Of Milk and Meat

Recently, upon arriving in Winnipeg and amidst a host of other life and routine changes, I enlisted the help of a friend to get back to the gym. If you’ve seen me you will know right away that physical activity has never been a strong discipline in my life. I coasted through life as an intellectual and an artist (music being my genre of art) and because those things kept me busy and successful I never really had to justify why my physical body was being routinely neglected in the development of my whole self.

That was until September 30 2003.

On that day my world changed in ways that I never could have foreseen. It was early in the morning, around 2:30 if I recall that I woke up next to my wife of only three months with what I could only describe as a tightness of the chest. I got out of bed and puttered around the apartment for a little while thinking that perhaps it was indigestion or a pulled muscle. I got onto webMD and looked up my symptoms and to my horror and shock the website told me to seek immediate medical attention because I was having the symptoms of a heart attack.

But I was young. I was healthy. I was twenty-three years old and had my whole life ahead of me – there was no possible way this was happening – and the doctors agreed. After waking up Joanna and convincing her to drive me to the hospital we were almost sent home because my claim of chest pain was so preposterous that I’m sure they imagined me a hypochondriac, test after test came back negative for a cardiac event, until the results of the blood work showed several myocardial markers present. After that I saw what must had been half a dozen different cardiologists over the course of the next six to eight hours none of whom believed it was possible that I was actually experiencing a heart attack. A whole host of different theories were floated that would explain away the seeming impossibility that someone like me would be having a heart attack at my age, but in the end they opted to play it safe and ordered and angiogram which confirmed what we had all feared and set me up for a lifestyle change that will continue to dog me for the rest of my life.

Exercise used to be something that I did to feel good about myself and consequently something that I didn’t work very hard at, something that I went through the motions with and just put in time. But along the way I learned a lesson that if I was going to get healthy, if my muscles were going to grow and get stronger, if I was going to strengthen my heart and lose some extra pounds I couldn’t just put in time – I needed to work. I needed to sweat, to be dead tired, to be sore after every work out and know that I’d left everything I have physically on the track or the treadmill or the gym floor. Growing spiritually is no different.

The author of Hebrews in chapter five berates the Church for her lack of maturity. The author spends the first half of the chapter trying to explain some advanced Christological concepts to their readers but in the end says (with tone of exasperation that is almost audible if you read it aloud):

We have a lot to say about this topic, and it’s difficult to explain, because you have been lazy and you haven’t been listening. Although you should have been teachers by now, you need someone to teach you an introduction to the basics about God’s message. You have come to the place where you need milk instead of solid food. Everyone who lives on milk is not used to the word of righteousness, because they are babies. But solid food is for the mature, whose senses are trained by practice to distinguish between good and evil.

Hebrews 5:11-14

To often we are content to simply put in spiritual time. We are content to do the bare minimum in our spiritual disciplines to get by, and alleviate whatever guilt we may have for not being more devoted followers of Christ. We think that because we started out as new Christians on a diet of milk that milk is all we need for the rest of our lives. But the call to the Church is not to remain on milk but to move onto a diet of meat; to grow, to go deeper, to develop our spiritual muscles in a way that will be stretching and challenging and even sometimes uncomfortable.

Recently I read a quote by Natural Church Development guru Christian Schwarz about a conversation he had with sociologist and demographer George Barna in which he asked the venerable researcher what was the most alarming result of all the data he has collected over the years on the church. Barna’s response was disturbing but not surprising. He said, “We are still a church nurtured by milk rather than solid food.” And in my experience, he’s right.

Too many Christians I have known have been happy to stay as infants for far too long. Five, ten, twenty or more years into their walk with Christ their prayer lives consist of little more than table grace and bed-time mantras; their devotional life consists of little more than ten minutes in Our Daily Bread or some similarly surface level daily reading guide. Their efforts to reach their neighbours and friends for Christ hasn’t gone past inviting getting their children to invite their peers to family-friendly church events, and they have shown no interest in growing past these things if it requires any level of discomfort or stretching.

Are you a baby Christian? Then enjoy nursing at the teat of the Church on what Peter describes as the pure milk of the word. But like all babies, there is a time to stop nursing and take on solid food if one expects to grow into a healthy person. Has that time come for you? Have you been cutting your teeth on deeper truths of the Scriptures? Have you been building your spiritual muscles with more challenging disciplines of the faith? We all need to grow up what are you doing to ensure that happens?

Starting this week I’m running my Thursday Tête-à-têtes with Pastor Chris where you can drop by my office any time between 1pm and 8pm every Thursday for a chat, a visit, some coffee and some prayer; and if you are looking to develop a spiritual growth regimen and don’t know where to start I’d be happy to walk you through some suggestions and help you get off your milk addiction and into some spiritual meat. Don’t wait until an unexpected crisis strikes and you find yourself immature and unprepared to deal with the reality of your situation. Start getting healthy now.

Really.

Because spiritual formation is as serious as a heart attack. Trust me. I know.

A Love Story

Established July 19, 2003

Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints, it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth. Love puts up with all things, trusts in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

As a pastor I'm always torn when wedding season comes upon us as to how I should handle this well-worn passage of scripture. On one hand it is the go-to text for readings at most Christian (and even some secular) wedding ceremonies, it is poetic and beautiful and very on-the-nose advice for a young couple starting their lives together, but it is also really about something else entirely than romantic love.

How did this beautiful young woman
ever end up with someone like...

It sits in the middle of a longer section on being a part of the body of Christ and learning how to value those with spiritual giftings other than our own (or conversely our own giftings when we would rather be like someone else). The general thrust of the passage is that Christian love (which is of course a reflection of the love of Christ) is of a higher order of gifting than any of the more flashy, practical or highly visible gifts bestowed by the Holy Spirit. It resides in an upper echelon of Spiritual blessings along with faith and hope, but even among that triumvirate of "greater gifts" it stands apart. Even gifts that we often place on a pedestal like Tongues, Knowledge, Prophecy or Martyrdom are nothing if not accompanied in equal measure by Christian love.

...This!

That being said - it does speak to the heart of what married love should resemble in addition to it's core message. And for that reason when I was pursuing Joanna romantically back in Bible College I took the bold - if not somewhat nerdy - step of taking the entirety of chapter 13 and making sweeping promises to her about how I would work to fulfill all of these things in my relationship with her (if she would only give me a chance).

So I promised her that I would be patient with her. Specifically that I would wait for her to come around to the idea that we were meant to be together. The night before I wrote her this letter we had sat down for the dreaded DTR (define the relationship) chat where I stuck my neck out and told her that I was in love with her only to have her break my heart by telling me that she just didn't have the same feelings about me. So I told her that I would be patient and wait for her to change her mind.

Fittingly, I proposed to her after taking
her to see the opera "The Marriage
of Figaro". Surprisingly, she said "yes!"

I also promised her that I would be a kind man and that she could trust me with her heart because I would always be gentle with it and treat her how she deserved to be treated and that I wouldn't be jealous of the other people in her life that she loved and cared for. Particularly when it came to spending time with others instead of me.

The greatest con ever pulled
off, getting her to say "I do"

I promised something along the lines of (I'm writing this from memory at this point as Jo is in possession of the only original copy of this letter and asking her for it would ruin the surprise) my desire to be a humble man who would not look down upon her in arrogance or condescension but who instead would always seek to build her up for who she was made to be by a God who is much greater than I. And that I would be a selfless man who always sought her happiness before my own and put her dreams as my first priority.

I vowed to her that I wouldn't be bitter, vengeful or unforgiving if she would

Twice!

(We repeated the

ceremony in Canada

three weeks later)

give me a shot. That I would choose to forgive in advance anything she could possibly do to hurt me and that there was nothing she could ever do that would jeopardize my feelings for her.

And then I told her that if she honestly prayed about it and searched her heart and couldn't come to the place where she would love me the way that I loved her that I would survive. That I would endure and trust in God and his plan, and that as awkward as it might be going forward that I still wanted to remain her friend (like that would have ever worked).

And to my great surprise, my flawed exegesis and cheesy attempt at being romantic won her heart and by the end of that weekend I (with a little help from Jesus) had managed to change her mind and the greatest love story ever told began.

If only that were true.

Because it's not.

Celebrating our first Christmas in our cozy little 32nd floor apartment in downtown Calgary

The truth of the matter is that over the last 11 1/2 years I have been anything but the type of man I promised to be in that letter. I have been painfully impatient with Joanna; too many times I've ruined her make-up with tears over my unwillingness to slow down and explain to her what I mean. I too frequently expect her to read my mind and come to the exact same conclusion - and when she doesn't (or she can't because I haven't given her enough data to formulate an opinion) I can become decidedly unkind.

Our first house, and our first
"kid" the much loved and
missed Fauna

Over the years I have been jealous. I have been jealous when she wanted time to herself, or in the early years when her ministry commitments kept her out of the house more than I liked. I have been jealous when her job as a private music teacher has left me to fend for myself with the kids far more than I would have liked to (and yet still only a fraction of the time I leave her to fend for herself while I pursue my career).

I have been incredibly selfish over the years. With my time, our money, my energy and my career. I have expected too many times that she, like a good little wife would suck it up and soldier on while I chased after one exciting opportunity after another. And along the way I have been bitter, irritable, short tempered and far too prone to holding grudges against the person I promised in writing to never bear unforgiveness toward.

I've been guilty of being unjust, untrusting, dishonest, and all sorts of other things unbecoming of a man who has been blessed with such an amazing woman of God for his wife. And yet all along the way she has stood beside me whether I deserved it or not.

More even than that, in an ironic reversal of fortune, she has been the one who has taught me the true meaning of this type of love that I so boldly and naively promised I would lavish on her.

In 2006 our family grew by one and
in 2007 Jack was dedicated on the
same Sunday I was ordained

She has been patient with me when I have been through busy seasons of ministry that have kept me away from home on far too many nights while she parented largely alone for seasons. She has been kind to me when I when I have been tired, irritable and have reserved no energy for graciousness with she and the kids after a long day of being kind, compassionate and caring with other people.

She has been gracious with me when I've been too quick to take a call from the church and too slow to take a call from home; when I've sacrificed my family time for ministry time and has not let her jealousy become a stumbling block when I have far too often put her in second (or lower place) in my priorities. And when we came to a junction in life where I had an opportunity to follow God into a new calling and opportunity to be the Lead Pastor in Estevan, she selflessly gave up a career and calling that she deeply loved to enable me to follow mine.

Over these years that we have travelled the road of life together I have always been able to count on the fact that Joanna would forgive me when I was an idiot, or an ogre, or selfish. I have never had to worry that I have screwed things up so badly that she wouldn't take me back. She has given me the blessing of being secure in her love and as a man who has struggled with insecurity throughout life there is no greater gift than the unconditional love of my wife.

In 2008 our family grew again
with the arrival of our second son
Harry who was an instant
celebrity

And she's done all of that even after enduring more than any newlywed should have to endure in the first season of our life together. When I woke her in the middle of the night three months into our marriage and asked her to drive me to the hospital because I was suffering chest pains and ended up saddling her with an invalid husband recovering from having two stents placed in his heart at the age of 23. A lesser woman would have cut and run, but my wife bore with me in a city where we had very little support structure, where we had no money, where (by virtue of the immigration process) she couldn't get another job to support us and I couldn't do ANYTHING to help alleviate her stress. She singlehandedly taught me about endurance, hope, perseverance and faith in that season of our life.

Finally in 2011 our family became
complete with the addition of my
little princess Penelope

And now, as we begin the second decade of our married life and simultaneously a new journey as a family and a new ministry in a new city I just want to say thank you to Joanna for taking a chance on me. Thank you for seeing the best in me when too often I give you my worst. Thank you for bearing with me when too often I've been unworthy of your unconditional love and affection. Thank you for being the woman I need, and not the one I deserve, and an amazing mother to our children.

Thanks most of all for teaching me what love really looks like and for providing a much needed correction to my understanding of just what the Bible describes by modelling it for me every single day.

Joanna, I love you. Happy 10th Anniversary and here's to many more.

I meant what I said 10 years ago and I mean it even more
today: I do.

The Ram

It’s been a while since I wrote anything for this blog as I’ve been undergoing a season of transition for the last couple of months, coming to the difficult decision to resign my pastorate in Estevan Saskatchewan to pursue what Joanna and I have felt God calling us into at a new congregation in Winnipeg Manitoba. When I last wrote about this decision what I emphasized was the unmistakable sense that we were in the middle of a God moment – an invasion of Kairos time – into the world of the ordinary. We felt as though every step of our journey was guided and directed by the one sovereign King who was working out some much larger plan through our insignificant lives and it was a very humbling and overwhelming experience.

And that’s where I left things. (If you want to review the whole story in detail you can check out my post from April 28 here)

But as frequently happens, God’s leading was not to simply make a decision as to where to minister, but rather he had bigger plans for us personally to learn how to trust him in the midst of difficult situations. There is an old saying that says “God is rarely early, but he is never late.” It’s a trite little statement that is usually offered with the best of intentions, but really is of little help in the midst of a storm – but for Jo and I over these last few months it has become a truism of almost comical proportions.

First there was the sale of our home. We had taken the risk of putting in a conditional offer on what would become our new home in Winnipeg when we were in the city candidating – we were advised that it would be a long shot in the brisk moving Winnipeg market but we took the chance anyways and made a full-price offer on the condition of the sale of our home. To our surprise and delight it was accepted! And so the clock started ticking for us to sell our house in Estevan which initially in the hot and inflated Estevan market seemed like a sure thing, but as the days went by, the showing s slowed down and nobody was making any legitimate offers to buy our property. The deadline for our condition was rapidly approaching and we were getting really nervous – but all along the way God was saying to us, “trust me, I’ve got this.”

It’s a lot easier to believe God when he says things like that when you can see exactly how he’s going to take care of the situation. When money is tight but you know that there is a cheque in the mail, or when you’ve got nowhere to stay but Mom and Dad’s basement is available rent-free. But when you’ve stepped out in faith in a big way; when the safety net has been removed and all you can see around you is how far you have to fall – it’s pretty hard to believe those words.

In Genesis 22 we get one of the most famous stories in the Bible – the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. I don’t call it a near-sacrifice, or an attempted sacrifice, because the narrator’s presentation of Abraham’s heart leads us to the inescapable conclusion that he would have gone through with it had God not intervened. No this is the story of Abraham sacrificing his son, whom he loved, to the will and sovereignty of God.

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”Genesis 22:1-2

Now Abraham’s actions tell us that he was willing to sacrifice, but Abraham’s words tell us that he trusted in the Lord and was holding onto the belief that God’s promise to make a great nation through Isaac was secure. We know this because he told Isaac as much. When his son asked what was going on, Abraham essentially said, “trust me, God’s got this.”

Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.Genesis 22:7-8

And so with no rescue in sight, clinging only to the knowledge of the character of God Abraham and Isaac continued to climb the mountain knowing that at it’s summit an altar would be built and someone was going to be sacrificed on it.

Our story, while certainly not life and death, played out in a similar way. The Friday before the Monday when our conditional offer was set to expire came and we had no offers or prospective offers in the pipeline for our house. We were feeling that perhaps we had not heard God’s voice properly, or that we had been too greedy in what we were looking for in a house or that we had messed up and were supposed to have accepted a low-ball offer on our house that came within hours of listing it. Our minds and hearts were full of what ifs as we prepared to lose the house we had fallen in love with when something unexpected happened – the sellers contacted our realtor and offered to extend the conditions by another two weeks! We had two more weeks to sell our house and another chance to make this all work out. God had provided our ram caught in the thorns and we rejoiced at his goodness to us.

But that was not the end. Abraham had to learn this lesson once but we needed to learn it again and again. Because shortly after receiving that extension (two days actually) we received not one, but two offers on our house and we accepted one at asking price (there was our ram) but there were conditions that needed to be met on their sale within a week – and I’m sure you can see where this is going, when the deadline came an went we had not received word of the conditions being removed. We felt like Abraham (or perhaps like Isaac) as we were being strapped to the altar. Our sale was going to fall through and we were going to lose our house – but then the day after the offer expired we heard through our realtor that the conditions were met, they just neglected to tell us before the deadline!!! Another ram in the thicket, and you would think by now we would have learned our lesson. But then the mortgage happened.

We had been very proactive in talking to our lender many times along the way from pre-approval, to

specific purchase approval once we had made the conditional offer, to sale approval (ensuring that we knew what was the lowest sale price we could accept on our home and still have enough to make the new mortgage viable). Every box had been checked, every “i” had been dotted and every “t” had been crossed and then a couple weeks after the sale our loans officer called and told us that the mortgage wasn’t going to work. Someone in the central loans office had declined our mortgage and everything was about to fall apart. Not only were we going to lose our new home in Winnipeg, but we had already cleared the conditions on our Estevan home and were set to be homeless in a matter of weeks. And now, if we had felt like Isaac being bound on the altar before, we felt now like Abraham with the dagger hanging over his son like the Sword of Damocles – ready to end everything. But once again God provided a ram in the thicket.

Our loans officer and the branch manager recognizing that this was the bank’s error (not sure who’s in the bank, but certainly not ours) furiously started calling people higher and higher up the ladder on our behalf, and on a Sunday morning (of all times) having been unable to sleep most of the weekend with worry for what might happen to us, the loans officer went into work and checked the status of our mortgage – Approved! We got out of church to find four or five messages on Joanna’s cell phone asking us to call.

Even right up to the hour (and past the hour) of possession these potentially catastrophic events kept happening to us, but every time they did God came through exactly when he needed to keep us going. He was rarely early, but never, NEVER, late. And we have begun to understand just a little of the lesson I believe that the Lord was teaching Abraham.

You see I think that Abraham needed to learn what the real promise was. He thought that the promise was a great line of descendants, so when years passed and God had not allowed Sarah to conceive he took matters into his own hands with Hagar and Ishmael was born. But God didn’t want his promise fulfilled by human intervention. When God finally allowed Sarah to conceive and she gave birth to Isaac, Abraham was I’m sure tempted to put all his hope now in this boy. Isaac, whom he loved, would be the embodiment of the promise – but God was dissatisfied with that arrangement too. God wanted Abraham to love him more. God wanted Abraham to put his hope in him, not in Isaac. God wanted Abraham to trust in HIS power, not in his own ability to rear and protect his heir – so he took them up the mountain and asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

And he did.

God may have intervened and provided the ram at the last possible moment, sparing Isaac’s life, but Abraham never looked at Isaac the same way. Before that day it was “Isaac, whom I love” but after that day is was just “Isaac.” Abraham had sacrificed on that mountain his dependence on his own ability to bring God’s promises into reality. He had sacrificed his own way of doing things on the Altar that day so that he could experience the full measure and scope of God’s amazing plan. And that’s what we’re learning too.

I won’t say that we’ve fully made the break that it seems Abraham did on that mountain. We’re still learning that lesson time and time again, but as we walk down this path of transition that God has so clearly called us to we are seeing again and again that we can’t affect the changes that need to happen in our own power. We can’t manufacture our circumstances in any way that matters, but rather God keeps taking us to the mountain summit to demonstrate to us that when the time is right and all of our attempts at control have failed, he will provide the ram. And along this journey he always has. And I’m starting to learn that if I’m walking in accordance to his will – he always will.

Blessings,

Chris