Tension can be negative. It’s annoying. It builds up over time (sorta like I mentioned here) and distracts. Negative tension is uncomfortable because it can crush you.

Tension can also be positive. It comes when we find ourselves in the midst of a situation where we are no longer so worried about what others think. When we look less at outcomes as positive or negative, and more at who we are becoming in the process of living in the tension. When we live in the tension instead of fighting it, we become stretched and not squashed. We grow through the tension, we don’t shrink under it.

I am learning to live in the tension because that is the only way we can really live. I choose to grow, not be crushed. I want to live my life, not survive it. I mean, really, isn’t that what Jesus dreams for us?

I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.
John 10:10 (MSG) 

Try harder.

It squeezes me, making me feel increasingly more pressure. Slowly, turn by turn, it begins to crush me. I realize how futile this kind of living is. It becomes futile to every aspect of my life and at the center is my spiritual life.

A life of trying is futile because everything I do in life is about what I can do. The more I live this “try harder” life, the more I realize how incapable to the task I am.

This “try harder” problem I have is probably the most frustrating aspect of my life. Unfortunately when I find myself trying harder, everything in me wants to try harder to stop trying harder!

Am I crazy? Am I the only one struggling with this habit? Where do you find yourself?

The reason Sara hasn’t been able to leave her home is due to an awful disease. Today as I write this, Sara’s disease is taking her physical life here on earth. Her passing could come at any moment. Though Sara will take a final breath in this life, the gentle force of her legacy lives in the thousands, maybe millions that have heard of and have been impacted by her life and story.

Sara has been peacefully resting this week, awaiting her face to face meeting with her Savior, yet her words have been teaching me some very crucial lessons on my own life.

It’s easy for me to be a complainer.

When things don’t seem to be going my way or I don’t have the job that “meets my needs,” I complain.

When I feel like I don’t have key, strong relationships in my life, I complain.

I sometimes feel like if I’d only find that new ministry job, I’d be able to use my passions…Complaining.

What Sara’s life has taught me this week is that positive outcomes, met needs, strong relationships and passions are in fact – relative.

Relative to my attitude.

Relative to my availability to God’s plan for me.

Relative…

We don’t always get to decide every hand dealt to us, but we do get to decide our reaction to it. That’s Sara’s legacy to me.

Sara taught me that life in Christ is about finding passion where you are, where God places you, regardless of your circumstances.

Sara couldn’t leave her house and yet from that home she impacted thousands, maybe millions. Just maybe, one of Sara’s biggest lessons taught to us is that “go and make disciples” is really all about taking steps toward your mission whether they are physical steps in a village in Africa, down the sidewalk of a neighborhood of at risk kids, or finger steps across a keyboard doing real ministry to real people in far-off places.

Sara taught me this week that I need to quit feeling sorry for myself and

choose joy.

Choose the joy that God has tucked away in the circumstances we’re in. It’s really a gift, not a curse. Sara’s life proves that.

Today is a different time.

I am not talking about some sentimental time period or some long abandoned cultural norm that is is seen as a relic. This is a trait that is woven into the fabric of who we were created to be. God created us to live in community with each other. He infused us with relational DNA. We long to be in meaningful relationships with each other, we long for true community. Jesus prayed a prayer for our community in John 17…

I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.  John 17:20-21

Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is at the heart of God’s plan for mankind. It’s what Jesus accomplished next that redeemed our need for community and redeems our broken relationships with others. This amazing redemption should bleed into our community with others. Christ wants to remove the barriers like privacy fences, personal space, and hidden burdens that drive us from community into isolation.

In what ways have you experience Christ’s redemption of the community in your life?

We need rain.

Earlier this year in the Midwest it wouldn’t stop raining. The rivers and waterways were flooding, in turn, washing out farms, homes, and towns.  These communities were devastated.

They needed it to stop raining.

It’s amazing how life goes. It really is all about perspective isn’t it? There have been horrible times in my life in recent memory when I couldn’t get out of the rain fast enough. The circumstances just seemed to pour on me and I just couldn’t stay dry from it all for any extended time. Last night I was chatting with a friend and I recalled an amazingly tough time in my life – for my family. As I retold the story, I was brought to tears, but not because of the pain. I was crying because looking back I realized again how amazingly blessed I am and how incredibly awesome and faithful God is.

I’m as guilty as anyone in losing perspective on my circumstances, but at least in this instance, God gave me the opportunity to really see his hand at work in and around me.

How we react is up to us. We can let it rain on our parade or we can go dancing in it.

What about you? How could your perspective change in your current circumstances?

Are you striving for something, chasing something (outside of Christ), that if you quit chasing tomorrow you wouldn’t know who you are?

I have struggled with this my whole life. As a child, I was always Debbie and Dwayne’s oldest son. As a teen, I was the talented singer. As a young man, I was pastor, husband and father of two.

Three years into my ministry as a worship pastor, I felt lost and over my head. I also, felt like God was calling me into something else. I wasn’t sure what that was yet, but in the process of finding out, I walked away from ministry. I wasn’t a pastor anymore. I wasn’t singing much either for awhile, so I lost two of my most identifying roles immediately. I quickly fell into a depression and I was lost without these roles in my life. Most importantly, I had lost sight of my place with Christ and sadly, that affected my ability to be the leader in my home God desired me to be.

There were a lot of reasons I chose to jump back into ministry somewhere after that. One major one was my need to be known again as “pastor”. I had this unhealthy need to be needed in that role. It wasn’t just a calling for me, it was an ego boost.

Then, in 2009, my marriage fell apart and I lost my identity as husband after my divorce.

Now, in 2011, I am no longer anyone’s husband and I currently am not serving as anyone’s pastor. I’ll be honest, some days I don’t know what to do with myself. What I’ve realized through all of this life of mine, is that God uses all of this pain to remind me of one simple truth.

When everything is stripped away and all the labels are gone, my identity is that of DISCIPLE and CHILD OF GOD.

And when it comes down to it, all my other roles should flow through those. Those two roles should define my life – as a son, singer, husband, pastor, and father. I’ll be honest, that hasn’t always been the case.

What about you?

Are you striving for something, chasing something (outside of Christ), that if you quit chasing tomorrow you wouldn’t know who you are?

It made me think…In what or whom am I placing my identity? What about you?

When we re-gift someone at Christmas or a birthday, we do it because we have something we have no use for or want to pawn off on someone else.

In light of that, reflect on 1 Corinthians 12:7

A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.

God gives us gifts not because He can’t use them or they are tacky. He gives spiritual gifts so we can be a blessing.

We are given something pretty special from God himself – a gift that fits into his master plan. When we identify our gifts from God our tendency is to be human and keep it to ourselves or only use it when it benefits us in the greatest possible way. But that’s not what God calls us to is it?

Remember Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 12:7,

A spiritual gift is given (from God through the Spirit) to each of us so we can help each other. Emphasis is mine

God wants us to re-gift one of the greatest things we’ve ever been given. Isn’t that just like God? He always seems to turn it all upside down.

In what ways has God asked you to give away the awesome gifts He has given you?

It’s a fifty question test that the NFL gives to incoming player prospects prior to the draft every year. It’s supposed to test a players cognitive abilities and give the teams an idea of how a player  might process complicated play formations.

Players have twelve minutes to complete the test. The average score on the Wonderlic is twenty-one.

The Wonderlic is not a sure thing. Scoring a high score doesn’t automatically mean you’ll be a star in the NFL, nor does scoring low mean you’ll be a bust.

Quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick score a perfect fifty on the test and although he is currently a starter for the Buffalo Bills, he is playing for his third team and mostly as a back-up. Hall of Famer Steve Young scored thirty-three, while another Hall of Famer Dan Marino scored 16.

So what’s the point?

It reminded me of a quote from the book, “Gracenomics” (which you can get by clicking on the graphic to your right)…

Sometimes I act as though it is somehow my job to determine people’s worth.

Good looks, lots of cash, a likable personality and the potential to help me in life? I whip out my pricing gun and tag them with high value.

- Mike Foster (pg. 63)

To add to that, how about a high Wonderlic score?

Have you ever used a worthless measure to attribute value to or withhold it from another person?

I really started thinking after I read Lindsey Nobles’ post yesterday about tallies and read this:

But one thing is clear. I have a terrible tendency to keep score in relationships. I file away a handy little mental tally  that keeps track of how each of my friendships is progressing. Notches are silently added when someone exerts effort. And notches are deducted when they do not.

I got to thinking, “That’s me.” And after I read the accompanying thirty-nine comments, I realized, “that’s us.” We keep score and we want credit. We want credit for the things we’ve done to make its way into our relational savings accounts.  And we process debits of the accounts of others who wrong us, or don’t adequately give us credit for the things we’ve done for them.

The back-breaker for me in reading Lindsey’s post was this:

But what my tally REALLY DOES is limit my ability to love, limit my ability to extend grace, and limit my ability to faithfully risk in my relationships.

Have you ever had the feeling you were staring very uncomfortably in the mirror where there was no mirror?  Uh, yeah…

Today, I was doing some Bible reading on YouVersion when I came across this verse from Ephesians 2:8…

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. (Emphasis is mine)

I don’t just limit my ability to love, extend grace, and risk in relationship with other people, fellow human beings, but also God. I have at times kept a record against God of the things I thought He should have done and didn’t, and I’ve tried to take credit for things that are not mine to take credit for.

Have you ever been there?