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I. Meeting God on the Mountain It’s been about a year since Cindi and I returned from my sabbatical, a year since I came back and shared my encounter with God in the mountains of Colorado. Now, my encounter with God was not quite like Moses’ encounter with God. Yes, we were both up on a mountain, alone but my mountain was not enveloped in a fiery cloud. There was no lightning or thunder, no fire or smoke, no booming voice. But sitting in the beauty of an alpine meadow 12,000 feet up, and looking out on the majesty of the Rocky Mountains, I heard God’s voice. Jesus took the words he had spoken to John almost 2000 years before, words we just read, and he spoke them to me by His Spirit. It felt like he sat down next to me, put his arm around me, and spoke. When I heard Jesus say, I know your deeds, your hard work, your perseverance, I began to weep. I began to weep because I was tired, bone weary. You see, the three years leading up to that sabbatical had worn me out. Saying goodbye to Geoff Twigg, a fourteen year partner in ministry, was one the hardest things I ever had to do. Then, letting three other staff members go under the financial stress of 2008; and weathering the storm of their pain and your confusion and concern, pushed me to the limit. Watching some long time members, and dear friends, leave the church, that, too, was hard. Finally, walking thru the valley of the shadow of death with my wife and her sister as they battled cancer, that was the hardest thing of all. But I didn’t actually know how worn out I was until that moment on the mountain. I didn’t know how much I needed someone to put their arm around me and say, I know, I understand what you’re going through, until Jesus did it. Jesus touched me deep down and began to heal my wounded soul but Jesus wasn’t finished with me. After loving me so tenderly, he also spoke reprovingly. I have this against you, he said, you have fallen from your first love. I knew, immediately, what Jesus was talking about. He was talking about what was happening, right then, right there. I was experiencing a relationship of love and intimacy that moved me to tears; I hadn’t experienced that for a while. Jesus was also talking about the time I had spent with Him earlier that week, down at base camp. Waking up early, I had walked down to the river; climbed out on a bolder and there, with the river bubbling in praise to God, I had begun to sing, to sing and make melody in my heart to God. I even made up words as I sang. Jesus and I shared an hour of joyful intimacy together; it was deeply refreshing. But back home I had become so busy; so busy doing things for God, good things, like preaching and counseling and leading a church, so busy doing things for God that I had not taken enough time to be with God, not deeply, refreshingly, intimately. Not only was I running out of gas; I was headed for a fall. I was like a gyroscope spinning off center, the faster I went, the closer I came to crashing. II. I Almost Quit; But Jesus Told Me to Repent But I have told you this before, most of you, anyway. I told you in the sermon I preached after the sabbatical. I told you at the Man2Man breakfast this past spring. I have told you here and there in various messages throughout the year but there is something I haven’t told you. I told the elders; but I didn’t tell you. But now, since the danger is safely past, I think I can tell you. I can tell you that there is some truth in the title to my sermon, “I Quit.” I almost quit. I came “this” close to resigning. When I left for sabbatical I was trying to decide, Do I come back to plan my exit strategy, or do I come back to stay? I happened to be in conversation with a seminary that wanted me to apply for a leadership position so I wasn’t just thinking in abstract; I was trying to make a real decision. But up in those Colorado mountains, it became very clear that God was calling me, not to leave West Shore, not to quit in my weariness and pain, but to repent. Revelation chapter 2, vs. 5: Repent, Jesus says, and do the things you did at first. You may not have thought of it this way before, but to repent is to quit. It is to quit doing one thing, so that you can turn, and do something else. In the Bible, to repent does not just mean, to feel sorry for your actions, or to grieve over something you have done. It means to change, to change the way you think and the way you act; to turn around and go another way. Of course, feelings of sorrow are a part of that, but not the whole. During my sabbatical Jesus was telling me that I needed to repent. I needed to turn around and go the other way. I needed to quit doing the things that were draining me and start doing things that would fill me up. Instead of spinning off center until I fell with a crash, with no one to blame but myself, I needed to get back on center. I needed to center my life on the love of God in Jesus Christ; then, secondly, on the relationships of love with the people in my life. So last year became a year of quitting. III. A Year of Quitting I quit making early morning appointments (burning the candle at both ends) and I made a renewed commitment to spending extended time with God. Enough time, not just talk to him before I rush off with my day, but to listen and to listen until I hear. I began to do something that I hadn’t done successfully for years: Keep a journal. These are my journals for the last 12 months and they are precious to me because they contain the blood, sweat and tears of my devotional life. I can find the place in here where God first nudged me to call for a Christmas offering, the one that eventually led to the Aurora Project. I can show you the place where I wrote my first reflection on Thursdays with Naomi which over the past year has become a book. I can turn to the sections where I am working through some deep personal stuff with a counselor or even some deeper, more personal stuff, just between me and God. There are meditations on Psalms, there are confessions of sin, and there are prayers of thanksgiving, and quotes from men and women of God down thru the ages. Every other week, at staff meeting, I open this journal and share something God has said to me which leads to another thing I quit this year. I quit making staff meetings all about the business (and busyness) of the Church which isn’t as easy as it sounds, because there is a lot of business to attend to. But we must be the people of God before we do the work of God or it is not going to be the work of God. Being the people of God means sharing with each other from our lives and sharing the words that God is speaking to our hearts. Living and leading out of a center where God is. I also quit holding all my meetings with staff members in my office. Sitting face to face, with a paper pad on my lap, filled with an agenda detailing what we need to get done. Instead, I instituted something I called, “Walk and Talk.” No pad. No agenda. Just an hour walk around the church, talking about whatever the person wants to talk about. Yes, we often talk about the needs of the church, or our vision for the church but we also talk about other things; and we talk differently, because we’re walking and talking as friends. I quit making early morning appointments so I could carve out more time for God. I quit making meetings all about business and started walking and talking with friends. I quit working as many hours. I cut my work week from 65 to 50. I began to guard my Sabbath again, not filling it with chores, not allowing it to become the one day of the week I catch up on all the things I didn’t get to the other six days. I also started taking a day every other week to spend with my grandchildren. That may have become the most transformative event in my life this year. As I already mentioned, a book has come out of it, a book I never expected to write. But a book has come out of it because I am being changed by it. As I said in one of my chapters, finding myself at a place in life where I can see the end of the road and look back to ponder paths not taken, God gave me the gift of a grandchild. I am learning to look at life through the eyes of a child. Learning to value love shared more than goals accomplished. Learning to laugh and play and dance and just be with someone. One more thing: I quit acting like I don’t need help, because I do. I am a human being just like you with his strengths and weaknesses, with his vulnerabilities, and sensitivities and deep flaws; and oh yes, blind spots. So I sought out a counselor to help me work on the deeper issues of my soul. I also found a spiritual guide, someone who does not attend this church and has no vested interest in my success at this church, someone who doesn’t regard me as his pastor or spiritual leader, someone whose sole purpose in my life is to attend to the state of my soul. I guess what I am saying is that I have repented. I heard the voice of Jesus and I have turned and gone a different direction. In some cases I have returned to the good things I did before as the letter to Ephesus says, sometimes I have gone in completely new directions, exploring new territory of the soul. But this one thing I am determined to do: To quit those things that lead me away from the water of life into busyness and emptiness and weariness of soul. To do things that lead to a deeper, more intimate, more life-giving relationship with the living God and with each other, because the two go hand in hand, a relationship of love with God and loving relationship with others. IV. Inviting You to Quit, too Which leads me to a question: How you doing? Is your emotional tank on full or empty? Is your spiritual life gage going up or down? Is the gyroscope of your life staying centered or are you wobbling, maybe even about to fall with a crash? Maybe you, too, need to repent. Maybe there are some things you need to quit doing so you can be what Jesus calls you to be, a person whose life is centered on love. Guess what? That is what the next 12 weeks of sermons is all about. Every week I am going to invite you to quit, to quit doing something that is leading you away from the love and joy and peace of God; and to commit yourself afresh to what will lead you back to God. Next week, for example, I will invite you to quit lying, to quit pretending that everything is all right, to quit posing and putting on a mask so you can get the help you need and be healed. Then I will invite you to quit blaming, to quit blaming others for the state of your soul, and take complete personal responsibility for becoming what God calls us to be. I will invite us to quit overworking, to quit overspending, to quit complaining, to quit going to church. That one should be fun. Church is not a place we go however much we talk about it that way. Church is who we are. We are the Church. The church is the people of God in deep, authentic relationship with God and each other; then going out into the world and inviting others to share in those relationships. If that’s not happening when we gather in our services, in our Fellowship Groups, in our small groups, then we are not being the church. So, how are you doing? Is your emotional tank on full or empty? Is your spiritual life gage going up or down? Is the gyroscope of your life staying centered or are you wobbling, maybe even about to fall with a crash? This Fall I invite you on a journey back to the center. To let Jesus be the center, the intimate center out of which a life of love and light may flow. But you’re going to have quit some things; at least I did; and I still do. |
