Becoming a Black Belt of the Way

By Mark E Pulsifer

Of all the ideas, insights, and practices that have helped me grow as a Christian, there are only six that guide and empower me to pursue lifelong conversion – to grow as far as possible in this lifetime in the character and Spirit of Jesus our Christ.

One of the six is the pursuit of becoming ever more meek.

When I attended Trinity College (now Trinity International University) in Deerfield, IL for a year, I became friends with a seminarian. One day, he happened to share the original meaning of “meek” with me that completely changed my understanding what it means for a person to follow Christ.

The common, widely understood meaning of “meek” is: Weakness; fearful or pointless deference; impotence. This is a strategic misunderstanding, part of the insipid religiosity that infects Christian culture. Many in the Church (and in the world) think that it is wrong to be strong and powerful and that in order to be like Jesus, a man needs to become feminine. Put another way, to become meek is like performing a spiritual sex-change on yourself. And what man wants to do that?

Instinctively, many men (myself included) subconsciously or openly rebel against this. As a consequence, we can quietly choose to ignore the difficult and prolonged task of working with the Holy Spirit to be converted and transformed into a greater being.

But as my friend taught me, a Biblical understanding of “meek” means “disciplined power”. This concept was used to describe Roman military chariot horses. Magnificent. Muscular. Highly trained. Powerful. Courageous –and under authority.

This is what Jesus meant when he taught that the meek shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5). In today’s vernacular, he may as well have said that the black belts of His Way will inherit the earth and rule it with Him.

Now that’s cool. It’s something I can get into and work on, trying to pray always, capture every thought, turn the other cheek, and so forth. It’s not pointless weakening but purposeful suffering or forbearance for a higher purpose.

Anyone who has forgiven another for a real harm knows that it requires strength and a setting aside or humbling of self. Not easy to do. Or to refrain from hitting back, whether with words or fists. Again, not easy to do. Being gentle sometimes requires a lot of self-restraint. Like doing a stomach crunch or a snap kick, it develops strength and habit, correct form. It’s worth it because it’s the only way to grow in disciplined power a.k.a. meekness.

As Lao Tzu observed in his famous book of wisdom, the Tao te Ching, “Knowing others is wisdom, knowing the self is enlightenment. Mastering others requires force, mastering the self needs strength.”

(For a thorough study of what meek correctly means, take a look at John MacArthur’s message on Matthew 5:5.)

Becoming (biblically) Human

By Matthew Farrelly

The men’s retreat this month was a blessing to me and to many men at Church of the Resurrection. Deacon Stephen spoke about something I’ve actually been trying to sort out for some time: that is, the idea that our work is prayer – ora et labora, pray and work.

This gets at the very heart of who God made us to be. All facets of our lives are to be characteristically worshipful. We were created to worship. One particular facet of what it means to worship is that God made us to be priests.

Of course, we are familiar with the Levitical priests and their function and purpose in Israel, but, from the start, Adam and Eve were priests in God’s garden. Our priesthood, however, has changed with the coming of Christ. Jesus is our now High Priest and, in Christ, his Church has become a kingdom of priests.

Priests offer sacrifices to God on behalf of the people. Fundamentally, this has never changed. Jesus, as both priest and sacrifice, offered himself for the sake of the whole world, making a way for our priesthood in Him. The Church now embodies Christ in all that we do just as he did. We are now the sacrifice and the priests for the sake of the world. We offer all parts of our lives: our work, our children, our students, our leisure, our worship to God.

St. Paul speaks of it this way in Romans:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1)

In Philippians, Paul speaks of his own priesthood. Notice the language:

Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me. (Philippians 2:14-18)

Paul calls us to be ‘without blemish’ – just as all sacrifices were to have been. We are to offer ourselves and all that we do as a priestly ‘drink offering’ to God, pouring out ourselves for the sake of our neighbor.

Back in Romans, the language is made all the more clear:

I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another. But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. (Romans 15:14-17)

Paul understands acutely that he is lifting up the Gentiles to the Father. They are his offering which the Holy Spirit will sanctify. If our lives are ordered by ora et labora, then all of our labors are priestly offerings. And God will sanctify the work that we do. We will ‘have reason to be proud of our work for God.’

This last week, Father Stewart introduced the concept of imitating Christ in marriage and celibacy. We see this same language from Ephesians 5:

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk [live your lives] in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Ephesians 5:1-2 ESV)

Like Jesus, and Paul who followed him, do we understand and embrace that we are both sacrifice and priest? Have our imaginations been baptized with the understanding that no matter what we do, we are offering a sacrifice to God.

Malachi spoke of a time that the LORD’S “name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to [His] name, and a pure offering. For [His] name will be great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts.” (1:11)

Through Christ, God has torn the curtain of the temple so that all places where Christ is present are holy places. Christ is in his Church day-in and day-out: at home, at work, at play.

As his Church grows, the bounds of the temple expand so that ‘every place’ will be an offering. The whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. So, our priestly service is in everything and through everything we do and will continue this way until Christ’s return.

Help us, Father, to live and move and have our being in you that we may be both sacrifice and priests.

Limitations

By Kurt Bullis

I should probably be sleeping right now.

We’ve just moved a few weeks ago and we’ve been having the hardest time getting settled. We haven’t been getting good sleep, or enough of it. We’re either too cold or too hot at night. And we haven’t gotten used to the sound of the trains yet.

Yesterday I came home from work half way through the day with a migraine. Maybe due to stress or lack of sleep, or both. Or maybe it’s some other factor all together. Whatever the cause, the reality I’m being confronted with of late is that we have limitations. We need sleep. If we don’t get it, there are consequences. Our bodies and spirits can only handle so much stress before breaking down.

Shortly after college, one of my housemates died in a car accident while on the road visiting his family. The weather was turning into winter and the road conditions weren’t great, but Andrew was speeding along anyway. He lost control of his car and the crash killed him.

At the funeral, his brother said some words that I think will always stay with me. He was addressing the question of God’s will in the situation. Was it God’s will that Andrew died at that time and in that way? No, he said. Instead, the reality is that we live in a world where there are consequences. When you drive that fast and lose control, the consequence is that you can die. Andrew’s life went all the way up to the limit of the realities of this world.

Freedom is understood as the ability to do what you want. But this is only partly true. Tim Keller uses the illustration of a fish when talking about freedom in his book The Reason for God. A fish is only free if he stays within the boundaries of his identity. The truth about fish is that they breathe water. A fish out of water is not a free fish. It’s a dead fish.

I hate being sick and don’t do well with it. I think the reason has a lot to do with the reality of limits. When I was home sick yesterday, I came face to pillow with my capacity. I could not continue to work at my job. When I got home, I could not go to the park with my wife and daughter. I could have pushed myself, but the consequences wouldn’t have been far off.

We worship a limitless God, right? Jesus was crucified, was died and was buried. And he came back to life. God could have stopped that car accident from happening that killed my housemate. God could keep sickness away. God could reach into the laws of nature and rework them so that fish can live out of water. We know this is true and we know that stuff like this has happened before. We call them miracles.

So why does God break the rules sometimes and other times keep them firmly in place? I don’t know. At least not in a universal theological sense. I’m at the point of my life where most of the pain I experience comes to me through my own bad choices. The ways I’m confronted with the limits of reality have largely to do with discovering myself.

When I get sick, it is God’s grace telling me I have been created to be taken better care of. When I get sick, it is God’s grace teaching me the ways I have been fearfully and wonderfully made. When I get sick, it is God’s grace showing me the order of his universe which he has pronounced good.

I should probably be sleeping now. And I think I will.

To Will and To Work

By Kurt Bullis

I was recently urged to read this article which originally appeared in Touchstone magazine. While I was reading it, a wonderfully annoying thing happened.

The article responds to a study which offers some stats about the effect of a father’s church-going habits on his children. According to the study, if a dad is a regular or even casual attender of church, his children are much more likely to attend church when they grow up.

Those stats are remarkable on their own but are even more so when compared with the stats for the effect of a mother’s church-going habits on her children. Even if a mom is a consistent church-goer, it pretty much makes no difference in her children’s likelihood of going to church as adults.

As I’m reading through the article, I start to feel this huge wave of temptation. I develop an incredible distaste for doing what’s right. And I don’t want to keep resisting the things I know are wrong. I want to give up and give in.

As often happens when I’m tempted, I feel like a loser for being tempted, but now I’m feeling like an extra-specially big loser for experiencing this kind of temptation right as I’m reading an article about how much of a difference my choices make in the lives of my children.

I decided to distract myself until the wave passed, which for better or worse has been my tactic of choice lately. As I was shopping for spice racks, this thought serendipitously slipped into my mind:

Perhaps the desire to do what is wrong is connected to the importance of doing what is right.

All my life, I’ve been tall. Maybe it’s my ability to see over more heads than most, but for whatever reason, it seems people have tended to look to me when there’s a leader-void. But I don’t like to be in this position. I’d much rather blend in. I just want to be normal, even when normal isn’t good.

I don’t want to matter. At least most of the time. I’d rather go through life doing whatever I want and not have to worry about the consequences for myself or my impact on others. But that’s just not how things are. Like I talked about in one of the first Man Blog posts, our decisions have consequences, good and bad, that extend far beyond ourselves. That’s what this study is saying.

As I’m reeling from the temptation and the low self-worth it brought, God took my desire to give up and give in and worked through it. The article showed me the height of the stakes. The temptation showed me my inability to rise to the challenge. And in the gap, stood God, beckoning me to turn to him for the strength to do good.

For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

There’s a great sentence in a prayer of thanksgiving in the Book of Common Prayer that says, “Thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best efforts.” I often find myself praying this when what I have to do seems too hard as a reminder that hard work is good.

Our labors are not for nothing. What we do matters. We have the privilege of partnering with God in his work as he prepares good works for us to do. But we can not do these good works without him. We cannot even will to work without him.

Father, help us to choose well and to choose in your strength. We can do nothing on our own, and even worse than nothing. But we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

The Wind Blows Where It Wishes

by Kurt Bullis

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Jesus said these words to Nicodemus after he told him he had to born of the Spirit in order to see the kingdom of God. These kinds of words are always frustrating to me coming out of Jesus’ mouth. What is being born of the Spirit, exactly? What is this kingdom of God? Clean cut explanations are elusive. Spiritual realities are not so easily confined to reason, which is both frustrating and beautiful.

Many of you know that my wife and I are trying to move to Madison. We have family there and close to there. There’s a great AMiA church there that we’d like to invest in. And we just like the town a lot. But a few factors in our lives make it impossible for us to move until I land a full time job with benefits in Madison.

Looking for a job in a healthy economy is a trying experience, but this job search has been a huge crucible for us. I regret to say it, but there’s a lot of dross that I’m not so keen on handing over to God.

Here’s a list:

• I don’t really want to let go of my definitions of success. I know my priorities should be my relationships with God, my wife, my child, etc. But I keep acting like the most important thing is being able to have adequate life insurance and a savings account, or a car I fit into, or a job that takes full advantage of all my gifts.
• I don’t really want to give anymore. I’ve been giving. I’ve been patient. I’ve extended grace, but I don’t want to do more than I’ve done. What I’ve done should be enough.
• I don’t really want to surrender to God. Maybe it’s that I don’t trust him. Maybe (despite the mounting evidence to the contrary) I’m not sure doing things my own way is such a bad idea.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

As I read this verse, I’m reminded of the nomadic nature of our faith. While I’d like to nomad my way up to Madison, the verse doesn’t provide that certainty. To follow Christ, or to journey with Christ, is to not know where you’re going. In other words, it’s a pain in the butt. Unless you accept it, relax into it, and trust the wind.

I don’t know if we’ll move to Madison anytime soon. I don’t know if it’ll ever happen. We’re praying that God will grant the desires of our hearts, even if that means he has to change them first. Maybe the pain of this job hunt is God changing our hearts. Maybe it’s him preparing our hearts for the change of moving to Madison. Maybe it’s not for me to know. Maybe what I need to do is find a way to trust God regardless of what tomorrow brings, and to trust that he’ll show me how to do that.

Satisfaction: If the Tool Fits

by Jeremy Delamater

Everyone dreads the move of a home…..not necessarily going to a new place, but the tangible part of getting the stuff out of the house, on a truck and then unloading at the new home.  Even if we work on limiting the amount of things or weeding out the clutter there is no option but to face to fact that when it comes to move day – this stuff is heavy!

So, it was with particular fear that I dreaded moving into our current home because the ultimate back-breaker awaited– a piano.  I don’t know if Kurt Bullis recalls now, but he was one of a team of four guys facing this task back in 2003.  I knew it was going to be a challenge so I decided to look for the best assistance I could find at Wheaton Rental.  I rented a simple item that looked like a set of oversized bookends with wheels, a couple handles and some heavy duty straps.  It didn’t give me confidence, but I wanted to use whatever I could leverage to make this specific task a success.

Well, the piano move happened – four guys alone – and I would say that if we had them available….cigars would have been in order.  We had strapped on these glorified bookends to the piano, synched them down, popped up the piano onto four wheels, flipped out the handles and we found quickly that we had the perfect tool for a very specific task.  We became a well-oiled machine with absolute command and control over that great burden.

It was a moment of great satisfaction.  I’m not talking about being merely pleased to have done well, but it was a realization that a perfect tool had been applied by focused men to a task that is universally dreaded – it was a precision operation and it felt like absolute perfection.

Perfection and Satisfaction……Ahhhh!  I don’t care to apply a tool or machine type of imagery to people (we are so much more than that), but it is right to say that we were made by God in a specific manner and for a purpose.  Much like those glorified piano bookends, if we don’t fit the task for which we are made then we will find satisfaction to be elusive.  We often acquire things to attain satisfaction, but Keith’s recent sermon on Satisfaction puts that folly to rest.

Are there moments of awe-filled satisfaction you have experienced and can share?  As Men, what are the specific ways we are ‘tooled’ by God and to what end should we be driving ourselves?  Apart from freedom from material objects or fitting the purpose for which we are made, what fundamental things also lead us to a deep or true satisfaction?

Movin’ It, Without Losin’ It

By Greg Pfeifer

I grew up moving from town to town, state to state, and even out of the country, courtesy of my father’s work with the US Army. I got used being the “new kid” and generally didn’t let myself get excited about making friends, knowing that those relationships wouldn’t last. Once making friends was no longer at the “encouragement” of the military, (and after a lot of other more complex growth and healing), I started to open up and let others in.

I built a network of people who shared their lives, thoughts, and feelings with me as I shared with them. College buddies, ministry partners, church family, work friends, my wife… each forming a unique strand in the webbing of community. Some stronger, some more complex, but all built of the same delicate substance.

So, now that we’re moving, we run the risk of disturbing this potentially fragile network that has taken years to knit together. However, much like the spider-web of this overly-bludgeoned metaphor, though the strands seem fragile, the tensile strength is immense because each of these relationships is ultimately grounded in that Trinitarian relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit.

Relationships of any kind are possible only because the God in Whose image we are crafted is a unity of relationality. I don’t presume to elevate every friendship I’ve made (even at Church of the Resurrection!) to the same stature or structure of the Holy Trinity, but I do feel confident that these friendships are made of some bit of eternity. Whether I ever see or hear from each of those I’ve left geographically, I know that my life is permanently affected and I am changed as a result of knowing, sharing with, and in the deepest sense communing with each person and the communities of which we were a part.

Moving forward… and Eastward to Ambridge, PA I don’t have to be afraid of making new friends who will be ripped away 3 years later when Seminary ends. And, though I’m going to miss my community in Chicagoland, I know that our lives are ever intertwined…and besides, we’ll always have Facebook and blogs.

Nostalgia Stuff

By Jeremy Delamater

This being the “MAN BLOG” it is, of course, centered on topics about how we are to be Men….before ours families, friends, the world and our Lord’s Church.  I know that I grew up with confused notions about Maliness with undefined ideas over how Manhood plays out.  The Dukes of Hazard contained competing and complex examples on Manliness – Bo or Luke Duke vs. Sheriff Rosco P. Coletrane or Boss Hogg.  I won’t mention Daisy….that just muddies the waters.

On the flip side, I am grateful for my own father’s example as a loving and patient  man before God. I’ve been able to see more of the grace of God working through him now as an adult than I ever had a sense of as a child.  But the question of what exactly a man is supposed to do, how he should act and behave, remains somewhat vague for me at times.  I’m not settled on the matter and I assume every reader here struggles with that in themselves.

Recently I came upon an article that spoke about the growing prevalence of nostalgia items.  This is basically the idea that we gather items or belongings that come from a past era, usually from early childhood or from our parent’s generation.  This is a new phenomenon unseen before in history.  It went on to speculate that the root of this hobby is based on the current culture of speed, change and progress.

Basically, the generation we grew up in – whichever one that is for each of us – is not the same as our Fathers and it will not be the same as our children.  Before all this glorious progress came upon us there was a continuity across many generations that helped Father and Son speak, know and experience a common language with a set of similar experiences and hence a solid foundation for transferring an understanding of Manliness.

Sin of course stood in the way of every father/son relationship, but now we have added complexities of a rapidly changing world, competing and immediate access to a lot of information and a barrage of messages that conflict with what wisdom we can glean from a wiser set of men who have gone before us.

Amidst all this change in such a short time span, it seems to be harder than it used to be to relay the essentials of manhood from one generation to the next and harder for the younger generation to learn from those who have gone before. Does this ring true for you? Is this bad? Should we try to do something about it? What?

Rites of Passage

By Kurt Bullis

I’ve just begun to look into Richard Rohr and his ideas about male initiation rites. It’s interesting. Some of what he’s saying strikes me as profound. Some of it, I’m not sure about. Some of it, I think is wrong.

In his book, The Wild Man’s Journey, he lays out five great messages that are communicated through male initiation rites.

1. Life is hard
2. You are going to die
3. You are not that important
4. You are not in control
5. Your life is not about you

What do you all think about these messages? Are they true? Richard says these messages are communicated by word, trial, community and symbolic woundings. Is this what we men need?

Happy Monday

By Kurt Bullis

This morning I…

• did most of my exercises
• took the garbage and recycling out to the curb
• cleaned up the kitchen
• fed my daughter the latter third of her breakfast
• did a full set of scripture readings and some prayers from the BCP
• shaved a weekend’s worth of stubble
• and still got out the door on the early side of on-time.

As I speed-walked through Adams Park, I was feeling good about my morning. I even thought of calling my wife up and letting her know. I spent time with God, I helped around the house. I got stuff done and was self-sacrificial at the same time!

But then I started to wonder. Am I bulldozing through my day because I don’t want to stop and be? Is all this getting things done a coping mechanism to avoid something? I’m not anti-productivity or anything, and on a different morning my list of accomplishments might be purely laudable. But I think today, God was whispering to me to slow down.

We visited Church of the Ascension (the Elmhurst church-plant) on Saturday. The church service was during our daughter’s dinner time, and though we thought we could fudge it with some snacks, she was crazy, so I had a hard time really being there. There was one moment where I was able to slow down, and notice my surroundings and myself. As often happens when these moments come in church, I got sad.

There’s some work to be done in my heart having something to do with me and God. I wish I could get more specific than that, but I just can’t quite put a finger on it. We’re not right, somehow. And while I feel good about getting things done for Jesus, I’m getting the sense that maybe I need to find a way (even in the busyness of my life) to get nothing done for Jesus. At the beginning of the work week.

I just re-read Galli’s post on Sabbaths. If you have time, I recommend it.

Happy Monday.