that draws us closer to Jesus. Anything that helps us relinquish the temporal and hold on more tightly to the eternal. And often it is the struggles and trials, the aching disappointments and the unfulfilled longings that best enable us to do that.

Learn to let go of all the bad and hold fast to all the good so that, at the end of the day and the end of your life, you’ll find yourself with no worries— just a pocket full of blessings.