reflections on philippians 4.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:4-7

Do you remember the first time you received really good news? For me, that news came when I was 3 years old, and my parents told me I was going to have a little sister soon. I remember being crazy excited for that. I cleaned my room, helped my mom pick out clothes, and picked a whole bunch of flowers out of the backyard (which my mom wasn’t too stoked on because apparently new flowers are supposed to stay IN THE GROUND). I got so crazy over the flowers that apparently I was convinced that my sister’s middle name needed to be “flower”. Thank God I was three and not the one to make those decisions!

I remember the first time I received really bad news. I was about 6 years old, and my mother told me that we were moving away from my dad. Nothing about it made sense. As a kid, you don’t really understand warning signs very well. Even though everything around me for the previous few years pointed towards it, no 6-year-old kid is ready to process that. I remember going through a few years of craziness after that. I became easily angered. I threw fits at school. I got vicious towards other kids at times. A couple of years later, they told me I had this thing called “tourette’s”. I didn’t really know what it meant at the time, but I knew that I now had these nifty new pills that put me to sleep really quickly, and that there was an official reason why I twitched and hummed all the time.

“Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”

-Pastor Steve Davidson

For as long as I can remember, I’ve found that my happiness and my well-being can be easily swayed by the circumstances in my life. I became a Christian at the age of 15, and it took me a long time after that to reconcile the pain in my life with God’s sovereignty. Having never grown up in church, I had a really odd view of God growing up. My parents would occasionally mention God, usually coupled with a few choice swear words, when trying to either motivate or scare me. I heard the phrase “God is watching” often growing up. My knee-jerk reaction to that used to be to think, “Oh yeah? God’s watching? Then why can you do whatever you want?” As I grew older, I became even more jaded hearing this. As my family kept struggling with anger, drugs, and broken relationships, and I saw friends suffering all around me, my response became, “God’s watching? Then God, if you're watching, why are you still letting all of these shitty things happen to me? Why do I have to be angry and miserable?” I never doubted that God was there, but I began to feel that He didn’t really care, which only pissed me off more.

During my sophomore year, when I was probably at my lowest, I came upon a passage that shifted my perspective.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30

This was really the first time that Jesus made any sense to me. This to me was the Gospel finally connecting; Jesus promised us rest from our burdens, and that his death would take those burdens from us. What’s crazy is that God didn’t just “lighten” our burden; he exchanged it. He bore the weight of it, and continues to bear it. That blows my mind! John 16:33 says, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” I had to start shifting my perspective from “God, why haven’t you fixed everything for me?” to “God, thank you for giving me rest.” That’s where Philippians 4 comes in. Studying through it this weekend rocked my world. Paul tells us to rejoice always. That’s super difficult in practice. It’s really easy to rejoice and praise God in the good things. We equate God doing good things with how “happy we are”, but we leave our happiness up to happenstance. God showed me this weekend that his constant nature allows us to rejoice not in the circumstance, but in the fact that God is in control. Terrible things happen. We don’t rejoice that those things are happening, but we rejoice in the fact that God is in control and will work it for our good and His glory. We don’t have to allow ourselves to suffer through the pain.

We can pick flowers out of the ground with exuberance and abandon, despite the thorns lying in our midst.

(Check out yesterday's message from Clovis Hills Community Church on Philippians 4. Blew my mind, and inspired this post).

love is patient.

(This is the first of a 4-week series of reflections on 1 Corinthians 13.)

I think it's very ironic that the first thing this passage talks about regarding love is patience, because for me it is one of the qualities I lack the most. In a world where Amazon Prime has replaced waiting times for packages, High Speed Internet has replaced spending an hour to download a single file, and text messaging has replaced waiting forever to get a response from someone, we have come to expect things to operate on our own time frame. I've grown so accustomed to "instant" results in many areas of my life. Having to wait 5-10 days for an order is aggravating. Being stuck in a line for anything over 10 minutes makes me want to give up whatever I came for and leave. The thing that frustrates me the most, however, is when I can't get other people in my life to operate on my schedule. All my life, I've always hated being late to anything. As a kid, though, you're almost entirely dependent on other people to make it to anything on time. My parents had this uncanny ability to make me late for anything. Church starts at 9? We'll probably be there at 9:05. Headed to the movies? You'll probably get to see one of the trailers, but no more. I used to have to tell them that everything started 10 minutes earlier than it actually did, because otherwise I could almost guarantee I'd be late. I grew up being very frustrated at this. Why weren't they considerate of my needs? Why didn't they see that what I wanted to do was important to me?

It wasn't until I started driving that this perspective shifted for me. It's crazy; for a guy that used to hate being late, I don't think I've been on time for anything in at least a year and a half. There's always something that gets in the way; traffic, car trouble, oversleeping, pit stops, high school kids that tell you to be at their house at a certain time and aren't ready for at least 20 minutes after that time (not naming anyone), or any other myriad of excuses. And I found myself feeling like a total hypocrite when I noticed this pattern. I had forgotten that the heart of why my parents would drive me places as a kid was because they loved me, and they cared about what I was doing. They sacrificed their time and their money to serve me, and all I could do was complain about why they weren't doing it they way I wanted to.

I think the heart of my impatience comes from a desire for people to do things my way. When I'm trying to teach something new to someone, I get frustrated that they're not learning it at the pace or the level that I would learn. When I spend the time mentoring someone I grow tired of seeing them make so many mistakes along the way because I want them to succeed and to experience the crazy awesome life God has for them. In this, I find myself getting bitter at people. I shut myself out to love because I'm too busy focusing on why other people aren't meeting my expectations at the rate I want them to.

I wonder how many times Moses and the Israelites felt impatient when they were wandering around for 40 years due to their own mistakes. I wonder how tired Jesus became when he told the same stories to people and they just didn't get it. I wonder if He would have been able to speak to more people while on Earth if the people he spent his time with didn't require constant hand-holding. And yet, he could just as easily feel the same way about me. "Daniel, how long is it going to take before you figure out how to appreciate people? When will you stop getting frustrated at those who don't meet your own crazy expectations?" What's crazy, though, is that God is not keeping track of how long it is taking me to figure things out, but instead He is rejoicing with me when I begin to understand His will.

In 1 Timothy, Paul is speaking about his conversion from a persecutor of Christians to a disciple of Jesus. While he was fully engaged in a life against God, he was met right where he was by Jesus and was forever changed. These verses stuck out to me though:

"Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life." -1 Timothy 1:15-16 NIV

Jesus waits for us to come to the point where we realize we need a Savior, and then welcomes us in with open arms. He never gave up on those who took too long to come to that realization. In displaying "immense patience", he modeled for us that love waits for those that it cares for. I think that for me, the perspective shift comes from realizing that I can't think of myself in some faraway place waiting for others to catch up to me, but instead I get to walk alongside people in their journey and grow with them. Patience is much easier when you say "I'll walk with you" rather than "hurry up and catch up to me." The walk may be slow, but the journey is half the fun.

reflections. 5.21.13 01.40am

There's a funny thing about nostalgia. So many times, I've revisited moments in the past, and thought that there's never a chance to fix them. It can never be undone. I'll never finish that project, idea, or dream. The door has closed. And all that remains with me is a faint memory of things that used to be, which may never happen again. I look at the people around me that I've been close with during any point in the last 4 years. I see how they've changed, for better or for worse. I begin to wonder if some of them will ever break free of the cycles they're stuck in, whether it be addiction, compulsion, heartache, or even apathy. I spend time thinking I'd like to "change" or "fix" them. And it usually looks pretty hopeless.

Over a year ago, I lost a sister. Most people have heard that story in some way, shape, or form by now. I've spent many nights and days in despair, anger, and countless other toxic emotions. And I've said many things that are difficult to take back, but that have caused the gap to become much wider. My deepest fear inside is that the relationship will never be mended, or that she'll hit bottom and not be able to come out of it.

But then I remember just how big our God is. It's amazing; every time I go to the mountains or the beaches, whenever I hear an amazing melody, or even when I sit gazing at stars in a town as boring as Clovis, I am reminded and stuck with awe at the wonder of creation, and how I get to have a relationship with the Creator of it all. Suddenly, the vast brokenness of everything around me begins to shrink.

We use our brokenness as a crutch too often; we sit and say, "Why?" When we should be saying, "What do I do next?" And when we are called to action, we must ACT.

I've started my list. It starts with easily manageable things. First steps. That's all I need. Laying out plans doesn't work when we're shooting in the dark. But the first step is always lit.

Somehow, it all seems much more manageable. I love the stars.